Whiteboard Wednesday Quote - January 28

"We suffer more in imagination than reality." - Seneca

I discovered one thing worse than the dentist this week: worrying about going to the dentist. "It's never as bad as it seems" is a lesson we are told growing up (ok, maybe it is as bad as it seems sometimes, but definitely less than .01% of the time), but one that I inevitably forget over and over. What did Portia Nelson say? “I am astounded at how long it takes to discover… for the first time, the things I have learned… over and over again all my life.” True.

It turns out my tooth wasn’t chipped beyond repair, and that my gums aren’t receding so fast that I'll be lucky to have teeth by 35; both slippery slopes my mind had been taking me down.

It’s never as bad as the mind tries to convince us. I know that. But do I understand? Do I remember? It turns out that understanding is remembering in the moment.

Remembering that the mind is often an incompetent consultant spewing seemingly research-backed risk-management advice. This information may have kept us alive when we were kids, but we aren't kids anymore. We can learn, through remembering more and more, that it's within our power to drop the ceaseless worrying that drains us and makes our days difficult.

I'm not saying we have to reach a point where we enjoy going to the dentist, but we certainly don't need to waste our days dreading it in imagination.