For months I notice the painted rock that sat on Karen's coffee table. The rock was painted and its face had a smile that just made you smile when you looked at it. I examined the rock and painted on the bottom was "why worry". 

Curious I asked Karen where she got the rock. 

A Gift With A Clear Message 

She told me that during a very stressful time in her life, a friend that she worked with gave her the rock. Her friend told her that when she looked at this rock, she was to remember not to worry so much. Her friend called it her "worry not bug". There was a poem with the rock, she went and got it and as I read the poem I thought how true it was: 

Why Worry by Author Unknown 

- 40% will never happen, for anxiety is the result of a tired mind, 

- 30% concerns old decisions which cannot be altered, 

- 12% centers in criticism, mostly untrue, made by people who feel inferior,

- 10% is related to my health which worsens while I worry, and only 

- 8% is "legitimate," showing that life does have real problems which may be met head-on when I have eliminated senseless worries.

Karen went on to explain that she used to worry about everything and everyone. She now uses the rock as a reminder not to worry about the things she cannot change. 

She also went on to tell me that when she finds herself worrying, she asks herself what percentage this worry is? Most of the time she found what she was worrying about was the 40% - things that will never happen. 

A Gift With A Clear Message 

Some things in life appear to be worthy of worry. For example, if you have a child that is going off to school but has to walk alone through what appears to be an unsavory section of town. This is the kind of thought that can wrack a mother full of worry and fright until her child returns home safely. But, even in this situation, there are things that can be done to eliminate worry completely. I am not going to list every one of these possible things to do but only to say that this mother should focus instead on finding a solution to her worry and not focus on what she cannot control. 

One of the things, for example that this particular mother could do would be to either walk her child to school, or to find a caring and concerned neighbor with children to take turns doing the escorting. The point is that worry cannot protect your child but taking action can. 

One Big Arguement 

Here is another example that hounds a lot of people around the world. And, this particular concern and worry is that of not having enough money to pay the bills or the mortgage or the rent. One thing is for sure, money issues lead to more arguments between couples than you might at first realize. As Amy E. Dean said in her book Peace of Mind, "Money is the number-one cause of arguments between couples. Couples who don't fight about anything else may fight about money; couples who have lots of it still argue about it." 

A Solution Is Available 

In this situation, arguments always lead to worry about what to do, or about whether the other person will ever be happy again. The whole aspect of worry though is to find a solution to the problem and not just focus on the issue. A resolution means that both parties sit down and develop a plan to either reduce discretionary spending or to devise a workable plan to increase personal revenue.  

The worry aspect must be relegated to the background for without doing this, the spiral of emotions keeps going downward.