MINDFULNESS & WELLBEING July 2025

Living with worry: Channelling troublesome thoughts into positive outcomes

When life deals us challenging situations it can be easy to overthink things. In this month’s mindfulness and wellbeing updates we’ll be talking about how to maintain a sense of clarity when times get complicated.

At some point or another, we all find ourselves worrying about something and in small doses worrying can help focus our minds on overcoming obstacles, but when our worries get out of control then we can suffer a host of physical and psychological setbacks. Dwelling upon worries can also cloud our judgment and compromise our ability to focus, in some cases even creating a cycle where we worry about things more because we’re tired and our emotional resilience is lower.

The former New Zealand cricketer Glenn Turner reportedly said that worrying is like sitting in a rocking chair in that it gives you something to do while ultimately taking you nowhere. Worrying about things is natural and in some cases even useful, but when worries begin to overwhelm us or prevent us from thinking clearly then they can detract from our overall quality of life and hinder our ability to take practical action in challenging situations.

With all of that in mind, here are some tips for keeping a sense of perspective and channelling nervous energy into more practical and positive outcomes.

Recognise troublesome thought patterns and try to actively challenge them

In an article about distorted thinking, HelpGuide.org lists ten common cognitive distortions which include catastrophisation, overgeneralisation, polarised thinking, and mentally filtering out the positives in situations. If you’re susceptible to these or other tendencies, try to recognise when you start to experience these thoughts and as far as possible try to take a step back from the situation and consciously evaluate whether there is supporting evidence for your thinking (or whether indeed there is evidence to the contrary). Looking for proactive ways of tackling worries head-on can help keep us from ruminating on them for too long.

It’s easy to lose a sense of perspective if for whatever reason we spend long periods of time on our own, so whenever you have the opportunity, try to spend time in the company of other people, whether that’s family members, friends, colleagues, or anyone else that you feel comfortable with. Talking through your worries with a trusted person can help you gain a sense of perspective since they’re likely to be more distanced from your situation and therefore able to see it with greater clarity, helping you challenge difficult thought patterns and see the reality more clearly.

Practise relaxation techniques such as deep breathing, body scanning, and visualisation

When we’re stressed we tend to hyperventilate, which means that making a conscious effort to control our breathing can often help us to feel more calm. There is a lot of guidance available about breathing exercises online, and Verywell Mind lists several mindful breathing exercises that can help during stressful intervals. These include mindful diaphragmatic breathing, which involves paying attention to the pace and depth of our inhalations and exhalations in order to make ourselves more conscious of when we need to deliberately relax our breathing, and counted breathing, which helps by ensuring that we pace our breathing well and exhale properly. It can also be helpful to combine these types of exercises with visualisation techniques, such as imagining stress leaving the body with every exhale.

Still on the topic of centring ourselves in our physical body and in the present moment, BetterUp advocates body scanning, which involves mentally surveying your body to identify areas of physical tension and focusing on breathing into that discomfort and consciously relaxing those areas in order to limit the amount of tension carried in the body. Picturing yourself in a calm environment like an island can also help relax your mind.

Practise good sleeping habits and try to look after yourself in general

Everything else in life is easier to deal with when we’ve eaten well, slept well, and otherwise taken care of ourselves. As far as possible, try to look after your physical self by treating your body with respect and allowing yourself time to rest, relax and reflect. Getting an appropriate amount of quality sleep can better equip us to tackle our worries, so try to engage in healthy sleeping habits such as avoiding stimulants and limiting screen time in the evening.

Try to find time to immerse yourself in creative activities, since these can help provide an outlet for overwhelming emotions while also providing us with a temporary distraction from our worry, and if you aren’t in the frame of mind to actively make something then reading a physical book or listening to music can also help to ground you. Getting outdoors and being physically active can also be hugely beneficial to our state of mind, so even just going for a short walk may raise your mood and help you to think more clearly, as well as helping you to sleep better afterwards.

Face your fears, or at least try to put them in perspective, and focus on what you can and can’t control

Sometimes the slow-burning anxiety of avoiding a situation can be more debilitating than the shorter but more acute pain of dealing with it head-on. There are many situations in life that we’d all prefer not to have to deal with, whether that involves meeting a deadline or having a difficult emotional conversation with someone, but if you tend to feel overwhelmed in the face of challenges then try to focus on the parts of the situation that you can actively control and identify practical steps that you can take to help you move forward with it.

Many people find it helpful to set aside a specific time to really focus on worries and placing a predefined limit on the amount of time thinking about them. This can help prevent our worries from becoming free-floating and taking over our minds when we’re not in a place to actively spend time thinking about them. If you find that you have things on your mind during the day then try to write them down so that you can revisit them later when you have more time to go over them properly., This can also be helpful in the sense of getting the worries out of our mind and onto the paper, as well as providing a starting framework for tackling the worry.

If you’re really stuck on a situation and you don’t know how to move forward at all, try to at least occupy yourself with something practical, even if it’s unrelated. For example, tidying your domestic or working environment feels cathartic, will release endorphins, and you will ultimately think better in a more ordered environment.

With that thought, we round off this month’s mindfulness and wellbeing updates, but if you have any further tips on maintaining a sense of clarity and perspective in the face of worries, please don’t hesitate to share them in the comments.

Stay mindful, and see you again for next month’s updates!