Let’s talk about all the terrible things that haven’t happened yet.
You know exactly what I mean. The telephone rings at an unusual hour and before you answer it, your mind has already decided someone is dead. Your boss asks to speak with you tomorrow, and by bedtime you’ve been fired, lost your health insurance, missed three mortgage payments, and started living in your car.
A doctor orders another test. A payment doesn’t appear when expected. Someone you care about hasn’t returned your message. Your car makes a noise you’ve never heard before. None of these things is necessarily a disaster, but that doesn’t stop your mind from turning each one into the beginning of the end.
That is borrowing trouble. You take a problem that may happen someday, drag it into today, and start suffering from it before you even know whether it exists.
If the problem eventually does happen, you’ve now lived through it twice. If it never happens, you’ve frightened and exhausted yourself over absolutely nothing.
I’m not recommending that you ignore genuine warning signs or walk through life pretending everything will magically work out. That isn’t optimism. That’s foolishness. A responsible man anticipates problems, prepares for reasonable possibilities, and handles what needs to be handled.
What he shouldn’t do is construct a two-ton catastrophe from one unanswered telephone call.
How a Small Concern Becomes an Avalanche
Borrowed trouble works like a snowball rolling down a mountain. It starts small. Maybe you notice an unfamiliar charge on your credit card or receive a message asking you to contact your doctor’s office.
That’s the original snowball.
Then your mind gives it a push. The unfamiliar charge must mean someone stole your identity. If they stole your identity, they probably emptied your bank account. If your bank account is empty, you won’t be able to pay the mortgage. If you can’t pay the mortgage, you’ll lose the house.
By the time that little snowball reaches the bottom of the mountain, it weighs two tons and is heading directly for you.
Meanwhile, the unfamiliar charge may have been a restaurant operating under the name of its parent company. The doctor’s office may have wanted to move your appointment from Tuesday to Wednesday.
The original fact was small. Your imagination built the avalanche.
This happens because the mind doesn’t like missing information. When something is uncertain, it tries to complete the story. Unfortunately, it often fills the empty spaces with the worst possibilities it can find.
Some men call that being realistic. It isn’t. Reality requires facts. A frightening prediction constructed from missing information is still a prediction.
Worry Is Not Preparation
Men often defend worrying by saying it helps them prepare. Sometimes it does, but only when the worry produces a useful action.
Preparation asks, “What could reasonably happen, and what can I do about it?” Worry asks the same frightening question repeatedly without ever reaching an answer.
If a storm is coming, preparation means checking the forecast, securing anything outside, charging your telephone, and making sure you have what you need. Worry means sitting at the window for six hours imagining the roof being torn from the house.
If you’re concerned about your health, preparation means making the appointment, getting the test, following instructions, and asking sensible questions. Worry means diagnosing yourself with seven fatal conditions before the doctor has examined you.
If you’re afraid of losing your job, preparation means improving your performance, updating your résumé, controlling your spending, and paying attention to what is happening around you. Worry means lying awake every night imagining a termination meeting that hasn’t been scheduled.
Preparation gives you something back. It provides information, protection, readiness, or control. Worry merely charges you for occupying space in your own head.
Separate the Facts From the Story
When I catch a concern beginning to grow, I separate what I know from what I’m imagining.
Suppose your doctor requests another test. The fact is that another test has been requested. That is all you know. The story may be that the doctor discovered something terrible and doesn’t want to tell you over the telephone.
Those are not the same thing.
Suppose someone doesn’t respond to your message. The fact is that you haven’t received a reply. The story may be that the person is angry, no longer likes you, is deliberately ignoring you, or has been involved in some horrible accident.
Again, you don’t know that.
Ask yourself a few direct questions. What do I actually know? What am I assuming? What evidence supports the outcome I’m imagining? Is there another reasonable explanation? Is there something useful I can do right now?
Those questions force the snowball to stop long enough for you to examine it.
Sometimes the facts will reveal a legitimate problem. Fine. Handle it. Other times you’ll realize that nearly everything upsetting you came from the story you added.
Handle What Belongs to Today
A problem should be handled when there is something available for you to handle.
If you need information, make the call. If an appointment needs to be scheduled, schedule it. If a bill appears incorrect, contact the company. If you don’t understand why someone behaved a certain way, ask rather than building a courtroom case inside your head.
