RULE ONE: THOU SHALL NOT WORRY: Is Anxiety Making You Poor?

RULE ONE: THOU SHALL NOT WORRY

“I can take it. The tougher it gets, the cooler I get.” Richard M. Nixon

A cool person is not always worried, always freaking out, always running around saying, “the sky is falling“. 

The sky is not falling. 

Chill out dude. Life can be tough. It can be grueling and mean, but life is mostly a mental game and if you have a mentality of a worry-wart, you are going to be stressing more than you need to be man. 

Biblical advice is do not let your heart be troubled or mind be afraid and that’s the same advice I have for being cool about money. All that stressing is going to make your life miserable and those around you miserable. 

Not to mention stress makes your face look ugly and is hazardous to your health.

When we are always worried, always assuming the worse, we are inviting unfortunate events into our reality because it is what we expect. The secret of life is what we expect to happen will happen. 

If we are broke, and we dwell on our poverty, we will prolong the struggle.

The best way out of poverty is to realize being broke is a temporary situation. Saying we live in poverty alone, gives our temporary brokenness too much control and power. 

Instead of thinking I live in poverty, it’s better to think when I finish my book I will have enough money to do anything I want, or I can’t wait to start a new job, or money is on the way because the universe is full of abundance and it wants me to be financially secure.

Being worried will actually create more problems in your life than being relaxed because a worried person cannot see clearly. A worried person makes a mountain out of a molehill. A worried person acts in such an erratic manner, that they make things worse for themselves, which is often why when we are freaking out; the feedback we get is just calm down. 

That’s right man, just calm down. 

When you start to imagine everything is bad and getting worse, your perspective shifts to desperation and this creates pessimism. When you create too much pessimism in your thoughts, you become anxious, suicidal and depressed. When we become suicidal and depressed we become destructive, uncaring and reckless. 

This combination of attitudes makes you dangerous to yourself and society. When you see the glass as half-empty, instead of half-full, your friends become your enemies and your opportunities become our prisons.

When anxiety gets the best of you it’s impossible to think clearly or rationally and you start to behave erratically. Once you begin to have racing thoughts, it’s hard to sleep and easy to panic. Your behavior is going to be abnormal if you panic. You cannot live life like you are in an emergency.

Anxiety makes disastrous life events much worse, because you start to imagine the worse and this thinking thrusts you into a dark patterns of negative thinking and acting hysterical, which only digs you further into the ground.

If you want to dig your own grave fast, be overcome with anxiety instead of managing it. There are ways to manage anxiety, going for a walk, talking with a friend, turning on a movie. This is why people preach of the wonders of meditation, it hushes the mind.

Usually, things look much better in the morning simply because sleep reduces our anxieties about situations. When you are worried, you are coming from a place of fear. Sometimes you have good reason to fear, but most of the time it’s paranoia getting the best of you. 

Humans have powerful imaginations. Most of things that keep you up at night, never happen in the real world just in your head. For this reason worry is not productive. If you did have a crisis to solve, freaking out is not going to help. Being calm and cool under pressure, is the difference between being strong and a wimp.

The truth is, whatever you have to face, even if its cancer, a divorcee or going to jail, you have to face it. You cannot escape your karmic fate. Your actions have consequences. 

Poor health is a result of neglecting your health. A failing marriage is the result of mistreating your marriage partner in some way, infidelity, neglect, rudeness. 

Going to jail is a result of violating the law. Ignorance of the law is no excuse. You might not feel the situations you are in are fair, but it’s likely the results of your own actions.

Acceptance is crucial to moving forward in a positive direction. Taking personal responsibility is powerful. Owning up to mishaps can be empowering and if you own up to your mistakes, and face the ramifications of your actions, you need not worry. You only need to worry when we are too cowardly to face the music.

Not only is it un-cool to be worried all the time, it’s ungodly. When you are over anxious, and stressed, it is hard to be grateful for what is already in your life.

Living an anxious life will keep us fearing danger and unable to appreciate what’s around us. if you don’t count your blessing you will lose track of them till you have nothing left. 

God himself says do not worry, fear not my child. In Matthew 6:25, it says, “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink, or about your body. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothes.”

What this passage is trying to say, is sometimes you will end up in raggedy old clothes, but don’t let this hurt yourself esteem because it’s a temporary situation. 

Sometime you will eat food you don’t really like, if you eat at all, and as long as you have life in you still that is all we really need. Life will work itself out. It always does. 

Think back to your worse problem, you solved it didn’t you. A cool person remembers life never gives them more than they can handle. If your challenges are harder than others, that’s because you can take a bigger punch.

In Matthew 6:27, “Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to your life?” Worrying doesn’t add time; it steals time valuable time from you. When you spend days, weeks, even months worrying, you stop living life to the fullest and become paralyzed with worry. 

You are not behaving as a powerful and beautiful creature when you are hauled up in the house stressing and bickering. It’s not enlightened to worry. Worry is a parasite of the mind. It will feed on you and steal your joy.

7 WAYS TO COMBAT WORRY

1.) Cry: Give yourself permission to freak out for a reasonable amount of time, but try to keep it on the DL. For those who are not up on slang DL means down low. Freak-out, but don’t let the whole world know about it.

2.) Stop being so self-absorbed: Worrying about something that is probably relatively minuscule when you gain the perspective of time, is an egocentric act. The reason you are so worried about your problems is because you are overly focused on you.

3.) Get out of your head by getting out into the world: Go help solve bigger problems, like world hunger and pollution problems and you will probably start to feel a lot better.

4.) Get out of the house: Changing your environment and taking in new stimulus is the fastest way to change your focus to something else, like where the hell am I and that food smells delicious.

5.) Treat yourself: If you are having a bad day go to a movie, or the spa, buy that jacket you’ve had your on. Do something for you.

6.) Exercise: it’s a stress reliever. Nobody an force you to exercise, but it is the most beneficial way to have a better mood and hot body.

7.) Seek professional help: If all else fails go see a therapist and get professional help.

Excerpt from the self help book: The Importance of Being Cool by Lyon Brave