Worry is a great drain of energy. Worrying about things makes us feel very bad and most of the stuff that we do worry about is unnecessary. I suppose that you would not believe me if I told you that worry is actually supposed to be an ally; that it should really be a helping hand that allows us to discover where we need to take action in order to change our circumstance for the better. If you are not willing or able to recognize the power of this ally, you must do everything in your power to lessen the dominance that worry has in your life. If you don’t, you will drain away the energy that should be used to take positive action.

You can eliminate most worry by figuring out what is important and not important. If you look at all the things in your life that worry you, you will find that many of the things that are causing you a lot of worry and pain are really not that important. It is advisable then that you study what is making you worry so that you are able to decide consciously whether this certain situation is really worth all that waste of energy.

It is the case that we also worry about things that are very improbable. You should always figure out whether something that is worrying you is really that likely to happen. When we worry about things and we say to ourselves that we are just worried and leave it at that, we tend to give up our power to control this worry. You must never just let yourself worry over nothing; that is exactly what you are doing when you are letting worry happen all by itself and you are not questioning what is making you worried and how likely that worrying situation really is. Next time that you worry about something, ask yourself how likely that situation is. Explore the situation and logically come to a conclusion as to how worried you should actually be. In this way you are able to eliminate your stress by realizing that most of the things that you worry about are quite unlikely, or at least not as severe as you might imagine.

If you run across certain worrying situations that have a kind of chronic mania to them, you must learn to let them go. For example there are situations that we worry about, that we might have some small or large reason to worry over, that we are powerless to change. In other words, it’s a situation that you have to learn to live with for the moment. When you face such a situation you must be able to let that worry go. You do this by knowing that you have studied this situation that is worrying you and that even though there’s nothing that you can do to stop this worry at the moment, you must be part of the situation for now. With this understanding you can let go of the worry for now, understanding that the worry is there to show you that you need to take action to change something that you do not like. That you will take this action as soon as you can but that for now there is nothing that you can do but to let go. You lessen this worry by planning ahead to the time when you can take action.

All worry is lessened when you are willing to look at it. When you are willing to look at and study the source of your worry, that worry loses its power. By studying and exploring these worries, it keeps them all in proper perspective. You understand their reason and you also understand that worry is just a type of warning system that is telling you that things need to change. Worry then just becomes an ally that allows you to plan in order to overcome obstacles that you might face in the near or distant future. Worry is your friend, face it, understand it, use it to overcome the obstacles in your life.