How to Break the Worry Habit

How to Break the Worry Habit


You DO NOT need to be a victim of worry. Reduced to its simplest form, what is worry? It is simply an unhealthy and destructive mental habit. You were not born with the worry habit. You acquired it. And because you can change any habit and any acquired attitude, you can cast worry from your mind. Since aggressive, direct action is essential in the elimination process, there is just one proper time to begin an effective attack on worry, and that is now. So let us start breaking your worry habit at once.

Why should we take the worry problem thus seriously? The reason is clearly stated by Dr. Smiley Blanton, eminent psychiatrist, "Anxiety is the great modern plague." A famous psychologist asserts that "fear is the most disintegrating enemy of human personality," and a prominent physician declares that "worry is the most subtle and destructive of all human diseases." Another physician tells us that thousands of people are ill because of "dammed-up anxiety." These sufferers have been unable to expel their anxieties which have turned inward on the personality, causing many forms of ill-health. The destructive quality of worry is indicated by the fact that the word itself is derived from an old Anglo-Saxon word meaning "to choke." If
someone were to put his fingers around your throat and press hard, cutting off the flow of vital power, it would be a dramatic demonstration of what you do to yourself by long-held and habitual worry.


We are told that worry is not infrequently a factor in arthritis. Physicians who have analyzed the causes of this prevalent disease assert that the following factors, at least some of them, are nearly always present in arthritic cases: financial disaster, frustration, tension, apprehension, loneliness, grief, long-held ill will, and habitual worry.


A clinic staff is said to have made a study of one hundred seventy-six American executives of the average age of forty-four years and discovered that one half had high blood pressure, heart disease, or ulcers. It was notable in every case of those thus afflicted that worry was a prominent factor.

The worrier, so it seems, is not likely to live as long as the person who learns to overcome his worries. The Rotarian magazine carried an article entitled "How Long Can You Live?" The author says that the waistline is the measure of your life line. The article also declares that if you want to live long, observe the following rules: (1) Keep calm. (2) Go to church. (3) Eliminate worry.

A survey shows that church members live longer than non-church members (better join the church if you don’t want to die young). Married people, according to the article, live longer than single people. Perhaps this is because a married couple can divide the worry. When you are single, you have to do it all alone.

A scientific expert on length of life made a study of some 450 people who lived to be one hundred years of age. He found that these people lived long and contented lives for the following reasons: (1) They kept busy. (2) They used moderation in all things. (3) They ate lightly and simply. (4) They got a great deal of fun out of life. (5) They were early to bed and early up. (6) They were free from worry and fear, especially fear of death. (7) They had serene minds and faith in God. Haven’t you often heard a person say, "I am almost sick with worry," and then add
with a laugh, "But I guess worry never really makes you ill." But that is where he is wrong. Worry can make you ill.

Dr. George W. Crile, famous American surgeon, said, "We fear not only in our minds but in our hearts, brains, and viscera, that whatever the cause of fear and worry, the effect can always be noted in the cells, tissues, and organs of the body." Dr. Stanley Cobb, neurologist, says that worry is intimately connected with the symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis.

A doctor recently stated that there is an epidemic of fear and worry in this country. "All doctors," he declared, "are having cases of illness which are brought on directly by fear, and aggravated by worry and a feeling of insecurity." But do not be discouraged, for you can overcome your worries. There is a remedy that will bring you sure relief. It can help you break the worry habit. And the first step to take in breaking it is simply to believe that you can. Whatever you believe
you can do, you can do, with God’s help.

Here, then, is a practical procedure which will help to eliminate abnormal worry from your experience.


Practice emptying the mind daily. This should be done preferably before retiring at night to avoid the retention by the consciousness of worries while you sleep. During sleep, thoughts tend to sink more deeply into the sub-conscious. The last five minutes before going to sleep are of extraordinary importance, for in that brief period the mind is most receptive to suggestion. It tends to absorb the last ideas that are entertained in waking consciousness.


