“Worrying can give even very small things a big shadow.”
–Anonymous
There is no surer way to make ourselves miserable than by developing the worry habit. Some of us worry about anything and everything. If we can’t think of anything to worry about, we worry that we have forgotten something about which we should be worrying. In fact, some of us worry almost daily no matter how good our lives are at the time.
None of us can ever be truly happy unless we restrict our worrying to only the major problems of life. There will probably never be a single day in any of our lives that we won’t have at least some small problems. That is just a part of life, but most of us face truly major problems, such as the loss of a loved one, the loss of a job or critical illness, only occasionally. It is impossible to be totally happy during such times, and most of us tend to worry more than usual during such periods.
However, worry is productive only if it motivates us to take actions that will improve our situation. For example, if we are unemployed and worried about our financial future, such worry motivates us to take actions that can lead to a new job or career. On the other hand, if we have a reasonably secure job and constantly worry about losing it, we are only hurting ourselves needlessly. We should be happy that we have a good job, and we should make sure that we do not do anything that will jeopardize our employment, but worrying about the loss of a job under such circumstances accomplishes nothing.
In his outstanding book How to Stop Worrying and Start Living, Dale Carnegie writes, “You and I are standing at the meeting place of two eternities: the vast past that has endured forever, and the future that is plunging on to the last syllable of recorded time. We can’t possibly live in either of those eternities. But, by trying to do so, we can wreck both our bodies and our minds.” Too many of us try to live in the past or the future instead of focusing most of our thinking on the only time period in which any of us can live–the present. It is only natural to spend some time thinking about the past and the future, but we dare not focus too much on these time periods, which are beyond our grasp. We can plan for the future and we may get some pleasure from reminiscing about the past, but most of our time and energy must be focused on the present. In the words of Dale Carnegie, we need to learn to “live in day-tight compartments.”
Think about it.
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Copyright 2025
Allen W. Smith
