2022-09-14 Worrying about the fu

Worrying about the future is another mental habit that feels productive but is actually harmful to both your emotional wellbeing and self-esteem.

Here’s the key distinction to keep in mind:

Planning for realistic dangers is very different than worrying about unrealistic ones.

Our imagination is a powerful tool. But like most powerful tools, it can be used well or poorly…

• Imagining how you might enjoy working in a new career can help you grow and explore new professional options. But imagining all the ways you’re likely to fail in any new endeavor will make you anxious and depress your self-esteem.
• Imagining what would happen if you lost power while on a trip to the cabin for a weekend get-away might help you plan ahead and bring extra flashlights, water, and other supplies that might be helpful. But imagining you and your family getting into a car accident driving to the cabin will likely make you anxious and insecure.

Both realistic planning and unrealistic worrying are forms of thinking about dangers in the future. And while it’s helpful to plan and prepare, worrying is rarely helpful and always comes with two big downsides:

• Worry makes you anxious. When we get caught in the mental habit of imagining unrealistic fears and worst-case scenarios in the future, we train our brains to be afraid unnecessarily. As a result, we end up feeling unnecessarily anxious. Worry is the engine of anxiety.
• Worry lowers your self-esteem. In addition to making you feel anxious in the moment, chronic worry about unrealistic things eventually makes you feel incompetent about your ability to navigate life successfully. And when you feel like that persistently, your self-esteem takes a hit.

Just like thinking about past mistakes quickly hits the point of diminishing returns, so too does thinking about future dangers.

If you’re caught in the habit of worrying about unrealistic fears in the future, you’re getting all side-effect (chronic anxiety and low self-esteem) with no real benefit.

Your ability to think about the future is a tool. And like any tool, it’s useful in some situations and counterproductive in others.