Page 120 - 100 Ways to Motivate Yourself

weekly and monthly magazines as well as e-zines that do a fine job of informing

us and giving us a calm, thoughtful, overall perspective on the news. Don’t
worry about missing out on important news. Really big news, such as a war, a
natural disaster, or an assassination, will get to you just as quickly during a news
fast as it would if you were watching the news.

Begin to experiment with news fasts today. Go on a short one at first, and
then extend the period of time as your system allows. When you do return to the
news, be totally conscious of just what the show is trying to do to you. Don’t
passively take it in as if what you are seeing is really “the way it is.” It’s not.
They’re not going to tell you how many thousands of planes landed safely today.

85. Replace worry with action

Don’t worry. Or rather, don’t just worry. Let worry change into action.
When you find yourself worrying about something, ask yourself the action
question, “What can I do about this right now?” And then do something.
Anything. Any small thing.

Most of my life, I spent my time asking myself the wrong question every
time I worried. I asked myself, “What should I be feeling about this?” I finally
discovered that I was much happier when I started asking, instead, “What can I
do about this?” If I am worried about the conversation I had with my wife last
night, and how unfair I might have been to say the things I said, I can ask
myself, “What can I do about that right now?”

By putting the question into the action arena, a lot of possibilities will occur
to me: 1) I could send her flowers; 2) I could call her to tell her I was concerned
about how I left things; 3) I could leave a nice little note somewhere for her; or
4) I could go see her to make things right. All of these possibilities are actions,
and when I act on something, the worry goes away.

We often hear the phrase “worry it to death.” But that phrase doesn’t reflect
what really happens when we worry. It would be great if we could worry
something to death. When it dies, we could dispose of the body and be done with
it. But when we worry, we don’t worry a thing to death, we worry it to life. Our
worrying makes the problem grow. And most of the time, we worry it into a
grotesque kind of life, a kind of Frankenstein’s monster that frightens us beyond
all reason.