How to Stop Worrying: 15 Tips to Live in The Moment

Is it possible to worry less? I have a confession: I am a big worrier. (My full back story here). As a high neurotic (one of the most important of the 5...

Is it possible to worry less?

I have a confession: I am a big worrier. (My full back story here).

As a high neurotic (one of the most important of the 5 personality traits) I have a love hate relationship with worry. On the one hand, worrying keeps me up at night.

On the other, worry helps me prepare for the future.

So, I wanted to know how I could worry less—or at least worry more productively and live more fully in the moment.

Through years of personal experience and research, I’ve discovered some powerful strategies (mostly centered around the idea of psychological distancing—more on that later) that blend scientific insights with practical techniques.

Whether you’re dealing with work stress, relationship concerns, or general anxiety about the future, these evidence-based techniques can help you regain control of your thoughts and emotions. Let’s dive into 15 powerful strategies that actually work!

_While learning to manage worry can be a helpful tool for personal development and stress reduction, please note that none of the content found on this website should be considered professional medical advice. Chronic worry and anxiety can sometimes be symptoms of an underlying anxiety disorder that requires professional attention. It is always best to consult a doctor or licensed therapist with any questions or concerns in regards to your physical or mental health. For a good resource for therapists, you can check out Mental Health America’s helpful list \

._

What is Chronic Worry?

Chronic worry is persistent and excessive anxiety about various aspects of life, often involving repetitive thoughts about potential negative outcomes.

Worry is our brain’s way of trying to protect us from potential threats.

While some worry is normal and can even be productive (like motivating us to prepare for a presentation), excessive worry can prevent us from enjoying life and being present in the moment.

So how do we prevent worrying from getting out of control?

What’s your biggest worry trigger?

15 Tips to Worry Less and Live in the Moment

Get Those Creative Juices Flowing

When you’re feeling stuck in a cycle of worry, creativity might be your way out. Science shows that there’s a surprising connection between psychological distance and creative problem-solving. Their experiment showed that when people viewed tasks as being “far away,” their creative output doubled.

Here’s how you can use this principle to transform worry into creativity:

• Imagine your problem happening in a different country
• Think about how you’d solve it five years from now
• Pretend you’re giving advice to a friend facing this issue
• View your worry through the lens of a different profession
• Write about your concern from a third-person perspective

Bottom Line: If you are stuck at a creative roadblock, create some distance between yourself and the project both mentally imagining that the project is far from you, and physically creating that distance.

Use the 10/10/10 Rule

Developed by author and former Harvard Business Review editor Suzy Welch, the 10/10/10 rule is a decision-making framework that can help tame worrying thoughts.

The principle is simple but profound: when faced with a worry-inducing situation, ask yourself how you’ll feel about it at three different points in time:

• How will I feel about this 10 minutes from now?
• How will I feel about this 10 months from now?
• How will I feel about this 10 years from now?

For instance, if you’re worried about making a mistake during a presentation, the 10/10/10 analysis might look like this:

• In 10 minutes, you’ll probably feel a bit embarrassed.
• In 10 months, you’ll likely remember it as a learning experience.
• In 10 years, you might not remember it at all—or better yet, it might be a funny story you tell to encourage others.

By examining your worries through these three time horizons, you’ll often find that many things causing you anxiety today won’t even register as a blip on your radar in the longer term.

Here’s a more detailed exploration of the 10/10/10 rule delivered by Suzy Welch herself:

Bottom Line: The 10/10/10 rule can help you distinguish between temporary worries and truly important concerns, allowing you to allocate your mental energy more effectively.

Harness the Power of Psychological Distance

Psychological distance is a powerful mental tool that affects how we think about and connect to events, people, and ideas.

Research from Construal Level Theory https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3152826/ shows that we can think about things either concretely (up close and detailed) or abstractly (zoomed out and big picture).

When it comes to worry, psychological distance can be your secret weapon. Here’s what happens when you create mental space between you and your concerns:

• Your emotions become less intense
• Solutions appear more obvious
• You gain objective perspective
• Your decision-making improves
• Your stress levels decrease

Bottom Line: When you create mental distance from your worries, you gain the perspective needed to handle them more effectively. Try imagining your current worry as if it’s happening to someone else, or picture how you’ll feel about it a year from now.

