Don't Worry, Be Happy
What I read: Worry is an unhelpful friend and a shoddy fortune-teller by Lucas LaFreniere in Psyche (this has become one of my favorite online publications). Published June 8, 2021.
Apologies for the seemingly glib and dismissive title to this post. After reading this article, Bobby McFerrin’s classic song, Don’t Worry Be Happy, popped into my mind.
Here's a little song I wrote
You might want to sing it note for note
Don't worry, be happy
In every life we have some trouble
But when you worry you make it double
Don't worry, be happy
Don't worry, be happy now
By no means do I intend to dismiss anyone who worries excessively or suffers from an anxiety disorder because of such worry. However, the song’s lyrics encapsulate much of the message of the article. Worry is rarely useful. Worry indeed makes trouble double.
Lucas Lafreniere, an assistant professor in psychology at Skidmore College in New York, offers a concise and compelling argument for each of us to manage our worrying in whatever manner works best for us. Not doing so can result in wasted stress, bouts of anxiety, and worse outcomes than if we had not worried at all.
Indeed, most worry is for naught. It seems counterintuitive. There is an assumption that plagues a lot of people I know that if they worry enough, it will catapult them into action to alleviate the causes of such worry. Nope. It turns out most worry is fruitless and a waste of psychic energy.
Sure, a modicum of worry can help us watch out for potential problems and threats so we can best prepare. I got the COVID-19 vaccine because the science was rather clear that if I did not, I could get sick and perhaps die. That worry turned out to be a smart motivator for me to get vaccinated (please get vaccinated). But so much of the energy I and others put into worrying is truly fruitless.
To start, the things that people worry about rarely actually happen. Compared with infrequent worriers, frequent worriers predict that negative events are more likely to occur, come up with more reasons why they would occur, and predict that the outcomes would be more harmful. According to research, these predictions are very often proven false.
Research supports this contention. The author and his colleague carried out a study with students who suffered from generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), a malady that manifests in excessive, uncontrollable worry. The conclusion of the study was that more than 91% of the things about which participants worried never came true. Perhaps surprisingly to worriers, the most common percentage of worries that didn’t end up being true was 100%.
Lafreniere talks about the all too familiar mental habit of “catastrophizing,” the mental churn that thinks the worst outcome will happen and, to make matters worse, that one can’t handle any consequences that might occur. This also turns out to be a false narrative we toss around in our brains.
Because even when worries do come true, people often handle the fallout much better than they expected – even those highly prone to worry. Much research on ‘affective forecasting’ has shown that when upsetting things happen – such as not getting a promotion or not getting the desired result on a pregnancy test – people tend to experience them much less negatively than they predicted they would. Moreover, another study tracking the worries of people with GAD found that when participants’ worries did come true, they reported coping better than expected in the majority of cases (79 per cent). Put simply, when predictions are driven by worry, people tend to magnify the threat’s power while downplaying their own ability to cope – falsely.
Business managers or anyone who oversees a team or organization should take note of this particular aspect of worry.
Those in the worry group reported the most anxiety after trying to generate solutions and, across all groups, participants who worried more said they also had less intention to actually carry out possible solutions. All in all, this and other research suggests that worry is not the aid to problem-solving that many people might think.
So, when someone employed at a business or working within an organization feels inordinately worried that any misstep or error they make will be dealt with in the most harsh and inhumane of ways, guess what? They end up performing more poorly as a result. They end up making more mistakes, solving fewer problems, and that results in worse outcomes and bottom lines.
Want the people you work with to produce stellar results? Treat them nicely. Allay their fears that an occasional screw up or bad decision isn’t going to crush their chances of advancement or risk firing or expulsion.
At work I am blessed with a management chain and coworkers where there is no culture of worry. Sure, sometimes some of us mess up. Myself included. We’re never happy about that. A bit of worry might occur which is entirely understandable. But excessive worry will only impede the success of any endeavor, small or big.
In the interest of transparency, I sometimes deal with excessive worry. It happens at various times in my life. For example, I’m a money worrier. Even when I might have plenty of money in savings, I worry I won’t be able to pay the bills. As a result, if I have ever been in need of a job, I have worked night and day until I’ve procured employment. I know that seems like a logical thing to do, and it certainly has an upside. But it’s also meant I rarely exhale and think “alright, you have enough money to pay your bills and then some – relax.” I’m still a money worrier and I’m working on coming to terms with that.
