Today's episode is about Worry. I believe worry is the debt of disorganized thinking. In other words, failing to think and plan costs us a heavy price, and that price is worry.

I want to start though with this Chinese proverb called, 3 Men Make a Tiger: It goes like this: People will believe anything if enough people tell them it’s true. It comes from a Chinese proverb that if one person tells you there’s a tiger roaming around your neighborhood, you can assume they’re lying. If two people tell you, you begin to wonder. If three say it’s true, you’re convinced there’s a tiger in your neighborhood and you panic.

Why do we worry? We worry because we have not set aside time for thinking or research, and as a result we have not made a plan.

Planning and worrying are in direct contrast. When you plan you see a picture of the future that is to be desired. You set a date for achieving that goal. Then you reverse engineer which actions are the most likely to help you arrive at your target. You consider how long those will take you and whether or not you can shorten or extend your target based on the likelihood of achieving the necessary steps. You even consider who can help you get it done, which tasks you can leave out to better focus, and what you may need to sacrifice in order to increase the likelihood that you are going to succeed.

Worry is the exact opposite of planning. When you worry you paint a picture of a future that is to be feared, dare I say dreaded. You do not set a date for when your world may crumble. And because you don't know exactly when everything may crash in on you, it increases your fear. You consider all the things that could go wrong, and you reflect on all the things you've done in the past that are exactly like the things that could go wrong in the future. You focus in on your worst moments and project them into your vision for the future. You see only obstacles and problems, not challenges and situations that you are capable of finding solutions to. You feel entirely alone and isolated, scared that you do not have what it takes and, as a result, you magnify the sacrifices required to get free from the situation. Success is the last thing on your mind.

Looking at these two scenarios, I can see that I have done both in my life. If I'm being totally honest, I naturally want to worry all the time and have to fight the urge. That's because worry is nothing more than an urge at first. It prompts you to think right now, in your head, without sitting down and planning. It doesn't want you to see all the options and ways you can combat a bad situation, it simply wants you to imagine. Worry tells you not to write anything down, not to consider the potential outcomes of various actions, not to think about who can help you. Worry is set on simply letting your mind stir on all the things that can go wrong.

Now that we've broken down how worry works and it's strategy to paralyze you, you know exactly how to go from worrying to planning. When you feel the urge to worry, pause. Write down what is troubling you. Look at it on paper. Ask yourself, what are a few ways I can ensure my future situation looks the opposite of the fears and concerns that are worrying me? How can I make sure my finances are in order? How can I prevent this deal or situation from blowing up on me? Who can help me? What is something I fear I am doing right now, or going to do, that is making things worse? How can I change my course right now?

Often times we avoid looking at things that we believe will expose areas of weakness or potential disaster in our lives. This creates more harm than good. The best way to protect yourself against worry (and catastrophes) is to simply get comfortable with being uncomfortable. When you allow yourself to face the demons and skeletons in your closet, you will realize worrying about them required more energy and pain than simply looking at them and solving them in the first place. A great motto to filter your actions through is this one: Hard decisions, easy life. Easy decisions, hard life. When you do what is hard, you condition yourself to DO IT NOW and tackle the things which you fear. Then, you fear things less, you trust yourself more, you spend less time worrying that something is unresolved and more time simply resolving things. You will also notice that more opportunity comes your way because we live in a world where people mostly worry. And when they see other people who worry very little, they are gravitated to those people. The world either seeks people who will worry with them, or seeks people who will ease their worry. Be someone who attracts the latter by learning to remove your own worry entirely by facing head on that which scares you, even if you don't have all the answers up front. The very act of planning will reduce and then begin to entirely remove your worry! You will know for certain, whether or not there is truly a tiger to be concerned about.

Do Not Worry

Matthew 6:25 — “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? 26 Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? 27 Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?

28 “And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labour or spin. 29 Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendour was dressed like one of these. 30 If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? 31 So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ 32 For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. 33 But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. 34 Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.