The
following article is provided free for reprint to our media friends, as
long as the article is reprinted in its entirety and includes the final
footnote paragraph. For additional information, contact Lindsay Dutro at
805-466-5917 or email at marketing@impactpublishers.com.
What’s the
Worst that Could Happen?
The worst thing that
could ever happen to us is not very likely to happen. But it could. You
could discover that you are dying of AIDS or cancer, or that one of your
loved ones is in this condition. Or even that the end of the world is in
sight, or that some other “terrible” event is about to occur. How do
you deal with this adversity?
Indeed, let’s go with the elegant solution: the probability of
you getting a disease is low, but if you do get it, death would still
not be awful. Why is it not
awful? Because it isn’t 100% bad – you could always die younger or
more painfully. And it isn’t so bad that it absolutely
should not ever transpire. No matter how
bad it is, it should be that
bad – because that’s the way it is:
very bad!
Nothing is awful, even death. To the best of our knowledge, death
is exactly the same state as people are in before they are conceived:
Zero. No pain, no hassles, no worries: Nothing. Therefore, why upset
yourself about it, when you will ultimately face it anyway, and when
worrying about it may cause you – until the age of 95! – needless
pain.
The advantage of your taking the “Suppose-the-worst-thing-does-actually-happen” approach is that it
not only tends to end your awfulizing about relatively minor
“disasters” but about major ones as well. For if you can see that
even the worst possibility, if it does occur, is only
highly frustrating and not totally
bad, you may thereafter resist making yourself disturbed about
practically anything. You can still be concerned
but not horrified about
exceptionally bad adversities.
If you adopt this solution to feeling frantic, you will also stop
exaggerating the probability of “dire” things actually happening and
will make yourself more emotionally hardy. You can accept the reality
that you have no control over what we call “fate” and over many
accidents that may happen. If you frantically think that you have
to control all dangerous events, you still cannot do so, and even if you
manage to partly control them, you greatly limit your freedom and your
life. Thus, if you avoid “dangerous” airplane flights, you may still
be killed in a car crash; and you limit how far you can travel. No
matter how you restrict yourself, you may fall victim to some germ or
other hazard. Tough! But you do not fully control your destiny.
Work to understand that if some of the worst things happen, you
don’t have to feel misery and horror. Great trouble and difficulty,
yes. Awfulness and terror, no. You can almost always find some degree of
real, personal enjoyment. If you strongly believe
that you can! After all, what’s the worst that can happen? ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Adapted from How To Make Yourself
Happy and Remarkably Less Disturbable, by Albert Ellis, Ph.D.
Available at online and local bookstores or directly from Impact
Publishers, PO Box
6016,
Atascadero,
CA
93423, www.bibliotherapy.com
or phone 1-800-246-7228.
|