Make Worries Easier to Handle

If the tasks at hand seem too daunting, too complex or are giving you anxiety, you can make them feel easier to handle by increasing your psychological distance. Researchers https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1931825 discovered this by increasing both physical and psychological distance between participants in their study and the projects they were assigned.

Some individuals in the experiment activated an abstract mindset and found that it reduced the feeling of difficulty. Then, some individuals directly manipulated their physical distance from the task and found the same effect: reduced perceived difficulty.

Bottom Line: If you’re feeling a little overwhelmed with all the work you have on your plate, physically lean back in your seat away from the work and take yourself on a mental vacation away from your office for a couple minutes. When you return, you’ll realize all that’s on your plate isn’t as hard to take care of as you think.

Be True to Yourself

Research https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2Fa0019843 has revealed something fascinating about how we maintain our authenticity under pressure. When we think abstractly about our values, we’re less likely to be swayed by outside influences.

Here’s how different thinking styles affect our alignment with personal values:

Bottom Line: Allow yourself to think outside the box and to interpret ideas in a large-scale, abstract manner. Let your thoughts and interpretations flow freely—this way, your final ideas on the matter at hand line up with the core truths and values that are so important to you.

Develop Greater Worry Insight

When everything in your life seems to be crashing down, instead of letting it get to you and have you feeling emotionally high-strung, distance yourself from the situation.

Researchers http://psycnet.apa.org/?&fa=main.doiLanding&doi=10.1037/a0019205 discovered that thinking of yourself as a “fly on the wall” when you’re surrounded by overwhelming negativity in your life can buffer you from feeling long-term effects from that negativity.

Here’s what happens when you step back and observe your situation:

• Your emotional reactivity decreases significantly
• You gain clarity about the actual scope of the problem
• Solutions often become more apparent
• Your body’s stress response begins to calm down
• You can access your logical thinking more easily

The key is to practice viewing your situation as if you’re watching it happen to someone else—like a friend you’re trying to help rather than being caught in the emotional storm yourself.

Bottom Line: When it all seems too overwhelming, take a deep breath and step back. View the situation from an outside, objective perspective—as if it’s not actually happening to you. How would you react if you were your friend trying to help you, instead of yourself in this moment? The answers you find once you reflect upon this will lead you in a whole new direction.

Be More Persuasive to Worry Less

The power of persuading others actually depends on where they are in their decision mindset, a new experimental study found. Researchers https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11002-012-9166-5 have found that consumers who are still in a predecisional mindset (they have not yet finalized their decision) are the most likely to be persuaded by psychologically distant messages. Psychologically distant messages emphasize the future or a distant target or goal.

If a consumer has already made up their mind about a purchasing decision, they are most likely to be persuaded by messages that are more psychologically close, focusing on the present.

Bottom Line: If you’re trying to persuade a new couple to buy a larger table than they anticipated, try talking about its use and phrasing your messages in the future: “Think of all the dinner parties you two could throw for new friends you’ll make in the neighborhood” or “Thanksgiving is coming up and you’ll need all the table space you can get to provide enough room for all your family members and the food.”

Want to be more popular without compromising on yourself and your values? Check out our training course:

Control Your Emotions

Research https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2Fa0021783 suggests that psychological distance allows for emotional distance. In his study, he examined how negative and positive emotion-eliciting scenes were perceived by viewers when scenes were to be imagined moving closer or further away from the participants.

He found that the emotionally negative scenes elicited a less negative response and lower levels of emotional arousal when imagined that they were shrinking and moving away from the participants, and they were given a higher negative response and higher levels of emotional arousal when participants imagined them growing and coming closer.

Here’s a few useful strategies to help you regulate your emotions:

• Label your emotions specifically (frustrated vs. just “bad”)
• Pause and count to 10 before reacting
• Use “I feel” statements instead of absolute statements
• Question your thought patterns using facts
• Notice physical signs of emotions (tension, racing heart)
• Schedule regular emotional check-ins

Bottom Line: If you ever see a negative, upsetting or disturbing image, try your hardest to imagine it getting smaller and moving away from you. It will help lessen the bad emotional impact and reaction the sight has on your psyche.

See the Bigger Picture

Being able to see the bigger picture can be a hard skill to learn, but practicing abstract thinking and psychological distance can make it so much easier to apply to everyday life. Researchers https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2011-13461-001 have found that psychological distance enhances wise reasoning and the ability to think big.

