Excessive Worry Quotes

Elsewhere the paper notes that vegetarians and vegans (including athletes) 'meet and exceed requirements' for protein. And, to render the whole we-should-worry-about-getting-enough-protein-and-therefore-eat-meat idea even more useless, other data suggests that excess animal protein intake is linked with osteoporosis, kidney disease, calcium stones in the urinary tract, and some cancers. Despite some persistent confusion, it is clear that vegetarians and vegans tend to have more optimal protein consumption than omnivores.

People who are diagnosed as having "generalized anxiety disorder" are afflicted by three major problems that many of us experience to a lesser extent from time to time. First and foremost, says Rapgay, the natural human inclination to focus on threats and bad news is strongly amplified in them, so that even significant positive events get suppressed. An inflexible mentality and tendency toward excessive verbalizing make therapeutic intervention a further challenge.

A habit of finding pleasure in thought rather than action is a safeguard against unwisdom and excessive love of power, a means of preserving serenity in misfortune and peace of mind among worries. A life confined to what is personal is likely, sooner or later, to become unbearably painful; it is only by windows into a larger and less fretful cosmos that the more tragic parts of life become endurable.

Regulate your mind. Do not worry excessively about the future. If you have done everything that has to be done, the future will take care of itself.

there came a point when if a conspiracy was that powerful and subtle it became pointless to worry about it.

I don’t really worry about the young, whose excesses are confined to lecture halls and quadrangles, so much as I fear the old, whose tyrannies are legislative.

From time to time I meet people who live among riches I cannot even imagine. I still have to make an effort to realize that others can feel envious of such wealth. A long time ago, I once lived a whole week luxuriating in all the goods of this world: we slept without a roof, on a beach, I lived on fruit, and spent half my days alone in the water. I learned something then that has always made me react to the signs of comfort or of a well-appointed house with irony, impatience, and sometimes anger. Although I live without worrying about tomorrow now, and therefore count myself among the privileged, I don't know how to own things. What I do have, which always comes to me without my asking for it, I can't seem to keep. Less from extravagance, I think, than from another kind of parsimony: I cling like a miser to the freedom that disappears as soon as there is an excess of things.

How can you achieve a state of balance in which you combine the decision to have with the abandonment of direct action? The answer is obvious. You have to maintain balanced intention, which means to want without desiring, to take care without worrying, to strive without being distracted and to act without demanding. Balance is destroyed by the excess potential of projected importance. As you already know, the more important the goal the harder it becomes to reach.

I was terrified of death by the time I was three or four, actively if not lucidly. I had frequent nightmares about snakes and scary neighbors. By the age of four or five, I was terrified by my thoughts. By the time I was five, the migraines began. I was so sensitive about myself and the world that I cried or shriveled up at the slightest hurt. People always told me, "You've got to get a thicker skin," like now they might say, jovially, "Let go and let God." Believe me, if I could, I would, and in the meantime I feel like stabbing you in the forehead. Teachers wrote on my report cards that I was too sensitive, excessively worried, as if this were an easily correctable condition, as if I were wearing too much of the violet toilet water little girls wore then.

Just as worry often brings about precisely the thing that was feared, excessive attention to a desire (or “hyper-intention”) can keep that desire from being fulfilled.

It is an unchristian religion, in the first place!' the prince resumed in great agitation and with excessive sharpness. 'That's in the first place, and secondly, Roman Catholicism is even worse than atheism - that's my opinion. Yes, that's my opinion! Atheism merely preaches a negation, but Catholicism goes further: it preaches a distorted Christ, a Christ calumniated and defamed by it, the opposite of Christ! It preaches Antichrist - I swear it does, I assure you it does! This is my personal opinion, an opinion I've held for a long time, and it has worried me a lot myself. ... Roman Catholicism believes that the Church cannot exist on earth without universal temporal power, and cries: Non possumus! In my opinion, Roman Catholicism isn't even a religion, but most decidedly a continuation of the Holy Roman Empire, and everything in it is subordinated to that idea, beginning with faith. The Pope seized the earth, an earthly throne and took up the sword; and since then everything has gone on in the same way, except that they've added lies, fraud, deceit, fanaticism, superstition wickedness. They have trifled with the most sacred, truthful, innocent, ardent feelings of the people, have bartered it all for money, for base temporal power. And isn't this the teaching of Antichrist? Isn't it clear that atheism had to come from them? And it did come from them, from Roman Catholicism itself! Atheism originated first of all with them: how could they believe in themselves? It gained ground because of abhorrence of them; it is the child of their lies and their spiritual impotence! Atheism! In our country it is only the upper classes who do not believe, as Mr Radomsky so splendidly put it the other day, for they have lost their roots. But in Europe vast numbers of the common people are beginning to lose their faith - at first from darkness and lies, and now from fanaticism, hatred of the Church and Christianity!

They worried to an excessive degree about getting gender correct, as if elves gave a shit. Humans could keep their concerns about everyone’s genitalia to themselves.

Excessive worrying about taxes usually leads to unsound investments in the hope of achieving a tax shelter.

Fear is the number one response to excessive worries and overthinking brains. In order to feel completely in control of our thoughts and actions, it is best to overcome our fears.

Learning to keep our brain active can help us avoid excessive worrying.

They worried that widespread mail-in voting would lead to fraud. And they had good reason to worry. A 2005 bipartisan commission co-chaired by none other than Jimmy Carter found that absentee balloting was the largest source of potential fraud in American elections. Why should 2020 be any different? They worried that universal mail-in balloting would make ballots harder to track, as some states bombarded addresses with ballots for previous residents who had moved out but hadn’t been struck from the voter rolls. What would happen to all the excess ballots?

It’s because of relationship honoring, for example, that social anxiety disorder in Japan, known as taijin kyofusho, takes the form not of excessive worry about embarrassing oneself, as it does in the United States, but of embarrassing others.

Worry and guilt and regret may serve a function—as a turbo-charger of conscience—but in excess they are useless and incapacitating.

So I don’t really worry about the young, whose excesses are confined to lecture halls and quadrangles, so much as I fear the old, whose tyrannies are legislative.

You’re not a coward,” Jenny assured her, keeping her voice low, “you simply worry to great excess – and well in advance – about the possible consequences of anything you do.

So everyone is in a hurry These days that we worry Right when we need to breath. Excess of stress we catch, That we forget to stretch Causing pain for miles away, Hence ruining a running day!!

A lot of campaigning for food purity is a translated worry about abundance. You still eat your fill, but you agonize over the food's contents. We are a pack of animals that allows some to have excess food while others starve. Those who have so much get finicky about what is good to eat; they become obsessed by it, re-creating scarcity for themselves so as to not feel guilty, confused, or dangerously envied.

My point is that focusing on the past, present or future can have both positive and negative effects. Excessive worry about the future can be bad, while hopes and dreams can be good. Regret because of the past can be destructive, but learning lessons from previous events and having good memories can be great. Focusing intently on the present is usually stress-relieving and liberating, but sometimes the present moment is too sad or horrible to dwell on.

Worrying about what does not yet exist, is that a gesture of love or the worst kind of argument putting pressure on the living, an excess of scrupulous conscience? For fear of soiling our hands, we prefer to cut them off right now. [...] How far can responsibility go without turning into an abstraction? To extend it to all coming generations is to empty it of its meaning, to put a titanic weight on our shoulders. By being accountable for everything, we are accountable for nothing. We can receive no pardon for our errors, since those who would be in a position to grant it have not yet been born! A vicious circle: isn't sacrificing people today for the benefit of those to come also a way of penalizing the latter [...]?

The reason why Hitler gambled everything on a massive attack in 1940 was not because he was worried about making excessive demands on the German population, but simply because he thought that this was the only way that Germany could win the war.

If you look a bit deeper, you can detect the emotional immaturity in these upstanding, responsible people. It shows up in the way they make assumptions about other people, expecting everyone to want and value the same things they do. Their excessive self-focus manifests as a conviction that they know what’s “good” for others. They don’t experience self-doubt at a conscious level and prefer to pretend that everything is settled and they already have the answers. Rather than accepting their children’s unique interests and life paths, they selectively praise and push what they want to see. Their frequent interference in their children’s lives is legendary. In addition, their worry about getting enough done runs them like a motor. Goals take precedence over the feelings of others, including their children.

