How fear and worry can paralyze useful effort, and good work

One great negative note in the lives of most people is Fear. Fear is the mother of all the negative emotions, and her brood is found clustering very closely around her. Worry, Lack of Confidence, Bashfulness, Irresolution, Timidity, Depression, and all the rest of the negative brood of feelings and emotions are the progeny of Fear. Without Fear none of these minor emotions or feelings would exist. By killing off the parent
of this possible brood of mental vampires, you escape the entire coming generations of negative thoughts, and thus keep your Mental Attitude garden free from these pests and nuisances. Fear and the emotions that come from its being do more to paralyze useful effort, good work, and finely thought-out plans, than aught else known to man. It is the great hobgoblin of the race. It has ruined the lives of thousands of people. It has destroyed the finely budding characters of men and women, and made negative individuals of them in the place of strong, reliant, courageous doers of useful things. Worry is the oldest child of Fear. It settles down
upon one's mind, and crowds out all of the developing good things to be found there. Like the cuckoo in
the sparrow's nest, it destroys the rightful occupants of the mind. Laid there as an egg by its parent. Fear, Worry soon hatches out and begins to make trouble. In case of the cheerful and positive "I Can and I Will" harmony. Worry begins to rasp out in raucous tones: "Supposing'," "What if,' "But," "I can't," “I'm unlucky,""! never could do things right," "Things never turn out right with me," and so on until all the minor notes have been sounded. It makes one sick bodily, and inert mentally. It retards one's progress, and is a constant stumbling block in our path upward. The worst thing about Fear and Worry is that while they exhaust a great part of the energy of the average person, they give nothing good in return. Nobody ever accomplished a single thing by reason of Fear and Worry. Fear and Worry never helped one along a single inch on the road to Success. And they never will, because their whole tendency is to retard progress, and not to advance it. The majority of things that we fear and worry about never come to pass at all, and the few that do actually materialize are never as bad as we feared they would be. It is not the cares, trials and troubles of today that unnerve us and break us down — it is the troubles that we fear may come some time in the future. Everyone is able to bear the burdens of to-day, but when he heaps on the burdens of to-morrow, the next day, and the day after that, he is doing his mind an injustice, and it is no wonder that after a bit he heaps on the last straw that breaks the back of the mental camel. The energy, work, activity and thought that we ex- pend on these imaginary "maybe" troubles of the future would enable us to master and conquer the troubles of each day as they arise. Nature gives each of us a reserve supply of strength and energy upon which to draw and oppose unexpected troubles and problems as they come upon us each day. But we poor, silly mortals draw upon this reserve force and dissipate it in combating the imaginary troubles of next week, or next year, the majority of which never really put in an appearance — and when we have need of the force to oppose some real trouble of the day we find ourselves bankrupt of power and energy, and are apt to go down in defeat, or else be compelled to beat an inglorious retreat.