During one of my first units in my Diploma of Kinesiology – quite some time ago now, I was introduced to this technique of using a Worry Box.
Dunno who first came up with this technique, but to be honest, it hasn’t come up all that much in the years I have been both practicing Kinesiology & as a client.
But now…to me…it has become… The Magical Worry Box.
The way it works is, you write down all your worries, individually on slips of paper & place them in the worry box. We then test for how many minutes a day & if there is a specific time of day for you to open this box & look at all the worries inside.
So it may be tested in a Kinesiology session, that you need to work with your worry box, say after dinner, for 10 minutes.
You take each piece of paper out in turn & say one says, “When will I get the vacuuming done?” – you then consider, “Do I want to worry about that?”, if you do, worry, then put it back in the box for tomorrow if you choose, or throw it away.
If you find yourself thinking about any of the worries in the box at other times, you need to say to yourself, “Stop, you can deal with that later at your allotted time.”
Your worries may be about absolutely anything – from cleaning the house, to dealing with an illness. From your child going to a party, to issues in your relationship…..anything.
The point is choice. Choosing that these worries do NOT consume your life.
I have been doing this of late to deal with a particular situation where I have been perpetually overthinking, feeling anxious & trying to work something through.
So I decided to utilise this technique of The Magical Worry Box to help me.
Every night at 9:50 PM for 5 minutes, I open my box & look at my worries.
I have discovered several quite interesting things!!
Part of this technique is any time I start thinking about those things during the day, I interrupt myself & say:
“Stop Jords, you can deal with that later at your allotted time.”
Now, in simply bringing awareness to every time I am thinking about those things, I am astounded at how much time & energy I am giving to my worries – basically to these things I have absolutely no control over!!!!!!
Say I’m awake for 16 hours in the day on average, I have actually been focusing on these things for about 4-6 hours out of every day.
I was shocked!
Then I started to think of all the things I could have been thinking about, putting energy into instead!
I actually had to laugh at myself!!!!
The irony is, I get to my worry box, I look at the stuff in it & I’ve realised that it’s actually changed how I feel about it.
In giving myself permission to worry, it has taken the need or the habit of worry away.
I have realised, it has almost become a habitual response to something I don’t understand & wish to. Just because I want to understand, does not mean I am going to understand in this way & worrying about it does very little other than taking up a lot of time & energy. I have been giving this situation so much power over me, doing this technique has helped me to start to channel this energy into the things that I want to.
When we interrupt negative thoughts or habitual patterns, or any patterns for that matter, whatever they are about, we start to develop new ways of dealing, new habits, new neural pathways. We design the way we want to live & what we want to focus on, rather than what we have always focused on or the way that we have always focused.
So, I ask you:
