As some of you may know, I am an animal lover, and especially love cats. For 25 years, we had at least one, but for the most part, two cats as part of our family. There are so many wonderful reasons for having pets live with you and I don’t regret providing them with a home. However, I must say that it did limit our mobility and freedom to some extent. When we wanted to go away overnight or especially for a week or two, we would first have to consider our cats and who would take care of them while we were away.

So, a few months ago, when we decided to rent a cottage for the recent labour day weekend with our grown daughters and their partners, I called my friend to see if she would be around so as to come in a couple of times a day to feed and change the litter. Unfortunately, she too was going away at that time, so I considered other options and then decided to put my worry aside for a while and to come back to it closer to going away, feeling hopeful that I would find a solution. In the meantime, our only cat became ill and eventually, we made the tough decision to put her to rest.

As sad as we were and still are about her passing, I realized very quickly that I no longer had to worry or think about who would take care of Flicka while we were away.

It got me thinking about other times that I worried or thought at length about what to do when. After my husband’s father passed away, my mother-in-law moved overseas to live in a warmer climate. What was for many years a two-hour plane ride to Winnipeg to see them became an eight-hour flight and much more of an expensive undertaking.

After she moved overseas, I often thought about whether my husband might go alone if his mother became ill or passed away, and worried about whether either of us would make it in time to see her being buried. As it turned out, she passed away during the height of covid, when flights were grounded and people were being told to stay indoors. Even burial places had rules about the numbers of people that could attend. And so, the decision was no longer ours. Neither of us was permitted to go. Then too, I was reminded that all the worry and thinking in the world would not have made a difference in the end.

There are other lesser times I can think about when I, or people I know, worried about something that in the end, worked itself out or resolved itself differently than we thought. I’m sure you can think of times too when you worried or spent time overthinking how you might handle something, or how you would get someplace on time, for example. Then, something may have thrown your plans off course so that all your worries were no longer of value. Perhaps a flight that you worried about connecting with at an international airport got delayed and you no longer had to worry about making it in time. Perhaps you fretted about seeing a family member you do not like at an event, only to learn that she was not going to be attending after all. Or perhaps you worried about how you were going to make a payment but then received a generous gift for your birthday that allowed you to take care of it.

All of the examples I have presented – true and hypothetical – are meant to illustrate why overthinking and worrying too long and hard about something is often a so-called waste of time and effort.

Don’t get me wrong. Of course we need to plan ahead, to prepare for the worst-case scenario and to consider options for dealing with a difficult situation. However, what I’m suggesting is the following:

• Don’t think about how to resolve a situation too far in advance. Wait until closer to the event or situation to determine how to best deal with it, considering your personal situation and the world around you, at that time
• If at first you can’t come up with a solution, take a break. Put it aside. Sometimes, the answer becomes very clear to you without you putting in as much effort
• If you’re overthinking and stressing about how to deal with a what if or what when situation, try to remember times when things changed over time, leading you to a solution you would not have considered before
• Instead of spending so much time worrying about hypothetical or real situations in the future, try to remain more present and focus on what’s going on in your present