How to Stop Worrying
Learning to relax in an uncertain world…

In 1909, the legendary writer and speaker Dale Carnegie described himself “as one of the unhappiest lads in New York.” Why? In Carnegie’s words — worry. Despite his education, he never learned how to stop worrying.
His struggles and fascination with the topic led him to write the classic, How to Stop Worrying and Start Living. As Carnegie put it,
I went to New York’s great public library at Fifth Avenue and Forty-second Street and discovered to my astonishment, that this library had only twenty-two books listed under the title WORRY. … Almost nine times as many books about worms as about worry! Astounding, isn’t it? Since worry is one of the biggest problems facing mankind, you would think, wouldn’t you, that every high school and college in the land would give a course on ‘How to Stop Worrying’?
Carnegie dedicated seven years to writing and researching. He read what the philosophers of all ages had to say about worry. Along with hundreds of biographies — from Confucius to Churchill.
How do you think about (or define) worrying?
A simple definition is to feel or experience concern or anxiety. Worrying (at normal levels) is a natural and healthy part of being human.
But how do we know when our worries go too far?
Figures like Carnegie, Seneca, Montaigne, and others suggest we tend to worry excessively. In a letter known today as On Groundless Fears, Seneca stressed to Lucilius,
There are more things, Lucilius, likely to frighten us than there are to crush us; we suffer more often in imagination than in reality. … Accordingly, some things torment us more than they ought; some torment us before they ought; and some torment us when they ought not to torment us at all. We are in the habit of exaggerating, or imagining, or anticipating sorrow.
We are creatures of habit. Therefore, the more time we spend worrying — the more we worry. Excessive worrying is a habit that most of us would be wise to break.
Interestingly, our worries are often focused on the future (on situations and events that may never arise). “What I advise you to do is not to be unhappy before the crisis comes,” Seneca wrote to Lucilius; the dangers you paled as if they were threatening you may never come upon you.
Learning to relax in an uncertain world is far more challenging than it sounds. Our worries are rational at times. The truth is, any one of us could die (become injured, ill, etc.) today, tomorrow, or the next. Yet, the harsh reality is that none of our worries will change this fact.
The same is true of past events…
In a letter to his daughters, the American essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote these wise words: “Finish each 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.”
Thank you for reading; I hope you found something useful.
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