“Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.” -Philippians 4:6
“Anxiety is the overestimation of danger and the underestimation of our ability to cope.” -Fr. Mike Schmitz
“Worrying is like a rocking chair; it gives you something to do, but it gets you nowhere.” -Glenn Turner
“I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them have never happened.” -Mark Twain
“There are more things, Lucilius, likely to frighten us than there are to crush us; we suffer more often in imagination than in reality.” -Seneca, Letters From A Stoic
“Action is the antidote to anxiety.” -Jock Willink
“Action may not always bring happiness; but there is no happiness without action.” -Benjamin Disraeli
When you care about something or someone, you will automatically be concerned. And that’s okay, because concern gets you to ask the question, “What can I do?” Which then leads to action. And if you can take action, take it.
But do not mistake caring with worry. Because worry doesn’t lead you to ask the question, “What can I do?” Instead it leads you to ask the question, “What if?” Which then just leads you to spin out thinking about a future you can’t predict, let alone control. Which leads you nowhere.
If you need more reason to not be anxious, consider a 2019 study conducted by researchers at Penn State that states that 91.4% of the things people worried about never came true. And for many of the remaining 8.6% percent, the actual outcome of the things that did come true were significantly better than they expected,
So why waste a single precious second being worried about something that’s probably never going to come true?
But if you do find yourself in that anxious state, perhaps say a prayer for clarity and guidance. And then take action. It really does help.
