The things we unnecessarily fear and stress about often don't happen.

I had a fresh reminder of this fact during my last trip.

Rushing to get everything sorted at home before leaving for the airport, we forgot to do the one thing we should've done first — take out the trash.

It wasn't until we were well on our way to the airport that we realised the blunder.

For a moment, our sense of excitement for the trip turned sour and morphed into this fear of having our kitchen filled with maggots when we returned home 11 days later.

Unfortunately, there was no going back to fix this problem, and we would have to deal with the situation, whatever that might be, after the trip.

We accepted this worst-case scenario and focused on what we could do instead: enjoy our holiday.

Thankfully, we forgot about this entire fiasco the moment we stepped onto the aeroplane. But the memory came rushing back on the last day of the trip.

On our way home, I mentally prepared myself for a deep cleaning exercise at 3 AM, right after we had travelled for 22 hours straight and were barely keeping our eyes open.

It would be one hectic job.

Nevertheless, we reached home, I unlocked the door, and there was no smell.

I went to the kitchen, and sure enough, the trash was there, but it was in the same state we had left it 11 days earlier — no maggots or other crawling creatures in our apartment.

Our worst fear didn't actually materialise.

The trash bag we forgot to take out contained mostly dry items such as burger boxes, empty milk packets, etc.

There was hardly anything there to decay in 2 weeks.

Often, we blow things out of proportion and needlessly stress over minor things, ruining our present focus and ability to enjoy what's in front of us.

An antidote to this habit is to imagine the worst-case scenario and be comfortable with it.

If you can accept the worst thing you imagine that could happen in a scenario, the stress slowly fades away.

Try this the next time you feel stressed over a mistake or anything else.

Now, before you move on to the rest of this newsletter issue, here are a few words from: