Do not distress yourself with dark imaginings

Today’s guest blogger in the Desiderata Series is David from How to Have Great Self Confidence.

But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings

I cannot say I’ve ever used the term “dark imaginings” before. However I have said – to myself amongst others – “stop worrying”. The word worry though doesn’t sound too bad – it’s almost a nice word.

The definition of worry is darker – “to torment oneself with or suffer from disturbing thoughts” (dictionary.com). Torment is a good definition. I tend to tell clients that worrying is like pouring petrol (gasoline) on a bonfire. It doesn’t achieve anything, but makes us feel worse.

Worrying is not problem solving. When we worry thoughts turn round and round in our mind. Our self talk gets more entrenched and negative. We forget that thinking is not reality. We lose any sense of perspective.

Many worries are trivial and have their roots in our irrational thought processes. For instance, many people may praise you for something – but you worry about what the one critical voice said. We can magnify problems, and minimize what is great about our life. We worry about what others think of us. We worry about events ahead when currently there is absolutely nothing we can do.

Why do we have these “dark imaginings”- we don’t choose to have them? Worries are automatic thoughts. Throughout our life we take on board millions of messages from those around us, and sadly most of us get more negative that positive – how many children get told to talk more or make more mess?!! This sets up the habit for our mind to take on negative perspective as we get older. This negativity feeds our automatic thoughts, giving us negative self talk – WORRY!

How do we stop worry? One method is to simply tell yourself a mental “NO”. Don’t analyze what you’re worrying about, just say no and switch your attention to something else. Some try clapping hands, or flicking their wrists with elastic bands, as a way of reinforcing that switch off.

The other technique is problem solving. Write down the worry on paper, and clarify what the problem actually is. You may find that there isn’t really a problem when you try to express it in black and white. Once defined, you can start thinking about possible solutions.

Get writing. The best way is to write everything down, without editing as you go.

Depending on the magnitude and complexity of the problem you may then choose to go through some of the better solutions and list pros and cons. Or it may be that by just writing out possibilities, the correct solution and course of action is obvious to you.

Whatever happens, your problem solving needs to come up with a plan of action – even if that plan is to do nothing or look at the problem again at some future date. It may be now is not the best time, or you may need more time to discuss the problem with others or research other possible solutions.

By looking at the problem in this way you can at least respond to your worries with a concrete positive answer. If your worry is indeed “what if the sun doesn’t come back”, a positive response would be -”If it doesn’t come back there is absolutely nothing I can do about it, so I might as well enjoy it setting whilst it lasts….”