If tissue samples--including blood cells--became patients' property, researchers taking them without consent and property rights up front would risk being charged with theft. The press ran story after story quoting lawyers and scientists saying that a victory for Moore would "create chaos for researcher" and [sound] the death knell to the university physician-scientist." They called it "a threat to the sharing of tissue for research purposes," and worried that patients would block the progress of science by holding out for excessive profits, even with cells that aren't worth, millions like Moore's.

Now, many Americans fear that China might grow too strong. I must confess that I’m not too worried about China getting too strong. I’m more worried that America might be getting too weak. It’s not bad for the United States if other nations have a strong economy. One fewer hungry-mouthed country wanting us to take care of it and its people is great news. If they have money, maybe they will buy the things we innovate and make. Instead, we need to fear that we will quit innovating and making things because excess taxation, regulation, and litigation will drive the jobs and the money away from American working men and women.

So perhaps we are all hypocrites. We damn others for what we fear as faults in ourselves. We rehearse the shortcomings of ‘people’ as a means of warding off the evil spirits that threaten us. It is certainly observable that those who most notice another’s excessive drinking, for instance, are those most worried about their own habit.

Psychotic conditions were considered to involve thought disturbances, including delusions and/or hallucinations, a break with reality, and, in general, an inability to function in normal social situations. Neuroses involved several conditions in which one suffered from distress (sometimes debilitating distress) but without significant distortions of thought, or loss of touch with reality. The neurotic conditions most related to fear and anxiety included anxiety neurosis (excessive worry, dread), phobic neurosis (irrational fears), obsessive neurosis (repetitive thoughts), and war neurosis (mental problems in soldiers that stemmed from stress, exhaustion, and specific battlefield experiences).

I have always been an optimist, because pessimists seldom have any fun and usually fret their way into one of the horrible fates they spend their lives worrying about. Of course, being an optimist doesn’t guarantee you an unrelievedly happy life. You can still lose your job on the same day that your house burns down and your spouse informs you that he or she has shot the sheriff. But the optimist, unlike the pessimist, believes that life has meaning, that there is something to learn from every adversity, and even that the absurdity of such an excess of misfortune will likely seem at least somewhat amusing after enough time has passed. That is why, years after they have lost everything, optimists are frequently richer and happier than ever, while pessimists often had nothing to lose in the first place.

A less drastic obstacle to experiencing flow is excessive self-consciousness. A person who is constantly worried about how others will perceive her, who is afraid of creating the wrong impression, or of doing something inappropriate, is also condemned to permanent exclusion from enjoyment. So are people who are excessively self-centered. A self-centered individual is usually not self-conscious, but instead evaluates every bit of information only in terms of how it relates to her desires. For such a person everything is valueless in itself. A flower is not worth a second look unless it can be used; a man or a woman who cannot advance one’s interests does not deserve further attention. Consciousness is structured entirely in terms of its own ends, and nothing is allowed to exist in it that does not conform to those ends.

Most of the time we have solely our thoughts as meager substitutes for our instinctual drives. We not only put a lot of energy into our thoughts, but we also frequently confuse them with reality; we come to believe erroneously, as did Descartes, that we are our thoughts. Thoughts, unfortunately, are poor surrogates for experienced aliveness, and when disconnected from feelings, they result in corrosive rumination, fantasy, delusion and excessive worry. Such perseveration is not really surprising, as the paranoid tendency toward concern for potential threat in the face of ambiguity might have had a significant adaptive advantage in earlier times. Now, however, it is the currency of our judgmental, negativistic “superegos.” On the other hand, when we are informed by clear body sensations and feelings, worry is diminished, while creativity and a sense of purpose are enhanced.

If people with messy lives are the point of certain narratives, if unlikable women are the point of certain narratives, novels like Battleborn, Treasure Island!!!, Dare Me, Magnificence, and many others exhibit a delightful excess of purpose, with stories filled with women who are deemed unlikable because they make so-called bad choices, describe the world exactly as they see it, and are, ultimately, honest and breathtakingly alive. These novels depict women who are clearly not participating in their narratives to make friends and whose characters are the better for it. Freed from the constraints of likability, they are able to exist on and beyond the page as fully realized, interesting, and realistic characters. Perhaps the saying “the truth hurts” is what lies at the heart of worrying over likability or the lack thereof—how much of the truth we’re willing to subject ourselves to, how much we are willing to hurt, when we immerse ourselves in the safety of a fictional world

The ADA takes a conservative stand, leaving out many well-documented health benefits attributable to reducing the consumption of animal products. Here are the three key sentences from the summary of their summary of the relevant scientific literature. One: Well-planned vegetarian diets are appropriate for all individuals during all stages of the life cycle, including pregnancy, lactation, infancy, childhood, and adolescence, and for athletes. TWO: Vegetarian diets tend to be lower in saturated fat and cholesterol, and have higher levels of dietary fiber, magnesium and potassium, vitamins C and E, folate, carotenoids, flavonoids, and other phytochemicals. Elsewhere the paper notes that vegetarians and vegans (including athletes) “meet and exceed requirements” for protein. And, to render the whole we-should-worry-about-getting-enough-protein-and-therefore-eat-meat idea even more useless, other data suggests that excess animal protein intake is linked with osteoporosis, kidney disease, calcium stones in the urinary tract, and some cancers.

Elsewhere the paper notes that vegetarians and vegans (including athletes) “meet and exceed requirements” for protein. And, to render the whole we-should-worry-about-getting-enough-protein-and-therefore-eat-meat idea even more useless, other data suggests that excess animal protein intake is linked with osteoporosis, kidney disease, calcium stones in the urinary tract, and some cancers. Despite some persistent confusion, it is clear that vegetarians and vegans tend to have more optimal protein consumption than omnivores.

The rewards from detachment are great: serenity; a deep sense of peace; the ability to give and receive love in self-enhancing, energizing ways; and the freedom to find real solutions to our problems. We find the freedom to live our own lives without excessive feelings of guilt about, or responsibility toward others.6 Sometimes detachment even motivates and frees people around us to begin to solve their problems. We stop worrying about them, and they pick up the slack and finally start worrying about themselves. What a grand plan! We each mind our own business.

Mercedes took Richard to the hospital. He was examined perfunctorily and Mercedes was told he was an epileptic and was experiencing grand mal seizures. There was nothing to worry about—he’d “grow out of it.” He was not given any medication, nor was Mercedes asked to bring him back. At home, Ruth began noticing that her baby brother was having long staring spells in which he would just sit still and look at something—a wall, a table, the floor—for five, ten, fifteen minutes without speaking or moving. He was having petite mal seizures, but no one realized it then, and Richard wasn’t diagnosed or treated. Richard had one to two dozen of these petite mal attacks every month until he entered his early teens, when they, as well as the less frequent grand mal seizures, lessened and eventually stopped altogether. According to Dr. Ronald Geshwind, a certain number of people who suffer from temporal lobe epilepsy have altered sexuality and hyper-religious feelings, are hypergraphic (have a compulsion to write), and are excessively aggressive. Van Gogh, Julius Caesar, Napoleon, Dostoevsky, and Lewis Carroll all suffered from temporal lobe epilepsy. Years later, after all the trouble, Richard would be diagnosed as having temporal lobe epilepsy.

Some of the tensions of teenage life can be eased if the family provides a sense of acceptance, control, and self-confidence to the adolescent. A relationship that has these dimensions is one in which people trust one another, and feel totally accepted. One does not have to worry constantly about being liked, being popular, or living up to others’ expectations. As the popular sayings go, “Love means never having to say ‘I’m sorry,’” “Home is where you’re always welcome.” Being assured of one’s worth in the eyes of one’s kin gives a person the strength to take chances; excessive conformity is usually caused by fear of disapproval.

Replace Behaviors That Make Your Rumination and Worry Worse There’s not much point in using strategies to decrease rumination and worry if you’re concurrently adding fuel to those fires. Self-criticism is one kind of fuel. Other types of fuel include things like excessive reassurance seeking, spending hours looking up health information online, or compulsively looking at your ex’s Facebook page. Look out for behaviors that seem to provide a temporary reprieve from anxiety but, in fact, make you feel like you need to go back and repeat them. Look into seeing a cognitive behavioral therapist if you can’t stop those behaviors on your own.

