Worry

Thinking time

Fear, Human Brain, possibility thinking, Thinking, Worry

Inspite of having so many productivity tools, we are so busy these days that we are not able to take out time to think.

Over the years, I have been sharing how I have tried to regain some of my life by eliminating apps from my mobile phone and tablet, so that they don’t interrupt me. That has definitely helped me regain at least about an hour, but given the amount of travel we have to do, its still a small piece.

Even on weekends, we have chores to run and family and friends to meet and interact with, which eats up time. Now we need to do all these things, because they help us get away from being caught up in our mental rut.

If you can somehow plan out your week, month, year in advance to cover 60% of what you want to achieve and leave 40% slack for unexpected situations, then you can genuinely achieve a lot. But if you have not got time to think, then you can’t plan.

So figure out ways to carve out at least 50 min in a week, in one stretch, when you will plan of the next set of activities. Once you do that, you get a lot of clarity on the next steps you have to take. To give an example, I have been thinking on ways of how I can increase my passive income. However it was always something to do. Today morning I took out about 40 minutes of time to just think of ways, because this was causing me a lot of insecurity. Finally I figured out an action plan, which I will need to put in place from tomorrow.

Now that it’s moved from your brain to the paper for execution, the brain is relieved that it no longer has to bother about protecting me and therefore my fear and insecurity has fallen. Tomorrow onwards, I will just need to ensure that I ticking off the points that we have identified.

Once the brain knows you have an action plan, it stops showing resistance and throwing up all the disaster scenarios.

Take time out for just thinking – put on some soothing music and let your brain dump out all the points it has and then figure out an action plan. This will also showcase possibilities that don’t come up when you are in the transaction mode.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

A simple plan for handling worry

Affirmative action, Human Brain, Worry

Today I heard a very simple system to handle “worry”

Please understand I have read books like how to stop worrying and start living by Dale Carnegie and a whole lot of other books on this subject. Each of these had some iota of advice which was a little helpful. But most of the times when we worry, our mind actually travels in a spiral so fast that the other pieces of logic don’t quite come up front to solve the worry.

However I heard one very interesting plan by Joe Polish in his I Love Marketing Mastery program. He learnt it from someone whose name I couldn’t get. You know I have deep regard for Joe so I thought of trying it and sharing it with you.

He says its a three step process

  1. Don’t worry alone – share your worry with someone – automatically the worry statement which your brain builds up falls
  2. Get the facts – this helps eliminate the emotions involved.
  3. Have a plan – for the next steps

I have realised that within these three the first step is actually critical. If I can share my worry with others, then my actually feels a little more relaxed. I have never tried it though with family members. Not sure how it work there. With my professional relationships though this does work.

The second and third points actually happen more easily when multiple brains are working together. And as I have mentioned in my posts earlier, once you start taking affirmative action, by working through small steps at a time, the worry automatically starts to fall.

Have a look at this simple 3 step process and let me know how it worked for you in the comments section.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!