The burlap bag of worry. Cumbersome. Chunky. Unattractive. Scratchy. Hard to get a handle on. Irritating to carry and impossible to give away. No one wants your worries.

Harm to our necks, jaws, backs, and bowels. Anxiety can twist us into emotional pretzels. It can make our eyes twitch, blood pressure rise, heads ache, and armpits sweat.

To see the consequences of anxiety, just read about half the ailments in a medical textbook.

Never let white folks know what you really think. If you're sad, laugh. If you're bleeding inside, dance.

Today, I will know that I don't have to worry about anything. If I do worry, I will do it with the understanding that I am choosing to worry, and it is not necessary.

If you believe that feeling bad or worrying long enough will change a fact, then you are residing on another planet with a different reality system," wrote Dr. Wayne W. Dyer in Your Erroneous Zones.2

It is almost impossible to have fun when we are bottled up with repressed emotions, worried sick about someone, saturated with guilt and despair, rigidly controlling ourselves or someone else, or worried about what other people are thinking about us. However, most people aren't thinking about us; they're worried about themselves and what we think of them.

worrying about people and problems doesn't help. It doesn't solve problems, it doesn't help other people, and it doesn't help us. It is wasted energy.

Oh, the positive power of an instructed tongue! How many weary people do we encounter day after day who could use a sustaining word?

A joyful heart makes a face cheerful, but a sad heart produces a broken spirit. Proverbs 15:13

Doctors estimate that seventy to eighty percent of their business is non-health-related. People aren't sick, they're self- dramatizing. Sometimes the hardest part of a medical job is keeping a straight face. As Jerry Seinfeld observed of his twenty years of dating: That's a lot of acting fascinated.

It's very inexpensive to give a compliment.