Why Free From Worry & Want
From Scarcity to Strength
Dear Why Team member,
I hope this week’s message finds you well and free of worry and want.
In the 1930’s, during the time of the Great Depression, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, during a State of the Union speech, implied that it was the government’s responsibility to free us from Fear and Want. This belief led to the creation of entitlement programs in an effort to get us out of the depression. More famously, President Roosevelt said, ‘We have nothing to fear but fear itself’. So naturally, he felt if he could get rid of fear, he could get rid of the depression.
Unfortunately, no government entity can rid us entirely of Fear and Want. It is our personal responsibility to address these feelings. Fear is best addressed with Faith and Living in Want is best addressed by Living in Gratitude. No government can give us Faith & Gratitude - clearly these are our responsibility, our choices.
There are certainly needs that call for intervention, such as to assist those who can no longer assist themselves. But as we know, even the wealthy often live in ‘want’, and even the most financially secure can live in ‘fear’.
Let’s consider our relationship with Fear and Want:
- What do you fear and why?
- Do you feel you’re living more in scarcity or abundance?
- Are you living more in ‘want’ than in ‘gratitude’? And if so, why?
When Roosevelt said we have nothing to fear but fear itself, it may have been more accurate if he had said we have nothing to fear but ‘worry’ itself.
As you may know, one of my coaches, Dr. Roger Hall, has been a tremendous resource for me. His insights on ‘fear’ vs ‘worry’ are particularly illuminating. He says fear is present tense productive, such as when encountering a snake on a hike - we quickly, fight, flee, or freeze. Fear is an important survival mechanism. I like to say without fear we wouldn’t be here - we would have died out generations ago.
So, fear is present tense productive. Worry, however, is unproductive.
Worry is anticipatory fear; we worry about the future. When we worry about encountering a snake in the future, we may become too fearful to leave the house - everybody knows that snakes live outside.
In this new light, let’s consider Freedom from Worry and Want.
The power of planning is that it addresses the unknown future. Benjamin Franklin is known to have said, “the best planners plan for the best.”
With planning for various outcomes in the future, knowing we have, for example, jumper cables in the trunk of our car, we have a Plan B should our car battery lose charge and we have increased our probability of solving the problem. We reduce the worry about our car battery not being revived in the future by effective planning today.
We can also reduce worry with reason. Many times we can become worried about outcomes that have very little probability of happening. Using our intellect, and even collaborating with professionals to consider probability, not just possibility, is extremely helpful for making wiser decisions and reducing worry.
As for living in ‘want’, there is nothing more powerful than gratitude. Being grateful for, or wanting more, what we have, is a powerful antidote to living in want of what we don’t have.
Worry and Want can significantly diminish the quality of our life experience.
Consider the benefits that can come from partnering and planning; using our reason to be more reasonable about our worries, pushing back on feelings with facts, considering more the probability and less the possibility.
And finally, add to your gratitude list daily, to lower and limit ‘wants’. The only true “get rich quick” scheme is gratitude. We are all rich beyond belief - we need only go beyond our current belief through gratitude to realize how truly rich we are. As Dr. Kevin Elko often shares, if you lost everything you have today, and all you did was get it all back tomorrow - tomorrow would be the best day of your life.
Be More Free from Worry and Want and you will live your BEST LIFE EVER!
Make it a great week!
Steve Luckenbach