Episode 23

I do a lot of overthinking in my life. How about you? Are you an over thinker? Do you put a ton of thought into things that are important before you ever get to them? “Should I do it?” “Shouldn't I do it?” “How should I do it?” “How will this be received?” 

I only realized in the last couple years of my life that I've lived with generalized anxiety disorder for a long time and I didn't even know that's what it was. In some research I was doing on my book, Confident Under Pressure, which I wrote several years ago, I was looking into different aspects of anxiety and stress, and I ran across these tests that you could take. It’s pretty easy to find various online tests to determine your level of anxiety. I started taking different ones of these and it dawned on me that I've had generalized anxiety disorder for as long as I could remember.

One aspect of anxiety is overthinking: getting stuck in your head and spinning your wheels.

That was happening to me this morning. I went to bed early, and I woke up early, 4 or 5 a.m. I was lying there in bed and my mind started spinning its wheels about today's episode. “What should I speak about? What if I don't find something good to speak about? What if I go into my little shower stall and I sit there and I don't have anything to say? And then people won't like the podcast, and then they'll stop listening to the podcast. And then I'll be really disappointed because the download numbers will go down and I'll probably start getting some bad reviews, people saying that I have lost it and it was good for a while, but now it's not good anymore, and then the podcast will kind of collapse and fold, and I'll lose energy for it. And then I won't have a job that I love. And then I won't make any money ever again, and I'll starve and my family will starve and we're going to be homeless on the street without any place to go!” Yeah—like that!

As the world falls apart, does your mind ever take you down those kinds of paths? The worst thing that can happen actually happens in your mind. Have you ever noticed that? The worst thing happens in your mind, not in reality. The only thing you need to live a happy and successful life is the truth. And if you have the capacity to be present with the truth of the moment, specifically your truth in the moment, meaning you're very current state and condition, and if you can just stay with it and be honest about it and come from that place, you will live a happy, even ecstatic, successful life.

Because we don't need any more than the truth. What's true right now? What's important for you right now? What's important for me is to speak truth. I'm not talking about some high level, philosophical, all-encompassing universal truth. I'm talking about what's real right now. In this moment. I woke up at 4 a.m. with my mind spinning scenarios. Doom scenarios about the podcast. How I could blow it or go in the wrong direction. What if I do a terrible podcast? What if this is the worst episode ever? That's what I woke up with. And that's what I'm speaking with right now

I'm not just talking about me, I'm talking about us. I'm talking about being human. I'm talking about the innumerable small deaths we experience every single day by allowing our mind to create a worst case scenario and not following through because we get stuck in our head, which is telling us if you take a step, you're going to die. And nowadays, since we don't live out in the wild in the jungles anymore, surrounded by tigers and pythons and bears, nowadays the deaths that we experience are for the most part social deaths, the deaths that we imagine in our minds.

We imagine we're going to be shunned, criticized, judged, abandoned, ostracized, left behind, ignored. If we make a wrong move, if we do the wrong thing, if we don't perform properly or up to standard, what's the worst that can happen? It happens in our mind. It doesn't happen in reality. What's the worst that could happen by speaking the truth, by living the truth, by coming from exactly where you are, saying what you want, going for the thing that's most important to you? What's the worst that can happen?

We are one half step away from living fulfilling, glorious, interesting, adventurous lives. That half step is simply a loss of presence.

You lose your presence in the moment that the overthinking, fearful mind is active. You enter a movie theater with a screen that's so big you can't extricate yourself from the fantasy of it. You can't extricate yourself from the fantasy of this terrible thing that you're looking at on the screen of your mind, which is projecting this future worst case scenario. The way through that is to take some kind of action.

The way out of over thinking is so simple. It's just to take a step, take some action.

Any kind of action is helpful, but especially action in the direction of the thing that's frightening you, that you're overthinking about. The illusion is that if you think enough about it, you will solve the problem of taking a wrong action before you act. That's ridiculous. That's not how it works. Life is a process of course correction, and we get the data and information we need to stay on course as we're moving. We have to be in our lives and navigate them as they arise. That's the only way to live.

