There will always be something worth worrying about. There will always be something worthy of your attention. Something going wrong, something that could be better, something coming in the future, something you did poorly in the past.
It is always possible to fall into anxiety, stress, guilt, or shame, and to focus on the clouds on the horizon. But, life is not meant to be lived with a focus on the bad. To quote C.S. Lewis:
“In other words, do not let us begin by exaggerating the novelty of our situation. Believe me, dear sir or madam, you and all whom you love were already sentenced to death before the atomic bomb was invented… It is perfectly ridiculous to go about whimpering and drawing long faces because the scientists have added one more chance of painful and premature death to a world which already bristled with such chances and in which death itself was not a chance at all, but a certainty.”
On Living in An Atomic Age – C.S. Lewis
His advice:
“…the first action to be taken is to pull ourselves together. If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things—praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts—not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs. They may break our bodies (a microbe can do that) but they need not dominate our minds.“
Lewis was talking about the atomic bomb, but the advice applies all the way down to the trivial stresses of day-to-day life.
Somehow in the midst of many things that could go wrong, you can choose to fix your sight on what is right. To savor the blue sky, instead of worrying about the clouds on the horizon. Feeling the sun on your skin and not fretting about the rain that may come later.
We hold up the hyper-vigilant and anxious workaholic as a model for success, but it is truly a blueprint for unhappiness. Living a good life requires you to sometimes ignore everything else and focus on the good in the present moment.
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