Do you worry about work?
I can’t imagine why.
You have the perfect job. You have a boss who respects you. You have co-workers who love you and clients who think you’re the cat’s pajamas. You also have an eye-popping salary with perks galore and big fat raises lined up from here to retirement.
You don’t?
Well, maybe you should worry. Maybe, you should worry a lot. It’s the only logical response to your horrible situation and the miniscule possibility that you’ll be able to make it work out. Yes, you should definitely worry — just as long as you do your worrying right.
It’s true! If you’re going to worry about anything, worry that you’re worrying all wrong. Fortunately, there is someone who can help you worry right. That’s psychologist and neuroscience professor Tracy Dennis-Tiwary, Ph.D., the author of “Don’t try to worry less. Worry smarter,” a helpful article in The Washington Post.
“Worry is the thinking part of anxiety,” Dennis-Tiwary explains. “It evolved to grab our attention and focus it on the uncertain future, priming us to take useful actions.”
The problem with developing these useful actions is that we’re not very good at it. Worry might have produced an effective response to a midmanagement cave-dweller, anxious about being attacked by a saber-tooth tiger — namely, “JUMP!” But a more nuanced response is demanded when feeling anxious about a new hire, a new boss or a new flavor of coffee creamer in the break room. (Though it certainly couldn’t hurt to “JUMP!”)
One response to worry that you definitely do want to worry about is the tendency we have to stifle it.
“Suppressing thoughts and feelings never works,” the professor writes, “and paradoxically increases anxiety and worries ... blocking us from figuring out other ways of coping.”
In other words, no more hiding in a maelstrom of worries. You’ve got to embrace the fear if you want to conquer it. To be specific, the question is not whether you should worry if you think your manager is looking at you funny. You should assume that the worry — and the funny looks — are real. This will let you decide if your response should be to stick out your tongue or stick out your thumb and move on down the road.
Sound difficult? Most def, but here are some pro tips from a respected academic as seen through the eyes of an experienced worrier: me.
No. 1: Locate worry in your body.
Worry is in your brain, sure, but there are other physical locations where worry shows up, like in your dry, constricted throat, your racing heart and your butterfly-infested tum-tum. Once you have located a locus, the advice is to “Stretch. Sit up straight. Breathe.” (Speaking personally, I hate it when someone tells me to breathe. If I want to hold my breath until I turn red, I’m going to do it. When dealing with senior executives, it always works.)
In the words of management expert Taylor Swift, shake it off. Of course, if your worry is located in your wallet, you’re definitely shaking already.
No. 2: Make worry concrete and contained.
Worries multiply. One strategy here is to “pick a specific time to worry.” I’d suggest spending every Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 4:45 p.m. worrying. That leaves 15 minutes a day and all weekend to find new things to worry about. You certainly don’t want to run out.
No. 3: Problem-solve.
“Worries are diminished by plans and actions,” says the professor. But before you act, you need a plan. To keep it simple, I have transformed Dennis-Tiwary’s problem-solving system into a catchy mnemonic — BETPATEA. Of course, that stands for Brainstorm, Evaluate, Think, Plan, Act, Test, Evaluate and Adjust.
Don’t think you’ll be able to remember all that? Well, that is a worry.
(After developing and patenting my brilliant mnemonic, I learned that Betpatia is one of the inner islands in the Outer Hebrides. If the Betpatians want to sue me, I say — go for it. My lawyer and my psychiatrist say I have nothing to worry about.)
No. 4: Let go of worries.
“Worries send us into the future,” writes our expert, “and once we’ve visited there, it’s time to let go and return to the present.”
By leaving your worries behind in the future, you will avoid “stewing in a miasma of vague distress.” Maybe so, but considering all that you have to worry about, a miasma sounds like a real improvement.
As they say in Betpatia, make it a double.
Bob Goldman was an advertising executive at a Fortune 500 company. He offers a virtual shoulder to cry on at bob@bgplanning.com.
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