One of the wonders of this time of year is we experience a calendarized, culture-wide commitment to wiping the slate clean and beginning anew.

But for many media execs and marketers, particularly those in their peak years, the good cheer of the holidays is quickly being replaced by worries and anxieties about the future.

It’s perfectly understandable.  2024 was a bloodbath in our business – thousands of layoffs, budget cutbacks and increased expectations to do “more with less.”  And if reports are accurate about what’s to come at places like Paramount, CNN and The Washington Post, 2025 promises more of the same. 

Everybody Worries

Telling ourselves or someone else not to worry doesn’t work.

A person working at a company planning to “reinvent” itself to compete in this new age is going to worry that the next meeting with their boss could be their last.

A person in transition wondering where the next paycheck is coming from is going to worry. 

A person launching a new business is going to worry.

Unfortunately, we can’t will or wish our anxieties away. There is no on/off switch, worrying is hard-wired into our brains.  The question becomes how we choose to deal with them.

What I’ve learned from hard-earned experience and the advice of some terrific coaches and mentors is that worrying is a skill.  There is a right way and a wrong way to do it.  It’s not something most of us are taught or are naturally good at.

Here’s why it’s so important to learn how to worry:  if we don’t, they control us.  Your worries will lay siege to your mind and emotions whenever they want, often at the worst possible times. 

We all have different triggers.  Scrolling through LinkedIn updates about other’s successes or amazing experiences can be painful for some people.  Perhaps getting the credit card bill or dealing with an unexpected expense will set you off.  Or it could be an afternoon of unwelcome silence where none of your emails or calls are returned, and you’re left to wonder if the world has forgotten about you.

This kind of worrying accomplishes nothing.  It’s toxic and debilitating.  It’s how amateurs worry, by that I mean it’s the way people behave who haven’t cultivated a process for managing their worries. 

A Better Way To Worry

To master our worries, or at least put them in a place where we can better control them, we need to approach worrying like any other professional project. Peak Years marketers and media executives certainly know how to deliver successful projects.

What’s the first thing any of us do when we take on a new assignment?  Set aside time to work on it.  You don’t wait for the project to come to you, you go after it.  We block our calendars.  Shift priorities as needed.

Treat worrying the same way.  Schedule time to do it, as often as you need.

During these scheduled blocks of worrying, make a list of all that’s troubling you.  You have to write them down; it’s key to the process.  Worries and anxiety are negative, fear-based emotions.  The act of writing gets your worries out of your head where they can inflict the most damage and into the light of day where you can deal with them rationally.

Trust me, I know how this sounds.  When a very wise career coach shared this advice with me years ago during a difficult job search I thought it was nuts.  Thinking I knew better, I ignored it for a couple of weeks.  But thankfully I put my ego aside and scheduled time to disaster fantasize.  It turned out to be game-changing. 

Once you’ve captured every conceivable worry, begin to brainstorm what you would do if they came to pass.  Create a two-column document – Column A is your list of worries and Column B is your list of possible solutions for each one. 

If you think about it, this is no different than the scenario-planning all of us have done countless times for projects throughout our careers.  We know how to contingency plan.  In marketing and media, creative problem solving and tackling unforeseen challenges is what we do.

How many times did circumstances change forcing you to alter a campaign or a strategic plan?  Maybe the budget gets cut, the client changes direction or the timeline moves up.  Whatever it is, we’ve been trained to be prepared to pivot on a dime, to be ready with contingencies. Do the same with worrying.

One of the key benefits of this exercise is once we proactively confront and project manage our worries, we realize that many of our worst fears are either highly unlikely or not as insurmountable as our lizard brains would like us to believe.

It Takes A Team

We need to bring a team-oriented approach to worrying just like we do with other professional projects.  None of us are an island, we can manage our worries better when we have help.

I’ve been fortunate to work as CMO at some of the best media companies in the world.  The higher you climb the corporate ladder the more you realize that achieving success is about building great teams and collaborating with talented people.  No matter who you are, if you’ve reached your peak years in this business you bring a lifetime of experience working effectively with others to get things done.

If you’re in transition or starting a new entrepreneurial endeavor, you don’t have direct reports or a team at your disposal.  In those situations, the key is to proactively find colleagues and friends you trust who are willing to help you sort through your list of worries.  Just like in a corporate setting, great ideas can come from lots of places and people, a team mindset is critical.

Also, AI can be a powerful resource.  Upload your worry list to ChatGPT, Claude or whatever platform you prefer and ask it to riff on ideas for contingency planning around your worries.  You can have a conversation with your favorite AI app while taking a walk or sitting in traffic. If you haven’t tried it, you will be amazed.

It’s important to acknowledge that sometimes negative emotions and anxiety can be overwhelming.  In those circumstances, one should never shy away from seeking professional help.  The saying about mental health has never been more true: It’s ok not to be ok.

The end result of learning how to worry better is not that you will no longer experience anxieties.  That’s impossible.  But as you practice this skill I think you will find that when the worries come, your mind will be better prepared with rational responses.  Ultimately, mastering how to worry will allow you to direct your energies on what matters most: making things better for yourself and the people you care about.