In my seminars the last few years, I have covered what I
have found to be those few simple basic principles that can
make major changes in life and lifestyle.
One of those subjects that gets the most comment is diseases of
attitude. And out of that subject, worry
and how to kick the worry habit have caused the most questions.
So in this brief visit with you, let me give you my best look at
worry, how to recognize it and define it and what to do about
it, and hopefully these ideas will give you a good chance for
confidence over worry. First of all worry might well be
killer #1 and if it is not the number one physical killer.
Although doctors tell us worriers die sooner than non
worriers, and we have all heard the expression worry yourself to
death, at least it is the number one killer of dreams and
achievement, of energy and vitality and lifestyle.
I know the damage and effect of this killer worry firsthand.
I will spare you the details, but over a period of some three
years I let worry get out of hand.
As I've mentioned before I became a super worrier.
I was good at it. The combination of small and big
worries about my circumstances, what people thought of me, my
finances, my abilities, the future, my progress all led to a
complete physical collapse, a stay in the hospital, emotional,
mental and physical exhaustion, and a deep despair I couldn't
shake. A sad picture for a young man
who should have been well on his way to carving out his share of
opportunity. I am happy to tell you that good
fortune came my way. And as many of you may be aware,
I met a man, Mr. Earl Schauff, with his ideas and inspiration
and the help of a very close friend.
I worked my way past the mine fields of worry and disaster and
out into the clear air of mental sunshine.
And if I did it, anybody can do it.
I'm not saying it's easy. It took me almost a full year to
kick the worry habit. It took practice and much
effort, but it was well worth it.
Remember, don't ask for the task to be easy, just ask for it to
be worth it. Don't wish it was easier, wish
you were better. Don't ask for less challenge,
Ask for more skills. Don't ask for less problems, ask
for more wisdom. It's the challenge that makes
the experience and life and its color and meaning and adventure
for you is this collection of experiences.
To wish them away is to wish your life away.
So let's get to worry and what it is and what it does, how to
define it and what to do about it.
And let's do it with eager high hope that it won't be long until
you will be free of the worry habit and on your way to the
life and lifestyle that you want.
First of all, let's define worry.
There are many ways we could describe it.
Worry is fear painting pictures in your mind, and if you watch
that mental movie too long, you get a false picture of how
things really are. Worry is a mental broadcasting
station, and more often than not it is false or at least
distorted propaganda. Worry has that sneaky way of
stopping short of giving you all the facts.
Worry is often the trickery of mentally filtered facts on the
negative side and the bold declaration that these are all
the facts. Worry has the mental audacity to
suggest that the elevator only runs one way down.
Many times, worry is A5 alarm bell for a wastebasket fire, and
worry is a depletion of constructive emotion.
It's wasted mental energy. It's like letting the starter
run the battery down when the car won't start.
And worry is most often a lack of all the facts, a lack of full
understanding, a lack of total information, and an
unpreparedness of ability, knowledge, talent, courage,
faith, and all the other virtues that should give us a better
definition of worry. And remember, left unchecked, it
can become like a Mad Dog loose in the house.
And the sorrow and pain and regret is too large a price to
pay not to do something about it, and to do it Now.
You see, if you contemplated the total sum of human suffering
long enough, it would drive you mad.
You must understand how life is human suffering, man's
inhumanity to man, war, disease, poverty.
But it must be in what I call it's rightful ratio of your
mental and emotional time. So much for what worry is.
The next question is what can I do about it?
What is the first step? My best advice on this is to 1st
recognize worry for what it is, admit what it does and then
decide you now want to be free. It first starts with decision on
your part and may I add, well, you should decide.
Why let worry, Continue to take money out of your pocket and
bank account. Why let worry any longer?
Keep you from becoming all you can be?
Why let it rob you of better friendships, Better Business,
better profits, better results, better communication, better
family relations? Why impose your worry on others
any longer? It's a burden you can get rid of
and a monkey you can get off your back.
Why not be rid of those sinking, nagging feelings that all is not
going to be well, that you can't do it, That it won't work out
for the best worry is undue concern.
That takes up too much of your mental and emotional time.
Now we must all be concerned. Hey, life is no joke except to
the jokers. Life and how to live it is a
serious matter. It is risky, full of peril, and
there are constant threats to the good we want and to the
pursuit of happiness. However, it is undue concern or
concern that takes up too much mental time that begins the
harm. It's like a family planning a
wonderful trip. While they certainly should be
concerned about the condition of the car, the tires, and making
sure they picked the proper route, it would be foolish to
allow themselves to be completely turned negative with
the thought that they might crash and kill the entire
family. If that were the case, even if
they went, the entire trip would be turned into one nightmare of
fear, with the specter of chaos looming around every curve
rather than enjoying the wonderful trip they had planned
for themselves and their family. A lot of people do that with
their entire life. So start to make these
declarations and if you mean it, they will start you on your way
to confidence and adventure, free of the worry habit.
