Pushing to the Front

by Orison Swett Marden

Is it not unaccountable that people who know perfectly well that success and happiness both depend on keeping themselves in condition to get the most possible out of their energies should harbor in their minds the enemy of this very success and happiness? Is it not strange that they should form this habit of anticipating evils that will probably never come, when they know that anxiety and fretting will not only rob them of peace of mind and strength and ability to do their work, but also of precious years of life?

No man can utilize his normal power who dissipates his nervous energy in useless anxiety. Nothing will sap one's vitality and blight one's ambition or detract from one's real power in the world more than the worrying habit.

Work kills no one, but worry has killed vast multitudes. It is not the doing things which injures us so much as the dreading to do them—not only performing them mentally over and over again, but anticipating something disagreeable in their performance.

Many of us approach an unpleasant task in much the same condition as a runner who begins his start such a long distance away that by the time he reaches his objective point—the ditch or the stream which is to test his agility—he is too exhausted to jump across. Worry not only saps vitality and wastes energy, but it also seriously affects the quality of one's work. It cuts down ability. A man can not get the highest quality of efficiency into his work when his mind is troubled. The mental faculties must have perfect freedom before they will give out their best. A troubled brain can not think clearly, vigorously, and logically. The attention can not be concentrated with anything like the same force when the brain cells are poisoned with anxiety as when they are fed by pure blood and are clean and unclouded. The blood of chronic worriers is vitiated with poisonous chemical substances and broken-down tissues, according to Professor Elmer Gates and other noted scientists, who have shown that the passions and the harmful emotions cause actual chemical changes in the secretions and generate poisonous substances in the body which are fatal to healthy growth and action.

One of the worst forms of worry is the brooding over failure. It blights the ambition, deadens the purpose and defeats the very object the worrier has in view.

Some people have the unfortunate habit of brooding over their past lives, castigating themselves for their shortcomings and mistakes, until their whole vision is turned backward instead of forward, and they see everything in a distorted light, because they are looking only on the shadow side.

The longer the unfortunate picture which has caused trouble remains in the mind, the more thoroughly it becomes imbedded there, and the more difficult it is to remove it.

Are we not convinced that a power beyond our control runs the universe, that every moment of worry detracts from our success capital and makes our failure more probable; that every bit of anxiety and fretfulness leaves its mark on the body, interrupts the harmony of our physical and mental well-being, and cripples efficiency, and that this condition is at war with our highest endeavor?

Is it not strange that people will persist in allowing little worries, petty vexations, and unnecessary frictions to grind life away at such a fearful rate that old age stares them in the face in middle life? Look at the women who are shriveled and shrunken and aged at thirty, not because of the hard work they have done, or the real troubles they have had, but because of habitual fretting, which has helped nobody, but has brought discord and unhappiness to their homes.

Somewhere I read of a worrying woman who made a list of possible unfortunate events and happenings which she felt sure would come to pass and be disastrous to her happiness and welfare. The list was lost, and to her amazement, when she recovered it, a long time afterwards, she found that not a single unfortunate prediction in the whole catalogue of disasters had been realized.