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An anonymous human being once said:  “If you cannot help worrying, remember that worrying cannot help you either.”

Ya Gotta Love Logic

We humans seem to excel at worrying.  We worry about money, family issues, health, relationships, death, other people’s perceptions & problems, status, politics, world news, climate change, aging, crime, the economy, calories, yadda, yadda, yadda.

We even worry about worrying and as time goes on we get better at it.  Like the saying goes, practice makes permanent.  If worry is something you’re not particularly fond of, try this little deworryfying exercise:

1. Take out a clean sheet of paper and create three columns with the following labels (visual aid below).
   Column 1:  “Worry”
   Column 2:  “Can’t”
   Column 3:  “Can”
2. Now think about all of the things you regularly worry about and list them in the “Worry” column.  Take your time with this step to make sure you list as many as you can think of.
3. Place a check mark in the “Can’t” column if the “Worry” is something you cannot control.
4. Place a check mark in the “Can” column if the “Worry” is something you can control.

Once you’ve completed your list, look over the worries you checked as “Can’t” and ask yourself the following:

• Am I absolutely sure that I cannot control this?
• For real for real?

If, after answering those two questions, you are still confident that the particular worry is one that you cannot control, then leave the check mark where it is.  Otherwise, check the “Can” column instead.  Repeat this process for the other worries you’ve checked as “Can’t”.

Once you’re done, consider this . . . It makes absolutely no sense to worry about these items because you cannot control them.  You even double checked to make sure!  You do not have the ability to change these things and worrying about them places an emotional burden on you that weakens you & obstructs true happiness.  So look at those items again, take a deep breath and let them go.  They’re not your problem so stop convincing yourself that they are.

Phew!

Now that you’ve freed yourself of the burden of that heavy “Can’t” column, let’s take a crack at the “Can” column.

Look over the worries you checked as “Can” and ask yourself the following:

• Am I absolutely sure that I can control this?
• For real for real?

If, after answering those two questions, you are still confident that the particular worry is one that you can control, then leave the check mark where it is.  Otherwise, check the “Can’t” column instead.  Repeat this process for the other worries you’ve checked as “Can”.

It may seem like déjà vu, but again it makes no sense to worry about these items either, because you CAN control them.  You have the ability to change these things instead of choosing to use worry as a substitute for action.

So look at this list and think about how you might lend some action to each of these “Can” items.  Whether they are local to your household, global in nature or somewhere in between, I’m confident that there’s an action you can conceive that will move each of these issues (even if only a little) in a direction you feel good about.

If you’ve stuck with me thus far, you’ve completely reduced your regular list of worries to a pile of ruble!  I hope you feel really good about that!

Future Proof

Now let’s examine some strategies to limit worry’s reach as you move forward.

1.  Stop watching the frickin news!  (Especially local)

There are tons of wonderful and inspiring things that occur everyday on this planet and they won’t likely be brought to you live at 6!  Being inundated with that much consistent negativity shapes your view of the world and ultimately your existence in it.   Most news stories rarely contain content worthy of your dreams and end up being fuel for your nightmares.  Let it go.

2.  Trust Your Instincts

Your gut is one of your best friends.  It’s not swayed by propaganda, suckered in by sales pitches or influenced by hype.  It just knows.  It’s knowing may sometimes send you down a path that you could characterize as difficult or unpleasant, but you’d be hard pressed to find an instance where it led you down the wrong path.  There have been times when I know without a doubt that I ignored my gut.  It’s “thoughts” were there for me to leverage at that critical moment and I went another way.  It knows what it knows and you should trust that.

3.  Leverage Your Strengths

Have you ever taken stock of your strengths and weaknesses or embarked on a quest to be more “well rounded”?  I’m sure you have in one form or another.  Maybe it was when you were planning out how you want to improve over the coming year, or when you took a personality test or even when you were answering that classic strengths/weaknesses interview question.  Either way, you’ve done it.  My suggestion for you is to forget about your weaknesses and focus on your strengths.  Think about the way a good basketball coach approaches winning.  He or she determines who the strongest players are and leans on them to deliver the bulk of the results.  Sure the other 7 guys or gals contribute and have a role to play, but that coach is going to depend on the star players when the game is on the line.  You can approach your strengths & weaknesses in this way too.  It doesn’t mean that you stop learning new things & becoming a new you, you just heavily leverage your strengths on the journey.  Give that some thought and find out what your strengths currently are, because they may be quite different than they were 5 or 10 years ago.  A great tool for discovering your true strengths is the StrengthsFinder 2.0 by Tom Rath.

