Hakuna Matata. It means no worries for the rest of your days. It’s our problem-free philosophy. That’s how the song goes, and that’s how I try to live my life. I want to kick off this blog with a little story of how I learned that worrying serves no purpose what-so-ever, and that things always work out for the better. I was in ninth grade. Life was simpler then, right? While that seems true now, the pressures of school can be overwhelming at times. Our ninth grade history class was participating in the school’s annual canned food drive. Classes throughout the school were tasked with creating a box to use as the repository for the canned food collected. Boxes were to be decorated in a creative manner with a theme centered around the canned food drive.
My teacher, Mister K, really put the pressure on. His class had won the contest several years in a row. He had asked for volunteers to lead the creation of our class “box.” Nobody was volunteering. He asked a few times and still nobody volunteered to lead. I’m not sure what possessed me, but I raised my hand to volunteer. Seemed like the valiant thing to do at the time I suppose. Well, after I volunteered to lead, several of my friends and classmates volunteered to assist. Only problem was, I HAD NO IDEA HOW TO BEGIN! In hindsight, I should have asked Mister K for help, or heaven forbid, ask my parents for help. But I didn’t… I racked my brain trying to come up with ideas, but nothing; not one single idea would enter my young mind. So, I began to worry. And I’m talking big time WORRY. I didn’t want to let my classmates down. I didn’t want to let my teacher down. Yet I had no idea how to proceed. I went over and over in my head. How could I pull this off? How could I come up with a theme? How could I get the team together to start building? How could we get the box to the school? My worrying kept me up to the wee hours of the morning. I just couldn’t get to sleep. I would toss and turn with worries bouncing around in my head. My worrying continued day after day and night after night with the deadline rapidly approaching!
What happened next was quite miraculous. One day, everyone on my team started throwing around ideas. With their help, we quickly settled on theme for our box. Very quickly after the theme was decided, the team put together a plan for assembly. One person volunteered their house as the location for assembly, and others volunteered to gather materials. In no time at all, we had a box assembled and ready for the big day.
After the canned drive was over, I realized that all the worrying accomplished absolutely nothing. Worry had been a complete waste of time and a waste of energy. In fact, the worry actually sapped my creative energy, and made harder to accomplish my goals. This was an epiphany moment for me. I realize now that I was fortunate to have this epiphany early in my life. To come to the realization that worry is useless changed my outlook on life, and made me better prepared to handle situations throughout school and my adult life.
While living this story had a great impact on my life, I hope that you can take it as one example, and consider the times in your own life when you were racked with worry. How did that situation work out? I’d love to hear your own stories of worry, and how they worked out in the end. Please share your stories in the comments section, and stay tuned for an upcoming blog on how to avoid worry in your own life.
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Hey, Eric. Great to see your blog. I liked your story
Not sure if you know, but we recently had a little health scare with Carson. He started limping and it wouldn’t go away…he was sent for an mri and tons of bloodwork to rule out leukemia and bone tumors (so scary). Turned out he DID have a tumor, and had surgery to remove it, but it was benign. So, all that worrying I did waiting for the tests to come back was worthless. Thank God. But just one more example of how 99% of our worst fears never come to pass. Take care! Hope your new job is working out well. They are lucky to have you.
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very good blog.. as you may know, I am mostly worry free in life. I try to focus most of my energy on how to make life or a situation better. I go through my day to day with out worrying what will happen, but looking at things as what will I do when it happens.
example. today I had a speech due in class. I did it on sending packets over the internet, something I knew almost very well. I prepared my speech at the last minute not worried about getting it done or if it was what i wanted to speak about.
Now I cant stand to speak in front of people and avoid it like work. I get nervous when i am up there speaking. Now I know that i might not going to speak well, so i know that i cant worry about it. because if I was to worry about what to speak on or how to speak it, then I would send my self through a down hill spiral to failure.
I did not so well at my speech today, but I did better then i thought. So I leave you with this, Dont worry about what life throws at you, just walk into the situation open minded and with thoughts of doing good.. and the outcome will be better then what you think.
and one more thing.. I know times are tough, but when times get down, dont worry about how to pay the electric bill or how you are going to eat.. just think how you are going to make these things happen. and focus all your energy on the good.. and things will start to work for the better. its tough to do, but I have done it and It works.
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Marianne, thanks for the comments. Situations involving your child can be very scary, and I am very happy that everything worked out for Carson.
Dennis, you are one of the most worry free people I know, thanks for your comments.
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Yes, parents and teachers can help but as a ninth grader that is the very last thing anyone wants to do. Upon reflection though it was good that you did not because you would have never learned this valuable life’s lesson. How many times as parents do we want to prevent the fall or failure? When what we should probably do is let our children fall or fail and then let them pick themselves up so they can learn lessons that will last them a life time.
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I enjoyed your blog.
I was wondering at what point does concern become a worry? As parents especially we are concerned about our children and about having a good job to supposrt them but when does it cross from concern to worry?
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Eric
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October 4th, 2009 at 8:36 pm
Good questions! When asked a question like this, I like to get a good grasp of the definition of the words in question. So, I headed over to Dictionary.com and found that “concern” implies an anxious sense of interest, while “worry” is an active state of agitated uneasiness and restless apprehension. While the terms are listed as synonyms, I see worry as more of an active state, being more disruptive to daily life. With concern then being more passive, maintaining interest, but not disruptive.
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After I had kids I started to worry all the time about everything. It was hell. I couldn’t do anything effectively as I was too busy worrying and too tired from all those sleepless nights worrying. The worry caused stress and more worry and the cycle got worse and worse.
Thank heavens I’m over it now and have a fairly laid back attitude to life. I agree that it’s easy to worry about our kids – we can control our own destiny but have less control over theirs. I’m always fretting that they’ll get bullied at school. You hear such terrible stories about that these days.
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Eric Watermolen
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December 8th, 2009 at 1:51 pm
Yep, kids can bring a whole new world of worry upon us. My outlook on that is that I will do my best to set a good example and provide an environment for my daughter to flourish. I love the laid back attitude, I sense it in the writing you do at Get in the Hot Spot.
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