It Doesn’t Matter

Early this morning Holly found out that her brother had tragically passed away at the age of 47.

It puts everything into a sharp perspective.

Those day to day stresses and worries are mostly irrelevant and unneccessary.

They don’t benefit you in any way.

If you go back to the root of everything, there’s very little that’s truly important.

There’s family, friends, shelter and food.

If you’ve got that then you’re okay.

According to a December 2014 Pew Research Center report the things people get most stressed about are:

1) Work
2) Family responsibilities
3) Health
4) Relationships
5) The economy
6) Poor health

Most of these are linked in some way. Work is definitely linked to The Economy. If you’re worried about the economy and high unemployment rates, then you’ll be worried about losing your job or getting a job.

In some situations it can be difficult to get a job, however in a high percentage of cases people don’t want to do the jobs that are available.

And here’s my thinking… if you need to make some money then do any job you can get, there’s plenty of time to change jobs later!

Personally I’ve always been able to find work online. Yes, sometimes it has taken A LOT of applications, but eventually I’ve always got something, even if it’s simply data entry for very low pay.

You only need to look at the major freelancer sites to see hundreds of thousands of jobs that need doing.

This means that there should be no reason to ever be completely out of work if you want to work.

Of course, if you have debts then you need to earn a certain amount to pay those debts back. The key here is to focus all your spending on clearing your debts as quickly as possible. No holidays. No meals out. No luxuries. Get those debts paid off, remove the stress of them and then you can get all those luxuries in the future.

Health and poor health should be taken seriously. In the West we are incredibly lucky to have access to some of the best medicine on the planet.

That means there’s no excuse to not get yourself checked out when you feel ill. When you feel slightly ill, it can often be prevented getting worse by seeing a doctor straight away.

Don’t wait until it’s serious!

In the UK we’re especially lucky because we have a free National Health system. If you don’t have that, make sure you have insurance (however basic) and put something aside for emergencies.

Finally… relationships.

When I say most of these are linked, I mean that if you’re stressed about money or work, then this will cause you to get bad health, this will add to your stress and can affect your relationships, which will make the stress even worse.

It’s like a bad slide.

Once stress begins it can lead to more and more stress.

And it’s simply not worth it.

Easy to say and hard to do I know.

But life is short. Life is special. The people in your life are special. Don’t waste your time getting stressed about the things that don’t matter. If something is stressing you out, it’s time to change.

Until next time,

Michael

P.S. I know I went slightly off-piste in today’s email. My brain is jumping around, so todays email is more a brain fart on current circumstances.

P.P.S. I’ve said it before, but I want to say it again. Thank you for being a reader, it means a lot to me.