You've caught yourself catastrophizing. You've stopped, you've paused, you've visualized better,
more realistic outcomes. And then you go right back to the negative thinking! What do you do?
My name's Steve and I coach professional people just like you to succeed from a peaceful mind
and a good place to start is with my free simple five-step guide to mastering stress in the moment.
Today I'm responding to a viewer question: what if you apply everything in this video up here but you
still keep going back to assuming the worst? Well, look I've got two things I would love to explore
with you about that. In this video I'm going to explore something which involves applying our
rationality, and in the next video I'll deal with something that's more to do with quality of mind
and presence of being, so be sure to subscribe and click the notifications bell so that you'll get
notified when that video appears. This is me. I spent years being a catastrophizer. I did it like
a champion. I conquered my worst tendencies for catastrophizing through a combination
of rational thinking and presence of mind. Now one thing that's worth acknowledging right at
the start is we're dealing with thinking habits here. Habits which may have spent years forming.
They can take some time to change and while habit change can happen quickly if you're new to these
practices it may simply be a case of sticking with it and persevering. Practicing if you like,
because practice is what makes perfect. Sometimes though, sometimes, it's not just habit that's
making it come back. Sometimes it's that there's a message from your unconscious mind which you
haven't acknowledged, that you haven't dealt with, and that message may simply be I'm afraid that
this might happen. And sometimes it's useful to sit down with our fears metaphorically speaking,
like you might sit with a frightened child: to love it, to hear it, to let it know that you
hear it, and in the space of loving kindness to be the rational counsellor. Now let's be clear,
terrible things do happen. It's just that it's not useful to live life in constant fear of the
worst things that could happen, especially when the probabilities of those things are low. Our
attention is better spent on what is more likely, but to get there sometimes it's worth making an
inventory of our fears and look at them the same way we would look at risks at work. Yeah,
you heard me: like risks at work. Like they're not personal risks but impersonal risks, like they're
risks of a project that you're working on, so like a dispassionate, professional project manager:
number one identify the risk; number two describe the risk; number three describe the impact of that
risk if it happened, being careful to think what will actually happen not what is the worst fear
story that you can create; and number four assess the probability of that risk. You know there's a
risk you could win the lottery but I'll bet you don't live your life as if that's about to happen!
Now many of the things that we catastrophize are genuinely high impact but very low probability,
but we exaggerate the impact by making up even worse stories than is actually likely. That's
where it's useful to catch your breath, catch your state of mind, and from a sober point of view
actually ask the question what will really happen, not how can I extrapolate this out to be absolute
catastrophe. For instance if the risk is that you could lose your job, what will actually happen
is you'll work your contacts, you'll work the job adverts, you'll work your butt off to get
a new job, not that you will just simply wither away and die. Then there are two more questions.
Number one is there something that could be done to mitigate this risk? And number two if there is
is it worth doing? By the way if you're liking this video so far do give it a thumbs up and
don't forget to subscribe to the channel and click the notifications bell. Now from that
inquiry is going to come a decision. Either I am gonna do this action to mitigate this risk,
so for instance if the risk is you could lose your job you might want to take proactive action
to get your knowledge up to date, maybe take some training, maybe take some new certification,
or you might make the decision I'm not going to do anything about this risk because there's
nothing I can realistically do about it, or I'm not gonna do anything about this risk because the
probability is simply too low, in the same way that you're probably not gonna spend much time
preparing for winning the lottery. I mean if that happens that's one of those things you'll deal
with it when it happens. Or what could even happen is you decide I'm not going to do anything about
this risk because when I write it down and explore it rationally it frankly is an irrational fear. I
mean that happens too and it happens quite a lot. But the most important thing though is to hold the
enquiry, be attentive to the enquiry, do it from a rational, sober mind, to acknowledge the fears,
acknowledge the risk, to acknowledge the unconscious part of you which raises the risk.
But most of all to make the decision, and make the decision to be done with the decision. Write
it down if you have to. And then do the being work which will support this. Now for more I recommend
you watch this video next and other than that this is steve wishing you health and happiness.