False Alarm

Welcome back everyone! A couple of weeks ago we talked about the power of emergencies to bring out the best in people, and how we might be able to experience some of these good qualities in more relaxed times. Today, I want to continue on the subject of emergencies, but from a somewhat different angle.

My parents took completely different angles on emergencies. My dad was a real go-with-the-flow kind of guy—almost nothing was an emergency, as far as he was concerned. My mom was the opposite. Not only did she thrive during a crisis, but it seemed like she almost needed the adrenaline, or the way it brought us all together, or maybe the way she was able to take charge. I don’t know. But we used to joke that if there was no emergency to be found, Mom would create one.

One way or another, I think nearly all of us do this. Regular readers will already be too familiar with the research on this subject: how most of us go into fight-or-flight five to ten times a day, over things that are not remotely life-threatening. The clinical stress this causes in our bodies, and how living this way becomes a habit that eventually leads us to break at our weakest link. In fact, the largest longitudinal study ever done on the human condition, the Harvard Grant study, found that the main correlation between people who lived to be a hundred years old and healthy was simply that they didn’t worry.

Now, my dad had plenty of flaws, and I think he needed Mom to give him a push from time to time, but I think he had the right idea about his approach to a crisis, at least in terms of not letting himself get easily worked-up.

So the obvious question, then: how do you consciously set about worrying less? I think the answer follows from asking when we should actually treat a situation as an emergency: namely, when there is an imminent threat of death, to yourself or someone close to you. Thankfully, this doesn’t happen to you often (at least, I sincerely hope not!). Certainly not the several times per day that most of us enter into fight-or-flight. Most of the time we do this, it’s because we’ve convinced ourselves that something is more threatening to us than it is. My good friend David Mills made an excellent point about a strange gap in our thinking that tends to occur here. When we imagine something bad that might happen to us as a result of our circumstances, we tend to cut off at the negative result. “If I don’t get this project in on time, I could lose my job.” Cut to black. The End. Game Over. So ask yourself a silly question here: say that happens, and you lose your job… would you drop dead on the spot? Hey, I said it was a silly question.

No, of course you wouldn’t. Perhaps things would be tight for awhile, but given time and effort, there’s no reason they should get better again.

That may sound naïve to some of you, but as I said a couple of weeks ago, it’s a mistake to assume that negative beliefs are inherently more reasoned or realistic than positive ones. Preparing for setbacks is one thing, but there is no more wisdom in naively assuming the worst than there is in naively assuming the best. A tremendously encouraging thought, and well worth dwelling on.

Have a blessed, wonderful day!

Dr. Alex Loyd