You're worried. And the more you think about this thing you're worried about, the bigger it seems to get.
As if it's looming like a big heavy black cloud over everything you do, giving you the feeling that something is going to go wrong any minute now. How can you tell? You can just feel it.
It's as if you spend more time in your head than actually looking around to realize that things, although not great, are fine. You're exhausted from worrying. But deep down there's a part of you that feels it would be irresponsible to stop worrying as if that part of you would watch everything crumble inside.
That happened because we stopped worrying, which is why it feels so convincing to tell yourself, if you just think about this thing a little bit more, then you'll finally feel better. But of course, the relief never fully arrives, does it?
Instead, this looming, stomach-churning feeling that something is going to go wrong any minute just continues to get louder. If all of this is sounding too relatable up until now, then let me reassure you on something that you're going to completely reject: You are not broken!
The Point: Worrying Isn't Who You Are
Worrying isn't who you are, and you don't have to let it continue leaking your energy. You can free yourself from it, but the problem is no one's ever taught you how. Instead, all you've ever heard is to meditate more, stop overthinking, and be a bit more grateful.
Let's be honest, such pieces of advice are just as annoying as the worry in itself. This is why in the next few minutes of this video, I'm going to share with you that other solution. The solution that in my experience actually helps you stop worrying and get your life and energy back.
But before we dive straight into that solution, and in order for it to fully sink in, there's something that we need to understand first.
Something that is going to sound completely absurd but once I learned it a few weeks ago, it completely shifted my whole reality.
You worry because your brain has convinced you it's helpful. Not because you're an anxious person, simply because your brain is convinced the more you worry, the more that you'll be able to see around dark corners.
The Smoke Alarm Problem
That's why worrying feels so responsible and why stopping it feels like someone just ripped off your life jacket while you were in open waters. The truth is that our brains do this all the time.
Worrying is just planning that never ends, which we're going to circle back to when we cover the solution in a few minutes' time.
Okay, great. Why does this all matter? Well, you already know this on a deep bodily level, but worrying too much at the wrong time is no different from letting the smoke alarm in your kitchen constantly ring out.
It's stressful because when you worry, you put your nervous system in a state of suspense, convinced that trouble is lurking just around the corner. Think saber-toothed tiger trouble.
That is why you have the general feeling that something is off, someone is mad at you, or something wrong is going to happen any minute from now, even though you're standing in your kitchen pouring cornflakes and milk into a bowl.
What Worry Takes From You
It's also why you feel like you've run a marathon in your mind. Even though you've been standing still for the last 10 minutes. So before we cover this solution and free ourselves from worrying, why would we even be invested in a solution to stop worrying in the first place?
What's the upside? Your brain is always going to worry to some extent, but the upsides of reducing that worry even slightly are worth it. And they can best be summarized like this: Imagine all of the mental and physical energy that gets leaked out of you when your mind focuses or previews imagined disasters.
Now imagine all of that energy is freed up for you to use.
The result? You get your life back! You stop walking around with the gnawing ache that life is happening, but you're not really in it. Instead, you'll be able to presently, playfully, peacefully focus on whatever or whoever is in front of you, partner, the first date, friends, family, deep work, hobby.
Your life gets better when your worry reduces. So if that sounds good, then you're ready for the protocol which can best be summarized like this.
When your mind is looping in the clouds, you need to let it land. Here's each step of the protocol in more detail. We're going to go through each step individually and then in a few minutes' time, I'll bring them all together on the board so you can see how they synchronize together.
Ask: Worrying or Planning?
The first step is to label the loop. You can't solve something you can't see, which is why the first step on this protocol is to simply notice when your mind is away in the clouds and you're worrying.
And the easiest way to do this is to become aware of when your mindset is busy and then preferably say something along the lines of "My mind is pretty busy right now" to yourself out loud.
That is the first step. The reason why this works is because when you label what is going on in your mind with language, you distance yourself from it which prevents you from identifying with that part of you that is worrying, and as the saying goes, if you can name it, then you contain it.
