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By Root 301 0

me his list. When I opened the document a few days later, it was four pages long. I’ll give Eric credit for being thorough, but the list was full of empty concerns. I called him the next day to walk him through the list, one concern at a time, to ask the likelihood of them ever happening. As we clicked through the list, I asked, “Do you really think this will happen?”

“Probably not,” he said.

“Then why are you giving it any space in your consciousness?”

In the end, only a handful of made-up worries were valid and worth his time and energy.

Most people are like Eric. They get stuck “what-iffing” themselves to death and spend all their time avoiding an issue by creating scenarios that may or may not exist.

“What if this happens?”

“What if I leave my relationship?”

“What if I quit my job?”

“What if I lose my job?”

You could play the “what-if” game for the rest of your life and you’d still be in the same place you started from. I call going down this worry route OMGWI—oh my God what if?

OMGWI is what stops us from living an extraordinary life. It kills people’s dreams. It takes only two or three moves from an original thought to stop you cold. That’s when you have to end the cycle by telling yourself “STOP!” When I find myself saying OMGWI, I say “STOP” out loud, even if I am by myself. The effect of doing this cancels the negative thought and brings me back to neutral.

I’ve walked into seminars where there are forty people and a thousand empty seats and think, What if no one else shows up? What if my marketing partners are upset? Then I quickly bring my thoughts right back around so I won’t let my mind create a worst-case scenario.

Could my ego be bruised by lack of interest in Tom Ferry?

Hell, yes.

Will I die over it?

No.

Can I get over it and just focus on the people who are here?

Yup.

I remind myself that I am committed to helping people, even if it is forty at a time. In that case, I choose to give the best seminar ever and leave those people blown away by the experience.

Being overwhelmed is in your head and is actually you being underplanned.

So, what do you really gain from worry? Worry is a mechanism that usually shuts people down. If that happens, you have plenty of time to swirl those negative thoughts around in your head and say things like, “I can’t go to the gym,” “I can’t connect with my kid,” “I can’t get projects done on time,” and “I’m so overwhelmed.” What you don’t understand is that worry is what’s really bogging you down. Being consumed with worry means missing out on doing meaningful and important things in your life. Why should you go to the gym and work out, and still feel awful about the way you look, when you can just sit around and cry about it? Here’s a what if: What if everything suddenly worked out for you? What would you do with all of that empty space in your head that used to be filled with doubt, fear, and worry?

Knowing what you now know about worry, how do you think it is impacting your life? What else could you be doing with the time you now spend worrying? What will you commit to right now to break the cycle of worry?

This chapter is one of the most important in my book because if you were to take away only one message from me it should be this: I want you to free yourself from the four addictions. If you do this, your life will become instantly and infinitely better.

I often wonder what my answer would be if someone asked me, as I asked Bill Mitchell, “What is the most important lesson you’d like to pass on?” What message would I want to leave behind as my legacy for my two sons, and what would I want them to understand about life so I could rest easy, knowing they would be well equipped, adjusted, and prepared for their future?

In a perfect world, I would raise two great boys into men who would be free of the four addictions and would go out into the world and do big things for themselves, their families, and others. They would be able to follow their dreams, live their visions, and go for whatever they wanted to achieve regardless of what anybody else thought.