Don't Worry Be Happy-
How to Break Free from Worry

Don’t worry be happy sounds blissful but is all too often hard to attain. Choosing not to worry is a seemingly obvious choice, but it is extremely difficult for many of us.

Worry is an over-activity of the mind, working itself into a frenzy by trying to come up with certain answers for every possible outcome or scenario that we may face in the future. Despite our best intentions to heed the lyrics of songs telling us don’t worry be happy, it is all too easy to let our minds run away with us. Worry is almost always about the future, even when that imagined future is based on something that happened in the past.

For example, perhaps you forgot to complete an important task at work. Over the weekend, you become more and more worried as your mind conjures up a range of outcomes to your oversight. These may range from probable, such as asking for extra time and completing the task with no serious fallout, to the extreme such as being thrown in jail for causing the downfall of an entire industry. It doesn’t matter to our minds how far-fetched their imaginings may be. If we don’t rein them in, there is no limit to how far they can run, dragging us behind.

Allowing yourself to worry is a choice, just as much as choosing to 'don’t worry be happy' is a choice. The difference is that allowing worry is a passive and often unconscious choice. In every moment, we can either allow our minds to run as wildly as they are inclined to do, or we can choose to firmly and gently discipline and train them.

Choosing don’t worry be happy as a motto is not a matter of making a choice once and for all. Although it would definitely simplify life if you could declare ‘I will never worry again,’ and be done with it, it doesn't work that way. While a one-time decision may work with, let's say, choosing never to get a tattoo, controlling the antics of the mind needs regular discipline.

In every moment, you have a choice of whether to allow your mind to threaten your peace and wellbeing with worry, or whether to replace the worry with thoughts of calm. One of the most powerful ways of replacing worry is to bring your thoughts and consciousness into the present moment. Focus on what is happening now. Know that in this moment, you can handle whatever is going on in your life, and that this moment is all there is.

It is interesting to note that worry usually doesn’t come when we are in a moment of crisis. In a crisis, we are fully present in the moment, focused on the immediacy of what is happening- to the exclusion of all else. This type of intense focus on the present is what we need to bring to that multitude of moments in our lives when we are not experiencing crisis.

We can train ourselves to pay more attention to right now, and develop trust that our higher selves will bring us through whatever challenges or difficulties we may face in the future. In doing this, the words don’t worry be happy can take on significance and meaning in our daily lives and remind us to keep choosing not to worry.

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