This part sets up everything else that follows. The part that follows this is you then need to ask yourself a question once you notice your mind is in the clouds and worrying.
The second step is to ask a simple question. Now, quick recap here.
Why Worry Feels Useful
What we said earlier is you worry because your brain is convinced it's helpful, and we're going to use that piece of information to highlight why this part of the protocol matters. If worrying feels helpful, the solution is you then need to teach your brain what's helpful and what's not.
In short, planning is helpful. Worrying, or in other words, looping the problem in your mind is unhelpful. A quick personal example makes the difference clearer. I was lost.
I was living somewhere else in the UK, but I was fed up with the UK and I just wanted to leave.
So in the following six months, late 2024, I spent the whole time coming up with new countries to go to in my head.
And I got the shortlist down to about six countries, including Costa Rica, Mexico, and Colombia, plus three others I can't fully remember.
So I spent those six months weighing up the pros and cons of going to each country to start my new life there.
But early 2025, I broke down from confusion.
A Decision Creates Relief
My mind felt foggy, my shoulders were tense all of the time, and no new information I was getting was helping me make the decision. One day, fed up with feeling stuck, I told myself:
By the time I come back, I'm going to have made a decision about where in the world I'm going. An hour later after my workout, I came back home and booked my flights to Mexico.
As soon as I pressed book on that screen and the screen refreshed and said confirmed, my shoulders relaxed, and all the worry I had melted away. That is the personal example.
Now let's deepen and pick apart that example by differentiating between planning and worrying.
Planning is useful when it ends in a decision. In my case, I was going to Mexico. Useful planning ends in the next action or a clearer path forward. Useful planning asks, "What will I do?"
What Planning Feels Like
Usually, your mind will not plan on its own. You have to sit down and focus on mapping out a path, but you can tell when your mind is planning usefully.
That is because each new thought feels as if it is getting you closer to a destination.
The result is that you'll feel more calm, secure, aligned, and your emotions will stop wobbling and will start walking straight. Worrying, however, is just replaying danger without a solution where no new information is helping it.
What worrying makes you question is not, "What will I do?" It is, "What if? What if?" Without new information or a path forward, then worrying is what keeps you lost in the woods with the set feeling that you're trying to navigate a path forward while looking at a torn map with scribbles all over it.
The key takeaway is this: Planning ends. It makes action possible and lets you relax. Worry loops stall action and keeps your mind busy. So after you've first labeled that your mind is busy, you then need to ask yourself, in your head or out loud: "Am I worrying or planning?"
Which one is my brain doing? Remembering the difference is that if your brain is planning, if you're closer to stillness, peace, security, and clarity, keep following that destination until you arrive there.
But if you notice that your mind is worrying, no new information is helping it, and you just feel like disaster is going to strike any minute, then you need to follow a second-to-last step on the protocol which is to name the actual fear. Looping worry is like a fire.
Use Fear-Setting
The air it needs in order to keep burning is vagueness, which is why the easiest way to calm yourself down and reduce worry is to get crystal clear on what fear has sparked the fire in the first place. So instead of asking yourself, "What if everything goes wrong?"
Or, "What if this happens?" Get clear on what you are actually afraid might happen. Vague fears feel huge when they stay undefined. Defined fears feel manageable.
So this exercise is the most helpful thing you can ever do when it comes to something you feel worried about or fearful towards, and it's called fear setting.
Shout out to Tim Ferriss. Here is the exercise: on paper, in a journal, or in the notes app on your phone. Create three columns: in the first, answer, what am I actually afraid might happen?
In the middle column, answer, what could I do to prevent that thing from happening? In the final column, answer, if that thing happened, how could I repair it? This helps you manage the fear.
Two More Fear-Setting Examples
Three quick examples: What am I afraid might happen? Here are three different contexts. I send the text, and they blank me. What could I do to prevent it? Be clear about why you are messaging, and respect that they might be busy. Notice how that feels a little more plan-oriented.