What matters most to you is waiting for you, longing, hoping that you will take one step in its direction. The thing that matters most to us is hoping that we'll just move toward it because as soon as we do, it's going to give us feedback. It's like we've got a blindfold on, and we're afraid to take a step because we can't see anything. But as soon as you take this step, the thing that wants you to serve it is going to say something back to you. “A little bit to the left.” “Oh, not quite so far.” “To the right, I'll guide you. I'll get you here.” “There's nothing in front of you. The way is clear. Take a big step forward.”

We can navigate all the way to our purpose by beginning to move toward it and just listening for the voice of its guidance. It will bring us all the way home, all the way to what we need to be doing. All we have to do is move, take a little step, move toward it and take the guidance. That's a thrilling prospect.

We can wind up living such small lives day to day by getting hypnotized by this unconscious voice that's beneath the surface. It runs unconsciously and therefore it's running us. It's this little loop off worst case scenarios and fears about the terrible things that could happen if we step out and try something new and take a risk. So we stick with the familiar, tried and true, the mundane, habitual steps that can't, by their nature, produce the change that we want in our lives. They can't deliver. It’s just the same old path. We may dream of more wonderful, fulfilling, engaged, happy, and compelling lives.

But we have to take that first step, which is the scary step into the outer space of the new.

So, my goal for this episode is that it's the worst episode ever. This should be the most rambling, unfocused, lacking in clarity or inspiration episode ever. Wouldn't that be wonderful? Gosh, that would be so nice. There's such relief and joy in the worst thing that could happen happening, because then you're free, you're freed up. You don't have to censor yourself anymore and edit yourself and be on guard to make sure that things go the way that they have to go so I don't die.

So here I am, 4 a.m. in the morning, recording the worst episode ever, and all I have to do is walk upstairs and take the recording and not edit it and publish it. While my mind is racing and screaming, “Don't do that you're crazy! They'll hate it! Everyone will stop listening and you've got such a good thing going. This could be big. You could have thousands of followers and listeners and make a living doing this and then you'll be happy, but only if you don't make a mistake, though, don't screw it up! Don't just be you because that's going to mess it up. Who wants to just hear about you and the authentic you who you really are?”

Oh man, I live from that place unconsciously, and I don't think I'm the only one. Most of us are living from this place, this aggressive, dominating, hovering editor that watches our every step and stops us from getting out there, from expressing ourselves, from sharing our art and our ideas and our passion and our joy. I just want us to be alive. That's what I want for me. And that's what I want for you. Freedom to simply be who you are, do what you love, and the money will follow. That's a book by Marsha Sinetar: Do What You Love, The Money Will Follow. I've never read it, but I know that's a book that got famous somewhere along the way.

How many of us have actually experimented with just doing what we love and then seeing what happens? What would happen if you just did that for a day or a week or a month? If you really just did what you love, would you worry, “I don't believe I'll be taken care of”? Or, “If I do that, something bad is going to happen”?

4 a.m. is a very good time to be alive. The early morning hours are these glorious unclaimed territories. There's nobody up. There's nobody around. There's no distraction from the truth of the moment. It's a chance to live into possibility. It's an empty space where it's pretty easy to put your attention on what matters most. And it's pretty easy to have time to take action on what matters in the early morning hours. It's such a great time to be alive, to be awake, to be alert with yourself in the early morning hours, and I think research has shown that going to bed early is best for you. I heard somewhere that every hour of sleep you get before midnight is worth two hours of sleep that you get after midnight. I don't know if that's actually true, but it seems like it might be. When I go to bed at a decent hour or early, and wake up early, I find myself in a very good state of mind. I feel very rested when I've done that.

This is a rambling, unfocused, mind stream of an episode. The worst episode yet! That will be the title of the episode: The Worst Episode So Far. What a relief. What a joy to let the worst that could happen happen. It's kind of like being in utter darkness and being scared of the dark. And when you go into it and sit there for a while, you start realizing, “Oh, I can actually see a little bit here.”