Say first I've had it with worry.
I'm tired of being beaten down and hassled with all those
negative mental pictures. I refuse to be tricked by false
facts. I'm really not that weak.
Never again do I want those sick feelings inside those mental
false alarms. I'm tired of the drain on my
resources. I'm tired of the embarrassment
of the lack of confidence. I don't want people, especially
my family, to see me in this state anymore.
I've got more to offer. I refuse to let my life be short
circuited any longer by letting my mind run wild with a
distorted view of the facts. Whether I bring it up or if it
comes from someone else, prove it to yourself.
Think back over all the things that you worried about, all the
fantastic catastrophic events that you're well meaning
advisors had told you were going to happen.
Be pleased that none of them ever happened to you or else you
would not be alive today. 90% of the things you worry about never
happen anyway. All of us have had these well
meaning advisors who want to appear larger in the eyes of
those they wish to advise and who immediately rare back and
describe every single bad option they can think of that might
possibly happen by the time they have finished.
The one who has come for some confidence and some help wonders
why he even bothers to live anymore.
And the fact is, those things are never really going to happen
anyway. Bring to question now what your
mind tells you or what others tell you, and pledge not to go
for false alarms. I've had it is a good beginning.
This first step will start you arguing with your worry
thoughts. Soon you will start to examine
your fears and worries to see if they are valid.
And you won't let your mind play those mental tricks any longer.
It is possible to destroy any emotion you have, including
worry and fear, by a very simple process.
And that is analyze it to death. Drag it out on the table and
look at it. Weigh it against all of your
past experiences. Make sure this one can stand
against all the past facts you have.
You will now start to use worry instead of letting worry use
you. It's a beginning, being in
control instead of out of control.
You will now let concern and the first signs of worry prompt you
to learn, ask questions and look at all sides in order to
evaluate true, positive, constructive action.
Now you can say, I will let fear advise me of the facts, but I
won't let fear tell me these are all the facts.
Nor will I let fear determine my reaction to the facts.
I will gladly take up the war of faith over doubt, reason over
fear, and positive expectation over worry.
So talk to yourself right now, into a change of attitude.
Be persuasive. Go all out.
Show yourself the hell if you don't, and the good life of
answers and progress if you do. Say to yourself what a fantastic
feeling it must be to stop the panic drain on my mental energy,
emotion and physical strength. Imagine putting all that saved
energy and emotion and strength into my action plans for the
good life. Hey, accept the challenge.
Believe your beliefs, doubt your doubts.
Stay on the campaign to give worry a bad time, like being
your own conscientious judge. Say I've had it with the
presentation of A1 sided story. I sustain the objection that
worry has failed to bring out all the facts.
I despise these mental courtroom maneuvers that try to belittle
my client me. I demand the whole truth.
And if worry will not be silent, I may cite him for contempt of
the court of reason. You call up that scene often
when Worry wants to hassle you with the same old tricks and the
same old results. It will work every time.
Okay, Let's move on to some really positive steps.
If you can survive all that has happened to you up to this
moment in your life, in spite of doing and thinking many of the
wrong things, imagine how you can succeed by now, starting to
do some of the right things first.
The best answer to worry is confidence, and confidence
starts first with awareness. Here is one of the most
important lessons in life. To learn life and business is
like the changing seasons, and the real challenge of life is to
learn how to handle the winter and take advantage of the
spring. In short, that's it.
You see, winter always comes, but so does the spring.
Night follows day, but also day follows night.
Sure, the tide goes out, but it always comes in.
Opportunity follows difficulty as surely as difficulty follows
opportunity. I have written and recorded much
on how to take advantage of the spring, how to cash in on life's
opportunities, work hard all summer, learn more ways to plant
and protect what you invest and to reap in the fall without
complaint, knowing it's your harvest and you've reaped what
you've sown. For This subject, however, let's
talk about how to handle the winters, those times when worry,
like winter, takes its heavy toll.
So we tell it like it is. Winter always comes.
So does the night. Some happenings in our life will
always be a cause for concern. And sometimes concern turns to
worry and worry turns to fear. But remember that is to be
expected each day, each event, each season, brings both
expected and unexpected challenges that we must think
about and make decisions on. Life is like a stream that flows
continuously. The better we understand that,
the better chance we have to produce good results out of all
of our challenges.