What, Me Worry?

By Dr. Gary Screaton Page
Copyright 2006 by Dr. Gary Screaton Page. All rights reserved

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“Worry,” wrote author William Jordan, “is the most popular form of suicide.

Worry impairs appetite, disturbs sleep, makes respiration irregular, spoils digestion, irritates disposition, warps character, weakens mind, stimulates disease, and saps bodily health.

It is the real cause of death in thousands of instances where the death certificate names another disease.” Spending our sleeping hours working over in our dreams the problems of the day, is a sure sign of over-work or worry. Most likely, it is worry that comes from overwork.

Pleasant dreams should be the order of the night. When every waking moment, a dull, insistent, numbing pain of “something” makes itself felt through all our other thinking we need to recognize that we are worrying. Then, there is only one thing to do. Stop that worry; kill it on the spot! Philosophers and scientists tell us that everything has its uses.

Take flies for example. As disgusting as they may be to some of us, are nature’s scavengers. Even each microbe has its own special duty and responsibility. In their wildest moods of scientific enthusiasm, researchers may even venture to try to persuade us into believing that the pesky mosquito actually serves some real purpose in nature.

However, no one has ever said a good word about worry. “Worry is forethought gone to seed,” said Jordan. It is exchanging future sorrow—that may never happen—for misery now. Under the guise of helping us to endure the present, and to ready us for the future, worry multiplies imagined enemies, alive only in our minds, and saps our strength.

Worry is the dominance of the mind by a single vague, restless, unsatisfied, and fearful idea. This one fixed idea constantly and surreptitiously absorbs the mental energy we would better focus on the responsibilities of the day. It works unconsciously in our mind trapping and eating away at that, which produces our best success and finest activity. Do not confuse worry with anxiety, however. While both words have a similar meaning—originally, a “choking,” or a “strangling” referring to the throttling effect worry has upon individual activity—anxiety faces large issues of life seriously, calmly, and with dignity. It always suggests hopeful possibilities. Anxiety actively readies us by devising measures to meet the outcome. Nor is worry one large individual sorrow. Rather, it is a colony of petty, vague, insignificant, restless fears that we make important by combining and repeatedly turning them over in our minds.

Fortunately, there is a cure for worry.

To start, we must realize, with every fiber of our beings, the utter, absolute uselessness of worry. This is not merely a theory, but a reality each of us must translate from mere words into living fact. If we were to spend an eternity in worry, we could not change this fact one iota. Action and though will always trump worry.

So, give no time to it. Worry paralyzes thought and action too. The one time you can least afford to worry is when you do worry: when you are facing, or imagine you are facing, a critical turn in your life. This is the very time you need one hundred per cent of your mental energy to make rational plans quickly and to determine your wisest decision.

There are two reasons why you should never worry. One or the other applies in every situation.

First, because you cannot prevent the results you fear.

Second, because you can. If you are powerless to prevent consequences, you will need perfect mental concentration to meet them bravely, to lighten their force, and to salvage what you can from the wreckage. Then you will sustain your strength so you can plan a new future. If you can prevent the evil you fear, then there is no need to worry. Doing so only dissipates the very energy you require in your hour of need.

Each day, do the best you can. Then, you will have no need to fear, to regret, or to worry. Look back upon your life. In the marvelous working of events, your greatest happiness and your fullest success have likely come out of your deepest sorrows, our most miserable failures.

We need to realize that our present happiness or success would have been near impossible had it not been for some affliction or loss in the past. To be sure, clearing ourselves of worry is not always easy. It requires clear, simple, common sense applied to the business of life.

Apply it. Do not waste your energy, or weaken your own powers and influence, through worry.

Put a stop-loss order on worry today!

Are you a worrier? Researchers tell us that 90% of all illness is attributable, directly or indirectly, to stress and worry. Would you like to know how to beat the blues?