DON'T WORRY

Back in 1993 during the Electioneering Campaigns between the Social Democratic Party (SDP)’s Candidate Chief M. K. O. Abiola and the National Republican Convention (NRC)’s Alhaji Bashir Tofa, one of the most catchy phrases I heard then was “Times are Tough now, but Times with Tofa will be tougher” it’s a phrase that apt describes the times we are in now. Times with PDP were tough, but the Times under APC are Tougher.

Members of the ruling All Progressive Congress (APC) insist, if the PDP was in power, the hardship we face now would have been tougher. That of course is an argument that is neither here nor there. The reality today is that Times are Tough and even the Tough are buckling under the circumstances and to add insult to injury, the future remains hazy as the Government keeps assuring us the Hardship will soon be over when there no plans as far as the public can see, perceive or as we had been exhorted to do read from their body language.

With the ever rising prices of commodities, the dwindling purchasing power of many, Businesses slowing down, Job lay off becoming more rampant and a gloomy oil forecast for 2017, citizens may become frustrated and things will spiral from bad to worse as worry, anxiety, frustration and anger will envelop the citizens but worry never solved a problem.

Part of the opening lines of Bobby McFerrin’s 1988 classic “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” reads

“In every life we have some trouble

When you worry you make it double

Don’t worry, be happy”

Recession holds some benefits; we need to look at the positive side of life to see how we can make a difference. It’s not money or Love that makes the World go round, Ideas drive the World. Ideas put men in the Moon, ideas produced Smart Phones, coming closer home; ideas produced pure water, ideas made Comedy an Industry today. There is nothing in existence today that cannot be improved on. Besides, solving problems is the surest way to make money and our Country has plenty of problems that are opportunities for those who can put on their thinking caps.

So don’t Worry, Happily put on your thinking cap. If you are still worried, here a list of 25 Empowering Worry Quotes from Positivityblog.com

1.    “Worry never robs tomorrow of its sorrow, it only saps today of its joy.”

~ Leo F. Buscaglia

2.    “Worry often gives a small thing a big shadow.”

~ Swedish Proverb

3.  “If you want to test your memory, try to recall what you were worrying about one year ago today.”

~ E. Joseph Cossman

4. ”People become attached to their burdens sometimes more than the burdens are attached to them.”

~ George Bernard Shaw

5. “Our fatigue is often caused not by work, but by worry, frustration and resentment.”

~ Dale Carnegie

6. “The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one.”

~ Elbert Hubbard

7. “If you ask what is the single most important key to longevity, I would have to say it is avoiding worry, stress and tension. And if you didn’t ask me, I’d still have to say it.”

~ George F. Burns

8.   “When I look back on all these worries, I remember the story of the old man who said on his deathbed that he had had a lot of trouble in his life, most of which had never happened.”

~ Winston Churchill

9.   “Worry 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

10.   “If you treat every situation as a life and death matter, you’ll die a lot of times.”

~ Dean Smith

11. “When one has too great a dread of what is impending, one feels some relief when the trouble has come.”

~ Joseph Joubert

12. “That the birds of worry and care fly over your head, this you cannot change, but that they build nests in your hair, this you can prevent.”

~ Chinese Proverb

13.  “Worry compounds the futility of being trapped on a dead-end street. Thinking opens new avenues.”

~ Cullen Hightower

14. “Worry is like a rocking chair: it gives you something to do but never gets you anywhere”

~ Erma Bombeck

15. “There is a great difference between worry and concern. A worried person sees a problem, and a concerned person solves a problem.”

~ Harold Stephen

16. “People get so in the habit of worry that if you save them from drowning and put them on a bank to dry in the sun with hot chocolate and muffins they wonder whether they are catching a cold.”

~ John Jay Chapman

17. “Somehow our devils are never quite what we expect when we meet them face to face.”

~ Nelson DeMille

18.  “The reason why worry kills more people than work is that more people worry than work.”

~ Robert Frost

19. “Every tomorrow has two handles. We can take hold of it with the handle of anxiety or the handle of faith.”

~ Henry Ward Beecher

20. “We can easily manage if we will only take, each day, the burden appointed to it. But the load will be too heavy for us if we carry yesterday’s burden over again today, and then add the burden of the morrow before we are required to bear it.”

~ John Newton

21. “If you can’t sleep, then get up and do something instead of lying there worrying. It’s the worry that gets you, not the lack of sleep.”

~ Dale Carnegie

22.  “I never worry about action, but only about inaction.”

~ Winston Churchill

23. “Rule number one is, don’t sweat the small stuff. Rule number two is, it’s all small stuff.”

~ Robert Eliot

24.  “A day of worry is more exhausting than a day of work.”

~ John Lubbock

25. “Worry a little bit every day and in a lifetime you will lose a couple of years. If something is wrong, fix it if you can. But train yourself not to worry. Worry never fixes anything.”

~ Mary Hemingway