Questions that kill worry
Here's a set of questions to ask yourself whenever you feel negative about an incident or issue.
1. Did you really fail? In almost 90% of the cases, failure is a myth. When you ask for something which you never had initially and then if you do not get it, it cannot be termed failure. If you applied for MBA, but did not get into the desired college, you did not fail.
2. Could it have been worse? Almost 60% of the world population toils hard to make ends meet. If you are not one of them, then be grateful. If your failures did not kill you, then be grateful because things can always be worse.
3. What did you learn? When Edison failed over 9,000 times in inventing the light bulb, he jokingly said that he now knows 9,000 ways of how not to make a light bulb. When you fall down in life, make sure you do not forget to pick the lesson.
4. Is there a solution to this problem? If the problem does not have a solution, then it is not really a problem. Learn to accept what cannot be changed. If there is a solution to your problems then learn as much as you need to learn to take quality action.
5. Who to ask for help? I always ask myself who are the three people who can solve my problem and how can I reach out to them.
6. Did you give your best? You can never give more than your best at any given moment. If you have done your best, then let God take care of the rest. I think most of the times we feel bad only because we did not give our best. It is not the failure that disappoints us. What disappoints us is the guilt of doing less than what we could have done.
(Siddhartha Sharma is the bestselling author of Love Your Mondays and Retire Young, 60 Keys to Success with NLP and many other books)