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Have you ever heard of wart magic?  Even if you have, I don’t know if you have heard of worry wart magic.

If you know about the former, you might be skeptical about it. I first heard about it from, of all people, my late first husband’s father, a medical doctor, who said that wart magic worked, and was the best way to banish those pesky things.  I never figured out if he was serious or not.  Over the years, I ran into others who espoused the wonders of wart magic. One U.S. Southern woman told me that you say a chant or prayer and rub the wart with the surface of a cut potato.  Then I heard of  a method used by someone born in another country. She said to light incense, hold a coin in the smoke, rub the coin on the wart, say some “magic words”, while visualizing transferring the wart from your skin to the coin, and then you bury the coin.  In about a month, the wart will, reportedly, be gone.

If only it were as easy to banish worrying about things in life, as those who believe in wart magic think it is to get rid of warts.  Unfortunately, I was raised to be a worrier.How about you?   I have to make a very conscious effort to get out of that mode, when I catch myself doing it excessively. . Like most parents, mine had good intentions, but nearly losing me when I was seven years old, and a series of other life events, filled them with a considerable amount of fear about life and a sense of unhealthy hyper-alertness.  I do think some people are more genetically inclined to worry too, but it’s kind of hard to prove whether some are predisposed to worry by nature, or whether it’s mainly learned behavior, or a combination.

If you have had the “worry curse” placed on your head, either through the misfortune of familial conditioning, bad experiences or for whatever reasons, then it could be a great thing for you to figure out some ways to take you away from that kind of thinking as much as possible. You might just want to develop a menu of “distractions” that you can pull out and focus on when you catch yourself beginning to worry too much, and too hard.

Sometimes we believe that we are using superior reasoning to problem-solve, by examining things from every angle. We think that makes us highly skilled at handling predicaments.  We mentally go through all of the different case scenarios. When we have vivid imaginations, it is easy for us to do this.  There is a great misperception, though, that this type of approach will help us arrive at the very best solution.  There is actually evidence that over-thinking things can hinder our ability to reason logically. It also can lead to physical stress.

Is there anything good about worry? Well, a little bit of worry may keep us in check and help us avoid making too many impulsive decisions.  A lot of worry is just a burden to us.  It takes us out of the present moment, diminishes our pleasure and joy in life, and in the end, gets us nowhere, since we can rarely (if ever) control every aspect of life. Someone said,  “Worrying is like a rocking chair, it gives you something to do, but it doesn’t get you anywhere. “Author Unknown

You might be quite surprised at how taking one or more simple actions, without thinking about things too much, makes a huge difference. Another of my favorite quotes about worry is from Robert Frost, who said, “The reason why worry kills more people than work is that more people worry than work.” Robert Frost

No, there is no real worry-wart “magic”  of which I’m aware, but the first step in retraining yourself is to be conscious of how much you do dwell on all of the what-ifs and the I should-haves, or shouldn’t haves. Try writing down your worries on some slips of paper, putting them in a jar, and allowing yourself to pick only one a day. That’s an action!

What works for you? If you have some great worry-wart magic, let us know, please.

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Certified and Credentialed Coach, Iris Arenson-Fuller, PCC, CPC, is a Life and Grief Transformation Coach, Life Reinvention Coach helping people (mostly midlife women, widows and Baby Boomer women}create a better present and a more promising future, no matter what they have been through in the past. She also  has many decades of experience in Adoption Loss and all adoption issues.

Contact Coach Iris: 

ir**@vi*******************.com