Are you a chronic worrier? Worry can have a negative impact on your physical and emotional life, which if left untreated, can cause distress. At some point in our lives, we will all experience worry, but for some of us, it’s often more of a daily occurrence.

Worry is a destroyer of the soul. If unchecked, it results in great anxiety and can lead to mental illness. Worriers are the most ingenious people in the world. When every possible source of worry is removed, it’s more than likely that they’ll immediately invent some new cause to worry.

Here are a number of tools that you can use to prevent worry from having a crippling and suffocating affect on your life.

Keep Busy

When you’re busy, you literally don’t have time to worry. People with too much time on their hands will often spend that time worrying, going over and over a problem or situation and figuring out every possible outcome and scenario! If you’re a born worrier, try to identify the times you catch yourself worrying most. Rather than sit there and fret, try and find something to occupy your time and get busy! I know this sounds all too easy, but for many hardened worriers, it’s very much a work in progress.

Keep a Journal

I’m a great believer in journaling, so if you’re prone to worrying, try to write down your thoughts for a few weeks. Identify those times (and places) when you find yourself worrying most and see what sets it off. Analyze and examine your worry from every aspect. Keep track of how often it occurs. As I travel so much, I carry around my pocket recorder, which is a great little device. I use it to record notes to myself that I often transcribe later.

Remember this process is not about you avoiding the issues but trying to change your mental programming. By identifying the causes of your worry, you can start to eradicate it, and by doing so, you’ll stop feeding it. The less you feed it, the less it gets exercised. The weaker it becomes and by its very nature of lack of exposure, it will diminish and lose its intensity. The net result will be that you’ll just worry less.

Change Your Routine

Find alternative things to do during those critical worry times. Shake things up. Change your routine around. For example, if you find that one of the key times you worry is when you get home from work, use that time to start a new personal project, something that will occupy and challenge your mind. Is there an evening class or workshop you’ve always wanted to take—one that would enhance your job or home life? Or maybe just do something completely different.

Be Your Own Spiritual Coach

Support yourself with positive affirmations, eat a healthy balanced diet, exercise, or join a gym. It’s important to get out of the house and connect your soul with nature as often as you can.

Be Productive

By being productively busy, it can lead to increased happiness as you achieve more and worry less. Imagine how you’re going to feel when you’re using your time more effectively, worrying less, relaxing more, and at the same time advancing your career, and surpassing what you thought possible. The whole process has a ripple affect, as your family, friends, and co-workers see and feel the change in you and start emulating your positive actions and integrating them into their lives. Everybody wins!

As you start making subtle changes in the way you think, how much you worry, or what you worry about, remember this: Any change you attempt to make will only be temporary, unless you own that change yourself. No one else can make it happen for you, only you!