How to stop Worrying and Start Living

Book summary of How to stop Worrying and Start Living

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Who should read: A person interested in self-improvement, or a person who worries a lot or a person in a problem and is worried about it, or a person in stress/ depression or worried of other people's decisions and his future.

1-Para Summary

This book deals with some wonderful techniques to deal with our worries

and problems. Author suggests that we should write our problems clearly

on paper or device and should analyze its cause. Just thinking about

problem in mind is not enough and it only increases our worries. Author

gives the 3 step formula to overcome the worry related to any problem.

Step 1- Write about worst case that can happen due to this problem. Step

2- Accept the worst case and mentally prepare yourself. Step 3- Now

make a plan to improve the worst case and take action. Authors also

gives many techniques to keep your worry habit at bay. Practicing

gratitude is one of these technique which works wonderful on our mind.

Explore following mindmap and give time on each element.

Conclusion- The best way to keep away worry is (1) Keep busy yourself in good works such as reading self-help books, listening summaries of these books and (2) to understand your worries by asking questions, searching its cause, and deriving possible solutions. Do following exercise to keep worries at bay ( The exercise is motivated by the book and derived from the book's contents)

Exercise

1. What are all of your worries? related to family, friends, office, income,

transport, your personalities, future plan etc.

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2. what causes are behind your worries? write in detail about all these- spouse’s

choices, lack of communication, fear, lack of resources, money, lack of skills etc.

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3. Put a question mark on the reality of your each worry and its causes. In studies

it is found that 90% worries either never happens or contribute to just a small

part of whole life without any real harm.

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4. what worst can happen if you don’t take any action to improve situation. write

about your all worries.

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5. Brainstorm solutions for the worst case of each worry. Give sufficient time to

each worry and brainstorm at least 10 solutions for each worry. When you start

to draw solutions, you will find that first 2-3 are usually obvious solutions, and

next 3-4 are little good. so when u try to draw 10 solutions, possibilities of

getting good solutions increases. If you find difficult to draw 10 solutions, try for

20. Keep target for 20 solutions, you will get enough no of solutions. you can use

mindmap in this process.

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6. Choose best solution in each case.

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7. Decompose each solutions in small steps.[ learning skills, reading books, practice of learned part of skill, taking feedback etc.]

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8. Priorities your worries and choose one to act upon. And add related small steps in your Daily & weekly To-Do List. Act Now.

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My Experience:

I was a worried man, a man who was always worried about all the little

things in his life, easily irritable in his mind and with his family and

showing extreme fear and shyness in public. I started to read self-help

and other books, slowly slowly changes was reflected, but on temporary basis.

One day I decided to invest my maximum time of the day in

reading books and I did it for one month. During this period, I read this

book too. After reading this book, I realized that my 80% worries were

totally unrealistic and were just my fear and negative interpretation. And

for seeing worst cases and finding solutions for worst cases, the rest of

worries has been reduced too. No one can say that one is a man without

any worry, but worry shouldn’t kill one’s life, instead should provide new

solutions. That’s what I learned from this book.

I Love to Hear Your Experiences. Write it after doing above exercise

several times.