In their study, participants were cued to reason and rationalize issues that were deeply personal and meaningful to them. When they were able to think about these issues from a distanced and bigger picture point of view, their attitudes, behaviors and abilities to use wise reasoning were significantly enhanced.

When faced with personal challenges, stepping back allows us to think about:

1. Multiple perspectives
2. Different possible outcomes
3. Long-term consequences
4. Hidden opportunities

Rather than getting lost in the details of your worries, this approach helps you maintain a broader perspective that often leads to better solutions.

Bottom Line: Being able to create distance between yourself and deep, personal issues can allow you to see the bigger picture of what it all means and how it affects others and the world around you. Understanding that some things may be out of your control can bring you peace of mind, deeper understanding, and a fresh outlook on life.

Be Polite

Research https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20085400/ has revealed a fascinating connection between politeness, psychological distance, and worry reduction: the more politely we interact with others, the more psychological distance we naturally create. But this distance isn’t about being cold—it’s about creating the mental space needed to process situations more calmly.

When we’re caught up in worry, we often lose perspective and react emotionally. Being polite forces us to step back, think more abstractly, and create helpful distance from our immediate anxious reactions.

Think about the last time you were upset at work. Using polite language like “I would appreciate if…” instead of making demands helps create psychological distance from the situation, reducing both worry and emotional reactivity.

Bottom Line: People are more polite to strangers and others that they don’t know very well or interact with often. Use this natural tendency to your advantage—practice politeness to create helpful psychological distance when worry strikes.

Demonstrate Self-Control

Fujita et al. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3153425/ has determined that self-control involves behaving and making decisions in a manner consistent with high-level construals, or abstract thinking. A series of experiments were conducted that tested participants’ self-control, psychological processes and thought processes.

Results indicated that people who were able to think abstractly and create psychological distances for themselves in the given situations exhibited “decreased preferences for immediate over delayed outcomes, greater physical endurance, stronger intentions to exert self-control, and less positive evaluations of temptations that undermine self-control”.

Bottom Line: If you can focus on the big picture and think abstractly about the outcome or the goal at hand, you are better able to demonstrate self-control to make the goal come to fruition, no matter what may try to get in your way.

Talk to Yourself

This might sound a little eccentric, but it’s backed by science! According to research https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0022103116307764, talking to yourself in the third person can be a powerful technique for managing worry.

Rather than thinking “I’m so worried about this presentation,” you’d think “John is worried about this presentation” (using your own name).

This simple shift in perspective, called “self-distancing,” creates psychological space between you and your worries.

Here’s what makes this technique particularly effective:

• It engages your rational mind rather than your emotional response
• It helps you view your situation more objectively
• It reduces both psychological and physiological stress responses
• It gives you a broader perspective on your concerns

Bottom Line: By talking to yourself in the third person during moments of worry, you can create helpful distance from your concerns while maintaining a supportive inner dialogue. This simple change in self-talk can significantly reduce both anxiety and stress.

Transform Your Worries Into Mental Images

Research https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27915122/#:~:text=Results%20indicated%20that%20our%20novel,state%20anxiety%2C%20and%20positive%20mood. has found that worry typically manifests as an endless loop of verbal thoughts. However, their study revealed that when people convert their worries from words into mental images, their anxiety levels drop significantly.

Instead of thinking “What if I mess up my presentation?”, try visualizing yourself at the podium. Picture yourself dealing with both successes and challenges. The researchers found that this simple switch from verbal to visual processing reduced worry levels and helped people feel more in control.

Bottom Line: When worrying thoughts start to spiral, try converting them into mental pictures instead of letting them remain as an endless stream of words. This shift from verbal to visual processing can help break the cycle of worry and lead to more productive problem-solving.

Distance Yourself from Future Worries

Remember the study from Ayduk and Kross (tip #4) that found that viewing your problems through a “fly on the wall” perspective can help you worry less?

Well, it turns out this applies to future worries as well! Research found that viewing upcoming stressful events from a distance—as if watching yourself in a movie—significantly reduces anxiety.

Here’s the fascinating part: the less vivid you make the mental picture of your worry, the less anxious you’ll feel about it. It’s like adjusting the brightness on a TV—when you dim the picture, you dim the emotional intensity too.

Bottom Line: When worrying about future events, try viewing them from a distance, as if watching yourself on a movie screen. The more you can make the mental image feel far away and less vivid, the more manageable your anxiety will become.

