Cast your mind back to this time last year and try and remember what were you worrying about? Give it some serious thought. What was it specifically?

If you’re not a worrier you’re probably wondering what the hell I’m talking about and whether I had the wrong kind of mushroom soup for lunch again.

On the other hand, if you’re a serial, world-class fretter you will have instinctively started scanning the dozens of worry files in your mind trying to find the one dated October 2007.

Unless you were undergoing something very specific and/or traumatic in your life at that time you probably wont be able to remember the issue that was causing you that momentary grief. I

t’ll just be another worry on another day in another month in another year chock full of worries and concerns. Why on earth should anything stand out when you just bounce from one crisis to another?

As I said in this post, your mind doesn’t reconstruct memories as would seem sensible, it constructs them.

That is the reason why you can’t remember what you had for dinner on April 13th 1996.

It’s just a day like any other of several thousand that you have lived so how on earth are you supposed to remember that particular one clearly?

Well I can remember, I can tell you exactly what I had on that day. Does that make me a genius with a brain the size of a small planet and a memory to embarrass a herd of super intelligent elephants? Much as I’d like to think so, probably not.

I can remember such a thing because it was my wedding day and it happened just before my father-in-law stood up to deliver a 5-minute speech that went on for almost an hour and a half and had people at the back stabbing forks into their eyes to keep them awake.

The day was obviously different to any other day in my life. As such I have a reference point for a meal that was otherwise less than extraordinary.

That reference point allows me to pluck it from my memory with ease.

Therefore, the reason you can’t remember what your main focus of concern was a year ago is because it was nothing out of the ordinary.

More importantly than that, it wasn’t that significant in your great scheme of things and probably never panned out as badly as you predicted at the time.

Why am I going on so much about this you may be wondering? Why am I not just laboring the point, but beating the poor thing to death with the eagerness of a Faroe Islander on a baby seal clubbing mission?

The reason is this. If you continue to justify your reasoning (especially to yourself) with, “Yeh but this is different, I really DO need to worry about this” you’ll never break the habit.

You have to believe there is never any benefit to worrying. Otherwise there’ll be no incentive to change and the cycle will continue ad infinitum and you’ll make yourself unnecessarily miserable.  If that’s your goal, check this out.

The belief that you need to worry is just that, a belief, it’s not fact. I need you to go with me on this. If you are (dare I say it) worried about not worrying, and think you may start acting recklessly, park that belief at the door for the moment.

It’s ok; you can give the keys to the nice valet and if you want them back again at the end, that’s fine.

As a rule of thumb you can’t rationalize your way out of fears that are buried at an unconscious level.

For example, if you have a fear of flying it is fruitless to tell yourself that it doesn’t make any sense and that it’s safer than eating tomatoes. You already know that and the knowledge has little or zero effect when it’s time to board that plane.

However, it’s slightly different with worrying because it often occurs precisely because either somebody hasn’t done the analysis or has done so and grossly over-estimated the danger.

Let’s take an easy starting point with this. I know that about 5% of people do exercises in books and so forth, but I don’t care because I know you’re more intelligent than the 95% and that if you want to make changes you’ll do this.

Make a list of the last 10 things that you can remember worrying about. It can be anything from thinking you’ll get laughed at for leaving the house in odds socks to being convinced that the headache you had was a brain tumor the size of a small melon.  Just write them down.

Of the 10 things how many came to fruition? My guess would be 2 or under if you’re anything like my clients. This means that 80%+ of the time you’re wrong in making a decision to worry.

In and of itself that is cool and will help any sane person with an IQ higher than the Village Idiot’s pet pigeon to see that things need to change.

It gets better though. Thinking of the times you were right, how many had consequences as serious as you initially predicted? I’m confident that this will be either a tiny minority or none at all.

As I said above, you’re an intelligent person, so what the hell are you doing devoting so much time and energy to stuff that rarely or never happens.

It’s nuts, you know that, right? It’s like planning a huge party and not inviting anybody.

If you have a levelheaded objective friend whose judgment you respect, why not enlist their help in evaluating your problems?

Ask them whether they think your concerns are valid or whether you’re making mountains out of molehills. In fact, ask yourself now if people frequently say such things to you. If they do, then isn’t that telling you something?

All worrying happens in the future about stuff that may or may not happen. You can’t worry about the past (although you can feel guilty which is about as useful) and you certainly can’t worry about the present.

So get yourself in the present more often because it’s the only place you can live life to the fullest anyway.

Here’s what I want you to do. I am going to give you the day after tomorrow off from worrying. As preparation I want to get all your worrying done up front.

Worry about your health, the weather, the election, your family, the way that guy you don’t know looked at you, whether your bum looks too big and anything else you can think about.

Take your time to wallow in this stuff like a very happy pig basking in the warm, wet, brown stuff for the next few hours.

Then on the day in question you can follow the American tradition of outsourcing and let me do your worrying for you. On this one occasion I’m not going to charge you, so let me know what you want me to worry about in the comments field and I’m on the case.

It may be that you have some serious stuff going on in your life at the moment and you think this doesn’t really apply to you. Well it does. Even if you are seriously ill or have money problems that could mean you lose your house you can still decide not to worry.

Worrying will not help; it will just make you feel even worse and prevent you from acting, the one thing that you most need to do.

This isn’t an overnight fix. It takes time and patience to overcome years of worrying, but it can be done if the will is there.

If you’re a worrier, I highly recommend you take the time and release yourself from the shackles and start to live a little.

Photo: ‘Worry Lines’ Courtesy of Brian Rosengrant