Let’s take Control of Our Worries

There are many people who like to worry about numerous things: ‘I’m really worried that my son won’t do well on his final exams at school next month;’ ‘I would like to fly to Europe on holidays this year, but I’m worried about losing my luggage like I did the last time;’ ‘I would like to go their party, but I’m worried because my hair is a mess;’ ‘I’m worried that I will be late again;’ ‘I’m really worried about my husband’s new job because he might not like it;’ ‘I’m worried about going shopping because I might get the flu from someone;’ and on and on it goes…

Like complaining, worrying is having an irritated or concerned state of mind about things, people and situations; only they haven’t happened yet. They are not real, however in our minds we give them life as if they are going to happen. It’s being concerned about the future, anticipating the negative things that might happen.

We all worry about something at some time, such as major events in our lives like buying our first home, expecting a baby, getting our first job but there are some people who constantly worry about most things in their lives and even in their children’s lives after they have become adults. All parents tend to worry to some degree about their children, but this is sometimes done excessively, especially by mothers.

We may also have worries or concerns about something related to our work that will challenge us. As an example, suppose we are in charge of a major relocation for the company where we work. The company is expanding and we are moving to larger more modern premises and we are worrying about not forgetting everything we have to consider. Well in this situation there is something we can do and that is to prepare a comprehensive plan that considers every aspect of the move. It would require a layout of the new location and there should be meetings with all the staff, or at least the supervisors, to work out the details of where all the workstations for their staff should be located. So basically this sort of thing requires a lot of planning and working with others to find solutions and then putting them into action. If we do all of this to the best of our ability involving all those being moved, then there should be no need to let our planning turn into worrying.

The main thing we have to think about with our worrying is there anything we can do to ensure the subject of our worry is eliminated or the possible negative outcome we imagine at least reduced? Also, we should reflect on whether our worrying is excessive and unreasonable. But basically, if we can’t do anything about the object of our worry, then we should do an Oyashikiri Prayer (an especially effective PL prayer) to get rid of it, leaving it completely in God’s hands.

Why do we worry?

It seems that worry is related to wanting to have control over future events and feeling helpless when it’s out of our hands. However, it’s also anticipating negative happenings with those things we can’t control. What this basically means is that we have a pessimistic state of mind and a lack of confidence that things will turn out for the best.

Excessive worry about many things can build up and overwhelm our minds such that we are unable to function well in daily life. It can also lead to panic attacks because we become obsessed about all the things we can’t control and it becomes too much for our brains to endure. Our minds were not designed to handle massive amounts of worry day after day.

Human beings are designed to be creatures of action and if we always act when we notice we need to do so, we won’t have time to worry. Also, by acting we will be doing everything within our capability so that we won’t have very much to worry about. By not doing what we should be doing we are procrastinating and this greatly enhances our worry. It’s quite clear that the longer we leave things without taking action the greater our worry becomes.

Through the experience of the Second Founder (the previous leader of PL) who learned how to rely on God and not have much in his mind at any time, we can see that when he needed to know something his intuition gave him the answers. This is contrary to what we have been taught. We were raised with the idea that we must always be thinking about things and that intelligent people are usually mentally analysing and pondering things. Then, in PL, we learn that this is not at all necessary and if we truly wish to follow our intuition we should eliminate the clutter from our minds. Our minds need to be open to receive our intuition and with a little practice we can all learn how to follow our ‘first thought’ like God’s whisper to us.

In PL we teach that the future is God’s realm because we human beings never live in the future; we can only live in the present — in the now moment. Therefore, if we worry about things, we are concerning ourselves about future matters which are not in the human realm. For this reason, we suffer Mishirases (sicknesses, accidents, misfortune and unpleasant happenings) if we are continually worrying about things; God won’t allow us to continue being concerned about the future so we will eventually suffer from Mishirases. Also, worrying prevents us from doing our heartfelt sincere effort; the best we can, here and now. As a result, we can’t live fulfilled happy lives.

A side effect of worrying is that we can sometimes cause negative events to happen because of our focus on them through our unnatural worry. Thus, it can sometimes be a self-fulfilling prophecy — we cause what we were concerned about to actually happen.

So how can we stop our worrying?

As I mentioned, action will help to eliminate worries. Often the worry becomes larger in our mind than the actual concern we are worrying about. For this reason, it’s a good idea to write down all our worries and analyse them to see how realistic they are. Then let’s look at the worst-case scenario for our major worries and think about how likely this is to happen. This will allow us to imagine our worst fears and help us to see how to cope with the outcome we anticipate.

Also, if we have a worrying type of personality, it’s best to avoid taking on unrealistic commitments.

The Second Founder readily admitted that he used have a worrying type of personality but through effort he was able to change this. Now that we have the Oyashikiri Prayer it’s a lot easier to change our worrying state of mind to a positive one than it was when the Second Founder was young. A quick way to handle our worry is to do an Oyashikiri Prayer saying something like: ‘God please help me to be free of my worry about … (describe the worry). Bless me to have a calm and peaceful state of mind.’

The important thing we always need to keep in mind is that worry won’t solve anything and only prevents us from positively handling those day to day things we really can do something about.