UNCONVENTIONAL THINKING BLOG

All around me, I see people undergoing nervous breakdowns. Perhaps not in the clinical sense as defined by the Harvard Medical School crowd but nervous breakdowns nevertheless.

They wring their hands about:

* Pressure of their jobs
* Fears of a double dip recession
*Global warming (even as the planet turns into an ice block)
* Their companies aren’t growing
* Their bosses don’t value them
* What if they make more money than poor people
* What if they don’t make as much money as rich people
* What if the UN doesn’t like us

It’s wake up worrying. It’s go to sleep worrying. It’s worry, worry, worry.
And it’s all a complete and total waste of time. The greatest gift we have is the lives we are privileged to live and the achievements we can secure along the way.

The truth is that if the energy expended on fear is directed toward innovation, setting goals and surpassing them, finding ways to win, snubbing our noses at fear mongering, running toward our fears and conquering them, driving ourselves to heights we thought would be dizzying: this is where the exhilaration lies. And the riches– spiritual and financial– that go with it.

If this sounds difficult, allow me to suggest a flight path:

1 Recognize that fear leads to weakness and weakness never wins.
2. Understand that life is inherently unfair and there is zero any of us can do about it.
3. The best way to improve the plight of the world is to improve ourselves.
That provides us with the wherewithal to hire people, develop life-enriching products and technologies, establish charitable foundations and on and on.
4. Recognize that every moment you wring your hands you could be applying your talents to achieve something positive and rewarding.
5. Drill it into your brains that guilt, jealously, hatred, grudges and fear are wasteful, harmful and self-destructive impulses that build on one another, fester and ultimately sap you of the jet fuel you need to land in the winners’ circle.
6. Let go. All of the fears you cling to will evaporate when a) you recognize there is nothing you can do about them and b) you make the decision to be in the life living business as opposed to the life protection business.

The latter always leads to bankruptcy.

Mark Stevens
CEO
MSCO | The Art and Science of Growing Businesses
www.MSCO.com
www.YourMarketingSucks.com

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 16th, 2011 at 9:32 am and is filed under Unconventional Thinking . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.