As the third evening approached, Gabriel looked up blearily as two people entered the room. His parents. The sight of them infused him with relief. At the same time, their presence unlatched all the wretched emotion he'd kept battened down until this moment. Disciplining his breathing, he stood awkwardly, his limbs stiff from spending hours on the hard chair. His father came to him first, pulling him close for a crushing hug and ruffling his hair before going to the bedside. His mother was next, embracing him with her familiar tenderness and strength. She was the one he'd always gone to first whenever he'd done something wrong, knowing she would never condemn or criticize, even when he deserved it. She was a source of endless kindness, the one to whom he could entrust his worst thoughts and fears. "I promised nothing would ever harm her," Gabriel said against her hair, his voice cracking. Evie's gentle hands patted his back. "I took my eyes off her when I shouldn't have," he went on. "Mrs. Black approached her after the play- I pulled the bitch aside, and I was too distracted to notice-" He stopped talking and cleared his throat harshly, trying not to choke on emotion. Evie waited until he calmed himself before saying quietly, "You remember when I told you about the time your f-father was badly injured because of me?" "That wasn't because of you," Sebastian said irritably from the bedside. "Evie, have you harbored that absurd idea for all these years?" "It's the most terrible feeling in the world," Evie murmured to Gabriel. "But it's not your fault, and trying not to make it so won't help either of you. Dearest boy, are you listening to me?" Keeping his face pressed against her hair, Gabriel shook his head. "Pandora won't blame you for what happened," Evie told him, "any more than your father blamed me." "Neither of you are to blame for anything," his father said, "except for annoying me with this nonsense. Obviously the only person to blame for this poor girl's injury is the woman who attempted to skewer her like a pinioned duck." He straightened the covers over Pandora, bent to kiss her forehead gently, and sat in the bedside chair. "My son... guilt, in proper measure, can be a useful emotion. However, when indulged to excess it becomes self-defeating, and even worse, tedious." Stretching out his long legs, he crossed them negligently. "There's no reason to tear yourself to pieces worrying about Pandora. She's going to make a full recovery." "You're a doctor now?" Gabriel asked sardonically, although some of the weight of grief and worry lifted at his father's confident pronouncement. "I daresay I've seen enough illness and injuries in my time, stabbings included, to predict the outcome accurately. Besides, I know the spirit of this girl. She'll recover." "I agree," Evie said firmly. Letting out a shuddering sigh, Gabriel tightened his arms around her. After a long moment, he heard his mother say ruefully, "Sometimes I miss the days when I could solve any of my children's problems with a nap and a biscuit." "A nap and a biscuit wouldn't hurt this one at the moment," Sebastian commented dryly. "Gabriel, go find a proper bed and rest for a few hours. We'll watch over your little fox cub.

The migrated self became, inevitably, heterogeneous instead of homogeneous, belonging to more than one place, multiple rather than singular, responding to more than one way of being, more than averagely mixed up. Was it possible to be—to become good at being—not rootless, but multiply rooted? Not to suffer from a loss of roots but to benefit from an excess of them? The different roots would have to be of equal or nearequal strength, and he worried that his Indian connection had weakened. He needed to make an act of reclamation of the Indian identity he had lost, or felt he was in danger of losing. The self was both its origins and its journey.

have always been an optimist, because pessimists seldom have any fun and usually fret their way into one of the horrible fates they spend their lives worrying about. Of course, being an optimist doesn’t guarantee you an unrelievedly happy life. You can still lose your job on the same day that your house burns down and your spouse informs you that he or she has shot the sheriff. But the optimist, unlike the pessimist, believes that life has meaning, that there is something to learn from every adversity, and even that the absurdity of such an excess of misfortune will likely seem at least somewhat amusing after enough time has passed. That is why, years after they have lost everything, optimists are frequently richer and happier than ever, while pessimists often had nothing to lose in the first place.

UNDERLYING NEED “COPING” MECHANISM To have support in figuring out your talents Getting stoned to avoid thinking about it To be loved, held, appreciated Negativity, pessimism to “control” expectations To have feelings received Overeating as an attempt at self-soothing To be recognized as mattering Overwork to prove worth To forgive yourself Becoming perfectionistic to try and avoid mistakes To avoid punishment or disapproval Focusing solely on the needs of others so you don’t take care of yourself by exercising Rest and rejuvenation Drinking alcohol to excess, “rewarding” yourself with fatty or sweet foods Solitude and contemplation Picking fights so you end up alone Stability in chaos Worrying as a way to feel in control A sense of purpose Overspending in an attempt to find meaning in material things

I have always been an optimist, because pessimists seldom have any fun and usually fret their way into one of the horrible fates they spend their lives worrying about. Of course, being an optimist doesn’t guarantee you an unrelievedly happy life. You can still lose your job on the same day that your house burns down and your spouse informs you that he or she has shot the sheriff. But the optimist, unlike the pessimist, believes that life has meaning, that there is something to learn from every adversity, and even that the absurdity of such an excess of misfortune will likely seem at least somewhat amusing after enough time has passed. That is why, years after they have lost everything, optimists are frequently richer and happier than ever, while pessimists often had nothing to lose in the first place. As

Worry To worry is to fret or torment yourself with disturbing thoughts. A wise person once said, “Most of the problems I’ve had in life never happened.” Is the emotion of anxiety consuming you? Is it attacking someone in your family? Do you dwell on “what will happen if” more than you abide in God’s Word and promises of divine provision? “Worry is a thin stream of fear trickling through the mind. If encouraged, it cuts a channel into which all other thoughts are drained.”3 Ultimately, worry is faith in fear and not in God! We all experience various trials in this life. It’s normal to be concerned about the crisis you or a member of your family may be facing. But excessively worrying about a situation will not change it; only by taking your concerns to the Lord in prayer and leaving them at the altar can your outcome be different.

A True Account Of Talking To The Sun On Fire Island" The Sun woke me this morning loud and clear, saying "Hey! I've been trying to wake you up for fifteen minutes. Don't be so rude, you are only the second poet I've ever chosen to speak to personally so why aren't you more attentive? If I could burn you through the window I would to wake you up. I can't hang around here all day." "Sorry, Sun, I stayed up late last night talking to Hal." "When I woke up Mayakovsky he was a lot more prompt" the Sun said petulantly. "Most people are up already waiting to see if I'm going to put in an appearance." I tried to apologize "I missed you yesterday." "That's better" he said. "I didn't know you'd come out." "You may be wondering why I've come so close?" "Yes" I said beginning to feel hot wondering if maybe he wasn't burning me anyway. "Frankly I wanted to tell you I like your poetry. I see a lot on my rounds and you're okay. You may not be the greatest thing on earth, but you're different. Now, I've heard some say you're crazy, they being excessively calm themselves to my mind, and other crazy poets think that you're a boring reactionary. Not me. Just keep on like I do and pay no attention. You'll find that people always will complain about the atmosphere, either too hot or too cold too bright or too dark, days too short or too long. If you don't appear at all one day they think you're lazy or dead. Just keep right on, I like it. And don't worry about your lineage poetic or natural. The Sun shines on the jungle, you know, on the tundra the sea, the ghetto. Wherever you were I knew it and saw you moving. I was waiting for you to get to work. And now that you are making your own days, so to speak, even if no one reads you but me you won't be depressed. Not everyone can look up, even at me. It hurts their eyes." "Oh Sun, I'm so grateful to you!" "Thanks and remember I'm watching. It's easier for me to speak to you out here. I don't have to slide down between buildings to get your ear. I know you love Manhattan, but you ought to look up more often. And always embrace things, people earth sky stars, as I do, freely and with the appropriate sense of space. That is your inclination, known in the heavens and you should follow it to hell, if necessary, which I doubt. Maybe we'll speak again in Africa, of which I too am specially fond. Go back to sleep now Frank, and I may leave a tiny poem in that brain of yours as my farewell." "Sun, don't go!" I was awake at last. "No, go I must, they're calling me." "Who are they?" Rising he said "Some day you'll know. They're calling to you too." Darkly he rose, and then I slept.

Open-plan offices have been found to reduce productivity and impair memory. They’re associated with high staff turnover. They make people sick, hostile, unmotivated, and insecure. Open-plan workers are more likely to suffer from high blood pressure and elevated stress levels and to get the flu; they argue more with their colleagues; they worry about coworkers eavesdropping on their phone calls and spying on their computer screens. They have fewer personal and confidential conversations with colleagues. They’re often subject to loud and uncontrollable noise, which raises heart rates; releases cortisol, the body’s fight-or-flight “stress” hormone; and makes people socially distant, quick to anger, aggressive, and slow to help others. Indeed, excessive stimulation seems to impede learning: a recent study found that people learn better after a quiet stroll through the woods than after a noisy walk down a city street.

