Episode 60: When You Can't Stop Worrying

Your brain loves to worry. It thinks it’s keeping you safe. But what if worry isn’t as helpful as it claims to be? In this episode, I share stories from real clients who’ve learned to quiet their minds—and a simple but powerful strategy you can use when you want to breathe easier. 

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Full Transcript:

You're listening to the Think New Thoughts Podcast with Emily Ricks, episode number 60. When you can't stop worrying.

I'm Emily Ricks, and this is Think New Thoughts, a life coaching podcast to help you find more joy in your relationships. In each episode, I'll share a simple idea that will help you see things in a new way, so you can love God, your neighbor, and yourself more deeply than you ever have before. If you're ready to literally change your mind, I think you'll like it here.

We've all been there, those nights when your mind won't turn off, your stomach feels tight, and you keep replaying every possible outcome in your head.

Recently, I had two clients, actually three, in that exact place, worried, anxious, and feeling powerless. And we used a simple exercise that completely shifted how they felt. It's such a powerful tool that I want to share it with you today.

Because if you can't stop worrying, this might be exactly what your heart needs. So the principle is that there are three types of business in this world. My business, your business, and God's business.

I talked about this in a little bit more detail in episode 50, but I learned this from Byron Katie, and I think it is brilliant and so helpful. My business is what I can control. Other people's business is their decisions and their thoughts and their feelings and their actions.

And God's business is things like what's going on in the world and the timing of life and death and healing and those types of things. So I want to tell you a story of a client, we're going to call her Amy, that is dealing with an intense family situation right now. She found out that her daughter attempted suicide.

And so she flew out to watch her grandkids while her daughter was in a facility. So she experienced a flood of chemicals in her body throughout that week in response to the gravity of the situation. She played with her grandkids, she took care of them, she cleaned the house, she showed up in the most helpful way she could.

And we had a coaching session when she got home and she was talking about the tight feeling she had in her stomach, the stress, the worry, the uncertainty that was gripping her insides and it felt so consuming and it was making it hard to sleep. So we talked about how stress is a feeling, worry is a feeling, and we create it by the way we think. And even really important circumstances like this one are neutral.

The situation itself is not stressful but our thinking about it can be. Which is good news because if you're interested in changing the way you think about a situation, you can start to breathe again and loosen the knot in your stomach. So during the session we talked about the three types of business.

And we wrote down different columns. God's business, my business, my daughter's business, my husband's business, my daughter's husband's business. And she expressed all of her concerns about the situation one by one and then we sorted those into whose business it was.

So decisions to answer the phone when her daughter calls, to provide help, support, and love, to reach out in the most loving way she can, that's her business. The ultimate choice though that her has to end her own life, that decision is her daughter's business. Whether her daughter's husband will make changes in his life, that's his business.

That's his model, that's his thoughts, his feelings, his actions, and his results. Amy can't control that. Whether the daughter will stay with this guy or end up getting a divorce, that's her daughter's business.

That's her thoughts and feelings and actions and results. That's her model. Life, death, healing, timing, the laws of nature, and the bigger plan we can't see, those are all God's business.

So when Amy tries to control anything that's in any other column than her own, she feels powerless and anxious and worried because those things aren't hers to manage. Amy's business is her model, how she wants to think about this, how she wants to feel about it, how she wants to show up, how she can support and turn to God in this situation, being as supportive as she can and letting go of what she cannot control. This was so helpful for her to really understand the guide rails between what truly is her business and what isn't.

The day after our session, I got this message from her. I noticed when I woke up this morning that that penetrating, huge, uneasy feeling in my core was gone. I'm so grateful.

And that is why I do this work. I've been there. I know what it's like to be out of my business, to try to control other people's choices, to worry about things that are not mine to own or change.

I know what it's like to not be able to sleep because I'm wringing my hands in worry and fear. And since I found coaching, I know the peace and the groundedness of staying in my own model, staying in my own business. My business is to decide how I want to respond to any situation.

What's my business is to pray, to support, to teach, to influence, to invite, to share, to love, and ultimately to honor the God given agency. Every other person has to make their own choices. This is where peace is found.

Staying in your business is what dissolves that penetrating, huge, uneasy feeling in your stomach. I have felt that shift. I love to help my clients feel it.

It's magical to witness and be a part of. I had another client, we'll call her Joanne, with a different situation who recently benefited from this same concept of staying out of God's business and really focusing on her own. Joanne runs a small business and had a vital employee quit.

