Don’t worry. Be happy.
Anxiety is a natural part of life. Here are our favorite words of wisdom about how to handle everyday worry and stress.
Do not anticipate trouble, or worry about what may never happen. Keep in the sunlight. Benjamin Franklin
No amount of anxiety makes any difference to anything that is going to happen. Alan Watts
Things take the time they take. Don’t worry. Mary Oliver
Though it may feel otherwise, enjoying life is no more dangerous than apprehending it with continuous anxiety and gloom. Alain de Botton
Sometimes people let the same problem make them miserable for years when they could just say, So what. That’s one of my favorite things to say. So what. Andy Warhol
The most important decision you make is to be in a good mood. Voltaire
You must learn a new way to think before you can master a new way to be. Marianne Williamson
People become attached to their burdens sometimes more than the burdens are attached to them. George Bernard Shaw
If you obsess over whether you are making the right decision, you are basically assuming that the universe will reward you for one thing and punish you for another. The universe has no fixed agenda. Once you make any decision, it works around that decision. There is no right or wrong, only a series of possibilities that shift with each thought, feeling, and action that you experience. Deepak Chopra
The what-if’s and the should-have’s will eat your brain. John O’Callaghan
Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal. Albert Camus
Anxiety is not being able to sleep because you said something wrong two years ago and can’t stop thinking about it. Unknown
Drag your thoughts away from your troubles… by the ears, by the heels, or any other way you can manage it. Mark Twain
Life is way too short to spend another day at war with yourself. Unknown
I am touched by your beautiful anxiety about life… Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters To A Young Poet
The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another. William James
Nothing diminishes anxiety faster than action. Walter Anderson
The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one. Elbert Hubbard
Too many of us are not living our dreams because we are living our fears. Unknown
You’ve been criticizing yourself for years and it hasn’t worked. Try approving of yourself and see what happens. Louise L. Hay
Although anxiety is part of life, never let it control you. Paulo Coelho
If you gathered up all the fearful thoughts that exist in the mind of the average person, looked at them objectively, and tried to decide just how much good they provided that person, you would see that not some but all fearful thoughts are useless. They do no good. Zero. They interfere with dreams, hopes, desire and progress. Richard Carlson
Feelings are just visitors, let them come and go. Mooji
To venture causes anxiety, but not to venture is to lose one’s self… And to venture in the highest is precisely to be conscious of one’s self. Søren Kierkegaard
Anxiety is the handmaiden of creativity. Chuck Jones
Don’t believe the things you tell yourself late at night. Cheryl Cole
Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom. Søren Kierkegaard
My need to solve the problem is the problem. Unknown
I’ve spent most of my life and most of my friendships holding my breath and hoping that when people get close enough they won’t leave, and fearing that it’s a matter of time before they figure me out and go. Shauna Niequist
Anxiety’s like a rocking chair. It gives you something to do, but it doesn’t get you very far. Jodi Picoult
Don’t let your mind bully your body into believing it must carry the burden of its worries. Astrid Alauda
Worry does nothing but steal your joy and keep you very busy doing nothing. Unknown
The mind that is anxious about the future is miserable. Seneca
Comparison is the thief of joy. Theodore Roosevelt
You don’t have to control your thoughts. You just have to stop letting them control you. Dan Millman
It makes no sense to worry about things you have no control over because there’s nothing you can do about them, and why worry about things you do control? The activity of worrying keeps you immobilized. Wayne Dyer
Anxiety is love’s greatest killer. It makes others feel as you might when a drowning man holds on to you. You want to save him, but you know he will strangle you with his panic. Anaïs Nin
We carry our prisons with us. Unknown
Every time you are tempted to react in the same old way, ask if you want to be a prisoner of the past or a pioneer of the future. Deepak Chopra
The largest part of what we call ‘personality’ is determined by how we’ve opted to defend ourselves against anxiety and sadness. Alain de Botton
Stress should be a powerful driving force, not an obstacle. Bill Phillips
People have a hard time letting go of their suffering. Out of a fear of the unknown, they prefer suffering that is familiar. Thich Nhat Hanh
Anxiety is a thin stream of fear trickling through the mind. If encouraged, it cuts a channel into which all other thoughts are drained. Arthur Somers Roche
What we see depends mainly on what we look for. John Lubbock
Worrying is like walking around with an umbrella waiting for it to rain. Unknown
It takes but one positive thought when given a chance to survive and thrive to overpower an entire army of negative thoughts. Robert H. Schuller
Good humor is a tonic for mind and body. It is the best antidote for anxiety and depression. It is a business asset. It attracts and keeps friends. It lightens human burdens. It is the direct route to serenity and contentment. Grenville Kleiser
Because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart even when it leads you off the well worn path. Steve Jobs
A head full of fears has no space for dreams. Unknown
We walk in circles, so limited by our own anxieties that we can no longer distinguish between true and false, between the gangster’s whim and the purest ideal. Ingmar Bergman
But I can hardly sit still. I keep fidgeting, crossing one leg and then the other. I feel like I could throw off sparks, or break a window–maybe rearrange all the furniture. Raymond Carver
Only man clogs his happiness with care, destroying what is, with thoughts of what may be. John Dryden
After all, what is happiness? Love, they tell me. But love doesn’t bring and never has brought happiness. On the contrary, it’s a constant state of anxiety, a battlefield; it’s sleepless nights, asking ourselves all the time if we’re doing the right thing. Real love is composed of ecstasy and agony. Paulo Coelho
No one can get inner peace by pouncing on it. Harry Emerson Fosdick
I promise you nothing is as chaotic as it seems. Nothing is worth your health. Nothing is worth poisoning yourself into stress, anxiety, and fear. Steve Maraboli
Our anxiety does not come from thinking about the future, but from wanting to control it. Kahlil Gibran
Her forehead was a maze of anxious little grooves, from a lifetime of wondering about whether everyone within range was OK. Tana French
Releasing the pressure, it’s good for the teapot and the water. Try it sometime. Jeb Dickerson
History has demonstrated that the most notable winners usually encountered heartbraking obstacles before they triumphed. They won because they refused to become discouraged by their defeats. Bertie C. Forbes
Slow breathing is like an anchor in the midst of an emotional storm: the anchor won’t make the storm goes away, but it will hold you steady until it passes. Russ Harris
I like trains. I like their rhythm, and I like the freedom of being suspended between two places, all anxieties of purpose taken care of: for this moment I know where I am going. Anna Funder
Anxiety is the essential condition of intellectual and artistic creation and everything that is finest in human history. Charles Frankel
Anxiety is one little tree in your forest. Step back and look at the whole forest. Unknown
A day of worry is more exhausting than a day of work. John Lubbock
Usually she ordered a cup of coffee and a cup of tea, as well as a brownie, propping up her sadness with chocolate and caffeine so that it became an anxiety. Lorrie Moore, Like Life
How do you run away from things that are in your head? Unknown
Anxiety, it just stops your life. Amanda Seyfried
If I knew what I was so anxious about, I wouldn’t be so anxious. Mignon McLaughlin
Concentration is a fine antidote to anxiety. Jack Nicklaus
If a sadness rises in front of you, larger than any you have ever seen; if an anxiety, like light and cloudshadows, moves over your hands and over everything you do. You must realize that something is happening to you, that life has not forgotten you, that it holds you in its hand and will not let you fall. Why do you want to shut out of your life any uneasiness, any misery, any depression, since after all you don’t know what work these conditions are doing inside you? Why do you want to persecute yourself with the question of where all this is coming from and where it is going? Since you know, after all, that you are in the midst of transitions and you wished for nothing so much as to change. Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters To A Young Poet
