Wasted Energies

That is a favorite expression of one of my favorite people in the world and it pretty much sums up the cumulative total of any given situation. No matter where you are, what you’re doing or what’s happening - “It is what it is!” So why worry? People worry for the future and what they think might happen. What is the sense in that? Worrying causes stress for a possibility that may never arise. In that regard worry is just like Fear. Stressing over what we expect or believe might happen. Break that down and you can clearly see that if what you worried might happen actually does occur then you will have stressed twice over the same issue, and if it never arises then you will have stressed for no reason at all. Does that make sense?

Let’s say you’re running late and you’re worried that you will miss your flight at the airport. Well “It is what it is” so one of two things is going to happen. Either you will miss your flight and still have to deal with the stress of what problems that might cause, and will have stressed twice, or you will make your flight and will have stressed for nothing. Maybe you’re worried that your boss is going to let you have it for something he or she believes you screwed up at work. Well, “It is what it is” so if your boss does light into you then you will have to deal with the stress of the tongue lashing he or she is laying upon you, and will have stressed twice, or it will never happen and you will have worried for no reason at all.

Worrying about things that may or may not occur only opens the door to upsetting yourself twice. If it doesn’t happen then you worried for nothing, and even if it does - well then, you’ve upset yourself twice over the same event. 

I took a friend of mine to the airport for a business flight to L.A. and she was running a little late. On Southwest Airlines she would be subject to whatever seat is available when she boarded the plane as Southwest has no assigned seating. For the 45 minutes it took to get to the airport and and the few it took to get her checked in through security she was all stressed out over having to take the only seat left that would stick her with the middle seat in between two large people. I kept telling her not to stress and just see what happens when you get on the plane. Well, when she got to L.A. she called to let me know she got there okay and also confessed that there were hardly any people on the plane and she had a whole row all to herself. So she spent more than an hour all stressed out and worrying for absolutely nothing at all. Even if the worst-case scenario played out and she did get stuck in that dreaded middle seat, what would have been the point of stressing over it before hand? It wouldn’t change the fact that she was going to be in that middle seat and only would have added more than an hour worth of stress to her entire experience.

Do you want to live longer and healthier and greatly reduce your risk for a heart attack? Try reducing the worry in your life and if you follow the simple philosophy above the math says you can reduce the stress from all your worry by at least half. If you stop worrying about what might happen then you’ll cut out at least half your stress by only having to deal with what strife and turmoil actually does befall your path. Once again it all boils down to your Attitude.

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Just like every choice, every decision and every action you ever make has rewards or consequences, everything you do can also have either credit or blame attached to it. When everything goes right you get to accept the credit for a job well done. But when things fail or otherwise go wrong, then you could be saddled with the blame. Keep in mind that if you’re willing and maybe even eager to accept the credit when due you should also be ready, and even eager, to accept the blame when problems are your fault.

The word blame is usually the negative moniker we throw at other people when we’re looking for a liable party to take the fall, so maybe Responsibility is a kinder and more reasonable word to use when you’re ready to be held accountable for your own failures. Another problem with blame is that its finger of Responsibility often gets pointed as a means of assigning a scapegoat to take the fall instead of directing all energies toward finding a solution to get back on track as quickly as possible.

Of course, failures should not simply be swept under the carpet and avoided as they can be great measures of lessons learned and what to avoid in future attempts. Scientist keep very detailed logs of each experiment so they know which tests worked and which did not. But the bottom line is that when things go wrong, it doesn’t really matter how you got there, you’re there now and what are you going to do about it? Sometimes when you’re working on a business or personal project things go bad or take a wrong turn. Maybe someone did something incorrect or failed to do something that was needed, or maybe what was thought to be a solution turned out to be just a wrong turn. It really doesn’t matter and blame in that situation only exacerbates the dilemma. Regardless of what action took the project off track, the primary concern is always to get back on track and get the problem resolved so your project can move forward as quickly as possible. There will always be plenty of time for casting blame and finger pointing later but right now the primary concern is to find a solution and get the job done. Funny thing is that usually once the project is back on track or maybe even completed no one really cares who may have screwed up anyway. As long as the lesson was learned on what to avoid in the future there is no reason to throw anybody under the bus just so there is a scapegoat to get the blame.

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A number of years ago a friend of mine and I were having our items rung up at an out-of-town grocery store and the checker was on her phone as she ran our things through the scanner. I noticed but didn’t really care as I was engaged in conversation with my friend, but apparently she was also building anger and an energy of hatred toward this woman for what she believed to be this woman’s lack of attention and insensitivity toward us as her customers. When we walked out of the store my friend was in a fury over what just happened and it took her a while to get over it. I just figured that first of all, it’s not too critical that a grocery checker pay too much attention these days as the scanners do most of the work, but more importantly, even if this woman had been blatantly rude - so what? It was a very minor moment in our lives while engaged with a woman with whom we would most likely never again cross paths. I would have preferred she pay a little more attention to us, but getting upset just wasn’t worth the effort. My anger would have only upset me, as my friend’s did to her, but the woman checking us out would not have even known and she’d feel nothing from our emotionally charged passion. Her day would not be impacted in the slightest. So why ruin my day with a bad Attitude? 

The moral of the story is that too many people put so much energy and effort into viral anger and hatred toward others - but why? What is the point? You’re only stressing your world as the person to whom your anger and hatred is targeted probably doesn’t care at all or even notice. Your energies, emotions and efforts could be so much better spent on other pursuits. 

The same thing goes for getting all worked up over things you can’t even influence let alone Control. We talk more about Control being an illusion and the fact that you can’t really Control anything on the page on Attitude, but why get so fired up over things that just happen. I had a roommate years ago who was a huge San Francisco 49ers' fan and if they lost on Sunday he was useless until about Wednesday. I mean don’t even try talking to him. The only thing in life that he can actually Control is his Attitude and his rested completely on the outcome of an event he couldn’t even influence … let alone Control.

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Gossip is an ugly beast! Advice from my parents long ago taught me, “not to care what people thought of me”. Of course, they were not speaking of close friends and family, but of those people who will spread idle gossip without much concern for what stories they may be passing along. Even if they hear a piece of juicy gossip, the people who care about you will always seek the truth before running to the Bat Phone or today’s social media outlets to share what they’ve heard. In fact, anybody with a mature understanding of the basic rules of societal interaction will engage you on a topic before passing along even just some tidbit they heard. The problem lies in the masses and with those people who suffer insecurity issues and have the need to talk about others in an attempt to make themselves look better at their expense.

Imagine if athletes and celebrities paid attention to and bought into all the gossip the newsstand tabloids wrote about them. Sadly some do and they end up in counseling or rehab because of it. You can’t please all the people all the time so why try? You could spend half your life or more running down all the stories being told about you in an attempt to set the record straight, but at what cost? Your friends and loved ones will always care enough to seek the truth so why Worry yourself with those who don’t?

Now let’s look at this from the other side of the coin. When you hear something about someone do you jump on the gossip phone and share what you heard, or do you wait for a chance to speak to the person directly to corroborate the story before saying anything? And even after securing the truth do you still have a need to share what you now know, or does the story now die with you? Mom always said:

The grand irony is that in their attempt to raise themselves up at the expense of others a Gossip unwittingly throws him or herself under the bus of social opinion. No one likes a gossip and their reputation usually does precede them.

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