We all go through periods of time when we seem to be on the downswing of the rhythm of life. It’s one of those seasons of life when one problem after the other appears, and things just don’t go our way and stress compounds and worry builds and festers in our minds. That downswing of rhythm can be difficult to get out of, and the worse we handle it, the longer it pervades.
I am in one such downswing. I am in a season of life where I am taking on more responsibility, and the adjustment period hasn’t been easy. I’m worried about doing a good job, I’m worried about letting people down, and I’m worried about being inadequate.
In times like this, it is always a good idea to seek the council of wise men and women, and I often do so by reading inspiring literature. So, I decided to crack open one of my favorite books, How to Stop Worrying and Start Living, by Dale Carnegie.
I opened the book to the chapter, Eight Words That Can Transform Your Life, and I found the wise counsel I was searching for. Carnegie opens the chapter with the wisdom of Marcus Aurelius, the Roman emperor and Stoic philosopher of old. Who could be a better source of wisdom on how to handle the worry that comes with responsibility than a man who had the weight of the Roman empire on his shoulders?
The eight words Marcus Aurelius wrote long ago that can transform you life are these:
“Our life is what our thoughts make it.”
Everything starts in the mind. No matter the circumstance, no matter the event, your mental attitude towards the things that come to you in life is what determines the outcome and the quality of your life. By fostering a positive mental attitude, you can transform yourself from being a worrier to being a problem-solver. You can transform yourself from whiner to warrior by changing your mental attitude. A positive mental attitude is the catalyst to transform your life for the better.
This doesn’t mean to deny problems or to adopt the attitude of being willfully ignorant of issues. Fostering a positive mental means to take concern for your problems, but not to worry about them. We all have problems. The difference between being concerned about problems and worrying about problems is determined by whether you take a negative or a positive mental attitude towards your problems.
We want to have concern for problems because we will not deny the reality of our situations, but we will actively seek problem resolution with a positive mental attitude because doing so increases the likelihood of the best possible outcome. Assuming a negative mental attitude towards problems and worrying gets nothing done and serves no benefit.
For example, I have recently taken on more responsibility at work and for whatever mysterious reason, problems just keep popping up when I’m in charge. Some problems were my own fault, and some were not, but regardless of where the blame falls, as a leader, I have to take ownership of those problems and seek resolution.
Because I’m new to the position, I took all the problems personally. I asked ‘why me’ and I complained about my poor luck and started to go to work worrying about what the next problem would be.
Not only did I take on more responsibility at work and experience a flurry of issues, but the same happened in my personal life and the worry and stress started to compound and really eat at me.
Luckily, I was shown what a poor negative attitude I had at work by talking to a co-worker who is also a good friend of mine. We were discussing how all the bad events at work seemed to be popping up when I was in charge and he laughed and said to me, “ You’re going to be the most battle-hardened and tested of all of us.”
My eyes widened, I laughed with him and I realized how fortunate I was to have a friend with a great mental attitude. He made me realize that I had let my own mental attitude slip into negativity. What he said had some truth in it. I was experiencing more problems as a supervisor in my first two months than most of the other supervisors did in a year.
Regardless of how and why the problems happened, I could either choose to think of it as life oppressing me, or I could think of all of those experiences as notches on the hatchet of a warrior. I could either come out of the battle stronger, or I could let my spirit be broken.
Who would you want by your side in a war, the warrior who has never seen battle, or the seasoned warrior who has been through hell and back and was not broken? I wasn’t unlucky. I just wasn’t looking at my experiences with the correct mental lens.
It wasn’t as bad as I thought it was. Nobody got hurt, nothing had been broken, and every time a problem came up, as unfortunate as it was, I always found a resolution even if it wasn’t in the most graceful of ways. I wasn’t failing; I was learning.
The only issue that I hadn’t resolved at that point was my negative mental attitude, and once I did correct it my growth as a supervisor and leader increased at a faster rate because I was in the right mental attitude to seek the growth. I stopped wallowing in self-pity and worry long enough to see the benefit in my experience.
Now I know what to look out for like the warrior who avoids the traps the enemy lays. I came out of the battles more knowledgeable about my trade, and more importantly I grew wiser in the ways of thinking like a leader and a supervisor.