About sixty thousand different thoughts are said to go through a person’s mind over the course of a day. Ninety-five percent of that is made up of the same things we’d been thinking about the day before, and 80 percent of those thoughts are believed to be negative. In my days as a maximalist, I lived in fear of my future, constantly worrying about my career and how others saw me. Forget about that 80 percent I mentioned a moment earlier—practically all my thoughts were negative. So, how do you make a slow computer like that work properly? Since our fifty-thousand-year-old hardware isn’t going to change, we need to get rid of the extra load that isn’t needed. Rather than trying to add more and more, running out of disk space and exhausting ourselves in the process, I think it’s time we started thinking about subtracting and refining to enhance the truly important things that might be buried deep down underneath all that excess.

George Romney’s private-sector experience typified the business world of his time. His executive career took place within a single company, American Motors Corporation, where his success rested on the dogged (and prescient) pursuit of more fuel-efficient cars.41 Rooted in a particular locale, the industrial Midwest, AMC was built on a philosophy of civic engagement. Romney dismissed the “rugged individualism” touted by conservatives as “nothing but a political banner to cover up greed.”42 Nor was this dismissal just cheap talk: He once returned a substantial bonus that he regarded as excessive.43 Prosperity was not an individual product, in Romney’s view; it was generated through bargaining and compromises among stakeholders (managers, workers, public officials, and the local community) as well as through individual initiative. When George Romney turned to politics, he carried this understanding with him. Romney exemplified the moderate perspective characteristic of many high-profile Republicans of his day. He stressed the importance of private initiative and decentralized governance, and worried about the power of unions. Yet he also believed that government had a vital role to play in securing prosperity for all. He once famously called UAW head Walter Reuther “the most dangerous man in Detroit,” but then, characteristically, developed a good working relationship with him.44 Elected governor in 1962 after working to update Michigan’s constitution, he broke with conservatives in his own party and worked across party lines to raise the minimum wage, enact an income tax, double state education expenditures during his first five years in office, and introduce more generous programs for the poor and unemployed.45 He signed into law a bill giving teachers collective bargaining rights.46 At a time when conservatives were turning to the antigovernment individualism of Barry Goldwater, Romney called on the GOP to make the insurance of equal opportunity a top priority. As

Reducing your anxiety to zero isn’t possible or useful. Anxiety itself isn’t the problem. The problem occurs when anxiety gets to the point that it’s paralyzing, and you become stuck. I think of these bottlenecks as anxiety traps. We’re going to work on managing your responses to five anxiety traps: excessively hesitating before taking action, ruminating and worrying, paralyzing perfectionism, fear of feedback and criticism, and avoidance (including procrastination). The reason I’ve chosen to focus on these particular five traps is that I’ve found them to be the common threads that affect virtually all of the anxious clients I’ve worked with. The traps are self-perpetuating because they generate additional stress. For example, someone hesitates so much that she misses important opportunities, and this leads to being financially worse off. Or someone avoids feedback and then isn’t alerted to real problems that could have been rectified earlier. When people are caught in any of the five anxiety traps, they often fail to see the big picture and don’t problem-solve in effective ways. Learning how to navigate these bottlenecks will allow you to manage your anxious tendencies so that you can pursue your goals in life, whatever those goals may be.

Don’t worry,” he said flippantly, taking her arm and starting to walk back toward the house. “I’m not going to make the ritualistic proposal that followed our last encounters. Marriage is out of the question. Among other things, I’m fresh out of large rubies and expensive furs this season.” Despite his joking tone, Elizabeth felt ill at how ugly those words sounded now, even though her reasons for saying them at the time had nothing to do with a desire for jewels or furs. You had to give him credit, she decided miserably, because he obviously took no offense at it. Evidently, in sophisticated flirtations, the rule was that no one took anything seriously. “Who’s the leading contender these days?” he asked in that same light tone as the cottage came into view. “There must be more than Belhaven and Marchman.” Elizabeth struggled valiantly to make the same transition from heated passion to flippancy that he seemed to find so easy. She wasn’t quite so successful, however, and her light tone was threaded with confusion. “In my uncle’s eyes, the leading contender is whoever has the most important title, followed by the most money.” “Of course,” he said dryly. “In which case it sounds as if Marchman may be the lucky man.” His utter lack of caring made Elizabeth’s heart squeeze in an awful, inexplicable way. Her chin lifted in self-defense. “Actually, I’m not in the market for a husband,” she informed him, trying to sound as indifferent and as amused as he. “I may have to marry someone if I can’t continue to outmaneuver my uncle, but I’ve come to the conclusion that I’d like to marry a much older man than I.” “Preferably a blind one,” he said sardonically, “who’ll not notice a little affair now and then?” “I meant,” she informed him with a dark glance, “that I want my freedom. Independence. And that is something a young husband isn’t likely to give me, while an elderly one might.” “Independence is all an old man will be able to give you,” Ian said blntly. “That’s quite enough,” she said. “I’m excessively tired of being forever pushed about by the men in my life. I’d like to care for Havenhurst and do as I wish to do.” “Marry an old man,” Ian interjected smoothly, “and you may be the last of the Camerons.” She looked at him blankly. “He won’t be able to give you children.” “Oh, that,” Elizabeth said, feeling a little defeated and nonplussed. “I haven’t been able to work that out yet.” “Let me know when you do,” Ian replied with biting sarcasm. “There’s a fortune to be made from a discovery like that one.

Although anxiety can sometimes seem like a flaw, it’s actually an evolutionary advantage, a hypervigilance system that causes us to pause and scan the environment. Feeling anxious triggers us to start looking out for potential threats. If you detect a potential danger, it’s not supposed to be easy for you to stop thinking about that threat. While that’s great when you’re a caveman worried about protecting your family, it’s not as great when you’re an employee convinced you’re getting fired. For many of us who suffer from anxiety, our anxiety alarms fire too often when there isn’t a good reason to be excessively cautious. Why does this happen? We may have more sensitive anxiety systems. Or we may have been doing things to decrease our anxiety in the short term, such as avoiding things that make us feel anxious, that have actually increased it in the long term. Having some false anxiety alarms—where you see threats that don’t exist or worry about things that don’t eventuate—isn’t a defect in your system. Think of it in caveman terms: In a life-and-death sense, failing to notice a real threat (termed a false negative) is more of a problem than registering a potential danger that doesn’t happen (termed a false positive). Therefore, having some false anxiety alarms is a built-in part of the system, to err on the side of caution.

Danae and the God of Gold. — Whence arises this excessive impatience in our day which turns men into criminals even in circumstances which would be more likely to bring about the contrary tendency? What induces one man to use false weights, another to set his house on fire after having insured it for more than its value, a third to take part in counterfeiting, while three-fourths of our upper classes indulge in legalised fraud, and suffer from the pangs of conscience that follow speculation and dealings on the Stock Exchange: what gives rise to all this? It is not real want, — for their existence is by no means precarious; perhaps they have even enough to eat and drink without worrying, — but they are urged on day and night by a terrible impatience at seeing their wealth pile up so slowly, and by an equally terrible longing and love for these heaps of gold. In this impatience and love, however, we see re-appear once more that fanaticism of the desire for power which was stimulated in former times by the belief that we were in the possession of truth, a fanaticism which bore such beautiful names that we could dare to be inhuman with a good conscience (burning Jews, heretics, and good books, and exterminating entire cultures superior to ours, such as those of Peru and Mexico). The means of this desire for power are changed in our day, but the same volcano is still smouldering, impatience and intemperate love call for their victims, and what was once done “for the love of God” is now done for the love of money, i.e. for the love of that which at present affords us the highest feeling of power and a good conscience.