So there you have it . . . worry debunked.  Now you can take Bobby McFerrin’s advice and have a smile as big as his!

“In every life we have some trouble
When you worry you make it double
Don’t worry, be happy”

- Bobby McFerrin
Vocalist, conductor & music education spokesperson

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I think that Happiness is a pretty well discussed topic and frankly an individually definable thing; so there’s probably not much benefit in writing at length about it.  I do think that most (if not all) could agree that it’s an unmistakable feeling and we want more of in our lives. 

Satisfaction on the other hand is a whole different matter. 

What kind of images come to mind when you imagine feeling satisfied?  Maybe it’s that moment right after the last bite of the perfect chocolate chip cookie or it might be that sigh of accomplishment you let out after a job well done.  Or it could be . . . well I won’t go there ;)

What if there’s another side to satisfaction? 

Think about the images that went through your mind earlier.  Did any of them resemble complacency or remind you of a time when fear stopped you from moving in a new direction?  It might seem like I’m coming out of left field right now, so let’s do this:  Why don’t we take a stab at deconstructing satisfaction?

Satisfaction Deconstructed

Ask yourself this:  Is it possible to feel happiness without satisfaction?

Let’s try and figure out if this could be possible. 

The following is a short list of inventions that have transformed modern day society.  What do you think was the common motivation behind each of these historic creations? 

• Airplanes
• Automobiles
• Computers
• Power Tools
• Air Conditioning
• Fiber Optics
• The Cotton Gin
• Television
• Traffic Lights
• The Light Bulb
• Cell Phones
• And on and on and on

While that answer forms in your mind, take a look at this next list.  Form an image in your mind of individuals who’ve overcome these kinds of personal struggles. 

• Poverty
• Abuse
• Addiction
• Discrimination
• Learning Disorders
• Social Conditioning
• Illiteracy

What do you think was the common motivation behind those personal transformations?

When I think of all of the things on both lists, one word comes to mind:  dissatisfaction.  Think about that one for a moment.

You see, all of those inventions and personal transformations only came about because a person’s creativity & determination were inspired by their dissatisfaction with the status quo.  Frankly I’ve never heard of anyone creating anything worthwhile when they were satisfied with what was already present.

Satisfaction is essentially the first cousin of complacency.  It’s a state of rest not growth.

So let’s dig a little deeper into dissatisfaction.  You might think, especially after reading that last list, that dissatisfaction is all about negativity.  I think it depends on how you look at it.

There are many people who don’t like some aspect of their lives.  It may be an individual struggling with poverty, a woman enduring physical & mental abuse from her mate or a laborer who doesn’t like the repetitive inefficiencies of his work.  In all of these cases, these people aren’t necessarily dissatisfied, they’re just unhappy. 

When people are truly dissatisfied, they transition from just feeling unhappy to actually believing they could create a different reality.  Seeing yourself entering the middle class or clear of debt, imagining yourself free of that abusive relationship or envisioning a better way to get the job done . . . In that moment the new possibilities hold a positivity that greatly overshadows any negativity that was there.  That’s when one becomes dissatisfied!

Their dissatisfaction becomes a clarifier, like a contrast knob on an old TV.  It provides a clear contrast between what currently exists in their life and the image of what they would like to bring into reality.  Then they can go about the business of doing it. 

Therefore, dissatisfaction’s focus is overwhelmingly positive. 

When I think of the Wright brothers, Marie Curie, Benjamin Banneker, Eli Whitney, Thomas Edison and scores of other inventors, I can almost feel the optimism, hope and enthusiasm that were born of their dissatisfaction.  I’m sure they experienced, setbacks, frustration and many obstacles in pursuing their achievements, but I am also convinced that their motivation originated in positivity.

So I most definitely believe that you can be happy and not satisfied.  In fact being happily dissatisfied is how I want to live because I know that I’ll achieve and become things I haven’t even imagined.  What I also know is that my dissatisfaction won’t ever preclude my gratitude for all of the things currently in my life. 

Here’s my wish for you:  Recognize and embrace the dissatisfaction in your life.  Use it as a compass for your own creation and you’ll find happiness.   ;-)

"Dissatisfaction is the seed of invention."

- Geuka Amusa 
Writer, Coach & Web Designer

 

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