“Instead of worrying about what you cannot control, shift your energy to
what you can create.”― Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart
***
More often than not, we hear people say, “I am sick with worry.” That is much more than a mere expression designating worry. One doctor has stated that fifty percent of his patients have definite worry symptoms. As Dr. Smiley Blanton admitted, “Anxiety is the great modern plague.”
“Worry is a thin stream of fear trickling through the mind,” said Arthur S. Roche. “If encouraged, it cuts a channel into which all other thoughts are drained.” Dr. Charles H. Mayo agreed: “Worry affects the circulation, the heart, the glands, and the whole nervous system. I have never known a man who died from overwork, but many who died of doubt.”
When in doubt, don’t ever think. “Heavy thoughts bring on physical maladies; when the soul is oppressed so is the body,” Martin Luther told us. “Don’t chain your worries to your body,” Astrid Alauda reiterated. “The burden soon becomes heavy and your health will give too much of itself to pick up the extra load.”
At one time, a pilgrim met the Plague going to Baghdad. “What are you going to do there?” asked the pilgrim. “I’m to slay 5,000 people,” boasted the Plague, with a hideous leer.
The pilgrim shuddered and changed his plans. However, sometime later he encountered a refugee from the stricken city and learned that not 5,000 but 50,000 people had died. Soon after, he met the Plague again, traveling to another city. “You lied,” accused the pilgrim. “You said you were going to slay only 5,000 people.”
“My friend,” explained the Plague as pleasantly as he could. “I did kill only 5,000, and the rest of the 50,000 died from fright.” How true indeed, were the words of John Lancaster Spalding, “We are more disturbed by a calamity which threatens us than by one which has befallen us.”
Worry won’t kill you if you face problems squarely and solve them. But sidetrack those problems and internal tensions increase. Repression of our natural safety valves causes these tensions to find outlets in the stomach, heart, blood vessels, etc. And this will eventually kill you, says a psychiatrist.
English motion picture producer J. Arthur Rank is said to have his own special way of handling worry. He decided to do all his worrying on one single day, Wednesday. He has what he calls his Wednesday Worry Club.
When a worry occurs to him on any other day, he writes it down and puts it in a box. And, of course, when he opens the box on Wednesday, he finds that most of the things he was disturbed about have already been settled. The rest, he says, he puts back in the box to take up the following Wednesday! In this way, he is curing himself of the worry habit.
Mark Twain pointed out, “I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.” Don Herold knew that well. “If I had my life to live over,” he said, “I would perhaps have more actual troubles but I’d have fewer imaginary ones.”
John Newton declares, “We can easily manage if we will only take, each day, the burden appointed to it. But the load will be too heavy for us if we carry yesterday’s burden over again today and then add the burden of tomorrow before we are required to bear it.”
Here’s timely advice from Ralph Waldo Emerson: “Finish every day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be cumbered with your old nonsense. This day is that all is good and fair. It is too dear, with its hopes and invitations, to waste a moment on yesterdays.”
Perhaps, worriers out there can heed the words of advice from Bobby Mcferin. “In every life we have some trouble. But when you worry, you make it double. Don’t worry, be happy.”
So, don’t worry, be happy. Don’t worry, be happy now.
