Preparedness

Good morning, God, and thank you very much for this new day and this new week.  I have ahead of me many new chances to accomplish major and minor things, and I do appreciate the opportunities.

I'd like to ask you about my difficulties in being prepared--or rather, my perceived difficulties in being prepared.  Sometimes I get extremely stressed out because I feel that I'm unprepared for something, yet it usually turns out that I'm fine--that I've done all I needed to do in order to be ready for the situation.  This is especially true in teaching.  Every Sunday and every Monday morning I feel a strong sense of stress, even though I know that I'm usually okay, and that nothing's going to go wrong during the week.

I guess the bottom line is that I put a lot of stress on myself with my imaginings of failure or folly, the way that I see possible disasters occurring when no disaster is actually looming.  I'd like to change this habit, but it seems to be sticking with me even though I know of it, I recognize it, and I accept it and try to deal with it.

A reply:

Every one of you on this planet is reliving your childhood over and over again.  Most of you have moved on far enough so that you're reliving only a small part of it, only minor portions that usually have to do with your greatest fears.  Growing up in an unstable household in which alcohol addiction played a major role, you--as you know already--are dealing with many issues that are typical of adults who grew up as children of alcoholics.  The two issues that affect you most--as you also know--are the fear of relationships and the fear of failure, of being criticized for not doing what you were supposed to do.

The most important steps for dealing with these issues have been taken care of--you recognize them, and you accept them.  But now you want to banish them from your life, which is completely understandable.  How can you banish a fear that seems to arise on its own?  How can you banish a thought that comes unbidden?

Your fears, of course, originate in your thoughts.  And really, that's all they are.  For you, the best way to deal with the fears has been to be completely prepared, for then you know that there will be no problems making class work.  And that's one way that you can take care of the fears before they happen--trade time that you normally would spend doing something else, and use it to prepare for the things that stress you out the most.  You know how you spend your time--where can you find time to prepare for the things that give you the most stress.

Remember that very often, you're not stressed because you're not prepared, but you're stressed because you didn't use time that you had available to do the work that needed to be done before you did other work.  Certain work on certain things can wait until after the grading is done.  Other work can wait until after your lesson plans are done.  It's always a trade-off.

Ask yourself very clearly and give yourself an honest answer:  Do these thoughts result because of the situation itself, or are they a part of your life because of the ways in which you've prioritized?