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One of the biggest enemies of success and peace is worry. Worry creates fear, drains your energy, prevents you from achieving your potential, while obstructing you from your goals. Not much happens – good or otherwise – when you are paralyzed with worry.
Research studies reveal that we typically worry five times more about things that will never happen than things that actually occur. That’s a lot of wasted worry!
Let’s say you have a new job and are worried about making a mistake. The worrying mind quickly jumps to a worst, and highly unlikely, case scenario: If you make a mistake, you’ll get fired. Rationally, you know this is improbable, but how do you prove it to yourself?
It’s simple. First, you break down the chain of events that would lead to your firing. Then you assign a probability to each event; a rough estimate will do.
So what are the odds of you being fired?
Even though each individual probability is just a rough estimate, the total probability, which is the product of all these individual probabilities, is a good ballpark estimate:
Probability of being fired because of a mistake = 0.25 x 0.1 x 0.7 x 0.1 x 0.05 = .0000875, or .00875% (less than one chance in ten thousand).
Now, doesn’t that put things in perspective? This kind of rational approach can help you get a handle on your worries. If the chances of you being fired because of a mistake are less than one in ten thousand, is there really much reason to worry about it?
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