Don’t Worry, (Try to) Be Happy
February 13, 2026
To Inspire:
Are you a worrier? How much of your time is spent and how much space is given to worrying? I saw this description in a recent Guidepost article: “Worrying is like praying for what you don’t want to happen.” What a way to think about it!
While some worry can serve a purpose, too much is not good. When you worry, your body activates a stress response. This can cause physical symptoms like increased heart rate, lowered immunity, and digestive upset, and mental effects such as sleep problems, difficulty concentrating, and increased irritability.
Plus, it’s usually a waste of time. There’s a study from Cornell University that found 85% of the things people worry about never happen! Of course, knowing that probably doesn’t make it easier to stop worrying. To help reign in the worrying, here are five tips to help free up your mind.
Write Down Your Worries – Taking the worries out of our head and putting them down on paper (or a note on your phone, tablet, or laptop) helps. Studies have found that writing down worries frees up the mind for other things.
Set a Worrying Date – Set aside a 30-minute “worry date” daily or weekly – a time when you are free to worry and obsess for a set amount of time. This helps reduce the amount of time overall that you spend worrying. If you’re in the middle of something and a worrying thought starts to intrude, just say “I’ll see you tonight (or on Tuesday)” and keep going with what you’re doing, knowing you’ll have time to focus on the worry later.
Share Your Worries – Just like writing them down, sharing your worries out loud helps diminish them. As we’ve discussed before, one of the keys to our overall wellbeing is human connection, and sharing your worries – and listening to a friend share theirs – can help strengthen relationship bonds.
Practice Gratitude – Thankfulness is, in many ways, the exact opposite of worry. When we take time to express gratitude, we have less room in our brain for our worries. Studies show a regular practice of gratitude can shift negative thinking to positive.
Be In the Now – Worry is concerned with something that happened in the past, or something that might happen in the future. Working to focus on what’s happening right now will naturally reduce the what-ifs and worry. If you get bogged down in worry, ask yourself a grounding question – In this moment, am I okay? The answer is probably yes.
It’s impossible to do away with all worry, but don’t let it take up too much of your time and energy. Write down your worries and tackle the ones that you can. For the things that are out of your reach or out of your control, remember the Serenity Prayer. “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.”
Written by Michelle O’Brien, Manager of Marketing & Communications