Worry Is Wasted Mental Energy
First of all, let’s define worry. There are many ways we could
describe it. Worry is fear - painting pictures in your mind. And if
you watch that mental movie too long you get a false picture of how
things really are. Worry is a mental broadcasting station and more
often than not it is false or at least distorted propaganda. Worry
has that sneaky way of stopping short of giving you all the facts.
Worry is often the trickery of mentally filtered facts on the negative
side, and the bold declarations that these are all the facts.
Worry has the mental audacity to suggest that the elevator
only runs one way – down. Many times worry is a five-alarm bell for
a wastebasket fire. And worry is a depletion of constructive
emotion. It’s wasted mental energy. It’s like letting the starter run
the battery down when the car won’t start. And worry is most often
a lack of all the facts: a lack of full understanding, a lack of total
information, and an unpreparedness of ability, knowledge, talent,
courage, faith, and all the other virtues. That should give us a
better definition of worry. And remember, left unchecked, it can
become like a mad dog lose in the house. And the sorrow and pain
and regret are too large a price to pay, not to do something about it.
And to do it now.
You see, if you contemplated the total sum of human suffering
long enough, it would drive you mad. You must understand how
life is: human suffering, man’s inhumanity to man, war, disease,
and poverty. But it must be in what I call its rightful ratio of your
mental and emotional time.
So much for what worry is.