Making decisions - beating fears -

[JJB]

Hello friends,

I seek wisdom, for I seek advice on what is probably the one difect I have that drives me mad the most. It concerns making decisions, beating fear and stopping yourself from contemplating the worst results of any given situation. Let me explain a little.
So I'm looking to volunteer with a charity that's rather important to me, Arthritis Care. It's nothing big or important (it is to me I guess). But for some reason I can't bring myself to submit a form for the volunteer place. I'm not sure if it's a lack of guts, or fear that something will inevitably go bad. For as long as I can remember I've always calculated situations out in my head. I guess you could see it as an over active human instinct of danger. Trouble is I see bad results of situations in everything. Its a bad habit to expect the worst in everything. I have an odd thing to in that for some reason, I believe that with goodness must come badness to balance things out. So say I win a tenner on the lottery, I'm already thinking what bad might happen, will I suffer a painful flare up or receive bad news etc.

Anyway, I'm sick of it. So looking for advice and possible external sources of help and insight to beat this. It's pathetic really, why can't I be brave enough. It's with a lot of things in life, even buying simple items at a checkout causes me to panic a little.

Would appreciate any help, and thank you. Hope you are all well.

 

[muxmux]

Hello there, mate.

I've had some mental struggles like those few years ago. Just don't think about it, get a music in ur head before the actual happening, and keep singin it in your head, to keep ur mind busy. 87% of the things we fear, won't happen in our lifes.

 

[vj288]

It's funny, I think the exact same thing about goodness and badness balancing each other out. I used to think like this a lot more in high school, I'd see a balance between school and sports. "Oh, I got a really bad grade is school, but I threw the shot put very well today."

I feel like I've grown out of this thinking pattern a little though. I mean think about it, does that good and bad have to even each other out make sense? If this was the case, the best things would happen to the worst people, and vice-versa. I think instead of goodness and badness balancing out maybe it's better to see it as good luck and bad luck balancing each other out. I don't know if this helps at all, I may be off, but I think this is sort of the reasoning I went through in my head. Personally I now think the better a person you are the better chance good things will happen are.

As to your thinking the worst case scenario for the form, what I like to do is think about three situations. What's the best that could happen, the worst that could happen, and what realistically may happen. While I know the best and worst are both possible, they sort of end up canceling each other out. And then you look at the realistic, and it's not so bad. And be objective, think if you were someone else what may happen. And think how bad is the WCS really. If it were to happen, would it be the end of the world? And if not, take comfort in that nothing worse than that can happen. Good luck.

 

[JJB]

It's funny, I think the exact same thing about goodness and badness balancing each other out. I used to think like this a lot more in high school, I'd see a balance between school and sports. "Oh, I got a really bad grade is school, but I threw the shot put very well today."

I feel like I've grown out of this thinking pattern a little though. I mean think about it, does that good and bad have to even each other out make sense? If this was the case, the best things would happen to the worst people, and vice-versa. I think instead of goodness and badness balancing out maybe it's better to see it as good luck and bad luck balancing each other out. I don't know if this helps at all, I may be off, but I think this is sort of the reasoning I went through in my head. Personally I now think the better a person you are the better chance good things will happen are.

As to your thinking the worst case scenario for the form, what I like to do is think about three situations. What's the best that could happen, the worst that could happen, and what realistically may happen. While I know the best and worst are both possible, they sort of end up canceling each other out. And then you look at the realistic, and it's not so bad. And be objective, think if you were someone else what may happen. And think how bad is the WCS really. If it were to happen, would it be the end of the world? And if not, take comfort in that nothing worse than that can happen. Good luck.

That's an interesting idea, so I wrote down in a simple word doc 'The best that could happen' and 'The worst that could happen'. Wrote what I personally thought and it did help me clear my mind to see that there's more good that could come out of submitting the form then bad. It's silly when you really think about it, as it's just a form but we do get ourselves worked up by such things.

I did submit it after doing that technique, will use that again in the future. Thanks both for your advice.