David111664's Journal

I have only been on Daily Strength for a couple of weeks, but this support group has been awesome for me. I appreciate all you that have chatted, messaged, and hugged me. I also appreciate all of you special people that have become my friends. I wish I could give you a $ 1,000 each, but I can’t. So I was thinking what could I do for you that would be helpful and make your life better, I had no idea, until I was chatting with a DS friend this morning and she mentioned she has a problem with worrying. That gave me the idea of giving you my way of coping with worry, stress, and pressure. I coached high school basketball for several seasons. My teams were very successful year after year. One of the reasons we were successful was because we learned to put our fears in to prospective by using questions.  When a “pressure situation” would come up, or we would worry about something, we programmed ourselves to ask these questions:

#1.       If this bad thing happens or this problem comes up, what is the worst thing that could happen?

For us the worst thing that could happen was usually we could lose a basketball game. We won a tremendous amount of games because we realized no one would die, and the world wouldn’t come to an end if we lost. So if your problem does happen, what is the worse thing that could happen?

#2        This is an immensely important question. What are the odds of the thing I’m worrying about happening? The best I can tell about 80% of the things I worry about never happen. So why do I spend 80% of my time worrying about things that will never happen?

#3        There are about 20% of things we worry about that are real possibilities. So, how many of the bad things we worry about do I have any control over?  I just cut my worry time by 80%, but I know I’m not even in control of everything that happens with the other 20%. So why would I waste positive energy worrying about a bunch of things I can’t control. I believe in personal responsibility. If you can do anything to have a positive influence on the situation you should. We should always do our best. So just do what you can and don’t waste that energy worrying.

#4        If I did all I could to avoid the problems that are left, and they happened anyway, I have to be content with that. Now I have to decide if I will I be a victim? The question we developed to avoid that is, Has anyone every had a worse problem in their life and still been successful? It seems you can always look around and find people that have worse problem than you. I choose to look deeper. I want to find the ones that have had worse problems than I do, yet they have overcome them.

#5.       When I get to that point I wonder why I wasted my life worrying. My last questions always is, If others have had worse problems than me and been successful, do I have any excuse not to be successful? My answer to that question has always been no.

            Over the years we were able to win a lot of games. When you beat the same teams year after year the opposing players, coaches, and fans have a tendency not to love you. Many of them hated us. I really thought we were quite lovable, but they didn’t agree. The lesson we learned from that was, what we know about ourselves is so much more important then what anyone else thinks about us. When you refuse to waste your life worrying about things that aren’t going to happen or you can’t do anything about, and you are at peace with whom you are and what you are life tends to be much sweeter. I wish that for all of you.  I wish each of you a Merry Peaceful Christmas - Dave