Personal Life Coaching Course

Chapter 16
THE CURSE OF WORRY

Your personal life coaching efforts provide you with an advantage over your peers. Taking time for self-improvement is a key factor in one's success. Maintaining a focus on personal development supports your short- and long-term goals and paved the way for a happier and more successful life.

Too often, however, people get side tracked with worry or fear. Have you ever heard of any good coming to any human being from worry?

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Did it ever help anyone to become a better person? Has time spent "worrying" ever assisted in the promotion a new idea or in obtaining a higher position?

Worry provides no real value to anyone. It does nothing more than impair your health, exhaust your vitality and lessen your effectiveness.

On the other hand, time spent invested in yourself pays ongoing dividends. By taking advantage of personal life coaching practices (such as completing this course), opens doors to new ideas and puts you on a path of self-improvement and personal growth.

Worry not only saps your vitality and wastes your energy, but it also seriously impacts the quality of your work. It minimizes your effectiveness and lessens your output. The mind and body must be working with maximum freedom before they will join firmly to meet your hearts ambition.

Personal life coaching experts point out that some people make the unfortunate decision to spend their valuable time brooding over their past mistakes; punishing themselves for their shortcomings and errors, until their entire self-reflection consists of negatives.

The longer we allow these visions of dread to take up space in the mind, the more thoroughly it becomes embedded there, and the more difficult it is to remove it. Personal growth and self-development exercises provides a healthy deterrent.

"Work kills no one, but worry has killed vast multitudes."

No man or woman can be fully engaged in the important work that must be done when he or she is overtaken by the useless anxieties related to worry. Personal development activities are a great way to avoid this common mistake.

People who benefit from personal life coaching come to realize that it is not the doing of things that hurts us; it is the dreading of having to do those things that kills the spirit.

Many people approach an unpleasant task as if it were the one thing in their path that has the ability to strike them dead in an instant. The task itself may cause some sweat on the brow, but the worry is what will do the most damage to the body and mind.

If you believe you are a worrier, or wonder if you are, consider taking out a piece of paper and write down a most exhaustive list of all the worries you have. Make the list as long as you can, thinking of all the ways in which you may be sabotaged or victimized; include your most feared anxieties.

Once the list is complete, store it away for 30 days. A month later come back to your list and see if any of your worries have come true. After another 6 months has past, go back to the list again and make note of how many of your predictions were false. Go back to the list one final time a year later and you’ll be laughing at how petty and ridiculous your worries were at the time you wrote them.

This realization that worry is nothing more than a time-stealer will hopefully provide you with the strength and insight to more quickly recognize worry and rapidly dismiss it from your mind whenever it raises its ugly head.

"One of the worst forms of worry is the brooding over failure. It blights the ambition, deadens the purpose and defeats the very object the worrier has in view."
- O.S. Marden

The secret to fight worry and fear is to quickly act in opposition to it. You can quickly drive away fear and worry by planting a new idea into your mind. Choosing a subject that requires great thought and effort in order to positively create change is a true antidote to worry.

Understand clearly that worry cannot besiege you without your permission. If you identify yourself as a worry-wart then you must take ownership of the fact that you created that which is in you.

The good news is that you can also be the one who chooses to evict worry from your life. You are the only one who can control what you allow into your thoughts.

If instead of giving in to your fear, you would persist in keeping prosperity in your mind; and assume a hopeful, optimistic attitude; and conduct your business affairs in a systematic, economical and far-sighted manner – actual failure will be extremely rare in your life.

In conclusion, personal life coaching advisors emphasize that there is not a single redeeming feature about worry or any of its numerous fear-based cousins. It is always, everywhere, an unhealthy and destructive curse on the mind, body and soul.

Realize that it is stealing life from you. Your time, and your life, are too valuable to allow worry to become a barrier to happiness and success. Recognize worry for the enemy that it is.

"Create the highest, grandest vision possible for your life,
because you become what you believe."

- Oprah Winfrey

Personal Life Coaching Activities

Complete the following exercises...

Describe three major worries that tend to occupy your thoughts most regularly? Explain what in your past experience might be triggering these worries.

Explain the benefit you receive from worrying about things you cannot control. Does the worry result in a more positive outcome? Do you feel a sense of recognition when others respond to your worry with sympathy? What specifically is the payoff you receive from worry? (Hint: There must be some sort of payoff to you or else you wouldn’t invest the time worrying.) Does worrying over things give you a stronger sense of self-importance? Were your parents' worriers? Are you satisfied with the outcome you get from worrying or do you wish to minimize worry in your life?

Given what you know from the above personal life coaching information, how would you change yourself and your current situation? Explain what you need to do differently in order to minimize time spent worrying. Identify what you are willing to do in order to create positive change in this area of your life.

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