Stressed? Ask Yourself This Question

When we are stressed, it helps to ask what am I afraid of to verify if a fear is real or just a set of illusions our frightened mind is making up and making real. Overwhelming what people find is that their fear is just their mind scaring them into believing something that at the moment is not true. It's what the philosopher Montaigne was addressing when he said, “My life has been full of terrible misfortunes most of which never happened.”

Transcript

Whenever we're stressed or worried,

It's helpful to ask ourselves,

What am I afraid of?

Asking this question tests the theory that fear and the stress reactions it produces is happening in us,

Far more than to us,

Meaning it's mind-made illusion most often about what might happen in the future.

So when we are stressed,

It's helpful to ask,

What am I afraid of,

To verify if a fear is real or just a set of illusions our frightened mind is making up and making real.

Overwhelmingly,

What people find is that their fear is just their mind scaring them into believing something that at the moment is not true.

It's what the philosopher Montaigne was addressing when he said,

My life has been full of terrible misfortunes,

Most of which never happened.

A study at Cornell verified what Montaigne was referring to.

It found that 85% of what people worried about never happened and that of the 15% that did happen,

79% of those people resolved the issue better than their worried mind imagined.

If you do the math on that,

What it suggests is that 97% of the time when we're worried,

There was nothing to fear.

97% represents a level of statistical significance that is enormous.

If I told you,

97% of the time people invest their money in plan A,

They lose everything,

Would you make that investment?

Well,

Of course not.

That would be throwing your money away.

Well investing our cognitive and emotional and spiritual power and fear is tantamount to throwing our lives away on something that doesn't help,

That doesn't work to solve a problem.

Of course,

Fear works incredibly well in causing us to freeze if we cross the path of a rattlesnake or take flight from a swarm of bees or to fight off an aggressor or to generate five minutes of superhuman strength to lift the car off a trapped person.

But fear makes us a mental mess when we're trying to solve a problem or relate to a personal crisis.

Neurologically and psychologically,

It robs us of the emotional,

Creative,

Intellectual and spiritual intelligence which comes from being positive.

By positive I mean by accentuating the strength that comes from love,

From having faith in our essential self,

From feeling gratitude for what we have,

For our blessings.

So the point of the what am I afraid of process is to demonstrate the illusions that fear represents,

And to shift us away from valuing and empowering those illusions of fear to valuing and empowering love and inner peace whenever uncertainty arises.

Reviews

Thank you for making me realise some truths about how silly some fears are

Great stuff! Love the statistics. Very helpful, thank you.

All should hear this. So well explained. A powerful excellent reminder of just how creative our mind can be, when all that is needed is an open awareness without the reactive essence.

Brilliant… statistics and logic come forth to clear the fuggy fog of fear
Thank you dear one

This is a good reminder to look at what is really true. Thank you.

Thank you for this reassuring message Don, namaste 🙏🏾☀️

This is such a good take on this. Using facts and statistics helps bring the message home!

Such a simple question- but the effects are profound and your delivery on the statistics really drives home that we really don’t have anything to be worried about (well only 3% of the time anyway!)

Thank you

That was amazing! Thank you. Will be listening again. 💜🕊🦋

Never did I think so much could be learned in so short amount of time – absolutely unbelievable!

97% of our fears will not happen. So quit scaring y ourself.

You have such a great way to present your topics, I love it! Evidence-based, straight to the point,no non sense. Thank you!

Great talk with very useful analogies. Fear is overrated and robs us of life when we invest more energy into it than is helpful or required.

Liked this perspective on worry. Do you know 72% of statistics are made up? 😉

Brilliant. Great reminders of how fear robs us of our skills to problem solve. Thank you

So insightful and helpful. I don't know how many times I have worried about things that never came to be

Very helpful I definitely need to listen to that again and again … thank you

Such clear and practical information about the affects of fear, which robs us of personal power!

This was so helpful to me as a chronic worrier. Thanks especially for the statistics.

Great question to ask myself! Thanks so much for this quickie message