I've got 7 specific tips for you. 7 ways to stop worrying about the
future. Stick around for all 7. Worry is the misuse of imagination. I didn't
make that up. I got that from Dan Zadra. I think it's brilliant. We imagine that
things are going to happen in the future. And then we get all worried about that
as if we know what's going to happen. I've got 7 tips for you about how to
stop worrying about the future and we'll start with a little test. I want to see
how good we are at predicting the future that we're so worried about. Let's go to
the dice. Now, you can play right along with me. I'm going to roll one die 5
times. Each time we will predict before I roll the die, what it's going to be? Let's
just see how we do. Play along with me. I'll guess. You can guess the same thing
or something totally different. It doesn't matter.
Ready? Let's try this. Alright, here comes roll number 1. I'm predicting
this will be a 4. Ah, it's a 6. Darn, missed it.
Okay. Here comes roll number 2. I'm predicting this one will be a 6, it is.
I got it. Woohoo! Awesome. One for two. All right
here's roll number three. I'm predicting this one will be a 1.
Ready? It's a 2. Oh, I was so close but wrong.
Here comes roll number 4, I'm predicting this one will be a 4. Of
course, oh it's a three. I missed it again. Here comes the last one. This is roll
number 5. I predict this will be a 5. Ready? It's a 4. Oh, I missed it. How did
you do with the predictions? I got 1 out of 5. That's 20%. 20%.
Was that good? Huh, maybe not. I'm not very good at predicting the future. Neither
are you. You don't know what's going to happen.
What can we learn from this? We really stink at predicting the future. But when
we're worried about the future, we think we know what's going to happen. And we're
making these predictions based on whatever we're making the predictions on.
It's kind of like predicting what's gonna come up on the die when you roll
it. You don't know what's going to happen. How you doing next week? You don't know.
You've got something to do with it. But you don't know,
Would you just connect with that? Now, sometimes when I share with people some
strategies about how to stop worrying about the future, they claim to be a
realist. So, here's tip number 2: If you must be
a realist then at least be an equal-opportunity realist. Sometimes when
people say they're a realist, it means that they expect or predict that the
negative thing is going to happen. You don't know what's going to happen. What
if you were an equal-opportunity realist? And you predict just as often that the
positive thing is going to happen. Would that be so unrealistic? I don't think so.
That leads me to tip number 3. When we predict that something is going to
happen and we get worried about that, the underlying belief down below the surface
is that that would be terrible, horrible, bad, awful. I couldn't handle that. Dr.
Susan Jeffers in her book Feel The Fear And Do It Anyway pointed out that the
root of every fear is in a common belief. And this belief is, "I can't handle it." So,
the next tip for how to stop worrying about everything is to practice saying, "I
can handle it." How would you feel if you believed that you could handle
absolutely anything that comes? And honestly, you've got a really great
track record because you've already handled absolutely everything that has
happened so far in your entire life. Isn't that awesome?
It's true. Now, you might be thinking, "Oh, I'm not very proud about how I handled
it. I didn't handle it very well." Well, those are judgments. The fact is that
you've handled everything so far, why would that ever change? Practicing "I
could handle that." If you want to take that up a notch, practice saying, "That
would be good." When you're worried about something happening, what if you were to
practice saying, "Oh, that will be good if that happened." You're going to have a little
fight on your hands or more accurately in your head. Because your head's gonna
start arguing with you and saying, "What could possibly be good about that?" Well,
it's a pretty good question. It's just not a question. It's a statement
disguised as a question. What could possibly be good about that? Turn it back
into a question. What could possibly be good about that? Do see how powerful that
is? And as you practice that, it changes your mind. Doesn't change your
circumstances. It doesn't even change what's going to happen. It changes you
and your mind. That's the powerful part of it. Tip number four. Check in with your
dog. See if your dog's worried about what's going to happen. If your dog is
anything like mine, he's not worried about anything.
He is always just chill. He's not like, "Oh, no. The rents due." He's not like, "Oh, what
am I going to do if that thing happens?" No, he's just simply staying in the present.
Which is another clue for how we're going to handle the worry. Check in with
your dog. See if he's worried. Now, this next tip is something that my dad shared
with me. Back in high school, I used to worry quite a bit. I know that might
surprise you. There's reasons why I know what I know. And it's not just because I
went to shrink school. Because I've been there, I've done that. And when I was
worried in high school about all this stuff that I had to do and what's gonna
happen. And is that person gonna like me or am I going to be accepted in that
particular group. I'm worried about all this stuff, right? Well, my dad tells me,
"Hey, Paul. Here's a strategy. Get you a little notebook. Title it worry about it
Wednesday. Actually write that on the cover of this little notebook. Worry
about it Wednesday." This is my worry about it Wednesday notebook. And if
you're worried about something, simply open your notebook. Write it down and
you're worried about it Wednesday book and then close the book. What are you
going to do with it now? Well, you're going to worry about it Wednesday of course.Iis
today Wednesday? If it is then today's your day. Open up your book. Worry about
all that stuff. If it's not Wednesday, wait till Wednesday. And then open it up
and worry about everything that's in there for I don't know 10 minutes 15
minutes a half-hour. Set some time limit on it so that you don't you know, freak
yourself out too much. Worry about it on Wednesday. Now, everything that hasn't
taken care of itself by Wednesday put it on the list for next Wednesday. This is a
powerful tool that actually works pretty well. I'm going to worry. I'm just giving
myself permission to worry about it on Wednesday. You're going to find some
interesting paradoxes if you try that. The number 6 way to stop worrying about
everything is kind of a callback to what we talked about earlier about you can
handle it. Sometimes we worry that things are not going to turn out well. The things
are not going to work out. Everything has worked out so far, right? So far
everything's worked out some way or another. It's not always the way that you
want it to but at some level, everything has worked out so far. Why would that
ever change? Remind yourself that things are going to work out eventually. The
final tip for not worrying about things is to remain present. Remain here and now.
Because everything that you're worried about is not now it's in the future.
Bring it back to the present because right now,
it's good. Everything's fine right now. The things that you're worried about
haven't even happened yet. Just as a quick recap, worrying about the future
implies that you know something about the future.
Remember how bad we are at actually predicting what's going to happen. And
realize that you've got some tools now to stop worrying about something that
hasn't even happened yet. You can see that these strategies are simple. Simple
and easy aren't the same thing. And if you could use a little more help with
this, I've got 2 suggestions. The Positivity Power-Up. You can connect to
that at positivitypowerup.com. It's an online course that's going to help you
with every aspect of your psychological functioning. If you could use a coach and
who couldn't use a coach, go to LiveOnPurpose.coach. You'll see a lot of
resources there.