Take the useful action available to you.
After that, there may be nothing more you can do until someone responds, the appointment arrives, the test results come back, or additional information becomes available. That is the point where you have to put the problem down.
I know that’s easier to say than to do, but repeatedly picking it back up won’t make the answer arrive any faster.
There are problems that belong to today, problems that belong to tomorrow, and problems that may never belong to you at all. Stop dragging all three categories into the same afternoon.
Stop Rehearsing Conversations That Haven’t Happened
Men can spend an unbelievable amount of time arguing with people who aren’t even in the room.
You imagine what the other person is going to say. Then you decide how you’ll answer. The imaginary person says something worse, so you deliver an even stronger response. Twenty minutes later, you’re furious with someone who hasn’t actually said a damn thing.
By the time the real conversation takes place, you arrive prepared for battle. Your voice is defensive. Your patience is gone. You’re responding to the imaginary version of the person instead of the one standing in front of you.
The conversation may then go badly, but not because your prediction was accurate. It went badly because you entered it carrying an argument you had already been having for two days.
Prepare the facts you need. Decide what you want to communicate. Then let the actual conversation happen before reacting to it.
You don’t need to script every possible insult, accusation, rejection, or disappointment. Most conversations don’t follow the script anyway.
Expecting Disaster Doesn’t Make You Smarter
Some men believe pessimism protects them from disappointment. If they expect everything to go wrong, nothing can surprise them.
The problem is that they pay for that protection by expecting misery every day.
Assuming the worst doesn’t make you more intelligent, experienced, or realistic. It simply allows fear to speak first. You can recognize risk without treating disaster as the most likely outcome.
There’s a difference between noticing that something could go wrong and deciding that it certainly will.
A sensible man keeps his eyes open. He doesn’t close them and hope for the best, but he also doesn’t stare at every cloud waiting for lightning to strike him.
Turn Pressure Into Action
I don’t spend much time borrowing trouble. When something needs to be handled, I handle it. When there is nothing I can do about it yet, I try not to manufacture ten imaginary outcomes while I wait.
Right now, my greatest source of stress is getting DougC launched. There is no clever trick that will make that pressure disappear. The work has to be completed.
I could sit here imagining everything that might go wrong. What if we miss the launch date? What if something breaks during testing? What if visitors don’t respond the way I expect? What if all this work doesn’t produce the result I’ve been building toward?
None of those questions will finish a guide, create an image, test a device, or move DougC one inch closer to launch.
So I tackle it one guide, one image, and one task at a time. That is productive pressure. It gives me a reason to focus and keep moving. Sitting around imagining failure would only make the same work feel heavier.
You may not be launching a business, but the principle is the same. If you can convert the pressure into a useful action, do it. If no useful action exists, feeding the fear won’t create one.
Use a Simple Rule
When you notice yourself borrowing trouble, ask one question:
Is there something useful I can do about this right now?
If the answer is yes, do it. Don’t spend three days worrying about a telephone call that takes five minutes to make.
If you need more information, determine how and when you can obtain it. Then stop inventing answers while you wait.
If you’ve already done everything available to you, acknowledge that the next step belongs to someone else or to another day.
If the concern is based entirely on assumptions, return to the facts.
You may have to repeat this process several times. The mind loves dragging an unfinished concern back onto center stage. Each time it does, remind yourself that you’ve already taken the available action.
This isn’t denial. You’re not pretending the issue doesn’t exist. You’re refusing to give it more of today than it deserves.
When Worry Starts Running Your Life
Everyone worries occasionally. There are times when uncertainty will get under your skin no matter how disciplined you are. That doesn’t mean anything is wrong with you.
However, if worry regularly destroys your sleep, causes panic, prevents you from making decisions, damages your relationships, or makes ordinary life difficult, talk with a qualified professional.
There’s no strength in allowing your own thoughts to terrorize you every day because you’re too proud to ask for help. Getting assistance is an action, and action is exactly what this guide is about.
You don’t need to become a man who never worries. You need to become a man who recognizes when worry has stopped being useful.
Life will hand you enough genuine problems. Some will be inconvenient. Some will be painful. A few may knock you flat for a while. When those problems arrive, deal with them using the facts, resources, and strength available to you.
Until then, leave them where they belong.
Stop paying interest on debts you may never owe.