05 Jul 2012

5 Ways to Stop Worrying and Start Living

When things are tough for your business, it’s hard not to focus on the negatives. When you’re feeling constantly afraid about the future, you’re letting fear control your life. Owning a business isn’t about fear, it’s about fun, wealth and freedom. It’s time you put away your negative attitudes and get some peace of mind in your perspective. Dale Carnegie, in his book “How to Stop Worrying and Start Living” provides several ways to do just that. Here are 5 tips to help you stop worrying and start living too.

  1. Live One Day at a Time.

Live every day to its fullest; carpe diem. Understand that you can’t change the past and work on everything one day at a time. Don’t let fears about the future hold you back. Seize every single day and it will greatly reduce your stress and mental load.

  1. Accept the Worst Possible Outcome.

There will always be things that are outside of your control. When you’re worried, it’s important to ask “What’s the worst that can happen?”, accept it, and move on. Prepare yourself for the worst and hope for the best. Attack your fears head-on by understanding the reality of the situation and the worst possible outcome. Once you’ve accepted the worst, you can proceed with significantly less worry and work on preparing for it or fixing it.

  1. Don’t Worry about the Vague

Often times you’ll find that a lot of your biggest fears are unfounded or blown out of proportion. Take time to understand what it is you’re afraid of and why. Is this a reasonable fear? What are some possible solutions? Stop focusing on vague worries. Quantify and qualify them before you become concerned.

  1. Focus on the Cause, not the Symptoms

If a doctor treats the symptoms of a disease and not the cause, the patient will never make a full recovery. Your business is your patient. If you don’t find the underlying cause behind the problems in your business, you’ll never be able to fix anything. Trying to fix a sales problem? What you probably have is a marketing problem. Look at the real issue, not just the other troubles it creates.

  1. Weigh the Odds

Most of what you worry about will never happen. When you worry about things that are never going to happen, you’re not just wasting time, you’re causing yourself unnecessary stress. Always consider the odds of what you’re worrying about. Is this fear likely to happen? How likely is it? Odds are, the majority of your fears won’t happen and if they do, will be significantly less devastating than you imagine.

3 thoughts on “5 Ways to Stop Worrying and Start Living”

  1. Excellent blog and timely. Thanks for posting. I look around the towns that encompass my “neighborhood” and I see so many courageous entrepreneurs starting new businesses, expanding existing ones and testing new ideas. Small businesses inspire me with their ability to look past fear and towards their goals, whatever those goals might be. Keep up the great work.

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