Push through negative feelings, move forward, and do what you need to do #
I have a recurring nightmare. It goes like this:
I’m 16 years old again, back on my old newspaper route.
But there’s a major problem:
I’m late.
I’ve overslept. Now it’s 6:43, and I have 150 newspapers to deliver by 7:00 a.m. If I don’t, I start getting complaints.
It’s an impossible task.
A wave of immense anxiety immediately follows. Followed by a feeling of pressure, all over my body.
At this point, I usually wake up in a cold sweat–thankful that all of this was simply a dream, until …
I realize the dream is related to a real-life situation. The true source of the anxiety, and a real-life feeling of “overwhelm-ed-ness.”
After facing this situation over and over, I’ve discovered a rule that helps me to push through those negative feelings, move forward, and do what I need to do.
I like to call it “first things first.”
(If you enjoy the lessons in this article, be sure to sign up for my free emotional intelligence course, where each day for 10 days you get a similar rule designed to help you make emotions work for you, instead of against you.)