The Perfect Antidote for Champion Worriers

And it doesn't cost a penny...(2/3)

January 12, 2024

I left the Corporate world in July 2023 after 18 years of non-stop working (except for a 6-month sabbatical during the pandemic). I had started working straight after college, and by the time 2023 arrived, a combination of many factors helped me to decide to jump out and take a break. I wanted to explore working on my own, doing work that is meaningful to me and others.

I’d worked with my financial planner, who said I was ready for a 2-year break. I had enough savings to live for two years if I spent them modestly. Now, six months into the break, as I see my savings depleting steadily, I experience my anxiety rising. I had been used to receiving a regular income all the while I had a job, and now, suddenly, I had a gaping void where that steady income used to come in.

There are days when I am worried about not having an income. I worry about what would happen if I never make enough money to care for myself. This well-programmed thought train in my head ensures that no worry goes unnoticed. This thought train magnifies it and projects the worst possible outcome into the future. The concerns about money were always in the background, affecting my ability to start working.

I’ve been coaching for a decade now and wanted to take it as my full-time work. But the money worries were so intrusive that I was paralysed and unable to take any action for a couple of weeks. I noticed this in my meditation practice and started experimenting with antidotes to this paralysis by worry.

What is the Antidote for Worry?

There are antidotes to all sorts of hindrances in Buddha’s teachings, so I figured that worry must have an antidote, too. I was running through this particular concern with my therapist, and she prompted me to work with gratitude. She’s been asking me to work with gratitude for a few years, but that hadn’t really stuck with me. I could not do a gratitude list or practice meaningfully, which made me want to continue doing it.

But reading this book, ‘365 Thank Yous: The Year: A Simple Act of Daily Gratitude Changed My Life by John Kralik’, during Thanksgiving gave me the necessary impetus to start incorporating gratitude in my life. If nothing else, I thought I could sleep with gratitude rather than rumination or worry.

I started acknowledging and noticing all the “wealth” around me. The interactions I have with people, nature, the material things I already have, the support, resources and myself. I started acknowledging these on an everyday basis. I write down a list of five things I am grateful for every day. I also take a minute or two every day when I am using things I have and acknowledge how I have exactly what I need at that moment. I look at the soap I am using and am delighted that I have such a lovely soap to take a bath with. I look at my pantry, and it makes me happy when I can explicitly acknowledge that I have them fully stocked.

Incidentally, this practice is helping me be more mindful of my consumption, and it has helped me reduce my spending impulses significantly. As I notice the effect of the practice of gratitude and acknowledging the wealth I have on my emotional state, it has been easier to keep the practice going.

Is Gratitude a Trick of the Mind?

One of the themes John Kralik covers in the book, ‘365 Thank Yous: The Year a Simple Act of Daily Gratitude Changed My Life’ is about weathering the financial crisis - both personal and the economic meltdown of 2008. He had to sell some valuable options he had held onto to buy his dream sailboat to pay for his living expenses.

"I had been bitter about the need to sell those options just to buy groceries and pay utilities. I hated letting go of my sailboat dream. But now I felt how lucky I was to have had the margin in which to commit errors. As we all know now, the stock market crashed in 2008 and reached bottom in early 2009, just at the time I had planned to sell the options right before their expiration. Had I kept them, they would have been worthless. To any dream.”

“As my focus moved from the painful reversals of 2007 to the resources and friends that had helped me survive them, I started to feel that things were getting better. But then I’d wonder, Were things really getting better or was this hopeful feeling just a trick of my mind?”

This is something I grapple with on an everyday basis. Am I being complacent by being content? Should I be hustling more? Putting myself out there more, asking for work? Am I not doing enough? Was being content just a trick of my mind?

The amount of resistance my mind puts up against being content is astounding. I have had to question those thought trains and stop them in their tracks because they were not productive. It has taken years of meditation, practice, and therapy to finally be able to question my thoughts. If all thoughts are just one perspective, I could do better for myself in being able to choose constructive ones. Gratitude helps me to stay present and work from what I need in the present moment. It is an antidote to my greed, worry and dissatisfaction.

The author finds himself settling into his personal financial situation by the end of his project. He also weathered the economic meltdown when most of his bank clients shut shop. In a situation that could have ruined him, the author was able to make the most of it by keeping his head above water and being able to see clearly. His practice of thank you notes supported him in this, which kept feeding into his everyday actions, mindset and heart space from which he operated.

Worry narrows our perspective.

It shows us only the worst-case scenario. It doesn’t let us see clearly what is right here. I am a Champion Worrier. I have had practice with this all my life. Every single family member is a Champion Worrier, too. We have lived our lives in perpetual anxiety that anything could go wrong anywhere. This has made us highly risk-averse. I am finding out now that gratitude is a great antidote that helps me live in the present. It allows me to take risks and try new things with my career and life that I thought impossible.

The author, through his journey, shows in the book how his perspective broadened and widened through his practice of thank-you notes. He shows us how he could go beyond himself in interactions with people. He talks about the various signs and inspirations he had along his journey that reinforced the importance of gratitude.

This showed me the importance of self-perpetuating feedback, which helps keep the practice going. When I express gratitude to another person, my emotional state shifts. And when there is acknowledgement from the other person, it also feeds into my emotional state. It becomes a constructive feedback loop that reinforces the practice.

Thank You Project for 2024

I’ve been inspired to start my project of thank-you notes after reading this book. I’ve given myself a task to write 180 thank yous in 2024 and keep up my practice of 5 things I am grateful for every day.

John Kralik says, “By December, my life had improved so much I began to imagine a Hollywood ending for the story of my thank you note project.

On Christmas Day, the doorbell would ring, and deliverymen would begin to arrive, from Federal Express, from UPS, from Express Mail. I would stare, dumbstruck, as I began to open the presents.

What really happened was that I got about the same number of ties and books and shirts as I had received the previous year. I had to work twelve hours on Christmas Day on a pointless motion that my opposing attorney felt was an emergency. Grace did not come back.

If the voice I’d heard in the mountains had implied that I would get all that I wanted, it seemed, at least at this juncture, that it was a promise unfulfilled. Yet, by being thankful for what I had, I realised that I had everything I needed. “

What’s Next?

We will round off the reflections from this book in the next edition. Meanwhile, write back to me and let me know if you intend to read this book. Or, if you have already read this book, what has touched you the most?

I am finishing this edition with my customary story as a parting thought.

Not Far From Buddhahood

While visiting Gasan, a university student asked him: “Have you even read the Christian Bible?”

“No, read it to me,” said Gasan.

The student opened the Bible and read from St. Matthew: “And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow. They toil not, neither do they spin, and yet I say unto you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these…Take therefore no thought for the morrow, for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself.”

Gasan said: “Whoever uttered those words, I consider an enlightened man.”

The student continued reading: “Ask and it shall be given you, seek and ye shall find, knock and it shall be opened unto you. For everyone that asketh receiveth, and he that seeketh findeth, and to him that knocketh, it shall be opened.”

Gasan remarked: “That is excellent. Whoever said that is not far from Buddhahood.”

Source: 16. Not Far From Buddhahood - Becoming Reason. https://becomingreason.com/16-not-far-buddhahood

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