Worry Less, Do More

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Here's something you may or may not know about me: I'm a grade A worrier. Seriously, I could get gold in the worrying Olympics.

I get it from my Mum, who now when I think about it, also got it from her Mum. Worrying about a multitude of things, big and small, appears to be some sort of family trait.

The list of things I worry about includes, but is not limited to: what other people think of me, how little savings I have, what ailment a quick Google symptom search will confirm that I almost certainly have, whether or I not I have found my true calling in life, if I am a good enough girlfriend/daughter/colleague/friend, how I'll pay to have my car/boiler/camera fixed if they decide to spontaneously break, etc etc. You get the gist - I spend a lot of time wrapped up in dramatic little scenarios that I've made up in my head. Cute, huh?

Sometimes worrying can be a good thing. I mean, if I didn't worry about meeting my mortgage repayments I would almost certainly spend all of my money on ASOS or Skyscanner and end up homeless (but impeccably dressed and very well travelled, I might add!). And worrying about staying healthy helps me to choose the green juices for breakfast instead of the deliciously drool worthy almond croissant.

But what I've been realising recently is that worrying about what might happen sometimes puts me off even getting started. Take this blog for example - I spent a good 6 months thinking that I might quite like to start my own blog and have somewhere to write about my life. But I kept delaying actually opening a Wordpress account because I was scared of whether anyone would actually read it and if the people who did read it would like it and whether my IRL friends would think it was weird. I was so consumed with worrying about this thing that I hadn't even created yet that I almost didn't do it.

And now I have this wonderful little space that I love so much. A space to be creative and record the ace things that happen and rant about some of the less brilliant stuff. And sure, I don't have millions of readers, and some people might not like my posts all that much, but actually, I don't really care about those things. I care about the fact that so many of you lovely folk leave me nice comments and that my confidence has grown and that I've made so many amazing friends that I would never have met otherwise. The list of things that put me off getting started just really don't matter.

I'm trying to keep this in mind in other areas of my life - just cracking on with doing the doing instead of worrying about all of the things that could go wrong. So much of what we worry about will never happen, but so much other amazing stuff COULD happen if only we just put ourselves out there. And really, we aren't ever going to please everyone, so worrying about what other people think is pretty much the biggest waste of time ever. I need to remember that sometimes.