Sandwiched
When you’re a member of the sandwich generation, worry can overshadow you in an instant. When you add a global pandemic and other terrible things happening in our society, it can dominate your every waking moment, not to mention keep you up at night.
I’m the former Queen of Worrying. Thankfully, I read Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People in my mid-20s. This book captivated me and put me on the path to teach the course based on it for 10 years. I read another book by Mr. Carnegie while immersed in the course called How to Stop Worrying and Start Living. Thankfully, reading the latter helped dethrone me.
While I will always battle worry and stress (I’m only human) I can at least recognize when both start to take me down and pull out methods from my inner “worry toolkit.” These help me keep my sanity. I thought I’d share some of them with you over the next couple of weeks.
One tip that can help now more than ever is to figure out the odds of something happening to you. This is one of my favorites that tames those “what if” thoughts that pop into my head. And when you’re taking care of both your mother as well as your family, those thoughts are common.
I remember how my heart dropped the first time both of my sons drove on their own with their new licenses. You always hear horror stories about teenage drivers, and I remember my own accident that happened shortly after I got my license.
However, my boys always wear their seatbelts – it’s second nature to them. And according to the U.S. Department of Transportation, buckling up is the single most effective thing you can do to protect yourself in a crash. When my oldest son Jonathon rear-ended someone 18 months ago, he had worn his seatbelt and both parties were uninjured.
With technology at our fingertips these days, finding out the statistics of something bad happening to you or to someone you love is quick and simple. This often relieves my mind whenever I’m about to board a flight!
Another tip is to live one day at a time. I created my own saying years ago that reflects this: “A day for everything and everything in its day.”
When my mind starts reeling at night about all of the things I need to accomplish the next day, I’ll say to myself, “Wait a minute. It’s almost midnight. There’s absolutely nothing you can do about it. That’s something for tomorrow. Get this crazy thought out of your head.” Most of the time it works like a charm, but if I’m worried I’ll forget something, I’ll just quickly write it down and I can usually fall asleep.
I hope these two ideas can help you and I look forward to sharing more next week!