Don't Worry Yourself to Death
Over the past few months (at least!), most people I know have been experiencing financial issues. I'd say it started since around January 2008 - about the same time load-shedding started.
Well, over that period of time, people have become quite skilled at worrying. I managed to find my way to the top of that list of skilled worriers. I became quite adept at figuring out everything that could go wrong and then feeling terrible about it for quite some time. Pretty useless way to spend your energy but it's such an easy trap to fall into.
So today I decided to steal 30 minutes for myself and listen to Jim Rohn talking about "Kicking the Worry Habit" and one of the things that really resonated with me was his definition of worry. It's quite a long-winded thing so I'm just gonna summarise it like this:
"Worry uses fear to let you know all about the negative facts around something and then tries to convince you that those are the ONLY facts about it."
In other words, worry only shows you the negative side of something and hides the positive from you. If you take a moment to acknowledge those negative things and then also acknowledge the positives related to whatever you're worried about, you'll gain some confidence and confidence kills worry.
The other important thing to note about worry is that most of the things it brings to your attention simply will never happen. You might worry that a brick will fall on your head when you step out today but it probably won't and if you let worry run your life, you'll never realise that.
So take some time to analyse your worries and you should find some balancing things about the situation that will set your mind at ease.
My single most powerful weapon against worry is hindsight. I've spent many a sleepless night worrying about all sorts of things. When I find myself doing that, I try to think back about something else (similar) that I was worried about and then see if it actually happened. 9 times out of 10, it didn't. The remaining 1 time - I probably learned something that can help me prevent it from happening this time.
Well, over that period of time, people have become quite skilled at worrying. I managed to find my way to the top of that list of skilled worriers. I became quite adept at figuring out everything that could go wrong and then feeling terrible about it for quite some time. Pretty useless way to spend your energy but it's such an easy trap to fall into.
So today I decided to steal 30 minutes for myself and listen to Jim Rohn talking about "Kicking the Worry Habit" and one of the things that really resonated with me was his definition of worry. It's quite a long-winded thing so I'm just gonna summarise it like this:
"Worry uses fear to let you know all about the negative facts around something and then tries to convince you that those are the ONLY facts about it."
In other words, worry only shows you the negative side of something and hides the positive from you. If you take a moment to acknowledge those negative things and then also acknowledge the positives related to whatever you're worried about, you'll gain some confidence and confidence kills worry.
The other important thing to note about worry is that most of the things it brings to your attention simply will never happen. You might worry that a brick will fall on your head when you step out today but it probably won't and if you let worry run your life, you'll never realise that.
So take some time to analyse your worries and you should find some balancing things about the situation that will set your mind at ease.
My single most powerful weapon against worry is hindsight. I've spent many a sleepless night worrying about all sorts of things. When I find myself doing that, I try to think back about something else (similar) that I was worried about and then see if it actually happened. 9 times out of 10, it didn't. The remaining 1 time - I probably learned something that can help me prevent it from happening this time.
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