And this impacts her life a great deal. So she came into the session wanting to decide how she could respond to this situation with faith, how she could choose her thoughts on purpose and feel peace about it, even though it put a lot of additional tasks and responsibilities on her plate. So we started in awareness and she shared that what she was doing as a knee jerk mental response, right? Her brain wandering around like a toddler, putting his finger in an electric socket was to look ahead into the future and worry.

I'm going to have to go back to work full time. We might have to sell everything. We could go bankrupt.

How are the kids going to adjust to this? And she felt very uncertain when she was focusing on this future that she couldn't see or predict. Over the course of the session, we sorted some of her concerns into whether it was God's business, the prior employee's business or her business, the prior employee's decision to leave totally the employee's model, the employee's thoughts, feelings, and actions. Joanne can't change that timeline of how long it will take to find somebody else to fill a position.

That's actually God's business. Joanne can put forth effort and she's going to, but she can't ultimately make that happen. There's elements of that.

She can't control daily tasks associated with filling the position, daily decisions of how to manage and approach the situation. That's Joanne's business. And next week, next month, there will be some financial decisions that she's going to need to make.

And that will be important. But imagining going bankrupt isn't her business today. She doesn't accomplish anything positive by focusing on that or by worrying about it today.

Worry pretends to be useful, you guys, but it isn't. It pretends to be responsible, but it actually isn't. So for Joanne, whether she feels worried and overwhelmed and stressed, that's her own business.

That's what she can control with her thinking about the situation. We talked about how some questions create anxiety and some questions create clarity. So a question like, how are my kids going to handle it if I go back to work full-time creates anxiety because it's unknowable right now.

You could ask it 50 times a day, every day, and still not have an answer because you don't have a crystal ball and you can't see into the future. And you don't even know if your work schedule is going to change yet. So the answer to all these questions is, well, we don't know yet.

Worrying about what we can't know yet and can't control creates a feeling of anxiety and powerlessness. So if you want to feel anxious and worried, focusing on questions about the future that you have no way of actually answering right now is a great way to do it. But I love the scripture.

Second Timothy one seven says, God has not given us the spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind. So if you want a sound mind, then you can choose to ask different questions, questions about your business today. For example, Lord, how can I trust you today as I face this challenging situation of my employee leaving? That's a question that will give you clarity instead of anxiety.

Or what do you want me to know today as I make decisions and determine next steps? What guidance do you have for me? Or how can I maintain faith and strength to lead my family through whatever happens, right? Those questions create a completely different emotion. Joanne decided she wanted to focus on questions like this instead of wringing her hands in worry about what might go wrong in the future. She also decided that she wanted to use this circumstance as an opportunity to develop a deeper layer of trust in God in her walk with him.

Isn't that beautiful? That is her business. That's what she can choose. And that's where the peace and the hope and the joy is every time.

I had a third client in the same week, actually, who had a different situation, but many of the same emotions. Her husband decided to leave their church and their mutual faith, and this impacts her a great deal. And understandably, she was bringing thoughts to this circumstance like, what is life going to look like now? What will this mean for my kids? Are we going to get divorced? How will this work out in the eternities? So many questions that were creating anxiety and stress.

I asked her how she wanted to feel in this situation. She said, I want to feel peace and comfort. I want to feel hope.

So she voiced her worries. And as we sorted together, what was her business? What was her husband's business? And what was God's business? Her worry gave way to peace and comfort and hope. And from peace, she could envision herself showing up in this situation as a loving, supportive, compassionate, understanding, patient, and forgiving person, which is who she wants to be.

So here's my question for you. How do you want to feel in the situation you're facing in your life? I want you to know that if you're lying awake at night, wringing your hands about your future or about the choices other people are making, you're normal. It's human, but here's the good news.

It's optional. And if you're ready to live another way, it's available to you. Sometimes worry pretends to be loving.

It pretends to be useful. It pretends to be responsible. But what I believe is that it actually isn't.

You can be a loving, responsible, conscientious, faithful, hopeful person without wringing your hands in worry. And I believe if we really want to follow the invitation to be not afraid, only believe it means we choose not to wring our hands over things that are not our business. So the next time you can't stop worrying when that heavy weight in your stomach appears, that tight, anxious feeling comes from trying to control what isn't yours.

I want to invite you to pause and ask yourself, whose business am I in right now? Grab a pen and paper, sort it out. What's mine. What's theirs.

And what's God's. When you come back to your own business and let God handle his and everyone else handled theirs. That's when the peace starts to come back in.