About Worry

In my last post, I took a run at MindSET—how the word subversively implies something fixed, installed, closed.

Worry may be the most common—and most destructive—example of a mindSET in action.

It is for me.

I know worry well.
I’ve earned a PhD in it. Multiple times over.

For most of my life, worry felt responsible. Mature. Necessary.
As if worrying were proof that I cared: Sincereously (sincere + serious).

It wasn’t.

Here’s something I learned about worry that’s changing how I think it:

The word worry comes from the Old English wy̆rgan, meaning “to strangle.”

That’s not a metaphor.

Worry tightens.
It constricts; breath, attention, and possibility.
It chokes my current reality in service of an imagined future.

And here’s what I know:

Worry has never once improved any outcome in my life.
Not once.
Not ever.

What it has done—reliably—is make me unhappy.
Anxious. Fearful.
At times, frozen. Procrastinating. Paralyzed.

Worry masquerades as preparation, but it’s really my creative imagination hijacked by fear.

It’s my mind projecting a future that does not exist—and thinking and feeling as if it’s inevitable.

That’s the quicksand.

A mindSET of worry loops.
It rehearses.
It tightens.
It strangles.

Wygran.

And the deeper irony?
Worry offers the illusion of control while delivering exactly none.

Only recently—through practice, not force—have I learned how to stop worrying.
Okay. Worry less.

Not by suppressing thought.
Not by replacing “negative” thoughts with “positive” affirmations.

But by calling it a spade, recognizing worry for what it is:

A destructive use of a marvelous mind.

When I see that clearly, worry loosens its grip.
Sometimes it dissolves.
Sometimes it returns—and I get to meet it differently.

Either way, it no longer runs the show as it did.

There’s more to say—especially about the difference between concern and worry.
That feels like its own conversation.

For now, this thinks and feels like enough:

Worry isn’t care.
It isn’t wisdom.
It isn’t love.

It’s just a thought—
one I no longer have to believe.

Thanks. I appreciate you.
— John ❤️

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John Fogg • 3620 Garden Gate • North Garden, VA 22959 USA • jmftgn@gmail.com • +434.960.9303