I used to be a bit of a worrier.

Not as bad as Woody Allen, but I have been know to lie awake at night mulling things over and wondering how they will turn out.

Worrying tended to be worse when there was something that was not quite resolved – when it could go either way and the scales were finely balanced between ‘it’s all going to be OK’ and ‘we’re all doomed’.

One thing that helped reduce the amount of worrying that I did was to stop watching TV and reading newspapers.

There was an instant reduction in the worrying about the state of the economy, the world in general and the amount of crime in the near vicinity.

And not knowing about these things did not mean that I became a victim of crime, or suffered economic misfortune through lack of knowing how bad everything was.

In fact, quite the opposite was true.

By not worrying about all the woes and misfortunes in the world at every moment of the day, I was free to focus on getting things done instead.

What this taught me was that there is no point in worrying about those things that we are not in control of (such as world events, the economy or the local crime rate), because there is absolutely nothing that we can personally do about it (as we have no control over them).

This realisation is enough to free up our minds enough to focus on those things that we do have control over – which then removes another source of worry.

It soon becomes clear that worry is a pointless habit. It serves no good purpose for us at all and is entirely counter intuitive.

For we cannot logically worry about that over which we have no control and we don’t need to worry about those things that we can control.

Therefore, in reality, we have no good reason to worry about anything.

Recognising this for ourselves is wisdom.

Not worrying about the things over which we have no control is discipline.

Doing something about those things over which we do have control is courage.

Wisdom. Discipline. Courage.

So much more valuable traits than being a worrier.