Another manifestation of excessive worry is something else I suffer from at times, FOMO (fear of missing out). I will be presented with several options to socialize, attend events, or otherwise go do something outside the house. I churn about such decisions. Angst ensues about which choice I should make, to what should I commit? What often ends up happening is I am sitting at home doing absolutely nothing and miserable about that situation. This is another form of excessive worrying that friends and acquaintances have said plagues them as well. Trust me. Pick something and go do it. It’s almost always the right decision to make a decision.
If you are a worrier, all is not lost. There are ways to manage worry and lessen its negative impact on your life.
The trouble is, even if you know this, it can be difficult to just stop worry by force of will. Often, it’s a strongly conditioned ‘bad habit’ that takes heavily repeated countermeasures to break. Fortunately, there are many resources and therapeutic approaches for effectively reducing your worry. Some, such as mindfulness practices and acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), focus on accepting worries and not struggling against them. These practices involve noticing your worries in a nonjudgmental way, and refraining from analysing, resisting or acting on them. Worries are observed as though from a distance: you let the tumbleweed of worry roll by without getting tangled up in it.
In contrast, approaches such as cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) attempt to actively change worry and its effects. For example, the practice of challenging worrisome thoughts involves using logic and evidence to argue against the claims of a worry. This might include determining the realistic probability that the worry will come true, and/or your means and likelihood of coping if it did. Lastly, practices for relaxing the body – such as progressive muscle relaxation or steady breathing – can relax the mind as well, reducing worry’s frequency and grip.
I was introduced to the concept of mindfulness when I attended a Wisdom 2.0 conference (great conference by the way) at the suggestion of a close friend (she’s remarkable, check her out). It changed my life. With a few simple mindfulness techniques, I significantly blunted the impact of worry, a habit I had dealt with since childhood.
Meditation is something I’ve tried off and on since my 20s. I remember taking some Transcendental Meditation (TM) training and liking it for a hot minute. It was great training, but it didn’t stick.
I made attempts at other meditation techniques in fits and starts over the next decades until a few years ago when I listened to a keynote speech by Dan Harris, author of 10% Happier: How I Tamed the Voice in My Head, Reduced Stress Without Losing My Edge, and Found Self-Help That Actually Works, at that fateful Wisdom 2.0 conference. I bought the book and wrote about it soon thereafter in Yes, You Can Be 10% Happier.
Since then, I have meditated regularly. Sometimes I’m good at it. Sometimes I’m terrible at it. But the key to meditation is to sit with it and adapt to its ebb and flow. No one is a perfect meditator. No one. My money worrying, FOMO, and host of other things I’ve worried about throughout my entire life is far less problematic.
If you’d like another great book about meditation, I recommend a book I just finished, A Monk’s Guide to Happiness: Meditation in the 21st Century by Gelong Thubten. It’s an articulate, simple guide to meditation and why it makes you happier and your life unfold with more ease.
Also, in reference to LaFreniere’s mention of progressive muscle relaxation and steady breathing relaxing the mind and reducing worry’s frequency and grip, let me recommend yoga. Every form of yoga I’ve practiced over the years has at its core deep, rhythmic, conscious breathing along with muscle relaxation and it really does help. My yoga practice comes and goes, but I’m never unhappy when I start it up again.
For me, the crux of LaFreniere’s message is summarized in this paragraph.
Worry is worse than useless, because it also racks up significant costs along the way. For example, do you feel good when you worry? Of course not! Worry generates distress in-the-moment, then maintains that distress over time by repeating itself. People find worry unpleasant, and it increases physiological stress. There’s a sick irony here: worry creates misery in the present to prevent misery in the future – future misery that hardly ever even happens!
At the risk of making this topic seem trite, which it most certainly is not, I’ll end with this from the tail end of McFerrin’s song.
Now listen to what I said, in your life expect some trouble
When you worry you make it double
But don't worry, be happy, be happy now
😀😀😀