The Week You Don’t Waste on Dread

Kris Evergreen here. Monday morning. And here’s a thought worth starting the week with: most of the suffering in an average week comes from the anticipation, not the events.

The meeting you dread all day usually takes forty-five minutes and goes fine. The conversation you rehearse for a week takes ten minutes and lands softer than you feared. The task you avoid for days takes an hour once you finally sit down. The dread costs more than the doing, almost every time.

I’m not saying nothing hard ever happens. Hard things happen. But the tax we pay in advance — the rehearsing, the bracing, the low hum of worry about things that mostly turn out fine — that tax is largely optional.

This week, when you catch yourself pre-suffering, try this: come back to the hour you’re in. Deal with what’s actually here. The future will arrive on schedule whether you dread it or not — and you’ll handle it better rested.

The dread costs more than the doing, almost every time. The tax we pay in advance is optional.

What’s one thing you’ve been dreading that will probably be fine once you’re actually in it?