What could I do to repair it if they did blank me? I could follow up if I want, respect their choice, and invest in people who show up as I do. This thing becomes a lot more doable.
Two more examples. First: what am I afraid might happen? I might never figure my life out and end up unhappy. I think a lot of us share this worry: what could I do to prevent it?
Keep learning, take action, and focus on the next step. If worse comes to worst, remember that people reinvent themselves all the time. Final one, relationship context: What am I afraid might happen?
Well, my partner is upset with me, and our relationship falls apart or is falling apart. What can I do to prevent that? Based on what I have learned about communication, I could listen to them until I understand their point in reference to what they felt upset about and then summarize their points in my own language.
But if worse comes to worst and that doesn't work or they are really upset with me and our relationship is falling apart, how could I repair it?
Fear-Setting in Practice
I could repair what I can realistically if possible, but if worse comes to worst, we can have the difficult conversation: are you still in this, and are we still committed?
I did this once when I was very young and thought it would be a great idea to be a bartender in a very fancy restaurant. I was about 21, and I had loads of fears before my first shift.
I wrote them all down and I turned up with actual bouncing, leaning forward confidence rather than worried all the time.
This practice works. It helps. And it's this step that will move you...
Before you move on, there's the final step that makes sure you turn this looping into action after you've named your fear.
Close the Loop
The final step is this: now you've named the fear, figured out a few ways to prevent it from happening, and even figured out how you could repair the damage if it happened.
You now need to prevent yourself from making the biggest mistake most people make here, which is letting the brain conclude, "Nice, now we have done that. Let’s loop this thing 30,000 times within the next three hours."
So in order to prevent your brain from doing that, you need to get clear on what it needs in order to close this loop and get this thing off your mind.
And most of the time, the thing it needs is a decision.
Think about what we said earlier at the beginning of this video just to really explain this: We said that worrying isn't responsible; it's just planning that never ends. To end it, you need to decide to stop planning.
A Decision, Not Certainty
In other words, you have to admit that no more thinking or information gathering is going to make you feel better about this thing that you fear. Instead, you're just going to decide to move forward with the information that you have.
The key thing to note here which blew my mind when researching for this video: the whole goal of planning isn't certainty; it's a decision.
Worrying, on the other hand, keeps asking another question and searching for another solution, convinced that more thinking will get you closer to certainty.
But the problem is not just that you won't achieve total certainty.
Most of the time, when you're searching for more information after a plan has already been made, you're just trying to find certainty where there is none. In that case you need to recognize that you're in this loop.
How do you do that?
Very simply: if you've named the fear, created a prevention plan, and thought of one way to repair the damage if it happened, but your brain is still looping disaster in your mind, then you're searching for certainty where there is none.
Instead, you need to decide to stop planning. One final thing before we summarize the main points.
That still stings, because uncertainty is hard to face.
Think about uncertainty this way, through the lens of something called the backwards law of life. The more you try to feel certain about things, the more uncertain you feel. But in a very paradoxical and backwards way, certainty arrives.
Let the Mind Land
It arrives when you decide to stop. In summary: When your mind is looping in the clouds, you need to let it land.
First of all, label the busyness of your mind out loud to yourself, then ask yourself "Am I worrying or planning?" If you're worrying, you get the sense that no new thinking about this thing is reaching a positive destination and you need to name the fear in clear language.
Then think of one to two ways you could prevent that thing from happening and also one to three ways you can repair the damage where it happened.
And finally, you need to decide to stop planning beyond that point in order to get this thing off your mind and get your life and energy back.
Three key points from the video are worrying isn't proof you're broken; it's proof your brain is convinced worrying is helpful. Brilliant, thanks brain. Planning and worrying are different. Planning ends in decisions and actions. Worry loops in circles.
And then finally, the goal of planning isn't certainty; it's reaching a good enough decision that moves you forward anyway.
Thank you very much for your time and attention. Stay disciplined, playful, and dangerous. Adios muchachos y muchacha!