The biggest problem I was facing was that I had such a bad mental attitude and I was so busy stressing and worrying about everything that I nearly overlooked how much I could grow from the experiences if I just changed my mental attitude towards them.
Worry Follows You Because It Starts With Your Thoughts
It doesn’t matter where you are, who you are with, or what you are doing, if you don’t change your mental attitude, then worry will follow you wherever you go. We can’t change what happens to us, we can only change how we think about it, and fostering a positive mental attitude towards life will relieve us of the burdens of stress and worry.
Instead of thinking of problems as bouts of poor luck, we can change our mental attitude and think of them as challenges that serve our growth when we deal with them. This is how we maintain a realistic view of issues by being concerned, but instead of occupying our minds by thinking thoughts of worry, we center our minds on resolution and think of opportunities to grow from problems. This is the subtle art of turning a loss into a gain. Every issue is an opportunity to grow. Every loss is an opportunity to win if we have the right mental attitude.
Winners aren’t worried about losing; they are concerned with winning. Winners have the correct mental attitude. Losers are so busy worrying about losing that they are blinded to opportunities to succeed. Their thoughts defeat them before they even start.
If you continue to have a bad mental attitude and think thoughts of defeat and worry, then why would you expect any positive outcome? Has anyone ever solved a problem by worrying about it or by complaining? No. You solve problems with a mental attitude that supports the idea that issues can and will be solved, and then by acting upon those good thoughts.
You make your life a paradise or a prison by the way you think and perceive. You hold the keys to both, and it starts in your mind.
“The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of Hell, a hell of Heaven.”
-John Milton
How To Change Your Mental Attitude
The Eclectic Method is all about finding what actually works by practical application, so I will provide a practice to implement that you can use to determine if changing your mental attitude will really help you stop worrying.
Carnegie cites the great William James as the creator of this technique who observed that the correspondence between emotion and action holds the key to changing one’s mental attitude.
“Action seems to follow feeling, but really action and feeling go together: and by regulating the action, which is under direct control of the will, we can indirectly regulate the feeling, which is not.”
-William James
Emotions can be stubborn things, and often trying to change them with willpower alone can be so difficult that it rarely works. Our behavior is heavily influneced by how we feel, and by understanding this correlation, we can use the Principle of Correspondence to apply this correlation in the opposite direction by acting the way we want to feel to induce the desired emotion, thus fostering the desired mental attitude.
Thoughts influence emotion, and emotion influences behavior. The correlation can travel up just as it does down; if there is a path it can be traveled both ways. James explains it in this quote:
“Thus, the sovereign voluntary path to cheerfulness, if your cheerfulness be lost, is to sit up cheerfully and to act and speak as if cheerfulness were already there.”
-William James
I encourage the reader, as Carnegie does in his book, to try the method out for themselves. Don’t believe me, or James, or Carnegie. Be a scientist and discover the truth for yourself by experimenting with it. That is the essence of the Eclectic Method. Be practical, find the truth for yourself and absorb what is useful and discard what is not.
Gratitude and Faith
Another way that I change my thinking to stop worrying is to be grateful. I may have issues and problems that need to be solved, but as I write this now I pause occasionally to look up at my surrounding and remind myself how blessed I am.
I’m out on my lanai surrounded by the green beauty of the island of Oahu, sitting next to a beautiful woman that I love and I remember how blessed I am to have the life that I do. I have a wonderful life and the problems I have are minuscule compared to the blessing I have.
Sometimes you can use the paradox of polarizing to the negative to induce a positive and inspire thoughts of gratitude. What I mean by that is that I imagine how much worse things could be, how much worse my problems could have been or how much worse things could have ended up. Polarizing to the negative in this way inspires thoughts of gratitude and my mental attitude elevates. You cannot worry when you are being grateful.
The other way I elevate my mental attitude and stop worrying is that I place my faith in God. For example, when all those problems at work began to plague me, I reminded myself that God never gives me situations that I can’t handle, and that if that responsibility has been given to me, then its because God knows that I am strong enough to handle it. My thoughts are not of worry, but of faith and trust in something higher than myself and that comfort provided by faith ceases my thoughts of worry.
Change your mind and you will change your life.
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