This process of mind drainage is important in overcoming worry, for fear thoughts, unless drained off, can clog the mind and impede the flow of mental and spiritual power. But such thoughts can be emptied from the mind and will not accumulate if they are eliminated daily. To drain them, utilize a process of creative imagination. Conceive of yourself as actually emptying your mind of all anxiety and fear. Picture all worry thoughts as flowing out as you would let water flow from a basin by removing the stopper. Repeat the following affirmation during this visualization: "With God’s help I am now emptying my mind of all anxiety, all fear, all sense of
insecurity." Repeat this slowly five times, then add, "I believe that my mind is now emptied of all anxiety, all fear, all sense of insecurity." Repeat that statement five times, meanwhile holding a mental picture of your mind as being emptied of these concepts. Then thank God for thus freeing you from fear. Then go to sleep. In starting the curative process the foregoing method should be utilized in midmorning and midafternoon as well as at bedtime. Go into some quiet place for five minutes for this purpose. Faithfully perform this process and you will soon note
beneficial results.


The procedure may be further strengthened by imaginatively thinking of yourself as reaching into your mind and one by one removing your worries. A small child possesses an imaginative skill superior to that of adults. A child responds to the game of kissing away a hurt or throwing away a fear. This simple process works for the child because in his mind he believes that that is actually the end of it. The dramatic act is a fact for him and so it proves to be the end of the matter. Visualize your fears as being drained out of your mind and the visualization will in due course be actualized.


Imagination is a source of fear, but imagination may also be the cure of fear. "Imagineering" is the use of mental images to build factual results, and it is an astonishingly effective procedure. Imagination is not simply the use of fancy. The word imagination derives from the idea of imaging. That is to say, you form an image either of fear or of release from fear. What you "image" (imagine) may ultimately become a fact if held mentally with sufficient faith.


Therefore hold an image of yourself as delivered from worry and the drainage process will in time eliminate abnormal fear from your thoughts. However, it is not enough to empty the mind, for the mind will not long remain empty. It must be occupied by something. It cannot continue in a state of vacuum. Therefore, upon emptying the mind, practice refilling it. Fill it with thoughts of faith, hope, courage, expectancy. Say aloud such affirmations as the following: "God is now filling my mind with courage, with peace, with calm assurance. God is now protecting me from
all harm. God is now protecting my loved ones from all harm. God is now guiding me to right decisions. God will see me through this situation."


A half-dozen times each day crowd your mind with such thoughts as these until the mind is overflowing with them. In due course these thoughts of faith will crowd out worry. Fear is the most powerful of all thoughts with one exception, and that one exception is faith. Faith can always overcome fear. Faith is the one power against which fear cannot stand. Day by day, as you fill your mind with faith, there will ultimately be no room left for fear. This is the one great fact that no one should forget. Master faith and you will automatically master fear.


So the process is—empty the mind and cauterize it with God’s grace, then practice filling your mind with faith and you will break the worry habit.


Fill your mind with faith and in due course the accumulation of faith will crowd out fear. It will not be of much value merely to read this suggestion unless you practice it. And the time to begin practicing it is now while you think of it and while you are convinced that the number-one procedure in breaking the worry habit is to drain the mind daily of fear and fill the mind daily with faith. It is just as simple as that. Learn to be a practicer of faith until you become an expert in faith. Then fear cannot live in you.


The importance of freeing your mind of fear cannot be overemphasized. Fear something over a long period of time and there is a real possibility that by fearing you may actually help bring it to pass. The Bible contains a line which is one of the most terrible statements ever made- terrible in its truth: "For the thing which I greatly feared is come upon me . . ."( Job 3:25) Of course it will, for if you fear something continuously you tend to create conditions in your mind propitious to the development of that which you fear. An atmosphere is encouraged in which it can take root and grow. You tend to draw it to yourself.


