Do you ever lie in bed rehearsing imaginary arguments, planning 17 different versions of a future that hasn’t happened, and still end up forgetting to reply to that one actual email? Welcome to the all-too-familiar headspace of worry—where the rent is free, but the cost is your peace.
Randy Armstrong’s quote slices through this exhausting loop with brutal honesty: “Worrying does not take away tomorrow’s troubles. It takes away today’s peace.” It’s not just poetic; it’s a psychological truth backed by science. Chronic worry activates the brain’s threat centre, triggering stress responses that mess with your sleep, appetite, immunity, and yes, your productivity.
Here’s the irony: most of the things we worry about never happen. Yet we act like catastrophising is a superpower. Worrying feels productive, as if running through worst-case scenarios will somehow help us control the uncontrollable. But all it really does is hijack our attention from the present moment and wrap us in a cloak of mental fog.
The mind is a master time traveller. It revisits the past to replay mistakes and fast-forwards into the future to imagine disaster. What it hates, interestingly, is staying still and that’s exactly what peace requires: presence. When we’re constantly anxious about tomorrow, we become unavailable to today to our loved ones, our creativity, and our joy.
So how do we break the habit? Start with small, tangible acts. Name your worries out loud or on paper. Question their logic. Can you do anything about them right now? If not, file them under “not today”. Try grounding techniques: deep breathing, a walk without your phone, or five minutes of staring at a tree. Anything that reminds your mind that you're here, not in some hypothetical doom loop.
Armstrong’s quote is a gentle but firm reminder that worrying won’t prevent future pain, but it guarantees present suffering. The trouble is not always out there; it’s often in how we narrate it in our heads. So the next time anxiety comes knocking dressed as ‘being responsible’, ask it: are you helping me solve anything, or are you just stealing my peace?
