I’m one of those incessant worrywarts. Risk mitigation is a significant facet of my work. Thus, I worry about the prospect of non-optimal results; I worry about the unintended side effects of my decisions, and I worry about what people aren’t telling me. I even worry that I worry too much (now, that worry is entirely unfounded.)
If, like many people, you’d like to worry less, perhaps you may find the following approaches helpful. Most of my over-worrying comes from thinking ahead, but after a reasonable effort to understand risks and make plans to adapt more flexibly to developing situations, I’ll just let up. I’ll self-talk as though I’m addressing a team, “Not everything is within our control. We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. Let’s deal with it as it appears and course-correct.” Beyond that, I’ll get really busy with something else that keeps me too occupied to fret about the previous thing that worried me.
You may have heard of the notion of