THE CURSE OF WORRY
This monster dogs us from the cradle to the grave. There is no
occasion so sacred but it is there. Unbidden it comes to the wedding
and the funeral alike. It is at every reception, every banquet; it
occupies a seat at every table.
No human intellect can estimate the unutterable havoc and ruin wrought
by worry. It has ever forced genius to do the work of mediocrity; it
has caused more failures, more broken hearts, more blasted hopes, than
any other one cause since the dawn of the world.
_Did you ever hear of any good coming to any human being from worry_?
Did it ever help anybody to better his condition? Does it not
always--everywhere--do just the opposite by impairing the health,
exhausting the vitality, lessening efficiency?
What have not men done under the pressure of worry! They have plunged
into all sorts of vice; have become drunkards, drug fiends; have sold
their very souls in their efforts to escape this monster.
Think of the homes which it has broken up; the ambitions it has ruined;
the hopes and prospects it has blighted! Think of the suicide victims
of this demon! If there is any devil in existence, is it not worry,
with all its attendant progeny of evils?
Yet, in spite of all the tragic evils that follow in its wake, a
visitor from another world would get the impression that worry is one
of our dearest, most helpful friends, so closely do we hug it to
ourselves and so loath are we to part from it.
Is it not unaccountable that people who know perfectly well that
success and happiness both depend on keeping themselves in condition to
get the most possible out of their energies should harbor in their
minds the enemy of this very success and happiness? Is it not strange
that they should form this habit of anticipating evils that will
probably never come, when they know that anxiety and fretting will not
only rob them of peace of mind and strength and ability to do their
work, but also of precious years of life?
No man can utilize his normal power who dissipates his nervous energy
in useless anxiety. Nothing will sap one's vitality and blight one's
ambition or detract from one's real power in the world more than the
worrying habit.
Work kills no one, but worry has killed vast multitudes. It is not the
doing things which injures us so much as the dreading to do them--not
only performing them mentally over and over again, but anticipating
something disagreeable in their performance.
Many of us approach an unpleasant task in much the same condition as a
runner who begins his start such a long distance away that by the time
he reaches his objective point--the ditch or the stream which is to
test his agility--he is too exhausted to jump across. Worry not only
saps vitality and wastes energy, but it also seriously affects the
quality of one's work. It cuts down ability. A man can not get the
highest quality of efficiency into his work when his mind is troubled.
The mental faculties must have perfect freedom before they will give
out their best. A troubled brain can not think clearly, vigorously,
and logically. The attention can not be concentrated with anything
like the same force when the brain cells are poisoned with anxiety as
when they are fed by pure blood and are clean and unclouded. The blood
of chronic worriers is vitiated with poisonous chemical substances and
broken-down tissues, according to Professor Elmer Gates and other noted
scientists, who have shown that the passions and the harmful emotions
cause actual chemical changes in the secretions and generate poisonous
substances in the body which are fatal to healthy growth and action.
One of the worst forms of worry is the brooding over failure. It
blights the ambition, deadens the purpose and defeats the very object
the worrier has in view.
Some people have the unfortunate habit of brooding over their past
lives, castigating themselves for their shortcomings and mistakes,
until their whole vision is turned backward instead of forward, and
they see everything in a distorted light, because they are looking only
on the shadow side.
The longer the unfortunate picture which has caused trouble remains in
the mind, the more thoroughly it becomes imbedded there, and the more
difficult it is to remove it.
Are we not convinced that a power beyond our control runs the universe,
that every moment of worry detracts from our success capital and makes
our failure more probable; that every bit of anxiety and fretfulness
leaves its mark on the body, interrupts the harmony of our physical and
mental well-being, and cripples efficiency, and that this condition is
at war with our highest endeavor?
Is it not strange that people will persist in allowing little worries,
petty vexations, and unnecessary frictions to grind life away at such a
fearful rate that old age stares them in the face in middle life? Look
at the women who are shriveled and shrunken and aged at thirty, not
because of the hard work they have done, or the real troubles they have
had, but because of habitual fretting, which has helped nobody, but has
brought discord and unhappiness to their homes.
Somewhere I read of a worrying woman who made a list of possible
unfortunate events and happenings which she felt sure would come to
pass and be disastrous to her happiness and welfare. The list was
lost, and to her amazement, when she recovered it, a long time
afterwards, she found that not a single unfortunate prediction in the
whole catalogue of disasters had been realized.
Is not this a good suggestion for worriers? Write down everything
which you think is going to turn out badly, and then put the list
aside. You will be surprised to see what a small percentage of the
doleful things ever come to pass.
It is a pitiable thing to see vigorous men and women, who have
inherited godlike qualities and who bear the impress of divinity,
wearing anxious faces and filled with all sorts of fear and
uncertainty, worrying about yesterday, to-day, to-morrow--everything
imaginable.
"Fear runs like a baleful thread through the whole web of life from
beginning to end," says Dr. Holcomb. "We are born into the atmosphere
of fear and dread, and the mother who bore us had lived in the same
atmosphere for weeks and months before we were born. We are afraid of
our parents, afraid of our teachers, afraid of our playmates, afraid of
ghosts, afraid of rules and regulations and punishments, afraid of the
doctor, the dentist, the surgeon. Our adult life is a state of chronic
anxiety, which is fear in a milder form. We are afraid of failure in
business, afraid of disappointments and mistakes, afraid of enemies,
open or concealed; afraid of poverty, afraid of public opinion, afraid
of accidents, of sickness, of death, and unhappiness after death. Man
is like a haunted animal from the cradle to the grave, the victim of
real or imaginary fears, not only his own, but those reflected upon him
from the superstitions, self-deceptions, sensory illusions, false
beliefs, and concrete errors of the whole human race, past and present."
Most of us are foolish children, afraid of our shadows, so handicapped
in a thousand ways that we can not get efficiency into our life work.
A man who is filled with fear is not a real man. He is a puppet, a
mannikin, an apology of a man.
Quit fearing things that may never happen, just as you would quit any
bad practise which has caused you suffering. Fill your mind with
courage, hope, and confidence.
Do not wait until fear thoughts become intrenched in your mind and your
imagination. Do not dwell upon them. Apply the antidote instantly,
and the enemies will flee. There is no fear so great or intrenched so
deeply in the mind that it can not be neutralized or entirely
eradicated by its opposite. The opposite suggestion will kill it.
Once Dr. Chalmers was riding on a stage-coach beside the driver, and he
noticed that John kept hitting the off leader a severe crack with his
whip. When he asked him why he did this, John answered: "Away yonder
there is a white stone; that off leader is afraid of that stone; so by
the crack of my whip and the pain in his legs I want to get his mind
off from it." Dr. Chalmers went home, elaborated the idea, and wrote
"The Expulsive Power of a New Affection." You must drive out fear by
putting a new idea into the mind.
Fear, in any of its expressions, like worry or anxiety, can not live an
instant in your mind in the presence of the opposite thought, the image
of courage, fearlessness, confidence, hope, self-assurance,
self-reliance. Fear is a consciousness of weakness. It is only when
you doubt your ability to cope with the thing you dread that fear is
possible. Fear of disease, even, comes from a consciousness that you
will not be able to successfully combat it.
During an epidemic of a dreaded contagious disease, people who are
especially susceptible and full of fear become panic-stricken through
the cumulative effect of hearing the subject talked about and discussed
on every hand and the vivid pictures which come from reading the
newspapers. Their minds (as in the case of yellow fever) become full
of images of the disease, of its symptoms--black vomit, delirium,--and
of death, mourning, and funerals.
If you never accomplish anything else in life, get rid of worry. There
are no greater enemies of harmony than little anxieties and petty
cares. Do not flies aggravate a nervous horse more than his work? Do
not little naggings, constantly touching him with the whip, or jerking
at the reins, fret and worry him much more than the labor of drawing
the carriage?
It is the little pin-pricks, the petty annoyances of our everyday life,
that mar our comfort and happiness and rob us of more strength than the
great troubles which we nerve ourselves to meet. It is the perpetual
scolding and fault-finding of an irritable man or woman which ruins the
entire peace and happiness of many a home.
The most deplorable waste of energy in human life is caused by the
fatal habit of anticipating evil, of fearing what the future has in
store for us, and under no circumstances can the fear or worry be
justified by the situation, for it is always an imaginary one, utterly
groundless and without foundation.
What we fear is invariably something that has not yet happened. It
does not exist; hence is not a reality. If you are actually suffering
from a disease you have feared, then fear only aggravates every painful
feature of your illness and makes its fatal issue more probable.
The fear habit shortens life, for it impairs all the physiological
processes. Its power is shown by the fact that it actually changes the
chemical composition of the secretions of the body. Fear victims not
only age prematurely but they also die prematurely. All work done when
one is suffering from a sense of fear or foreboding has little
efficiency. Fear strangles originality, daring, boldness; it kills
individuality, and weakens all the mental processes. Great things are
never done under a sense of fear of some impending danger. Fear always
indicates weakness, the presence of cowardice. What a slaughterer of
years, what a sacrificer of happiness and ambitions, what a miner of
careers this monster has been! The Bible says, "A broken spirit drieth
the bones." It is well known that mental depression--melancholy--will
check very materially the glandular secretions of the body and
literally dry up the tissues.
Fear depresses normal mental action, and renders one incapable of
acting wisely in an emergency, for no one can think clearly and act
wisely when paralyzed by fear.
When a man becomes melancholy and discouraged about his affairs, when
he is filled with fear that he is going to fail, and is haunted by the
specter of poverty and a suffering family, before he realizes it, he
attracts the very thing he dreads, and the prosperity is crushed out of
his business. But he is a _mental_ failure first.
If, instead of giving up to his fear, a man would _persist in keeping
prosperity in his mind_, assume a hopeful, optimistic attitude, and
would conduct his business in a systematic, economical, far-sighted
manner, actual failure would be comparatively rare. But when a man
becomes discouraged, when he loses heart and grip, and becomes
panic-stricken and a victim of worry, he is not in a position to make
the effort which is absolutely necessary to bring victory, and there is
a shrinkage all along the line.
There is not a single redeeming feature about worry or any of its
numerous progeny. It is always, everywhere, an unmitigated curse.
Although there is no reality in fear, no truth behind it, yet
everywhere we see people who are slaves to this monster of the
imagination.