Don't worry, be happy

There was a man who went to the psychiatrist so worried about his health. He believed he was sick. The psychiatrist used therapy and talked the man out of his worries. It was his stressful thoughts that were making him sick.

The man went home feeling so much better. But the next day he showed up again at the psychiatrist’s clinic more frantic than when he came the day before. Puzzled, the doctor asked him what was the problem this time. “Doctor,” the man replied, “I’m so worried. There’s something I should worry about that I can’t remember!”

That’s the way many of us are. We fill our lives with worries, about just anything. Sometimes when we find ourselves with nothing to worry about, we suddenly worry all the more. We’d think there must be some important concerns that have slipped our mind.

Worry is a very common thing with us, so common that we tend to underestimate its power to tear us down. Worry fatigues the mind and lowers the body’s resistance to disease. Many of our ailments, physical and mental, are due to too much worrying.

In time, our body manifests the negative thoughts we keep. We develop so-called psychosomatic symptoms. This type of ailment is often more complex and difficult to cure than purely physical afflictions.

Worry can kill, literally and figuratively. Even before actual sickness can wreck a habitual worrier, the person already suffers enough emotional agonies, his life being a chain of apprehensions and fears. But why do we worry?

We just can’t help it. Worrying is a well entrenched habit in us. Since childhood, we’ve been trained to worry about anything: how to improve our grades, how to be better than the neighbour’s child, how to ensure our own salvation in the hereafter.

Worrying is not a bad thing altogether. We need to worry to move us to do something to enhance ourselves and make our lives better. But chronic, senseless worrying is bad. The habit has to be broken if we have to live healthy, satisfying lives.

Of course, it’s not easy to undo a long-standing habit. As the saying goes, “Old habits die hard.” And they won’t go away if we don’t start kicking them out. Like breaking any bad habit, we have got to consciously decide on conquering our worries.

The time to start is right now. There’s no better time. Let’s decide to make this day one worry-free day for us. Once a worrisome thought comes to mind, let’s think that it will turn out in either one of only two possibilities: it may happen or it may not.

If we are worried about an impending situation, either it will come to pass or it won’t. And our worrying alone will not change the outcome. If there’s anything we must and can do, let’s move at once and do it. If there’s none, worrying will only make us too weak to cope with the situation should things turn out as we fear they will.

Passive worrying does not help a bit. Instead, by the time the dreaded situation actually occurs, we will already be so exhausted that we won’t be able to properly deal with it. If we stop worrying, even if the worst happens, we will have the poise and energy to handle it.

There’s no sense in thinking that things cannot go right unless we worry about them. It’s quite similar to swimming. When we are so anxious to stay afloat in the water, we’d flap our arms wildly and the panicky effort makes us take on some more body weight. Then we begin to sink instead of float. We need to let go and relax, to make it work. That’s how swimming is learned, whether in the swimming pool or in the sea of life.

Worrying is like wastefully tiring our body in the open waters of life and virtually drowning ourselves. But if we learn to be calm amid the many concerns of living, live one day at a time, we will stay afloat even in the midst of the worst turbulence. And, overall, our life will be much better.

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Watch POR VIDA TV’s season-ender episode “Street Life/ The Other World”. The show tells the story of the people living on the city’s sidewalks, and of a man who claims to have a glimpse of the spirit world. This Tuesday at 6:30 p.m., on Studio 23.