A father reflects on his journey from chronic worrier to someone who worries far less, noting that children absorb their parents' anxiety habits. He argues that conventional worry-reduction techniques don't work, and instead suggests ignoring the internal negative voice rather than fighting it allows peace to replace the internal conflict.
Hi, good morning everybody. I hope your week is getting off to a great start. I hope you are thriving this lovely Monday morning. Look, it's lovely where we are. I hope it's lovely where you are too. So we've reached W in the A to Z of happiness, and W is for worry. Now, um, yesterday was, uh, yesterday was Father's Day. And unfortunately, my dad died just over 3 years ago now, so we still miss him, and especially on Father's Day. I didn't talk to my dad a lot about feelings, but I do remember one particularly poignant conversation with— I had with one particularly poignant conversation I had with him about worrying. And he, he, he shared a little side of me that I didn't know. And the fact that he thought that worrying was good, because worrying kept him on his toes. So worrying kept danger at bay, um, worrying stopped bad things happening. You know, he was talking about everything in his life, um, uh, and I said to him something like, but didn't that worry stop you Enjoying your life. And that— sorry, tears are coming to, to my eyes as I recall the tears coming to his eyes at that point. You see, I do exactly that as well. And I think we all do. We think that worrying serves some sort of higher purpose in terms of protecting us, but it just stops us most of the time. It stops us enjoying what we've got, you know. And so in some ways, for me, worry is about— it's the opposite of gratitude because it stops us being I'm not a, you know, gratitude diary fan or anything like that. I'm not into techniques. The techniques— I've tried all the techniques and the techniques don't work. They don't work for me. That's why I don't advocate them to anybody else. And people come to me and said, how can you do this? And you think, yes, okay, well, we've— we— there are hows, but it goes a little bit deeper than techniques. If the techniques work, I wouldn't have Little love handles, you know, little patches of fat on my on my belly. You know, we would the techniques don't don't work. So worry. I have become I'm a I'm a recovering worryaholic, I think. I used to worry, and then I used to worry about worrying. And, and I, I see that so much in— I see that so much in, uh, in parents that I, I speak to. They're worried about that. They're worried about their children, and, um, they're worried about not being a good enough parent. They're worried about— So the, the worry It goes all the way down. It's a whole—it's just worry. It's worry about worry. It's worries about. So I want to bring them hope, and that they—the hope is here. I'm here with a message of hope to help you stop worrying. Because kids do what we do, not what we say. So the more we worry, the more likely that they are to worry. And the less worrisome— the less, the less we worry, the less they'll worry. And it is that simple. It is as simple as that. And I wish I could give you the cure to worrying in a 5-minute video. I wish I could do that, but I can't because you need to see that for yourself like I've seen it for myself. So I worry a lot less. I worry a lot less, but I also worry about worrying a lot less, if you get what I mean. So it's not that I I don't worry at all. It's that my worrying is less worrisome. So, you know, people talk about worrying and then it becomes anxiety. So anxiety is, at its most essential, worrying about worrying. And I do, I do a lot less of that than I used to do. And that is my message of hope For you today, and let me give you one thing that I found that definitely doesn't work. Okay, and that's trying to argue with the voice in your head, trying to get yourself to worry less. So my sister does this by shouting Zen, Zen, Zen. I shouldn't shout, but saying Zen, Zen, and Zen. To herself. And I really— I've never seen that work. And I'm laughing because I've done exactly the same. You know, we're all trying to shut that voice in our head up. We're trying to argue with it. It's the— what my friend Richard Wilkins called a civil war. There's a civil war in our head, and that doesn't work. That does not work. A civil war— for a civil war to end, you need peace, and that is ignoring the negative voice in your head, not arguing with it. See you soon. Bye-bye.
Weathering Storms With Joanne Morales, Jennifer Hartwig and Rebecca Dominguez
