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Worrying
(Photo by Geekgirly)

Several years ago, a guy came up to me before a church service and said, “This morning I was really feeling sorry for myself. Then I came into church and saw you sitting here in a wheelchair. You actually are worse off than me, but you had a big smile on your face. So I figured what do I have to complain about?”

This man learned a valuable lesson in how to stop worrying. He began to appreciate what he had.

Too often we worry about what we don’t have and don’t appreciate what we do have. We worry that we have bills to pay, but we don’t appreciate that we have a job to pay those bills. We worry about the high cost of our monthly mortgage payment, but we don’t appreciate that we have a roof over our heads. We worry about the cost of gasoline, but we don’t appreciate that we have a car. We worry about a toothache, but we don’t appreciate that, in general, we have good health.

Sometimes it takes seeing someone worse off than ourselves before we appreciate what we have. This is even true for me. By many people’s standards, I’m severely disabled. I use an electric wheelchair because I’m basically paralyzed from the shoulders down. I use a ventilator because I can’t breathe on my own. Yet even with these difficulties, I’m not as bad off as other people. My roommate has ALS (or Lou Gehrig’s disease). In many ways, he is worse off than I am. Most days, he doesn’t even get out of bed. Although he might also say he’s better off than me in the fact that he has children and grandchildren. So, in whatever situation we are in, we can always find someone worse off than we are.

Learn how to stop worrying by appreciating what you have.

How do you stop worrying? Please share your tips in the comments.

Forward Habit’s series on worrying:

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