horizons

It’s one of the great ironies of life: You’re too frantically busy to deal with the things that make you feel frantically busy. Tackling them might feel like a someday project, but these strategies can help ease your mind and let you enjoy life a lot more.

Banish nagging thoughts.

“Tell your brain when you’ll get a task done. It kills the worry loop,” recommends Christine Carter, Ph.D., a sociologist and author based in California.

Control what’s possible.

“When we don’t know how something will work out, we worry in order to get certainty,” explains Robert Leahy, Ph.D., director of the American Institute for Cognitive Therapy, in New York. However, one study at Pennsylvania State University found that 85 percent of things people fretted about had neutral or positive outcomes.

To quell anxiety, throw yourself into what you can accomplish—say, writing the introduction to that big presentation rather than just worrying about it. “You’ll feel good about the present and put other thoughts on pause,” Leahy says.

Streamline your choices.

You’re inundated with options for everything from house paint to olive oil. “You either end up getting nothing, or you’re convinced what you got is the wrong thing,” says Barry Schwartz, author of The Paradox of Choice. The best sanity tactic is to impose limits: Pick just one place to shop, and allow yourself only a handful of possibilities. “With practice, it gets easier,” he notes, “and you’ll have extra hours in your day.”

Loosen up on perfection.

“We have reached a tipping point in perfection. People are realizing we can’t do it all at the level that we used to,” says Julie Morgenstern, author of Shed Your Stuff, Change Your Life. Try divvying up more responsibilities at home and work when possible, and try Morgenstern’s “minimum, moderate, maximum” strategy: Decide what level of effort you can give tasks (and get away with). As she says, “You may be surprised to find that everything works out OK.”

As previously posted on CookingLight.com