Researchers interviewed nearly 150 thousand people in 26 countries to determine the prevalence of generalized anxiety disorder to find, had excessive and uncontrollable worry adversely affected their life. They found that richer countries had higher rates of anxiety than poor ones. The authors wrote, "The disorder is significantly more prevalent and impairing in high income countries than in low or middle income countries." The number of new cases of depression world-wide increased 50% between 1990 and 2017. The highest increases in new cases were seen in countries with the highest sociodemographic index income, especially North America. Physical pain too is increasing. Over the course of my career, I have seen more patients, including otherwise healthy young people presenting with full-bodied pain despite the absence of any identifiable disease or tissue injury. The numbers and types of unexplained physical pain syndromes have grown. Complex regional pain syndrome, fibromyalgia... [], and so on. When researchers ask the following question to people in 30 countries around the world. "During the past four weeks, how often have you had bodily aches or pains"...[]. They found that Americans reported more pain than any other country. 34% of Americans said they experienced pain often or very often, compared to 19% of people living in China, 18% of people living in Japan, 13% of people living in Switzerland, and 11% of people living in South Africa. The question is, "Why in an unprecedented time of wealth, freedom, technological progress, and medical advancement, do we appear to be unhappier and in more pain than ever?'. The reason we're all so miserable may be because we're working so hard to avoid being miserable.

Pity those who are punished. Alas! Who are we, after all? Who am I who speak to you now? Who are you, listening to me? Where do we come from? And is it quite certain we did nothing before we were born? The earth is not without some resemblance to a gaol. Who knows whether man is not a previous offender against divine justice? Take a close look at life. It is so organized that everywhere there is a sense of punishment. Are you what is called a happy man? Well, you are sad every day. Every day has its great sorrow or petty anxiety. Yesterday you were trembling for the health of someone dear to you, today you fear for your own; tomorrow it will be financial worries, the next day some back-biter’s slander, the day after that a friend’s misfortune. Then the weather, then something broken or lost, then a pleasure that your conscience and your backbone begrudge you. Another time, what is going on in the world. Not to mention heartache. And so on and so forth. One cloud clears, another forms. Hardly one day in a hundred that is entirely joyous, entirely sunny. And you are one of that small number who are happy! As for the rest of mankind, stagnant night is upon them. Reflective minds rarely use those terms, ‘the happy’ and ‘the unhappy’. In this world, the antechamber to another, of course, no one is happy. The real human division is this: the enlightened and the benighted. To reduce the numbers of the benighted, to increase the numbers of the enlightened, that is the object. That is why we cry: Education! Science! To teach someone to read is to light a fire! Every spelled-out syllable sparkles! And he who says ‘light’ does not necessarily say ‘joy’. People suffer in the light. An excess of it burns. The flame is enemy to the wing. To burn without ceasing to fly, that is the marvel of genius. Even if you have knowledge and even if you have love, you will still suffer. Each day begins with tears. The enlightened weep, if only for the benighted.

TARYN GRANT, DEMOCRATIC CANDIDATE for the U.S. Senate, suffered from narcissistic personality disorder, or so she’d been told by a psychologist in her third year at the Wharton School. He’d added, “I wouldn’t worry too much about it, as long as you don’t go into a life of crime. Half the people here are narcissists. The other half are psychopaths. Well, except for Roland Shafer. He’s normal enough.” Taryn didn’t know Roland Shafer, but all these years later, she sometimes thought about him, and wondered what happened to him, being . . . “normal.” The shrink had explained the disorder to her, in sketchy terms, perhaps trying to be kind. When she left his office, she’d gone straight to the library and looked it up, because she knew in her heart that she was far too perfect to have any kind of disorder. •   •   • NARCISSISTIC PERSONALITY DISORDER: Has excessive feelings of self-importance. Reacts to criticism with rage. Takes advantage of other people. Disregards the feelings of others. Preoccupied with fantasies of success, power, beauty, and intelligence. •   •   • EXCESSIVE FEELINGS OF SELF-IMPORTANCE? Did that idiot shrink know she’d inherit the better part of a billion dollars, that she already had enough money to buy an entire industry? She was important. Reacts to criticism with rage? Well, what do you do when you’re mistreated? Shy away from conflict and go snuffle into a Kleenex? Hell no: you get up in their face, straighten them out. Takes advantage of other people? You don’t get anywhere in this world by being a cupcake, cupcake. Disregards the feelings of others? Look: half the people in the world were below average, and “average” isn’t anything to brag about. We should pay attention to the dumbasses in life? How about, “Preoccupied with fantasies of success, power, beauty, and intelligence”? Hey, had he taken a good look at her and her CV? She was in the running for class valedictorian; she looked like Marilyn Monroe, without the black spot on her cheek; and she had, at age twenty-two, thirty million dollars of her own, with twenty or thirty times more than that, yet to come. What fantasies? Welcome to my world, bub. •   •   • THAT HAD BEEN more than a decade ago.

You need to make sure you always have a reserve of willpower available for the on-the-fly decision making and controlling your reactions. If you run your willpower tank too low, you’ll end up making poor choices or exploding at people. The following are some ways of making more willpower available to you: --Reduce the number of tasks you attempt to get done each day to a very small number. Always identify what your most important task is, and make sure you get that single task done. You can group together your trivial tasks, like replying to emails or paying bills online, and count those as just one item. --Refresh your available willpower by doing tasks slowly. My friend Toni Bernhard, author of How to Wake Up: A Buddhist-Inspired Guide to Navigating Joy and Sorrow, recommends doing a task 25% slower than your usual speed. I’m not saying you need to do this all the time, just when you feel scattered or overwhelmed. Slowing down in this way is considered a form of mindfulness practice. --Another way to refresh your willpower is by taking some slow breaths or doing any of the mindfulness practices from Chapter 5. Think of using mindfulness as running a cleanup on background processes that haven’t shut down correctly. By using mindfulness to do a cognitive cleanup, you’re not leaking mental energy to background worries and rumination. --Reduce decision making. For many people, especially those in management positions or raising kids, life involves constant decision making. Decision making leeches willpower. Find whatever ways you can to reduce decision making without it feeling like a sacrifice. Set up routines (like which meals you cook on particular nights of the week) that prevent you from needing to remake the same decisions over and over. Alternatively, outsource decision making to someone else whenever possible. Let other people make decisions to take them off your plate. --Reduce excess sensory stimulation. For example, close the door or put on some dorky giant headphones to block out noise. This will mean your mental processing power isn’t getting used up by having to filter out excess stimulation. This tip is especially important if you are a highly sensitive person.

What is involved in appearing to court me?” He quirked an eyebrow at her. “You haven’t been courted before? What about the climbing cits and baronets’ sons? They never came up to scratch?” “Many of them did.” She wondered what he’d look like if somebody were to shave off those piratical eyebrows. “They did not bother much with the other part of the business.” “The wooing?” “The nonsense.” “We need the nonsense,” he said. “We need to drive out at the fashionable hour; we need to be seen arm in arm at the social events. I need to call upon you at the proper times with flowers in hand, to spend time with your menfolk when I creditably can. I’ll carry your purchases when you go shopping and be heard begging you to save your waltzes for me.” “There’s a problem,” she said, curiously disappointed to see the flaw in his clever scheme. He was a wonderful dancer; that was just plain fact. And she loved flowers, and loved the greenery and fresh air of Hyde Park. She also liked to shop but generally contented herself with the occasional minor outing with her sisters. And to hear him begging for her waltzes… “What sort of problem can there possibly be? Couples are expected to court in spring. It’s the whole purpose behind the Season.” “If you court me like that, Their Graces will get wind of it. They very likely already know you’ve called on me.” “And this is a problem how?” He wasn’t a patient man, or one apparently plagued with meddlesome parents. “They will start, Mr. Hazlit. They will get their hopes up. They will sigh and hint and quiz my siblings, all in hopes that you will take me off their hands.” “Then they will be disappointed. Parents expect to be disappointed. My sister was a governess, and she has explained this to me.” He looked like he was winding up for a lecture before the Royal Society, so she put a hand on his arm. “I do not like to disappoint Their Graces,” she said quietly. “They have suffered much at the hands of their children.” He blinked at her, his lips pursing as if her sentiments were incomprehensible. “I won’t declare for you,” he said. “If they let their hopes be raised by a few silly gestures, then that is their problem. You have many siblings. Let them fret over the others.” “It isn’t like that.” She cocked her head to study him. Hadn’t he had any parents at all? “I could have seventeen siblings, and Their Graces would still worry about me. You mentioned having sisters. Do you worry less about the one than the other?” “I do not.” He didn’t seem at all pleased with this example. “I worry about them both, incessantly. Excessively, to hear them tell it, but they have no regard for my feelings, else they’d write more than just chatty little…” “Yes?” “Never mind.” Some

Mentally, you tend to experience a deep sense of angst as your mind fills with dread and excessive fear about the future. You may also feel mentally spacey, worry too much, or behave in an overly cautious manner without need. You may also have a tendency to dwell on situations that occurred in the past, unable to let things go.