Practice Mindfulness

Science https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20541180/ shows that mindfulness training helps chronic worriers in a unique way: it actually changes how your body and mind respond to stress. Their study revealed that mindfulness practice reduced worry and improved physical stress responses in ways that simple relaxation techniques couldn’t match.

Here’s what mindfulness does for you:

• Improves emotional understanding and awareness
• Enhances your body’s natural calming system
• Creates healthier breathing patterns
• Increases heart rate variability (a sign of better stress resilience)
• Helps you develop a better relationship with anxious thoughts

Check out our article here to get started with mindfulness: 30 Mindfulness Activities To Keep Your Mind Calm (At Any Age)

Bottom Line: Regular mindfulness practice can help you better understand your emotions while teaching your body and mind to stay calm in the face of worry. Even a few mindful breaths can begin to shift your relationship with anxious thoughts.

Caution — The Illusion of Explanatory Depth

While psychological distance can be a powerful tool, be wary of the “illusion of explanatory depth https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/14698687/ ” when it comes to thinking abstractly about your worries.

This concept, studied extensively in cognitive science, refers to people believing they understand something more deeply than they actually do.

Think about a bicycle. Most people believe they know exactly how a bicycle works—until they’re asked to draw one in detail or explain the precise mechanics. Suddenly, gaps in understanding become apparent.

The same applies to our worries. When we use abstract thinking to distance ourselves from problems, we might feel we’ve fully grasped the situation when we haven’t. For example:

• You might think you “completely understand” why your colleague is difficult to work with
• You could believe you’ve “figured out” why your presentation went poorly
• You may feel you know “exactly” what’s causing your relationship issues

Bottom Line: Be cautious about applying psychological distancing and abstract thinking to every situation or problem in your life, because you may not truly understand something as well as you think you do!

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) About Worry

Why do I constantly worry about everything?

Constant worry often stems from our brain’s natural tendency to protect us from potential threats. While some worry is normal, excessive worry might be linked to heightened activity in the brain’s threat-detection system. Genetics, life experiences, and stress levels all play a role in how much we worry.

How can I stop worrying and start living in the moment?

Start by recognizing that worry is a habit that can be changed. Practice mindfulness techniques, engage in regular physical exercise, and use the strategies outlined above. Focus on what you can control and take actionable steps toward solutions rather than dwelling on problems.

Can worry ever be helpful?

Some worry can be beneficial as it helps us prepare for challenges and take necessary precautions. However, productive worry leads to action, while unproductive worry leads to paralysis. The key is learning to distinguish between the two.

Is worrying a sign of intelligence?

While some studies suggest a correlation between worry and intelligence, excessive worry isn’t necessarily beneficial. Smart worry helps us prepare and solve problems, while chronic worry often prevents us from taking effective action.

How do I know if my worry is normal or excessive?

Normal worry tends to be temporary and focused on specific, realistic concerns. Excessive worry persists for months, interferes with daily life, and often focuses on unlikely worst-case scenarios. If worry significantly impacts your sleep, relationships, or ability to function, consider speaking with a mental health professional.

What’s the difference between worry and anxiety?

Worry tends to be focused on specific situations and involves conscious thought, while anxiety is a more general feeling of unease that may not have a clear trigger. Worry is primarily mental, while anxiety often includes physical symptoms like rapid heartbeat and muscle tension.

Can worrying affect my physical health?

Yes, chronic worry can impact your physical health through increased stress hormones, disrupted sleep patterns, muscle tension, and weakened immune function. Managing worry through the techniques discussed can help protect both your mental and physical wellbeing.

How can I stop worrying about things I can’t control?

Focus on identifying what’s within your control and what isn’t. For things outside your control, practice acceptance and psychological distancing techniques (like the ones outlined in this article). Remember that worrying about uncontrollable situations doesn’t change their outcome.

Taking Control of Your Worry

You might have noticed a common thread throughout a lot of these tips—the importance of psychological distance.

Worrying can suck, but it really does just happen in your mind. Detach yourself from it. Observe it from afar. Or, as the saying goes, think outside the box.

And remember, learning to conquer it is a journey, not a destination. Keep practicing these techniques and find what works best for you! Want to learn more strategies for managing worry and anxiety? Check out our comprehensive guide: 40 Powerful Tips to Deal with Anxiety (That Actually Work).