Make sure you only die once

When I take care of the laundry I always check that there is no cat in the machine. I check not only once or twice, often I check three times.

Why?

Because I read about one person who accidentally killed his beloved cat by turning on the laundry machine without  noticing the cat had crawled into it. That is a terrible and tragic story, I am sorry that I am putting it into your head, but I do it to make a point.

Before I heard about this I never double checked. I just closed the machine and started it. Has the probability of one our cats crawling into the laundry machine increased since I heard the story? Of course not. My worry has.

What do you do in your life because you worry about something, because you want to prevent something terrible to happen? Does it make you waste time? Waste energy?

Feelings, Pixabay

In my survey about time, one of the challenges you brought up was:

"I spend more time thinking/planning/worrying for something I need to do instead of actually doing it."

I have personally spent a lot of time and energy on what my husband calls "catastrophy thinking". I called it being prepared, I called it being pro-active. Until I listened to a speech by Sandra Bullock.

"I used to worry about a lot of things that never happened. Other things, things I did not worry about, happened instead."

To me this was an eye opener. No matter how much I worry or prepare, I cannot protect myself or my family from everything that might happen. So I can just as well stop worrying.

Or as only Shakespeare can put it:

"Cowards die many times before their deaths.
The valiant never taste of death but once."

Don't imagine all the things that can go wrong, all the things that might kill or hurt you and others. Make sure you only die once.