Louise Thompson: Faith or fear?

A lot of the time, feeling relaxed or feeling anxious comes down to the ability to believe something unseen. Photo / Thinkstock

Our worries often seem so real it's as if they have happened already. The client is going to cancel. The kid is going to hurt themselves on that swing. The car is going to break down. You'll never get a park. The money will run out. The boss is going to shout.

The worry and anxiety we feel about these outcomes as we watch the children play, or sit in a tense boardroom, or drive to our destination can be as bad as if they were already real. And how many times does the thing we have worried about not happen? All the time. So that's a huge amount of stress for nothing.

When you get on a plane, do you know how the plane stays up in the air? Hats off if you have a first in aeronautical engineering, but I am willing to bet 99 per cent of us don't really know. You just know the plane stays up, and that's good enough. You trust in the process. You can't see it, or define it, but you know it's all happening and the flight is going to make it to Club Tropicana.

Or how about when you turn the TV on. Do you know how the electricity works? Could you actually explain it? Draw me a diagram? No, you just know it does, and that's good enough. You trust in the process.

All day every day we are putting our trust in things that we can't see. That we can't define. We are trusting in intangibles. We have a huge amount of faith in stuff we can't see and we can't explain. It's an awesome capacity, really helpful. It helps us to glide through life, get things done, stay calm, take stuff for granted. It can be a very positive force for good.

Endless worrying is like using this force in reverse. By worrying about some future event that may or may not happen we are asking ourselves to once again have faith in something we can't see, but something that makes us actively anxious.

A lot of the time, feeling relaxed or feeling anxious comes down to the ability to believe something unseen. It comes down to faith versus fear. Faith in

the fact that something good is going to happen (the plane stays up; the telly makes noise and pictures) or fear that something bad will happen (the client walks away; there will never be a park in this rain). Either way you have to believe in something you can't see: faith or fear. Fear or faith.

We can choose to believe in an unseen outcome that is good and relaxing, or one that's not so good and is anxiety-inducing. It's a choice, not a certainty.

Trust and faith require that you believe you are big enough, brave enough, strong enough to handle it whatever the outcome. Which you ARE. Worry is a fear of events unseen. It robs us of joy in the present and actually makes us less able to handle what comes up. If we are going to believe in something we can't see or know of for sure, choose faith over fear every time.