I started to worry that I suffered from a chronic form of nice-guy complex, a socially induced castration from a youth spent in the Seattle Public School System - where excessive PC progressivism rounds the bend of the political spectrum and comes dangerously close to puritanical fascism.

Use those leaves! Next, use leaves and excess grass clippings in the garden. Fifteen big bags of leaves, when chewed up by a lawnmower, turn into an inch of mulch on a 15 by 25’ garden. (The job took about 30 or 45 minutes.) I did that last fall; this spring, I’m finding worm castings all over! Pour the leaves out on your garden, mow them into little pieces, and till them under. Or just leave them on top of the soil and don’t bother tilling. With mulch, you don’t have to worry about your garden drying out – or weeds coming up.

Do you feel at peace now? After destroying everything you had and could have? No, don't worry nobody knows I am talking to you never made that connection with anyone. Don't dare me coz I will still choose to go with the truth and tell them I won't feel anything coz my whole is still with you. So how is it going? Having fun in your life? How is the tuning With your new love? Is it similar to the level we had or is it better than ours? No you can tell the truth I won't get jealous coz What's mine will always be mine internally. I don't care where you go or with whom coz when you were with me you were with me and completely mine. You know? My friends still ask me if I have stopped loving you? Even today I fail to lie to them regarding my love towards you, even today I fail to say I don't love you leave alone saying I hate you. Maybe, I really loved you too much that is why you left right? Nobody can digest anything in excess, I know nobody likes this nature of mine being over loving and caring, they get the idea that I am obsessive but I am not. I don't know. You don't know how to see love or feel love, coz if you knew you wouldn't have abandoned me in the first place. But it's totally fine, your call after all.

As a result of my hike, I am much more inclined to do things. I will have fewer “should have dones,” even if it means incurring some “wish I hadn’ts.” I have changed in smaller ways, too. I am friendlier and more patient. I worry less about money. I can get by with less. It is as pleasing to get rid of old stuff as it is to get new stuff. Excess is a burden, even when you are not carrying it on your back. And

من أعراض الإكتئاب: يرون أتفه الأمور أكبرها، ونسمي هذا: القلق الزائد على توافه الأمور Excessive worry About Trivia ص 43

Social worry confusion is much more than “shyness”. It can be powerful dread and anxiety in excess of simple each day activities, such as shopping or communication on the phone. Many communities occasionally worry concerning certain social situations, but someone with community anxiety disorder will worry exceptionally about them before, during and afterward. So don’t worry is here Masha can help you in all these types of problem-solving.

Excessive worry over what others think makes us wear ourselves out to gain someone's approval and then work tirelessly to keep it. It's exhausting, and it is not God-honoring.

You accept me. I don’t have to hide any of the pieces of who I am. But I worry that will change. It has in the past. A lot.” “Alex,” she sighed, brushing a curl behind his ear. It made him feel nurtured and safe. “We both have our reasons for feeling insecure, but lets work on those too. Because I want this, Zoe. I want us.

The key is living in one day increments. To compartmentalize your life into 24 hour time frames by which you live by. This way you only deal with problems and issues as they arise. You also let your creative centers do their best work, as you are not clogging up the cognitive machinery with excess worry and doubt.

In a series of empirical and theoretical articles, Vicki Helgeson and Heidi Fritz explore sex differences in the propensity for what they call “unmitigated communion,” defined as “an excessive concern with others and placing others’ needs before one’s own.” To measure an individual’s unmitigated communion, they developed a simple nine-item scale, where people rank themselves from “Strongly Disagree” to “Strongly Agree” on statements like ● “For me to be happy, I need others to be happy.” ● “I can’t say no when someone asks me for help.” ● “I often worry about others’ problems.” Women typically score higher than men on this scale

A neurosis is a psychological disorder defined by persistent and deep levels of anxiety and an overall fear of life. In addition to these cardinal symptoms, a neurotic illness may also include depression, guilt, phobias, obsessions and compulsions, excessive worry and rumination, insomnia, irritability, or anger. Carl Jung suggested that the neurotic’s fear of life was a result of “a disturbed or diminished process of adaptation” (Collected Works Volume 18) and “a morbid development of the whole of a personality” (Collected Works Volume 10). A neurotic, in other words, is an individual who fails to adapt to the demands of life, whose personality is stunted as a result, and whose existence, therefore, becomes a continual struggle with little, to no reprieve.

As a result of my hike, I am much more inclined to do things. I will have fewer “should have dones,” even if it means incurring some “wish I hadn’ts.” I have changed in smaller ways, too. I am friendlier and more patient. I worry less about money. I can get by with less. It is as pleasing to get rid of old stuff as it is to get new stuff. Excess is a burden, even when you are not carrying it on your back.

The 60% Tax (Very Low Trust) In the organization . . . In personal relationships . . . • Unhealthy working environment • Unhappy employees and stakeholders • Intense political atmosphere with clear camps and parties • Excessive time wasted defending positions and decisions • Painful micromanagement and bureaucracy • Hostile behaviors (yelling, blaming, accusing, name-calling) followed by periods of brief contrition • Guarded communication • Constant worrying and suspicion • Mistakes remembered and used as weapons • Real issues not surfaced or dealt with effectively

My sense is that if I spend more time talking to you than I spend complaining about you, then something wonderful often happens and the enlightenment is mutual. So I don't really worry about the young, whose excesses are confined to lecture halls and quadrangles, so much as I fear the old, whose tyrannies are legislative.

In 1989, the average young person was high-to-very-high in self-oriented and other-oriented perfectionism (most people slightly agree or agree with statements), and moderate-to-low in socially prescribed perfectionism (most people neither agree nor disagree with statements). Not the healthiest profile in terms of personal expectations, admittedly, but good news regarding socially prescribed perfectionism – young people seemed to report that expectations and pressures on them weren’t excessively demanding. By 2016, however, that profile had drastically changed. Self-oriented and other-oriented perfectionism had edged even higher, which was bad enough. But it was the trend for socially prescribed perfectionism that really worried us. It surged from low-to-moderate in 1989 to moderate-to-high in 2016. Projecting those increases into the future shows us where we might be headed. By 2050, based on the models we tested, self-oriented perfectionism will move above the very high threshold (most people agree with statements) and socially prescribed perfectionism above the high threshold (most people slightly agree or agree with statements).

The demoniacal powers know this and do all they can to push you to strain your mind. It can be strained by dwelling on one theme until it cannot see anything else clearly—or by worry, anxiety, or even excessive “thinking” as to what is the will of God.

the boomerang that has whirled back through the air and smacked the children of the 1960s in the face. They knew that racists, homophobes and misogynists were bad people with terrible ideas, and too few worried about the ground they were conceding when they accepted excessive restrictions on free speech. They ought to know better now. Because they decided that they must do more than fight bad ideas with better ideas, and allowed ‘offence’ to a faith or racial group, rather than actual harm, to be grounds for censorship, they could not defend liberal principles against Islamists who were also racists, homophobes and misogynists.

Don’t worry: It’s not excessively expensive or a threat to the efficiency of the Internet to keep track of where information came from. It will actually make the Internet faster and more efficient.

no organism is primarily adapted to be healthy, long-lived, happy, or to achieve many other goals for which people strive. As a reminder, adaptations are features shaped by natural selection that promote relative reproductive success (fitness). Consequently, adaptations evolve to promote health, longevity, and happiness only insofar as these qualities benefit an individual’s ability to have more surviving offspring. To return to an earlier topic, humans evolved to be prone to obesity not because excess fat makes us healthy, but because it increases fertility. Along the same lines, our species’ proclivities to be worried, anxious, and stressed cause much misery and unhappiness, but they are ancient adaptations to avoid or cope with danger. And

There is no need to worry about that excessive fat around your belly, as we offer you a one-stage solution in body contouring by perfectly combining liposuction and tummy tuck in Houston

In addition to the alienation of farmers, large parts of the Mittelstand, growing numbers of industrialists and of the nationalist right by 1928, there was a further worrying trend facing the regime, the progressive disillusionment of young people and of the literary and cultural elites. The First World War and its aftermath had shaken loose many of the traditional ties binding young people to their families and to their local communities. As the Koblenz authorities noted in the early 1920s, ‘the present sad appearance of the young, their debasement on the steeets, in pubs and dance halls results from the absence of firm authority by fathers and by schools during the war. The children of that time are today s young people who have little sense of authority and discipline.’ In Cologne, it was observed that young people were spending too much time on ‘visits to pubs, excessive drinking and dancing’. As

Your nose has defense mechanisms that prevent impurities and excessively cold air from entering your body.

