From "The Speed Trap"

It seemed as though everything in Mark’s life was going through change and dissolution. He was in the midst of a highly contested divorce, and partially due to his depression and inability to function his business partners decided to break off on their own.

Mark’s whole approach to life was to put everything into a category or box. As a financial/estate planner, Mark excelled at analyzing balance sheets and investment portfolios and making projections based on his analysis. Now he found himself analyzing his future -- facing life without his wife, the question of how he would relate to his children, and financial uncertainty from the breakup of his partnership. As he obsessed on these issues, his mind would spiral out of control with worry, fear, and depression. Some mornings he had a difficult time getting out of bed and getting dressed. He felt immobilized.

Mark was in a state of panic much of the time from weighing the outcomes of all the possible scenarios. He saw a traditional therapist who helped him analyze his past, how he got where he was, and how to cope. He was on a high dose of antidepressants and was even hospitalized for depression. Still, he wasn’t getting any better; in fact, he was getting worse. The more he thought about the mess he was in, the more he spun his wheels, and the more he felt depressed. For Mark, there seemed to be no way out.

The Fork in the Road

At the urging of his former business partner, Mark changed therapists to a counselor who focused on teaching healthy principles of mental well-being. She saw Mark going down into a vortex of life changes without any understanding of how his thinking was playing into it. At first, her approach sounded too simple for Mark, and he had a hard time letting go of his habits of analysis and worry.

“I was on my way to another one of my divorce hearings,” said Mark, “and I was listening to a tape about breaking the habit of worry. Suddenly, all of the ideas my therapist had been trying to get across to me fell into place. It was like a light bulb went on. Something changed, and all of a sudden my mind cleared up. I began to see that my habit of worry was nothing more than that -- a habit. I saw that I worried my way through life, so no wonder I was stressed and depressed!

“My whole life began to change. I am still going through a difficult divorce, but I don’t react nearly as much as I did before. I don’t spiral down into the ‘poor-me’s’ and waste time trying to figure out why this is happening. I just deal with one thing at a time, and that is manageable. In my work, I still need to analyze at times, like analyzing someone’s estate tax liability. That’s okay, but I’m able to recognize when intellectualizing is no longer being productive. I am now able to put things on the back burner and let them go. It is amazing how creative my thinking has become and how much the quality of my work has changed. When I let go, the answer just comes. And, of course, I am far more productive now. I’m also able to sleep.”
“How about your feelings of depression?” I asked.

“I still have times when I feel depressed or overwhelmed. But now I only feel that way for an hour or two instead of weeks at a time. I’m able to recognize my thinking and recognize that I’m in a low mood. I used to spend so much time trying to control outcomes that were all in my imagination. Now I save so much energy not doing that. As soon as I recognize that I’m trying to control things, I stop it right away. I’m able to question my own thinking instead of trusting thinking that is isn’t based on reality. I haven’t taken antidepressants for several months now, and I feel better than I ever have.

“I believe that if I hadn’t learned these principles, my life would be totally different. I’ve been able to turn my business around, I’ve lost over sixty pounds by following an exercise program, and I’m completely motivated to live my life. I don’t know if I would have even been alive if I hadn’t learned this. My biggest realization is that life doesn’t fit into a box anymore. There are endless possibilities now -- I’m volunteering to be on boards of nonprofits, I listen to people now, I get up each morning to watch the sun rise, and I am awestruck with every day and what it has to offer. I can’t believe that life can be so much fun and so joyful.”

The Principle in Practice

Worry is a habit for many people. I believe that worry is an attempt to deal with the fact that much of life is an unknown. If you don’t have faith that life will work out for the better or that you will be able to deal with what comes up, you have no choice but to worry -- to process and analyze all the possible scenarios.

When you begin to trust in the power of wisdom and insight, when you have an understanding of a larger force at work in life, you can let go and recognize when you have gone overboard with your future projections.
Mark was used to controlling life and putting it into explainable categories. When his divorce and his business problems got to be too much for him, his old coping mechanisms no longer worked. Luckily for Mark, he was able to learn a deeper, more profound way to deal with the unknown in life. He was able to recognize when his thinking was spinning out of control, before it led to exhaustion and depression. Now he is able to put things in perspective and see the boundless possibilities that life has to offer.

By trusting in his inner intelligence, his wisdom, Mark has found that he can handle even the most difficult situations. He isn’t perfect; he can still get caught up in his thinking and his low moods, but his lows are short-lived. He now sees analytical thinking as a tool for certain tasks, not a weapon to be used to judge himself and others or a means of figuring out the unknown.

The future is unknown. Instead of worrying about it, have faith that your wisdom will guide you into the future.

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