The Trap of Worrying About The Future

You don’t know enough to worry, yet.

The compulsion to try to plan for the future is strong in me, lately. I’m preemptively stressed about what may or may not happen, before it happens (or doesn’t).

I know, I’m writing about this again—it’s because I’m living it. I’m thinking too much about what’s coming and how I’m going to figure it all out. I’ve been a little more anxious than I need to be, to say the least.

I’m anxious, despite knowing that I can’t know with certainty what’s ahead—I don’t know what kind of problems lie in the future. Yet, I’m still planning for them; trying to figure out how things will go; attempting to know the unknown before it’s time.

If I have learned anything in the last few years, it is that plans change. Rarely does anything unfold as you anticipate it doing so. This is not to say that you don’t have some ability to exert some agency over what unfolds—you do. I will not discount the power of your daily actions and your perspectives to shape your life. Additionally, there’s a certain kind of magnetism to belief, delusional or not: if you truly believe something is going to happen, you are more likely to take action that indeed makes it so, and look for evidence that it was always meant to be.

But at life’s core lies change and the unknown, and despite all the plans you attempt to hatch, you always must surrender to that unknown. Even the things you most count on happening—which may even be highly likely to happen—are still subject to change. Change is what you can rely on.

Lately, in the midst of my future-tripping, I have been experimenting not for the first time with the idea that if I’m anxious about the future in a not-motivating way, it means that it’s not time to take any action. I need more information, more time, more clarity, before I do anything about it. If I feel a sense of urgency, or like I absolutely need to know right now how it’s all going to shake out—that’s a key sign that actually, I don’t need to solve anything right now. Actually, this problem I’m worrying about now may not even exist in the future.

And if it does? I’ll have to deal with it then, anyways.

The feeling of urgency is not useful unless it is propelling you to take some life-saving action in this moment—in which case, you would already be doing that, right now. The feeling of urgency, like you need to know or do something now, creeps in all too often unnecessarily.

Chances are, you don’t need to know what’s going to happen in the future, right now. Further, regardless of if you want to know what’s going to happen, you can’t. It’s not time yet. Trying to solve a problem before it’s a problem by preemptively being anxious about its solution is a waste of your precious energy and life.

So try out this approach and don’t do anything, yet. Wait to act.

Wait for clarity. Wait to decide. Wait to find out.

If you’re worrying about what’s going to happen in the future, remember—you don’t know enough to worry, yet. You don’t have all the necessary information about the future to know whether what you’re trying to plan for will even happen in the way you foresee it happening. It’s probably not going to unfold in the way you think it will. So, wait. While you’re at it, stop worrying.

It’s not time to act, yet.

Wait and see.

If you’re like me, and are spending too much time worrying about the future, solving problems before they are even problems—remember that there’s a lot we can’t know yet about how it’s all going to unfold. Let us become ok with that fact, and move from that place. Going into the future in a state of anxiety is only going to poison how we view the world. Let us not lead with anxiety, but trust: let us trust that we will be able to figure it all out, as it comes. Let us trust that we don’t need to know the answers to our future problems, now.

Let us not get lost in worrying, because worrying doesn’t work.

Let us wait and see what the unknown brings.

Maggie