Don’t Worry, Be Happy

We’re all familiar with the words of that song so popular a few years back. Lots of wisdom in it, if we can learn to not worry that is!

          My mother-in-law used to say: “Don’t fret. It gets you nowhere.” She was right of course. Worry is indeed a waste of time and a waste of energy which makes us spin our wheels for nothing. It becomes very sad when it’s something chronic done out of habit. Easier said than done when you have a family, I say.

          Some of us are like Peanuts’ Charlie Brown who said: “Sometimes you lie in bed at night and don’t have a single thing to worry about. That always worries me.” I know exactly what he meant!

          But what exactly is worry? We worry when we focus on disturbing thoughts about problems that could happen or about something we attempt to avoid. Dale Carnegie’s comments on the subject are well known. Who hasn’t heard of his book How to Stop Worrying and Start Living? One of his suggestions is to use the law of averages and examine what the odds of the things we worry about happening at all.

          He added: do you remember what you were worrying about a year ago? How did it turn out? Chances are you worried for nothing about things that never happened. Don’t cross your bridges until you come to them is Carnegie’s advice.

           I believe that one sure way to drive worry away is to keep busy. It occupies the mind with concrete positive thoughts that do not allow us to think of frightening things that most surely will never happen.

           Dwight Eisenhower had the right idea when he said: Worry is a word that I don’t allow myself to use.