⏳ Erebus Growing | 0030 - Why are you worrying so much about something that might not happen?

Welcome to Erebus Growing, a weekly email where I share little snippets of life to help you change and grow into your highest life.

Well, I’m off to play frisbee in about 30 minutes. It’s currently 5 pm and I’m putting the finishing touches on this week’s newsletter.

It’s going to be a busy week at the 9-5 and the part-time. This is the last week of summer hours at the 9-5 and we have our first batch of students returning next week.

I’ve got no shortage of things to work on and the academic year is going to start in a rush, as always. That’s one thing I’m excited about, in two or three years, being able to step out of the academic year cycle and be in a more consistent timetable of some type—preferably my own.

Until then, I’m going to keep moving forward and building the future, my future.

You got this week!

👨🏻‍💻 Meditation

Why worry about a future that might not happen?

It’s a lesson I’ve been practicing quite a bit recently.

This week, I was supposed to work just about every day from 6 pm to 11 pm at my part-time.

This wouldn’t be an issue at all if it wasn’t directly after and leading into a full day of work at my 9-5.

My availability is listed as 6 pm to 10 pm, Monday through Thursday. And I spent days stressed out over it.

Literally.

Until last weekend when I made a decision: I was going to call the scheduler on Monday and get it straightened out. Until then, no point in worrying because I wasn’t going to fix it.

Shockingly, I spoke to the assistant manager that Monday when I arrived for my shift and got it all straightened out.

I was doing the same thing with an application that I’m filling out.

Worrying about what am I going to do for housing?

How about I actually complete the application first? Then I can worry about housing as I move along in the process.

We spend a lot of time worrying about a potential future that may not even come true.

It’s one of the tricky parts of our brain.

Our brain is made to look for problems; it’s where we come from prior to established cities. Originally, we were always looking over our shoulders to ensure that we weren’t going to die.

Without those concerns being so prevalent and pervasive now, our brains look for other problems (or create them, even).

That’s one place where our worry comes from.

You have to find the fine line between just worrying about a potential future (I can’t work all of these shifts because it will impact my 9-5) and instead planning for the future (I’m going to call the scheduler tomorrow to get this resolved).

Worrying requires you to constantly be in a fight or flight state of mind.

Planning allows you to acknowledge the issue, set it aside, and keep moving forward.

The key here is that we spend a significant amount of time worrying about hypothetical futures instead of designing the future we want.

If we spent more time planning how to tackle things, we can set the issues aside and start executing more quickly.

Once we start executing, we can start iterating to significantly improve our response to, well, anything.

As Rob Dial puts it: “Ready. Fire. Aim.”

The surest way to worry less about the future is to simply start moving forward toward the future we want.

📚 Inspiration and Resources
Every week we all consume content and I share my favorites here.

Listen.
I’ve been using my Calm trial from YouTube Premium fairly often. As I’m trying to build meditation into my daily routine, Calm is going to be the go-to. I used to use Insight Timer for a while, and likely still will because it’s a free app for the most part, but Calm has far more videos and walkthroughs (admittedly under the paid subscription). Give it a try here.

Watch.
I just finished watching the full series of Castle. Personally, it’s a great series, especially as it follows a writer working with the New York Police Department. It follows the same exact sequence of most other crime shows from the late 2000s/early 2010s…some sort of murder, the first suspect has a rock-solid alibi, the conversation with the first person they talk to goes kind of like this: “They didn’t have any enemies…wait, there was this one person like two days ago,” and, of course, it’s virtually always solved within a week. But, the characters were all loveable and the backstories were fleshed out in a logical way. All in all, I’d recommend it. It’s on Hulu if you’re interested. Give it a watch here (Hulu link).

📓 Journaling Prompt
Journaling is one of the most important things to do when exploring our own lives. A new prompt for you to use this week is below.

What is one thing you’re worrying about that you don’t need to?

Until next time, I wish you enough and send you off with love and a sense of urgency in your life.