But do not be alarmed. The Bible also constantly reiterates another great truth, "That which I have greatly believed has come upon me." It does not make that statement in so many words, and yet again and again and still again the Bible tells us that if we have faith "nothing is impossible" unto us, and "according to your faith be it done unto you." So if you shift your mind from fear to faith you will stop creating the object of your fear and will, instead, actualize the object of your faith. Surround your mind with healthy thoughts, thoughts of faith, and not fear, and you will produce faith results instead of fear results.


Strategy must be used in the campaign against the worry habit. A frontal atack on the main body of worry with the expectation of conquering it may prove difficult. Perhaps a more adroit plan is to conquer the outer fortifications one by one, gradually closing in on the main position.


To change the figure, it might be well to snip off the little worries on the farthest branches of your fear. Then work back and finally destroy the main trunk of worry.


At my farm it was necessary to take down a large tree, much to my regret. Cutting down a great old tree is fraught with sadness. Men came with a motor-driven saw and I expected them to start by cutting through the main trunk near the ground. Instead, they put up ladders and began snipping off the small branches, then the larger ones, and finally the top of the tree. Then all that remained was the huge central trunk, and in a few moments my tree lay neatly stacked as though it had not spent fifty years in growing.


"It we had cut the tree at the ground before trimming off the branches, it would have broken nearby trees in falling. It is easier to handle a tree the smaller you can make it," so explained the tree man.


The vast tree of worry which over long years has grown up in your personality can best be handled by making it as small as possible. Thus it is advisable to snip off the little worries and expressions of worry. For example, reduce the number of worry words in your conversation. Words may be the result of worry, but they also create worry. When a worry thought comes, to mind, immediately remove it with a faith thought and expression. For example: "I’m worried that I will miss the train." Then start early enough to be sure you get there on time. The less worrying you do, the more likely you are to start promptly, for the uncluttered mind is systematic and is able to regulate time.


As you snip off these small worries you will gradually cut back to the main trunk of worry. Then with your developed greater power you will be able to eliminate basic worry, i.e., the worry habit, from your life.


My friend Dr. Daniel A. Poling gives a valuable suggestion. He says that every morning before he arises he repeats these two words, "I believe" three times. Thus at the day’s beginning he conditions his mind to faith, and it never leaves him. His mind accepts the conviction that by faith he is going to overcome his problems and difficulties during the day. He starts the day with creative positive thoughts in his mind. He "believes," and it is very difficult to hold back the man who believes. I related Dr. Poling’s "I believe" technique in a radio talk and had a letter from a
woman who told me that she had not been very faithful to her religion which happened to be the Jewish faith. She said their home was filled with contention, bickering, worry, and unhappiness. Her husband, she declared, "drank far too much for his own good" and sat around all day doing no work. He weakly complained that he couldn’t find a job. This woman’s mother-in-law lived with her and the latter "whined and complained of her aches and pains all the while."


This woman said that Dr. Poling’s method impressed her and she decided to try it herself. So the next morning upon awakening she affirmed, "I believe, I believe, I believe." In her letter she excitedly reported, "It has been only ten days since I started this plan and my husband came home last night and told me he had a job paying $80 a week. And he also says that he is going to quit drinking. I believe he means it. What is even more wonderful, my mother-in-law has practically stopped complaining of her aches and pains. It is almost as if a miracle has happened in this house. My worries seem to have just about disappeared."


That does indeed seem almost magical, and yet that miracle happens every day to people who shift over from negative fear thoughts to positive faith thoughts and attitudes.


My good friend, the late Howard Chandler Christy, the artist, had many a sound anti-worry technique. Scarcely ever have I known a man so filled with the joy and delight of life. He had an indomitable quality, and his happiness was infectious.


My church has a policy of having the minister’s portrait painted sometime during his pastorate. This portrait hangs in the minister’s home until his death, when it reverts to the church and is placed in a gallery along with pictures of his predecessors. It is usually the policy of the Board of Elders and Deacons to have a portrait painted when in their wise judgment the minister is at the height of his good looks (mine was painted several years ago).


While sitting for Mr. Christy, I asked, "Howard, don’t you ever worry?"

He laughed. "No, not on your life. I don’t believe in it."

