Who Will Cry When You Die\?: Life Lessons From The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari pdfdrive com

12.
Schedule Worry Breaks
After I wrote The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari, I was flooded with letters from
readers who saw their lives change from the lessons they discovered on
becoming happier, more fulfilled and more peaceful in these stress-crazed times.
Many of the letters came from people whose work lives had grown so busy that
they spent most of their free time worrying about things that should have been
left at the office. They had lost the ability to laugh, love and share joy with their
families because challenges at work were consuming them.
Too many people are spending the best years of their lives stuck in a state
of constant worry. They worry about their jobs, the bills, the environment and
their kids. And yet we all know deep in our hearts that most of the things we
worry about never happen. It’s like that great saying of Mark Twain’s, “I’ve had
a lot of trouble in my life, some of which actually happened.” My father, a
particularly wise man who has had a deep influence on my own life, once told
me that the Sanskrit character for funeral pyre is strikingly similar to the Sanskrit
character for worry. “I’m surprised,” I replied. “You shouldn’t be, son,” he
gently offered. “One burns the dead while the other burns the living.”
I know how dramatically the worry habit can reduce one’s quality of life
from personal experience. While in my late twenties, I was on the so-called fast
track to success. I had received two law degrees from one of the country’s most
prestigious law schools, served as the law clerk for a Chief Justice and was
handling highly complex cases as a litigation lawyer. But I was often working
too hard and worrying too much. I was waking up on Monday morning with a
sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach and a deep sense that I was wasting my
talents on work that was not aligned with the person I was. So I began to search
for ways to improve my life, turning first to the self-help and life leadership
literature, where I found a wealth of lessons for a more balanced, peace-filled
and meaningful existence.
One of the simple strategies I learned to conquer the worry habit was to
schedule specific times to worry—what I now call “worry breaks.” If we are
facing a difficulty, it is easy to spend all our waking hours focusing on it.
Instead, I recommend that you schedule fixed times to worry, say, thirty minutes
every evening. During this worry session, you may wallow in your problems and

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brood over your difficulties. But after that period ends, you must train yourself
to leave your troubles behind and do something more productive, such as going
for a walk in natural surroundings or reading an inspirational book or having a
heart-to-heart conversation with someone you love. If during other times of the
day you feel the need to worry, jot down what you want to worry about in a
notebook which you can then bring to your next worry break. This simple but
powerful technique will help you gradually reduce the amount of time you spend
worrying and eventually serve to eliminate this habit forever.

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