Asklemmy

I totally agree. Worrying, as an action, is useless. Worry as a feeling, an emotional signal, is useful.

Worry is like a messenger from your subconscious. It’s a signal there’s a gap between your opportunity and your action. As soon as you see the worry, you can turn it off by getting back in line with your conscience.

Worry is part of “the wisdom to know the difference”. It indicates you haven’t yet determined which of those two it is: a thing you can change, or a thing you can’t.

So worrying is useless, in the same way sitting there listening to an alarm bell is useless. The alarm is a useful signal. Indulging in it is not.

Shut off the alarm and address the problem. In this case the problem is not “something I value is gonna get hurt”. It’s “something I value is gonna get hurt, and I don’t yet know whether I should be doing something about it or not”.

The best way out the is:

worry -> map out the problem -> [branch] (help how you can OR accept it)

You can pluck the worry out of your mind if you’re a skillful meditator. Just kill it like a computer process. But it will come up again until you remove its root, which is vagueness about the line between “the courage to change things I can” and “the serenity to accept yhe things I cannot”.

So, like I said, worry is a component of “the wisdom to know the difference”. It is that wisdom’s triggering mechanism.

In my opinion, at least.