“You can’t change the past, but you can ruin the present by worrying about the future.” –Anonymous
As we travel life’s journey, we must always remember that the road behind us has already been traveled, and there is absolutely nothing we can do to change anything from the past. We must also accept the fact that there is no way we can know for sure what lies ahead farther down the road of life. All we can do at any given point in time is to travel that stretch of road that lies immediately ahead of us.
Almost all of us have some regrets about the past, and we would like to go back and change certain things, but it is just not possible to do so. With regard to the future, we can’t live it until it arrives. We can have some influence over the future by doing such things as getting a good education, practicing good health habits and avoiding unnecessary risks. However, there is much in life that we have little or no power over, and it doesn’t make sense to worry about such things.
I have mentioned in previous columns that reading Dale Carnegie’s wonderful book, How to Stop Worrying and Start Living, some 41 years ago marked a major turning point in my life and my way of thinking. I read the book over and over, and I still refer to it occasionally. Carnegie spent seven years researching and writing the book. Among other things, he studied what the great philosophers of all ages had said about worry, read many biographies of great people and did additional original research to discover how various people had managed to conquer worry. He pulled together the knowledge that was accumulated throughout history and brilliantly made this information available to the lay reader. How to Stop Worrying and Start Living was first published 72 years ago, and Dale Carnegie has been dead for 61 years. Yet the book still remains one of the most popular and useful books ever published, and it is still available in most bookstores today.
My way of thinking was transformed in a major way by reading Dale Carnegie’s book. I became convinced, and remain convinced to this day, that many people are slaves to their own worry and can set themselves free only by finding a way to substantially reduce the amount of worrying they do. Nobody can totally eliminate worry, and nobody should even try to do so, because some kinds of worry are productive. For example, if you worry that you might not make the April 15 deadline for filing your federal income tax return, that worry will probably motivate you to make sure the return is filed on time.
But if you are worried about getting some terrible disease that you are no more likely to get than anyone else, you are diminishing the quality of your life by such worry. In fact, if your worry puts enough stress on your body, it may even lower your immune system and increase your likelihood of becoming ill. We should all try to make it a rule to not worry about things over which we have no control. Such worry is irrational, and it reduces the quality of life for us and for those who care about us.
Think about it.
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Copyright 2025
Allen W. Smith
