What can you change by worrying?

Naked Leader Week – 290 – Monday 12 January 2009

What can you change by worrying?

Read Time: Sixty Seconds

This week, our daughter, Olivia embarks on the travelling part of her gap year – yes, she is off across the world.

For the last few weeks, as she prepared and packed and talked about all the places she would visit, the number one question people have been asking us is this:

“Are you worried?”

And, as people often word questions as if they are statements, they “ask” – “You must be so worried.”

So, are we “worried”?

The simple answer is, NO

We have given her all our pearls of wisdom for staying safe, as have all of our friends and visitors (she listened to them more than to us!). She had a successful trip last year to Cost Rica (adults went for support but it was organised by the pupils), and we know Olivia and her boyfriend to be sensible – they will look after each other.

What could we possibly achieve by being worried about them?

Of course we can imagine 101 different problems, if we chose to, about what might go wrong on the trip – the reality is that we can’t change situations they might be in by worrying about them, especially in advance of them probably not happening!

We prefer to imagine them enjoying their experience and explorations and meeting new, exciting and friendly people. They can ring for advice – they will ring for help if they are up against something tricky – then we would worry, and, more importantly, do something to help them. Because then there would be something to actually worry about.

For now, there’s nothing to be gained by this emotion which can use up so much of our brains resources and emotional energy – no we are far better served by turning our minds to our work so we are able fork out when the likely call for more funds comes in!

The thing is though, should we worry that we are not worried as so many people seem to think we should be?

Or

Should we have a cup of tea, instead?

With our best wishes to Olivia and Ollie for the five month adventure of a lifetime

And of course, to you

David and Rosalind

xx