“Live in day-tight compartments. Don’t stew about the future. Just live each day until bedtime.”
– Dale Carnegie
Exhuming your cares
I’ll share that the whole worry thing reminds me a lot of my wonderful dad. He’s actually a bit of a worrier himself but it’s funny to notice what he did with *MY* worry.
He’d ask sorta, “What’s the big deal?” and I’d have to tell him the oh so awful, terrible, very bad story.
He’d be quiet for a moment, totally not even reacting to the clearly HORRENDOUS nature of the story (wink wink 😉) then ask, “What else?”
Oh, so that wasn’t bad enough? Ok well there’s THIS too and this other thing and … THAT and uh … THIS too!
No reaction.
“What else?”
… uh … uh … this?
Stoicism.
“What else?”
uh … nothing.
“Ok then.”
And that was it.
Not very rewarding, complaining to my dad about stuff. 😉
And havin’ to think of something worse cuz what you shared just wasn’t quite heinous enough to elicit some sort of response wound up being an unexpected exercise in putting-things-in-perspective.
Interesting.
Interesting and annoying both. 😉 Ha!
Yet something about exhuming all of your worries, just digging them all up and throwing them onto the ground outside of the hole, looking for more and then more and then finally staring into an empty hole … Well, that was a pretty valuable exercise, I have to admit.
The worst that can happenÂ
Dale Carnegie said …
Ask yourself, “What is the worst that can possibly happen if I can’t solve my problem?”
Honestly, when I do this I realize pretty quickly how “the worst” is not *nearly* as bad as the utter misery I am putting myself through with the worry.
Try it, you’ll see.
Prepare yourself mentally to accept the worst—if necessary. Then calmly improve upon the worst.
This opens up new avenues which were not available to you when you were stuck in “omg” mode, right?
So tell me, friend … What works for you? What do *you* do when worry comes a knockin’?
This is a little painting I made of one of my all-is-well-with-the-world places … West Landing. It’s called Sanctuary. Lying on the ground out in nature, on the beach near the bluffs with all of those bushy trees on top, absolutely soothes my soul and all of my cares just fall away. Do you have a place like that?
Adopt an archival, museum quality giclée of Sanctuary for your home.
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