"I've been through many terrible things in my life, and some of them really happened." – Mark Twain
This has always been one of my favorite quotations. Why?
Because I believe that it perfectly sums up what goes on within my head when I get too much anxiety over something that "might" happen. I'll get very concerned about something to do with my health. My job. My investments. And I can overthink it until it becomes something "terrible."
Think for a moment about something in your recent past that you were very concerned about. Maybe it was your job. Maybe it was your marriage or relationship. Maybe you're having trouble with your car – or at least think you do. But take a moment and look back upon your life and think about how many terrible things you were expecting to happen, yet they never did.
But inside your head things were going around and around. One calamity after another. One disaster after another. The worst scenario always seemed to show up and ruin your day. And the more you focus on these perceived problems the more gigantic they became. But once you struggled through the day, and slept for the night, for some reason you woke up in a world that was fine. That's the kind of power that our monkey mind has over us. We allow our emotional brain to push us around until we become highly emotional and upset.
So why this quotation is so important to me is it allows me to know why I sometimes imagine my way into emotional problems that are totally unnecessary. So it isn't so much about what really happens, it's about what I imagine could happen.
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