Anxiety is something that we all have in life from time to time, particularly during something very important that could be positive or negative into the future. As a long haul trucker I cannot have anxiety that a trip over 3000 miles is running 7 minutes late. What I do instead is solve the problem of 7 minutes late. In that particular load (Blood Plasma from thousands of people in LA to Avenel NJ) is use the tractor's long range fuel tanks (About 345 gallons total) and fill at 2100 miles. In this case from NJ to Holbrook AZ and skip the Memphis Fillup. Filling takes 30 minutes to less than a hour so we arrived in LA 20 minutes early. It was based on a understanding of several truths...
1- We can go 2150 miles on 300 gallons of fuel with a margin for safety.
2- Do not run out of fuel. You will really be late and lose your profits.
3-Do not be late. Two normal fuel stops costs too much time. The trip is about 3030 miles or so on the ground give or take a few. So the truck must do 2100 miles on what we already have from Jersey all the way to Arizona Holbrook with Armarillo as a fall back if we ran short.
Dispatch was anxious. The load has to be there, people's lives depended on it. Me and wife worked really hard together to keep that thing rolling straight through. We have had many loads like that, but for whatever reason our Bosses and Dispatch cannot have that load a minute late and we left Jersey 10 minutes late with 3000 miles to go straight through to LA. How do we fix this problem?
Talk about anxiety. But its all good. Do what you can in the moment, let the unimportant or make work stuff go for another day, OR... delegate it to other people.
Anxiety is a form of fear. A powerful emotion that once started will eat away at someone. You cannot allow that to happen. You decide in your mind that yes, today is a hard day for this reason or that problem or whatever. SOLVE THAT FIRST before anything else. Whatever is bothering you so much. CALM and think through the situation before you do something with your hands or body or whatever it is you are doing at a job or task at home etc. (Can you imagine trying to clean a home with three kids screaming for your attention and slowly undoing your work? HA....)
We all pace ourselves. Stay calm, make a choice and follow through one at a time. In the end its all finished and you can now kick back at home, unwind or engage in some form of physical activity that does not involve family or work. You need something to remove the stressor of what caused the anxiety.
All of us have weaknesses. For me it's mountain driving. If it's Donner westbound on ice after a storm during a rain here ice there and snow over there its really anxious for me to make sure that "She" does not get away from me and kill people. So I work on one mile at a time and eventually we are down the mountain and now we can get up and run make some time for dinner bell later.
Having a hobby, activity or freetime without anyone telling you need to be somewhere now or whatever to DECOMPRESS once a day minimum and kick up your heels and play. THATS very important, equally important as work. If you grind away in the saltmines without decompressing, joyful play or whatever it is that moves your world away from there, you are going to get all dried up, mean, nasty and then sick. And lookie here unable to do anymore of that job because its toxic for you all of a sudden.
The worst days for me is the kind that I call straw on the camel. I would have a problem or four being dealt with right now, 1,2,3,4 all juggling along towards the logical conclusion and here comes the bully boss telling me I need to drop all that and do number 5 right now. The number 5 being such a TINY TASK that totally destroys the productive other four makes me wants to deck the lazy boss. He can go do it himself OR pick one of the four things I already am dealing with. What trade sir?
You can only carry so much and you must shed the rest that is too much. If you do not? Then you break yourself. And you will break. Being at peace and motivated knowing that your friends, family and cherished things are doing well and you are to have a good day today. Yes it's 50 mph rain sideways with a chance of tornados later. But you are going to have a good day. The world can take care of itself.
Enjoy!
