Hi guys! Welcome to the 62nd episode of the Wildly Successful Lifestyle podcast!
How’s everyone doing this beautiful day? I don’t know what the weather is like where you are but it doesn’t matter, right? If it’s rainy, well who doesn’t love a good rain shower? I always say I love the contrast that the rain provides because without it we might not appreciate the feeling of the sun shining on us quite as much as we do.
But I honestly am wondering how YOU are doing. How are you handling the changes we have been through? How are you handling 2020? It has been a year full of twists and turns for pretty much everyone. There are those that have been hit harder than others. For most, I think anxiety has been pretty high. If you already had stress in your life, 2020 probably isn’t helping with that.
Some of us are terrified of getting COVID and some of us are terrified of losing our job. Some are worried about how to manage the kids being home for school and others are trying to explain to our children why they have to wear a mask and can’t hug anyone. I’m a hugger so I feel ya! Some are upset we are having to wear masks and others are upset because some aren’t taking things as seriously as they are.
But you know what? Every single person including YOU is doing the very best with what they have been given.
I sometimes get upset over the thought of someone mandating I have to wear a mask. I had to do some soul searching as to why it bothered me so much. I realized that growing up in a religion that enforced strict rules where you were publicly shamed for not following them makes me a little sensitive to certain rules as an adult. But, You wouldn’t know that if you walked past me on the street. I can remember a time, when I was a young teenager I had a role in front of hundreds of people at one of our church events, it was an all day event and my part was in the afternoon. At that time, girls would put gel in their hair to make it kind of curly so it had kind of a wet look. I thought it looked great and I was nervous and excited about my part. At lunch break my dad pulled me aside and said that the minister that was head of the event, didn’t like that my hair had the wet look so I needed to brush it out in order to still keep my part. If you are a girl you understand how awful that looked and how insecure I felt at that point. That was just one minor example of the strict rules I grew up with. So I carry beliefs from my past that make the mask mandate a little harder but you wouldn’t know that, if you passed by me on the street. Another person has an elderly mother and father that lives with them and so wearing a mask to them is crucial and in their eyes means the difference between life and death for their parents…but, again, you wouldn’t know that either if you passed them on the street.
What I’m trying to say, we NEVER know what someone else is struggling with or why they are struggling. Especially strangers. We are all carrying a certain set of beliefs, certain ideas that have been wired into our brain depending on how and where we were raised.
If there is something you are especially struggling with, keep in mind you are probably not alone. So many are having real anxiety right now. I was talking with a friend this last week and she told me a story of how they as a family have been really trying to eat super healthy and stay away from sugar trying to be extra healthy so they don’t get sick. but she had a little minor breakdown and snack by herself to Ben and Jerry’s. She ordered an ice cream to go, they promptly handed her a little wooden spoon which of course she wasn’t going to eat with that because who knows if that was even safe…so she had to get the ice cream home where she stuck it in her purse so no-one would see her, snack into the kitchen for a spoon then went upstairs in her room and ate it in the dark, burying the evidence deep at the bottom of the garbage bin so her family wouldn’t see it. All of this due to the stress of COVID… and she is someone that really does seem to have it all put together. I am sure more of us can relate then will admit…No one has it all figured out. The best thing you can do is TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF. This doesn’t just mean physically, it means especially right now, mentally too.
I talked earlier about my struggle with the mask mandate and figuring out why it was so hard for me. Sometimes just recognizing why you feel a certain way allows you to deal with it. If I just let that go and didn’t do any thought work, it could fester and get out of hand.
A lot of times we create a majority of our anxiety out of things that are never going to happen. I’ll share with you a couple questions I ask myself when I’m feeling anxious:
“Is this something I will be worried about next year at this time?’ Most often the answer is no. “Is worrying about this problem making it any better?” A majority of the time, the answer’s NO.
Finally, I ask myself what’s the worst that can happen? Then think about the things that could happen and if you could deal with them then it isn’t so bad.
To give an example of how I have used this question in design…Lets say I’m using a new trendy paint color and I am anxious about it. The worst that could happen is more than likely I have to pay for a new coat of paint. I can handle that. But if you put a very trendy fabric on a nonreturnable sofa, then that’s a couple thousand dollar mistake. I don’t want to do that….
Try asking those questions the next time you are feeling anxious…it helps!
So just to end on a good note…There have been LOTS of studies on how many of our worries actually come true and it turns out most of them don’t. 91% of them in fact DO NOT COME TRUE>. I bet you can think of ten things off the top of your head that you worried would happen and it never actually did. I know I can. Alright guys I hope this helped, I love you and I’ll talk to you in a few days!