And the more you stay with it, the more your eyes adjust to that darkness, and you realize you can navigate when you thought you wouldn't be able.

The worst thing that I could imagine happening when we moved into our home here in January of this year was that I would get less speaking work than I have in the past. That's the worst thing that I could imagine. What actually happened was my entire year of speaking work got canceled. I lost every shred of work, and I just said a few minutes ago that the worst thing that can happen happens in your mind. But I didn't even imagine how bad it could get! I did not imagine that I would completely lose all of my work. But here's the thing about why this is true, that your mind imagines the worst thing, because as it imagines the worst, it doesn't include the best thing that could happen at the same time.

Here's what I mean by that. Here's the example. So my mind was imagining I would have a significant downturn in my speaking work, and that would be scary and hard because we've just moved into a new home in January with a bigger mortgage. We actually had no mortgage before that, our home was paid for, and we moved to a more expensive home that we love with a significant mortgage. And then I lost all my work. But what my mind couldn't anticipate is that there was another part of the experience of the worst.

I was around 18 when I started traveling for work as an entertainer, and I've been traveling ever since. I added it up the other day and I realized that I haven't been in one place for more than four weeks at a time in 40 years, up until March of this year when I lost all my speaking work. When that happened, I got to stay home. And I have been home for nine months now. It's been extraordinary. I had no idea what it's like to have continuity of place. It's so wonderful to be home in this way.

It has been a huge gift to me. Now, please don't take my language about this pandemic as a gift with any offense. I know it's been horrible and terrible in so many ways for people economically, and I'm in that bucket. Economically and health wise the disease has wreaked havoc with so many of our lives. But all I'm saying is that when we imagine the worst that can happen, we do so with a blindness to the gifts that might be available in that same dire situation. For me, the worst was that I could lose some speaking work. In fact, I've lost all my work. And yet I've been given this incredible gift of being home and allowing my body to rest and heal from 40 years of constant travel. When I was doing that, I loved my work. I love presenting to people. I love being a speaker, an entertainer, and doing face to face live shows with people.

But I also was not aware of the toll it was taking on my whole physiological system and more than anything, my relationships with my family. I've never experienced this in my life. I've raised two kids who are now grown, and I have such sadness that I wasn't there with continuity. And I'm not trying to whip up some terrible thing or beat myself up that I wasn't there the way I should have been as a dad. It was what it was, and my kids got the example and model of somebody who loves their work. There are a lot of things they got from me based on the work that I did. But one thing they didn't get is continuity of my attention and my presence, and I can't reverse that.

I can't take that back, and I feel sad about the fact that I just didn't have that with my older kids. It makes me want to say to them, I'm so sorry because I know what this feels like now to be in one place and to be there every morning when my kid wakes up, when my eleven-year old wakes up, and to be there when he goes to bed and to see my partner, my life partner every day. It's wonderful. It's a joy. It's so nice to have a routine and be able to stick with it on a daily basis, instead of bouncing all over the map and being up at wild hours and traveling all over and being in endless numbers of hotels moving from place to place.

There are almost always upsides to the worst-case scenarios that we can't imagine until we get to live the moment that's given to us. And once we're in the moment we find our way through, we find the upsides. We work with the downsides, and we apply our creativity and ingenuity and adaptability to whatever we've got, and we move forward.

This concludes the worst episode yet of The Follow Through Formula Podcast. And even though it's the worst, it's still an example of follow through, which just requires moving forward with action. So please take action today on what matters most to you. Whatever is calling your attention, whatever dream you've got, whatever you've been wanting to engage for so long, that great idea you had for a business or a piece of art or poem or an event you want to run or a meal you want to cook or something you want to learn or an instrument you want to play or a person you want to be in more of a relationship with or a project you've wanted to do in your house, a renovation, or a body that you want to live in that you could be creating through exercise. What have you been dreaming about? What's been calling your attention? Move toward it. Take a step and just keep doing that. Then you get the joy of life showing itself to you day after day, piece by piece. Hooray! Hooray! This has been Episode 23 of the follow through Formula Podcast and I'll be back tomorrow. Take care and Game on!