Monday 27 February 2017

How to Stop Worrying and Start Living

"My life has been full of terrible misfortunes, most of which never happened."
- Michel de Montaigne

Image Credit: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Worrying-Start-Living-Personal-
Development/dp/0749307234

I recently got a new book: How to Stop Worrying and Start Living by Dale Carnegie, and it's changing my life. I'm a worrier. I always have been. It's something that I've accepted that I'm probably never going to be able to change about myself, and I guess that's okay.

Over the last few years, particularly while I've been at university, I've noticed a change in myself. I was getting worse. I have managed to push my worries from everyday ones into full-blown anxiety, as put so eloquently by my doctor last year. But she said that I'm also incredibly good at hiding it. Which I am. I'm a self-taught expert. Because hiding it is by far easier than trying to explain to people how you feel.

I always hear the same stuff. I could give you five different responses without even thinking about it.
'Just don't worry about stuff.'
'Cheer up, it's not the end of the world.'
'Other people have far more to be worried about than you.'

All true. I don't have a shit life. And I don't know where my anxiety comes from. My insecurities? Probably. But aside from that, who knows? Your guess is as good as mine. But if I had a pound for every time someone told me to 'just stop worrying', I could have paid off my student loans by now. If I could, I would. It's not as simple as that. To me, it feels like the end of the world. It's feeling everything too strongly. It's going days without wanting to talk to anyone. It's sobbing hysterically at something that only kind of upset you. It's questioning all my friendships, my relationship with my boyfriend, because I feel like I have too much emotional baggage. It's feeling useless. It's feeling lost. It's feeling nothing and everything all at the same time.

Bright side? I'm improving, Slowly. I'm pushing myself out of my comfort zone, with major encouragement from my boyfriend. And tangent aside, this book is incredible. It's changing the way I think about things. Like the quote by Michel de Montaigne says, the majority of the stuff I'm worrying about won't even happen. This quote has really stuck with me since I read it, and I think it's something that everyone needs to hear. My life has been full of terrible misfortunes, in my head. I'm literally wasting time and energy on stuff that won't happen. 

'Life is in the living, in the tissue of every day and hour.'

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