How to stop worrying and start living
When the brutal Chinese military leaders tortured their prisoners, they tied them on the hands and feet and put them under a sack of water, from which it constantly dripped. .. dripped. .. day and night. These drops of water, constantly falling on the head, eventually began to seem to prisoners capturing the hammer. As a result, people went insane.
Anxiety is reminiscent of continuously falling drops of pods, and its constant exposure often drives people to insanity and suicide.
Little that can grow old, embitter a woman and destroy her beauty as quickly as anxiety. Anxiety gives the person a repulsive expression. It makes you squeeze your jaws and covers your face with wrinkles. Anxiety gives a gloomy look. From anxiety hair can turn gray, in some cases they even fall out. From worry, the skin of the face goes bad. ..
The load of the future, added to the weight of the past, which you take on yourself in the present, makes you stumble on the path of even the strongest. .. The senseless grate of energy, mental suffering, nervous anxiety,who worries about the future. .. Educate yourself in the habit of living in a period of time, separated from the past and the future by "geometric bulkheads".The best way to prepare for tomorrow is to concentrate your forces and abilities on the best implementation of today's affairs. And further. It is better to use your time to solve the problems of tomorrow than regret what happened yesterday.
Professor William James, the founder of applied psychology, told his students: "Reconcile with existing circumstances, because. .. accepting what happened as inevitable is the first stage in overcoming the consequences in any difficult situation."
In fact, when we are reconciled to the worst, we have nothing to lose. So, it automatically means: we can all purchase!
That's reasonable, is not it? However, millions of people have destroyed their lives with fierce indignation, because they refused to accept the worst;refused to act to change something;refused to save what was in their power, from destruction. Instead of trying to change their lives, they engaged in grievous complaints about "blows of fate".Such complaints could only lead to a painful condition called melancholia.
We must prepare ourselves to be able to cope with various kinds of anxiety. To solve any problem, you first need to collect the facts. After all, if we have no facts at our disposal, we can not even try to solve problems intelligently. Without facts, we are only able to panic. Confusion is the main cause of concern. Half of the worry in the world is caused by people trying to make decisions before they get enough information to make these decisions. If there is a problem in front of me that needs to be solved at three o'clock next Tuesday, I do not even try to make a decision until next Tuesday. In the interval, I concentrate on collecting all the facts related to this problem. I do not worry, do not panic, do not lose sleep. I just concentrate on collecting facts. By the time Tuesday comes, if I have all the facts at my disposal, the problem usually resolves itself! If a person devotes his time to collecting facts and does it impartially and objectively, his anxiety usually disappears in the light of knowledge.
I now know beyond a doubt that the biggest problem we face( in fact, almost the only problem with which you and I have to deal) is the choice of the right frame of mind. If we are able to make this choice, we will find ourselves on the road to solving all our problems. The great philosopher Marcus Aurelius, who ruled the Roman Empire, expressed this thought in nine words - nine words that can determine your destiny: "Our life is what we think of it."
In fact, if we think of happiness, we feel happy. If there is fear in our minds, we are afraid. If we think about diseases, it is possible that we will get sick. If we think about failures, in some ways we will certainly fail. If we are mired in self-pity, everyone will avoid us.
Do you think that I'm promoting a primitively optimistic attitude to all your problems? No, unfortunately, life is not so simple. But I am for the fact that we must develop a positive, not negative attitude to the world around us. In other words, we should take care of solving our problems, but not worry about them.
If you want to stop worrying and start living, follow one more rule: keep track of your luck, not your troubles!
Every day we work without rest in the service and spin like squirrels in a wheel. In the hours after work, when we enjoy the rest and, it seems, should feel the happiest, the devil of anxiety lies in wait for us. After all, just at these moments we are thinking about the fact that nothing has been achieved in life, that we are marking time: we think that the boss had something in mind when he made his remark, or regretted that he was bald. Our imagination then draws ridiculous pictures of the alleged failure of life's failures, and exaggerates the slightest mistake. At this time, our brain resembles a motor that operates without load. It works at a frantic speed, and there is a threat of burning the bearings or completely destroying it. To cure anxiety it is necessary to be completely engaged, doing something constructive.
One of the most tragic properties of human nature, as far as I know, is our tendency to postpone the realization of our aspirations for the future. We all dream of some magical garden full of roses that can be seen somewhere beyond the horizon - instead of enjoying those roses that grow under our window today.
"How strange we spend that little period of time called our life," wrote Stephen Lee-kok. "The child says," When I become a boy. "But what does this mean? The young man says: "When I become an adult."Becoming an adult, he says: "When I'm Married."Finally, he marries, but this little changes. He starts to think: "When I can retire."And then, when he reaches retirement age, he looks back at the path he has gone through: the cold wind blows in his face, and he reveals the cruel truth about how much he has missed in life, how everything has irretrievably gone. We understand too late that the meaning of life lies in life itself, in the rhythm of every day and hour. "
Two people looked through the prison grille. One saw dirt, another saw the stars.
When I was a little boy, I once played with the guys in the attic of an old, abandoned wooden house in northwestern Missouri. When I climbed off the attic, at one point I put my feet on the windowsill, and then jumped. On the index finger of my left hand I had a ring;and when I jumped, the ring caught on the nail head and I tore off my finger.
I screamed. I was terrified. I was sure that I would die. But when the arm healed, I did not worry about it for a second. What's the use of thinking about this? I reconciled with the inevitable. Sometimes I do not remember for months that I have only four fingers on my left hand.
Several years ago I met a man who ran a freight elevator in one of the business buildings in downtown New York. I noticed that he did not have his left hand. I asked if his lack of left arm was troubling. He replied: "Not at all, I almost do not remember this. I'm not married and I remember this only when I need to thread a needle. "
It's amazing how quickly we reconcile with almost any life situation, if we are forced to do this. We adapt to it and forget about it.
On our way of life we find ourselves in many unpleasant situations that can not be changed. They can not be different. We have a choice. We can either accept these situations as inevitable and adapt to them, or ruin our lives by protesting against the inevitable, and perhaps to bring ourselves to a nervous breakdown. I will give you the wise advice of one of my favorite philosophers, William James: "Agree to accept what is already there. Reconciliation with what has already happened is the first step towards overcoming the consequences of any misfortune. "