"Well," I commented, "that is quite a simple reason for not worrying. In fact, it seems to me too simple—you just don’t believe in it, therefore you don’t do it. Haven’t you ever worried?" I asked.


He replied, "Well, yes, I tried it once. I noticed that everybody else seemed to worry and I figured I must be missing something, so one day I made up my mind to try it. I set aside a day and said, ‘That is to be my worry day.’ I decided I would investigate this worry business and do some worrying just to see what it was like."


"The night before the day came I went to bed early to get a good night’s sleep to be rested up to do a good job of worrying the next day. In the morning I got up, ate a good breakfast—for you can’t worry successfully on an empty stomach—and then decided to get to my worrying. Well, I tried my best to worry until along about noon, but I just couldn’t make heads nor tails of it. It didn’t make sense to me, so I just gave it up."


He laughed one of those infectious laughs of his.


"But," I said, "you must have some other method of overcoming worry." He did indeed, and it is perhaps the best method of all.


"Every morning I spend fifteen minutes filling my mind full of God," he said. "When your mind is full of God, there is no room for worry. I fill my mind full of God every day and I have the time of my life all day long."


Howard Christy was a great artist with a brush, but he was an equally great artist with life because he was able to take a great truth and simplify it down to its basic fact, namely, that only that comes out of the mind which originally you put into the mind. Fill the mind with thoughts of God rather than with thoughts of fear, and you will get back thoughts of faith and courage.


Worry is a destructive process of occupying the mind with thoughts contrary to God’s love and care. Basically that is all worry is. The cure is to fill the mind with thoughts of God’s power. His protection, and His goodness. So spend fifteen minutes daily filling your mind full of God. Cram your mind full of the "I believe philosophy," and you will have no mental room left to ccommodate thoughts of worry and lack of faith.


Many people fail to overcome such troubles as worry because, unlike Howard Christy, they allow the problem to seem complicated and do not attack it with some simple technique. It is surprising how our most difficult personal problems often yield to an uncomplicated methodology. This is due to the fact that it is not enough to know what to do about difficulties. We must also know how to do that which should be done.


The secret is to work out a method of attack and keep working at it. There is value in doing something that dramatizes to our own minds that an effective counter-attack is in process. In so doing we bring spiritual forces to bear upon the problem in a manner both understandable and usable.


One of the best illustrations of this technique strategy against worry was a scheme developed by a businessman. He was a tremendous worrier. In fact he was fast getting himself into a bad state of nerves and ill-health. His particular form of worry was that he was always doubtful as to whether he had done or said the right thing. He was always rehashing his decisions and getting himself unnerved about them. He was a post-mortem expert. He is an exceptionally intelligent man, in fact a graduate of two universities, in both instances with honors. I suggested that he ought to work out some simple method that would help him to drop the day when it was over and go ahead into the future and forget it. I explained the gripping effectiveness of simple, dramatized spiritual truth.


It is always true that the greatest minds have the best ability to be simple, that is, they have the capacity to work out some simple plans for putting profound truths into operation, and this man did that in connection with his worries. I noticed that he was improving and commented on it.


"Oh, yes," he said, "I finally got the secret and it has worked amazingly well." He said that if I would drop into his office sometime toward the close of the day he would show me how he had broken the worry habit. He telephoned me one day and asked me to have dinner that evening. I met him at his office at closing time. He explained that he had broken his worry habit by working out "a little ritual" that he performed every night before leaving his office. And it was very unique. It made a lasting impression upon me.


We picked up our hats and coats and started toward the door. By the door of his office stood a wastebasket and above it on the wall was a calendar. It was not one of those calendars where you see a week or a month, or three months, it was a one-day calendar. You could see only one date at a time, and that date was in large print.


He said, "Now I will perform my evening ritual, the one that has helped me break the worry habit."


