worrying Archives - Julianne Harvey

Live and let live is one of my favourite slogans of the recovery movement. So simple and yet so challenging, for we all have opinions on how others should function.

Most of the time, what other people do is none of our damn business. Putting this thought into practice can radically change your life for the better.

Does a certain family member drive you up the wall? How about a neighbour? Or a parent at your kid’s school? Maybe it’s a co-worker, your boss or a particular client?

Live and let live. You get to make any choice you want in life, with your words, your actions, the expression of your thoughts and feelings. And guess what – so does the person you makes you utterly bonkers.

It’s infuriating and freeing, at exactly the same time. It’s not up to us to decide how other people should live. They get to choose and they also get to deal with their unique consequences. And the same is true for us.

Learning to practice this has been one of the hardest but happiest experiences for me. When I find myself in a negative cycle of criticizing someone whose decisions make zero sense to me, I step back (often midway through my rant) and remember to say, “Live and let live.”

I’m not responsible for what other people do and say and neither are you. Why should we waste even a moment of our precious life worrying or fretting about something that’s not our responsibility? This is where the “live” part of the slogan comes in. It’s up to me to make my own decisions and look after the words I say, for good or for evil, and make a conscious choice to allow the other person to be responsible for theirs.

Try it. Write “live and let live” somewhere and look at it to remind yourself not to get involved when it’s someone else’s life. As I improve at this, I’m working on adding, “I wish you well” to this phrase so I can extend a bit of goodwill to the person who might baffle, irritate or anger me. I do this because it’s healthy for my soul and also because it makes the world feel softer, gentler, more loving. This is a Step Two kind of thing, however, so I don’t recommend starting with it. Build up to it.

The goal is to be busy creating a life that we love living, so we have less interest in criticizing anyone else’s decisions. If it has nothing to do with me, I’m really trying to simply leave it alone. And where it does affect me, I get to choose how I respond and then let go of whatever the other person does or says.

If we all work at living how we want to live and letting others live how they want to live, our world will be a more peaceful place. And that’s good news for everyone.

Like most people, I’m concerned about the U.S. election today. But I’m over worrying about the things I cannot control. I’ve wasted too much time on that already.

When something is worrying us, we have two choices. We can stew and obsess and forecast disaster. Or we can intentionally choose to hope that it’s all going to work out the way it’s meant to. Probably not the way we would design it, but we only have a portion of the information we need at any given time. In order to see the whole picture, we have to simply keep going to see what’s next.

This summer I decided to live in the now instead of the future or the past. It was easier to do this when I was sick in the hospital and recovering at home, because my whole world shrank down to the next hour in front of me. I could not make any plans for anything beyond that.

Once I accepted this reality, everything got easier, simpler and clearer. Planning for the next hour makes more sense than the next month, year or decade. But when I recovered from my ruptured appendix and we were suddenly moving to BC and dealing with massive change, my commitment to staying in the present was put to the test.

And I failed, more often than not. Lately I’m stuck in the past, longing for the comforts of the life we had built for ten years in Alberta: predictable, safe, reliable. Our new existence in the lower mainland is the opposite, but I know this is a temporary instability.

So I’m back to the two choices when I’m worried. Stew and obsess or hope it’s all going to work out. My fallback is always number one, but I can work at this and choose a better option for my mental health.

At the end of 2015 I picked three words to focus on for the new year: strong, clear, optimistic. I’m reminded of these now when I feel weak, muddled, hopeless. We can all do hard things. We can make it through the challenges we face on a daily basis. We can choose optimism over despair.

No matter what happens tonight with the election, I’m not going to allow it to steal any more of my peace and contentment. I’m going to love myself through the change in the U.S. government the way I must love myself through every other obstacle that arises.

It’s all going to be okay. It’s going to work out like it’s supposed to. Believing this can be challenging, but it’s preferable to the fetal position where we are too afraid to continue. Let’s put our fear aside and trust in God, the universe, goodness, ourselves.

Let’s believe that something bigger is going on here than we can piece together with our own perspective. When all of the pieces are eventually revealed, our individual lives will make more sense, to us and to others. For now what we need is optimism, teamwork and kindness. We can get through this together.

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Live and Let Live

When Worried, We Have Two Choices