Why We Should Worry Less

Illustration by Al Murphy from 'Creative Demons and How to Slay Them'

It’s almost impossible to be creative when you’re anxious.

Yet a recent study at Cornell University found that 85% of the things we worry about never happen.

The study followed subjects over an extended period, asked them about the things they feared and then observed which imagined misfortune actually came to pass.

And of the 15% of concerns that did happen, 79% of people found that the challenge was much easier to handle than expected, or that they learned a valuable lesson from it.

Which means that 97% of the things we worry about really aren’t worth worrying about at all.