Time and again, one written over 60 years ago never fails to amaze me with its power to help lead a better life. Consistently rated as one of the best of all times, Dale Carnegie’s How To Stop Worrying And Start Living does indeed help me both stop worrying and start living. And this book offers , rather than an answer, that might be the solution to most of our worries.
“What is the worst that can possibly happen?”
Asking myself this question has cleared my mind more times than I can recall. Even on those occasions when it didn’t solve my worry, it served as the first to finding a solution.
Statistically speaking, for me and those close to me that I have observed, “the worst” never happened ninety percent of the time. Yet invariably most of us tend to put ourselves through the torture of imagining the worst, or worse, begin to accept it. The above question isn’t a pearl of wisdom from another planet — it is one of the simplest techniques to conquer worry but often elusive to us.
Let’s look at it this way. By asking yourself what is the worst that can happen, you will also realize that it’s not the end of the world. Now, what are that the worst will happen? Little to zero, most of the time. What is the next worst thing that can happen? And what are its odds? Chances are it might happen, but it might also be something that would only hurt you at a minimum. The trouble with most of us is we hit our brakes at imagining the worst, and do not train our heads to take a step back and analyze the situation dispassionately.
Try this technique on for size — you’d be amazed at how little you worry, and how much you live.
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