John Y’s Musings from the Middle: Mind Tricks

I always worry on Sunday nights about the work week ahead.
The worry and anxiety of things to do and things undone start seeping in until they start to trickle and then flow to the point of being almost overwhelming.

When I get to that point, I play a little mind game with myself. I like to ask myself What if several abductors burst into my home right at this very moment and stormed into my office and kidnapped me and took me to some dark basement in the middle of nowhere where I couldn’t have access to wifi, what would happen in the larger scheme of things? In other words, if I couldn’t text any business associates, return emails to any clients or do any scheduled conference calls all week next week, what would happen?

And then I remind myself that probably the only noteworthy thing that would happen is that by this Friday my captors would be so sick of my constant jokes and rambling stories and irritating personal questions and odd ideas about life and requests for coffee with real half & half and Splenda at all hours and my endless proposed “deals” to bargain my way out of my captive state, that my captors would agree that it wasn’t worth kidnapping me and they would decide to return me to my home unharmed.

And I’d only miss out on one week of work.

And just running through that mental scenario helps relax me and get my perspective back by reminding me that –worst case scenario–I’ll still get everything done and be no more than a week late delivering it.