The same people with the same intelligence have wildly different potential under different circumstances. And the circumstances that tend to produce the biggest innovations are those that cause people to be worried, scared, and eager to move quickly because their future depends on it. “Nothing can become truly resilient when everything goes right,” Shopify founder Toby Lütke said. “The excess energy released from overreaction to setbacks is what innovates!” wrote Nassim Taleb. Stress focuses your attention in ways good times can’t. It kills procrastination and indecision,

Post 9/11: American flags, public anger, excessive I love yous. Adina suspects all three of being in place of other, more authentic expressions. What would these people say instead of I love you? I'm scared. I worry I will never recover. I love you is a can of soda that comes free with every meal. Yet every day humans suffer from lack of hearing it.

Real America, in honor of the hellhound, our beloved Bukowski You hate America, no, not at all, I love it so much that I can say obvious truths that they themselves do not want to accept. If I criticize myself all the time, why would I stop criticizing others? A poem in honor of the only sincere American, Bukowski. The myth of America tells us of the land of freedom, founded by descendants of intelligent and puritanical Europeans. It's all a load of crap, no, it's the land of slavery, my friends, not just in the sense of slavery of African descendants, but of mental slavery. Yes, the land of the alienated. Eden, created by Angels. This is all a load of crap. Real America, Real America, Strong America, came from the indigenous tribes, from the toil of blacks and the industrious mentality of descendants of Europeans, all lazy, violent and who wanted to get fat like pigs, without worrying about anything. Dirty America that produces clean America, sold in the movies. Why lazy? Well, they don't like to make a lot of effort, and this indolence produces innovation. Is that why they are so creative? Well, they are creative in order to pay well the brains of other nations who go to work there. They knew that numerous wars and constant friction were much worse than anything else and cost money. So? Well, then, let's create a land where everyone can get fat, rich and kill each other, but only as long as the general profit of society increases. Let's sell the excess food, weapons and our gourmet culture to other peoples. It worked. But let's not fool ourselves. America is Golden on the outside and dark on the inside. America is the country of weapons, drugs, fantasies and lies. Above all, lies. See, the mafias that operated there to supply the demand for alcohol, prohibited in order to maintain the pure "spirit" of the drunken bourgeoisie, were all called mafias of other nationalities. But they were all Americans. America is geography, not history or ethnicity. You are an American because of your ties to this immense land blessed by God. Is that what these bastards have done? They have turned their own pain into art and sold it to us in the movies. The weapons, yes, they have to be good and they have to kill quickly. Why? Because Americans are lazy and don't like anything that lasts long. Even wars have to be fought in other countries and if they are too exhausting, they lose their Hollywood shine, so we have to abandon Saigon. Fatness, that is another thing that best represents America. Americans are all obese. Well, at least you can't help but notice them. They are, well, heavy people, especially the Karens. I love Karens, I'm a male Karen, you know. And as for drugs, well, that's the most interesting part. It's the country that consumes them the most, why? Well, maintaining the American dream requires a lot of mescaline. Fat drug addicts with guns sticking out of their own toilets. The toilets in America must hide everything we really want to know. I will probably never get a visa there, thanks to this poem. Still, you can't deny that my writing is anthological. God bless all the Americas. Please don't blow me up, I have poetic license to write these words.

Recipe 19: Honeydukes Chocolate Frogs Ah, the legendary Honeydukes! Honestly, that store is enough to drive a person with a sweet tooth absolutely bonkers! Honeydukes is like a Muggle candy store on steroids! Anyway, I made these chocolate frogs as an experimental Christmas present for my little nephew. He went crazy when he saw them and actually asked if I would take him to Honeydukes the next time I went there, the cute thing! Here’s the recipe and a few variations that you could make! Serving Sizes: 8 Duration: 1 hour List of Ingredients: For the Shell 1 big bar milk chocolate or 1 cup chocolate chips For the Filling Use anything from fruit to hazelnuts to peanut butter. If you are feeling particularly tricky, which is pretty much my constant mood, get some popping candy and make a sort of hybrid cross between a Chocolate Frog and a Fizzing Whizzbee. You will also need chocolate frog molds to get that froggy shape. These are easily available on Amazon. WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW Preparation: 1. First, melt the chocolate in your microwave at 30 seconds, till the chocolate is melted and smooth. Use a big bowl, you’ll soon see why. 2. Stir the chocolate until it is slightly cooler but still runny. 3. Fill a piping bag with the melted chocolate, this makes the entire process less messy! 4. Take your frog molds and lightly spray them with cooking spray to make the demolding easier. 5. Pipe chocolate around the mold and in the centre. Don’t worry about quantities but ensure that the surface of the frog is completely covered. 6. After you’ve filled all the molds in the tray, flip the tray over the bowl of melted chocolate to get rid of the excess chocolate inside each frog. 7. Place the mold inside the freezer for about 10-15 minutes and allow the chocolate to harden slightly. 8. In the meantime, choose your fillings. I usually use nuts and peanut butter as one option and popping candy as another. I make an assortment so that when someone bites into the frog, they get a pleasant fizzy surprise! If you intend to use peanut butter or something runny, use a piping bag or a small squeezy bottle to fill your frogs. 9. Next, get the mold out of the freezer and carefully fill with the desired filling. 10. Top the filling with more melted chocolate and smoothen out so that the mold is completely even and covered. 11. Return to the freezer for another 30-35 mins. 12. When the chocolate has hardened, remove from the molds and store in the refrigerator. So perfect for boxing up as gifts and so easy to make that you can probably go into the business of making Chocolate Frogs professionally!

Pachomios worried that excessive self-denial led to vainglory,

My sense is that if I spend more time talking to you than I spend complaining about you, then something wonderful often happens and the enlightenment is mutual. So I don’t really worry about the young, whose excesses are confined to lecture halls and quadrangles, so much as I fear the old, whose tyrannies are legislative.

Trying to extract every last dime out of your financial decisions is likely to incur significant social and psychic costs. As you’ve no doubt noticed, not everyone likes a person who’s obsessed with money. And even if everyone did, an insistence on always making the best financial decision in a given situation can lead to excessive worry and anxiety.

Chinese proverb: “That the birds of worry and care fly over your head, this you cannot change, but that they build nests in your hair, this you can prevent.” We avoid excessive worry

The birds inspired me." “They may be born with wings, but they too fall before learning to fly. While they begin life amongst other birds, growing up, they must fend for themselves. Some may express displeasure, others would show admiration, but they cannot allow either of the emotions to get to them. Riding on winds and touring the sky, they do not worry about the ones who do not keep up with their pace, because if they halt to look back at the companions they lost, they will never reach the heights they were destined to. Birds do not carry excess baggage; the weight will hinder their flight. Free-spirited, they explore the skies with faith, trusting Allah to take care of them. Everything else is transient. Ibn al-Qayyim used their example and said, the heart, in its journey to Allah, The Exalted, is like that of a bird: love is its head, fear and hope are its two wings.

