David J.

Pollay

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November 3, 2008

Don’t Invent Future Problems

I cried the night before my first day of kindergarten: I was worried. Would I make new friends? Would my teachers be nice? Would I like school?

My mom has often told me that I loved kindergarten.

When it was time for the first grade, I cried again. I had similar worries. Would I be with my friends? Would I like my new teacher? Would school be harder?

I recently saw my first grade report card. Mrs. Philosophous said that I was a happy child and I enjoyed class.

Fortunately, I did not cry again before the start of another school year. However, over the years I have worried about the future and what changes and challenges I might face.

The problem I endured for many years was that I invented obstacles in my future – people and things that could make life difficult for me. Something in my life – a mood, an event or an interaction with someone – would trip a switch in me and my thinking would turn negative and unproductive. And although most of the projected encounters I feared never came to pass, the anxiety I experienced along the way was upsetting and unnecessary.

Psychologists Karen Reivich and Andrew Shatte wrote in their book, The Resilience Factor, about the perils of catastrophic thinking – when we play out the worst possible scenarios: “For many people, their anxiety takes over and they catastrophize – they dwell on a current adversity and within a few minutes have imagined a chain of disastrous events stretching into the future.”

Now, we must all spend time thinking about the future. We have to commit to the success we seek, and be prepared when we run into challenges. This requires that we envision what lies ahead for us. But ruminating about scenarios that only end poorly never helps us accomplish anything. It just takes our attention away from enjoying what we have today and planning for what we want tomorrow.

One day my father helped me see the issues I was imagining in my future. Dad told me an old story to make the point. Here’s how he told it.

A guy is driving through the desert when one of his tires blows out. He gets out of his car and pops open the trunk to look for a spare tire and a jack. He sees the spare, but there’s no jack. “Oh s*#&!,” he yells. “I’ve got to walk back to the gas station I passed five miles ago!”

So he starts walking. “I hope he has a jack,” he says to himself. Halfway there he mumbles anxiously, “He better have a jack.” When he’s almost there he growls, “That son of a b#@t% better let me use his jack!”

Minutes later he finally arrives at the gas station. He’s hot. He’s frustrated. He’s fuming. He sees the station owner in the garage and he walks up to him and says, “Hey buddy! You can forget it! Keep your g#@ d@% jack!”

He turns around and marches five miles back to his car . . . with no jack.

And then this is when Dad looked at me, smiled and warned: “Don’t build a Jack Story.”

We gain nothing by conjuring up and replaying our worst visions of how people might be unkind, unhelpful and unfriendly to us. We only create problems where they do not exist.

Events in our lives trigger negative, unhelpful thoughts. It happens to all of us. This is the human condition. It’s natural. The key is not to fixate on these thoughts when they appear. There is no need to fight or block them. We do not need to invest unwanted thoughts with any additional energy. We just need to apply The Law of the Garbage Truck (see my column on October 29, 2007, or go to www.bewareofgarbagetrucks.com) and “smile, wave, wish them well and move on.”

Follow The Law and free yourself to focus on what really matters.

David J. Pollay’s book, Beware of Garbage Trucks!™, is due out this Fall. Mr. Pollay is the creator of The Law of the Garbage Truck™ (www.bewareofgarbagetrucks.com). He is a syndicated columnist with the North Star Writers Group, creator and host of The Happiness Answer™ DVD, and an internationally sought after speaker. Mr. Pollay is the founder and president of the personal coaching and seminar organization, The Momentum Project (www.themomentumproject.com).

© 2008 David J. Pollay. Distributed by North Star Writers Group. May not be republished without permission.

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