Oh, here we go, gang.
Guess what?
You're gonna die one day.
Oh, some of you are going, what are you talking about? No. Think about it, gang. You're gonna die one day.
We all are.
We need to face that sometimes. We need to realize sometime that sometimes. And sometimes it's not our morose and bad thoughts. Sometimes that's a thought that can sober us up when we're maybe a little too anxious or nervous about something that's going on here in our life.
Just facing that fact, stating it to ourselves.
It was May 2009 in Dodger Stadium.
And I gotta tell you, gang, I have been in a lot of nervy situations,
but throwing out a first pitch at a sold out Dodgers baseball baseball game is right up there.
I mean, my mind was racing. Jesus, what if I throw it in the backstop?
What if I hot skip it
past the catcher? Uh, well, maybe I should stand on the front of the mound and just lob it in, you know, away with the crowd and walk off. Nobody would know I played it safe
except me.
And that's when I heard a voice in my head say,
so what, McConaughey?
You're gonna die one day.
Throw the ball like you, man. So what if you air mail it? So what if you two hop it past the catcher? You're gonna die one day.
It
relieved the stress
because it put the moment in context.
So what did I do? I stuck my right foot against the rubber, took a deep breath, started a full wind up, and I fired a 74 mile per hour cutter on the outside edge of the plate for a strike.
Yep.
A lot of times, folks, we don't need to give the stress
extra credit,
like the things we stress about that we can't do anything about.
Like like, for instance, I'm very relaxed on planes. Alright? Not because I don't think we could crash, but because I know that if there's a problem and the plane is going down, I am 99% sure that I am not the next most qualified person to pilot the plane.
So flying doesn't really give me any stress.
Then there's that stress that turns our molehills
into mountains, the false drama we create like a soap opera.
It's usually an illusion.
Oftentimes,
we'd do well to heed the advice of my college roommate's granddad who told me,
I've had thousands of crises in my life.
Most of them
never happened.
And sometimes what we call stress isn't even stress at all.
I was listening to, uh, NPR the other day, and there was a child psychologist talking about how so many children are saying how stressed they are. And he asked them, well, what are you stressed about?
And most of them said, well, I'm I'm I'm stressed about not having as cool of clothes as Barry. You know, not having as good as Grays as Jenny or not having as many followers as Susie.
And then he said, well,
that's not stress.
That's envy.
And by accurately labeling what they were feeling,
they suddenly became much more equipped to deal with it and less stressed.
So the next time you're stressed,
ask what you're really stressed about.
It may not be stress at all.
And even if it is, you can always remind yourself,
you're gonna die one day.
Just
keep living.