The paradox is that you fear losing life but by doing so you are already not living. You are therefore already experiencing what you dread most. In other words, you are actually negating the life you are fighting for. I can reassure you, it will most likely not get any worse. A lot of people with terminal diseases are still smiling and doing their best to enjoy whatever is left of their lives, but you, with your excessive worrying and all it brings to you, you are not…

I feel uncomfortable and experience building tension or discomfort that seems to come out of the blue when I think about a particular situation. ____ 2. I avoid specific situations that make me feel uncomfortable. ____ 3. I have at least four of the following symptoms at the same time: shortness of breath or feeling smothered; heart palpitations (rapid or irregular heartbeat); trembling or shaking; choking; dizziness or unsteadiness; nausea or abdominal distress; numbness, feeling detached or out of touch with myself; fear of dying; fear of going crazy or out of control; hot flashes or chills; sweating without exertion. ____ 4. I worry excessively, and so I feel restless, keyed up or on edge, irritable, easily fatigued, have trouble falling or staying asleep or I wake up tired, have tense and tight muscles, have difficulty concentrating, and/or find my mind going blank. ____ 5. I have recurring intrusive thoughts such as hurting or harming a close relative, being contaminated by dirt or a toxic substance, fearing I forgot to lock my door or turn off an appliance, and/or have unpleasant fantasies of catastrophe. ____ 6. I perform ritualistic actions such as washing my hands or counting to relieve my discomfort because I have fears that keep entering my mind. ____ 7. I have witnessed or been subjected to a life-threatening experience and have persistent symptoms that have lasted for at least a month, including repetitive and distressing thoughts, nightmares, flashbacks, attempts to reenact the situation, emotional numbness (out of touch with your emotions—feeling no anger, sadness, guilt, or relief), feeling detached from other people, losing interest in activities that once gave me pleasure, sleep or concentration problems, startling easily, irritability and/or have outbursts of anger.

Once You’re in Keto, How Can You Keep It Going Without Fasting? The short answer is: Eat a boatload of fat (~1.5 to 2.5 g per kilogram of body weight), next-to-no carbs, and moderate protein (1 to 1.5 g per kilogram of body weight) each day. We’ll look at Dom’s typical meals and day in a minute, but a few critical notes first: High protein and low fat doesn’t work. Your liver will convert excess amino acids into glucose and shut down ketogenesis. Fat as 70 to 85% of calories is required. This doesn’t mean you always have to eat rib eye steaks. A chicken breast by itself will kick you out of ketosis, but a chicken breast cut up into a green leafy salad with a lot of olive oil, feta cheese, and some Bulletproof Coffee (for example) can keep you in ketosis. One of the challenges of keto is the amount of fat one needs to consume to maintain it. Roughly 70 to 80% of your total calories need to come from fat. Rather than trying to incorporate fat bombs into all meals (one does get tired of fatty steak, eggs, and cheese over and over again), Dom will both drink fat between meals (e.g., coconut milk—not water—in coffee) and add in supplemental “ice cream,” detailed on page 29. Dom noticed that dairy can cause lipid profile issues (e.g., can spike LDL) and has started to minimize things like cream and cheese. I experienced the same. It’s easy to eat a disgusting amount of cheese to stay in keto. Consider coconut milk (Aroy-D Pure Coconut Milk) instead. Dom doesn’t worry about elevated LDL as long as other blood markers aren’t out of whack (high CRP, low HDL, etc.). From Dom: “The thing that I focus on most is triglycerides. If your triglycerides are elevated, that means your body is just not adapting to the ketogenic diet. Some people’s triglycerides are elevated even when their calories are restricted. That’s a sign that the ketogenic diet is not for you. . . . It’s not a one-size-fits-all diet.

Parents who have experienced trauma often have excessive feelings of fear and worry that an unnamed catastrophic event is going to happen, so they try to exert control over their children in an attempt to keep them safe from harm. This behavior is intended to protect children, but instead, the adults model anxiety and the children internalize the fears and worries of their parents as their own. The fears of the parents become the fears of the children.

then puts a magnifying lens on all his flaws and starts turning each of them over in his mind, wondering why he is the way he is, tortured by the fact that he can’t seem to just “let it go.” After an hour of this, he realizes with despair that he is no closer to making a decision about his health issue, and instantly feels depressed, sinking into a storm of negative self-talk where he tells himself over and over again that this always happens, that he never sorts himself out, that he’s too neurotic . . . Phew! It’s hard to see how all of this torment and mental anguish started with nothing more than James noticing he had a weird-looking mole on his shoulder! We all live in a highly strung, overstimulated, highly cerebral world. Overthinking puts our ordinary cognitive instincts in overdrive. Excessive thinking occurs when our thought processes are out of control, causing us distress. Endless analysis of life and of self is usually unwanted, unstoppable, and self-defeating. Ordinarily, our brains help us solve problems and understand things more clearly—but overthinking does the opposite. Whether you call it worry, anxiety, stress, rumination, or even obsession, the quality that characterizes overthinking is that it feels awful, and it doesn’t help us in any way.

One consequence of all of this has been a severe erosion of democracy, an immediate consequence of sharp concentration of wealth and business power. We’ve discussed some of the means: virtual purchase of elections, radical escalation of lobbying, undermining of voting rights, all facilitated further by the most reactionary Supreme Court in living memory. There is no longer fear of excessive democracy. There’s a lot of fuss, as you know, about alleged Russian meddling in the elections. It is scarcely detectable, but even if it existed on any substantial scale, it would be invisible in comparison with the interference in elections by extreme wealth and corporate power. But these are more things that it wouldn’t do to say. Best to worry about the Russians. One consequence of all of this, also well established in the academic political science literature, is that a considerable majority of the population, those who are lower on the income-wealth scale, are literally disenfranchised. They may cast votes, but it doesn’t much matter. They’re disenfranchised in the sense that when you compare their preferences and attitudes with the decisions made by their own representatives, there’s virtually no correlation. The legislators are listening to other voices. The donor class. During the neoliberal period, the past generation, both parties shifted pretty far to the right. The Democrats abandoned the working class. They delivered them to their class enemies, who try to mobilize them on what are called cultural issues: white supremacy, fundamentalist religion, and in other ways to which we’ll return. And with the promises of decent jobs, which oddly enough are not fulfilled.

▪ We don’t create the meaning of our life, as Sartre claimed—we discover it. ▪ We each have a unique reason for being, which can be adjusted or transformed many times over the years. ▪ Just as worry often brings about precisely the thing that was feared, excessive attention to a desire (or “hyper-intention”) can keep that desire from being fulfilled. ▪ Humor can help break negative cycles and reduce anxiety. ▪ We all have the capacity to do noble or terrible things. The side of the equation we end up on depends on our decisions, not on the condition in which we find ourselves.

For most of the jury selection, Arturo Hernandez had stopped coming to court. Daniel had hired a paralegal named Richard Salinas, who had wavy black hair, a pointed hatchet face, and dark eyes. Daniel would often confer with Salinas on important issues. Arturo had apparently become disillusioned with defending Richard. There was no big movie or book deal, and the case was costing him money. A television movie about the Night Stalker was in the works, but the Hernandezes hadn’t gotten a dime. As long as Richard refused to talk about his alleged crimes, nobody was willing to put up money. Daniel did his best, but the arduous task of being in court every day, staying in hotels away from his family in San Jose, and working without the benefit of co-counsel was taking its toll. He was tired, yet couldn’t sleep at night; he’d toss and turn and worry about the case, his two little girls, and his wife. He began eating excessively, and by the time the jury was finally sworn in, he’d gained twenty-five pounds.

The idea that we should not concern ourselves unduly about the future because “expectancy is the main impediment to living” has to be qualified for other reasons too. At the societal level, too much focus on present goods, like lower taxes or gas prices, at the expense of future goods such as a cleaner environment and an adequately funded welfare state, is hardly praiseworthy, and we would do well to worry about the consequences of this shortsightedness. With respect to both individuals and communities, it is hard to make significant plans and engage in long-term projects without worrying about the ways in which they might be derailed. This is true whether one is raising a child, planting crops, running a business, carrying out research, writing a book, building an organization, or working for a cause. Yet immersing ourselves in such projects and bringing them to fruition yields some of our most valuable experiences and accomplishments. It hardly makes sense to eschew long-term enterprises on the grounds that they usually produce anxiety as well as (one hopes) satisfaction. And it is hard to really throw oneself into a project without worrying about its prospects for success. The advice not to worry unduly about the future thus has to be quite restricted if it is to be reasonable. It amounts to telling us not to spoil the present through excessive anxiety about the future, and not to worry unduly about the loss of things that do not really matter. One of the merits of simple living is that it demonstrates how little we need to possess in order to be content, and how much of what we consider necessary is in fact superfluous. Keeping these points in mind may help us become, in Epicurus’s phrase, “fearless of fortune,” at least with respect to wealth and possessions. But it is less obvious how living simply helps one to achieve greater detachment from other things one values, such as loved ones, meaningful projects, or political causes.