“There is only one way to happiness and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power of our will.”
–Epictetus
Those words were spoken nineteen hundred years ago, by a Greek philosopher who was born a slave and lived a simple life with few possessions, and they are just as true today as they were the day they were first spoken. These words are at the very core of my own personal philosophy of life, and I do not believe that anyone can find true happiness until, or unless, they reach the point where they can focus most of their attention on the present and on those things that are under their control.
Worries that motivate us to take action that can reduce the possibility of misfortune visiting us are good worries. For example, worrying about our health can motivate us to live a healthier lifestyle and practice preventive medicine. Also, being aware of the possibility that there could be a financial crisis in our future should motivate us to be a bit more careful about how we manage money. But worrying about things that are totally beyond our power is a recipe for perpetual misery.
A major source of worry and unhappiness for some people involves regrets about the past. Worrying about the past is an exercise in futility. The past is over and done with, and there is no way that any of us can travel back in time and change anything that happened. There are a few things we can do that might ease our regrets. If we have done something that hurt another person, we can apologize and try to make amends. If we made a bad mistake, we can try to learn from the mistake so that we will not make the same mistake again. But most of the things that happened in the past are totally beyond our power, and we should try to push the bad memories as deep into our subconscious minds as possible.
Worry about the future is another burden that too many people carry around with them. They want guarantees that they and their loved ones will live long, happy lives with a minimum of problems, but, since there are no guarantees in life, some people try to substitute worry for the guarantees that they cannot have. Worrying about the future is almost as futile as worrying about the past. The best we can do is to use the law of averages to outlaw our worries. Most of the things we worry about never happen. It is true that any person who is alive and well today could suddenly die tomorrow, but it is not very likely to happen, and I think we have to operate on the assumption that it will not happen. If our assumption turns out to be wrong, then we will have to deal with the consequences when they come.
It is hard to not worry about the future or the past. It takes discipline and practice to push worries about things over which we have no control out of our conscious minds. But it can be done, and the net results are worth the effort. The trick is to replace worrisome negative thoughts with pleasant thoughts.
Think about it, and do it.
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Copyright 2025
Allen W. Smith
