Worry

5 Ways To Combat Worry

Garth Beyer

Worrying is pointless, really, but at times nearly impossible.

Whether it’s worrying if the old car will start, if the SO of years will propose or if you’ll get hired with a salary, worry creeps up on us, takes over and prevents us from doing (and focusing) on the work that matters.

Alas, here are five ways to combat worry.

1) Write a list of all the things you’re thankful for until you’ve run out of paper or exhausted yourself

2) Send an email to all the people involved in the activity you’re worried about, praising them, letting them know you appreciate what they’re doing

3) Ask yourself if you’re giving a small thing a big shadow, be honest

4) Remind yourself that you have no clue what others are thinking. Your boss, SO, or friend could be thinking about chocolate covered strawberries and not about what you’re worried they’re thinking about. Only address what you truly know

5) Acknowledge your worry and let it float away (this idea is flushed out in episode 18 of In The Box podcast)

 

Stay Positive & Win The Battle And The War

Digging Through Layers

Garth Beyer

Dig To The Remarkable

I’ve never heard of anyone finding gold right on the surface. Never heard of treasure, just sitting there on an island. Never heard a success story come easily. To get anything of value, there’s work, time, effort, sweat and an absolute resiliency involved.

Successful people don’t settle, they dig.

To get to an inspiring thought, a creative idea, a brilliant strategy one has to dig through the layers of fear, worry, anxiety, nervousness, resentment, and I’m sure a few other negative thought-layers I’m missing here.

Half the battle of coming up with a great PR plan or something as simple as a blog post is digging through the dirt until you find something pure enough, remarkable enough, worth sharing, doing, writing, etc,.

If we recognize that in any important decision there are mental and emotional layers we have to dig through, we can track where we are at in the process and obtain a confidence boost by knowing we’ve done the hard work of digging through our insecurities.

Another thing I’ve never heard of is our mind being empty of value once we work through the top layers of fear, doubt, and uncertainty. Nope. There’s something remarkable down there every time.

 

Stay Positive & Uncover The Remarkable

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Two Of My Favorite Words

Garth Beyer

Agency and urgency.

Agency means we have a choice. We always have a choice. Everything that happens, we’ve done something that lead to it. If we want something different in the future, we only need to change our present actions, and agency means we can do that.

Urgency, in my opinion, is more powerful than agency. Urgency can outrun agency. Urgency is like looking at tasks as if they were 100 meter runs. You’re running too fast to think if your leg is sore, if the shoes don’t fit right, if you have friends in the stands cheering you on or enemies up close hoping you fall behind. Urgency means you give up a bit of agency, a bit of observation of what’s around you while you focus just on what’s ahead.

Agency is about exploring options and then acting on one of them. Urgency is about acting on it quickly.

If you’re confused, hurt, or worried, you need to recognize you have agency.

If you’re afraid, fed up with your lack of success, or nervous, you need to grab hold of urgency.

 

Stay Positive & Fail Fast To Succeed Faster, Choice Is Yours

 

What Makes Us Better

Garth Beyer

I came across this article in the New York Times, “Does Great Literature Make Us Better?”

It encompasses the effect reading great literature has on our morality. The assumption is that the more literature we read, the more moral we become, that is, until we arrive at a level of moral expertise.

At the end of the article, I had an immediate thought far apart from the initial argument Gregory Currie makes. In fact, I think it’s an argument that he meant to make, but, alas, he had a word count.

What triggered my thought – which I am just about to share – was Currie’s first line in his last paragraph. After showing that many of the studies on this subject lack evidence, he acknowledges, “But it’s hard to avoid the thought that there is something in the anti-elitist’s worry.” His final note is that those who dedicate their time to reading such strong works of literature must greatly benefit from it; that it is not solely a form of aesthetic stimulus. Doing so puts them in a group of the elite, singling out those who do not exchange their time for cramming their brain with words.

I believe that Currie has taken only one small piece of the Moral Pie of Learning. Take anything that one has dedicated long tenuous hours to, that he has ruminated on, or that she has prioritized acting on over other actions which may result in a quicker benefit, and you will discover that one has become “better,” more morally enlightened.

If one were to floss their teeth for as many hours as someone were to reads great pieces of literature, I guarantee they will have arrived at conclusions about morality, the way of life, and have obtained a plethora of applicable analogies with dental floss being part of them – different, but as many as the person who read great literature.

Currie brings forth the question of whether we are naturally moral people and as a result, read more great literature, or if the great literature we read makes us moral people.

The simple fact is that the more of whatever we do, the more moral we become.

So what if you don’t read as much as someone else? Just be sure that what you are doing as much of, is something that you love. Moral elites are not made from reading great literature, they are made from doing what they love and doing it often.

 

Stay Positive & No Need To Worry

Garth E. Beyer