He reached up and tore off the calendar page for that particular day. He rolled it into a small ball and I watched with fascination as his fingers slowly opened and he dropped that "day" into the wastebasket. Then he closed his eyes and his lips moved, and I knew that he was praying, so was respectfully silent. Upon finishing his prayer he said aloud "Amen. O. K., the day is over. Come on, let’s go out and enjoy ourselves."


As we walked down the street I asked, "Would you mind telling me what you said in that prayer?"


He laughed and said, "I don’t think it is your kind of prayer." But I persisted, and he said, "Well, I pray something like this: ‘Lord, you gave me this day. I didn’t ask for it, but I was glad to have it. I did the best I could with it and you helped me, and I thank you. I made some mistakes. That was when I didn’t follow your advice, and I am sorry about that. Forgive me. But I had some victories and some successes, too, and I am grateful for your guidance. But now. Lord, mistakes or successes, victories or defeats, the day is over and I’m through with it, so I’m giving it back to you. Amen.’ "


Perhaps that isn’t an orthodox prayer, but it certainly proved to be an effective one. He dramatized the finishing of the day and he set his face to the future, expecting to do better the next day. He co-operated with God’s method. When the day is over, God blacks it out by bringing down the curtain of night. By this method this man’s past mistakes and failures, his sins of omission and commission gradually lost their hold on him. He was released from the worries that accumulated from his yesterdays. In this technique this man was practicing one of the most effective anti-worry formulas, which is described in these words, ". . . but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus." (Php 3:13-14)


Other practical anti-worry techniques may suggest themselves to you, and I should like to hear of those which after careful use prove effective. I believe that all of us who are interested in self-improvement are fellow students in God’s great spiritual laboratory. Together we work out practical methods of successful living. People from everywhere are kind enough to write me about their methods and the results attained. I try to be helpful in making tested methods available to others through books, sermons, newspaper columns, radio, television, and other media. In this manner there can be developed a great many people who have the know-how for
overcoming not only worry but other personal problems as well.


To conclude this chapter in a manner designed to help you go to work now to break the worry habit, I list a ten-point worry-breaking formula.


1. Say to yourself, "Worry is just a very bad mental habit. And I can change any habit with God’s help."

2. You became a worrier by practicing worry. You can become free of worry by practicing the opposite and stronger habit of faith. With all the strength and perseverance you can command, start practicing faith.


3. How do you practice faith? First thing every morning before you arise say out loud, "I believe," three times.


4. Pray, using this formula, "I place this day, my life, my loved ones, my work in the Lord’s hands. There is no harm in the Lord’s hands, only good. Whatever happens, whatever results, if I am in the Lord’s hands it is the Lord’s will and it is good."


5. Practice saying something positive concerning everything about which you have been talking negatively. Talk positively. For example, don’t say, "This is going to be a terrible day." Instead, affirm, "This is going to be a glorious day." Don’t say, "I’ll never be able to do that." Instead, affirm, "With God’s help I will do that."


6. Never participate in a worry conversation. Shoot an injection of faith into all your conversations. A group of people talking pessimistically can infect every person in the group with negativism. But by talking things up rather than down you can drive off that depressing atmosphere and make everyone feel hopeful and happy.


7. One reason you are a worrier is that your mind is literally saturated with apprehension thoughts, defeat thoughts, gloomy thoughts. To counteract, mark every passage in the Bible that speaks of faith, hope, happiness, glory, radiance. Commit each to memory. Say them over and over again until these creative thoughts saturate your subconscious mind. Then the subconscious will return to you what you have given it, namely, optimism, not worry.


8. Cultivate friendships with hopeful people. Surround yourself with friends who think positive, faith-producing thoughts and who contribute to a creative atmosphere. This will keep you restimulated with faith attitudes.


9. See how many people you can help to cure their own worry habit. In helping another to overcome worry you get greater power over it within yourself.


10. Every day of your life conceive of yourself as living in partnership and companionship with Jesus Christ. If He actually walked by your side, would you be worried or afraid? Well, then, say to yourself, "He is with me." Affirm aloud, "I am with you always." Then change it to say, "He is with me now." Repeat that affirmation three times every day.