Help! I worry too much

A reader, 35, is an accountant and is the finance head of a retail family business. She says: “My two brothers and I work well in the business started by our father, who wants us to take over soon.  I perform well, but my brothers say that I worry too much, and that I should take it easy.   They call me a pessimist.  I worry about budgets, clients, stocks going down and even up.  I am doing yoga, but what more can I do?”

My Reply

Stop worrying that you are worrying too much.  Yoga is a good way to calm down, but unless your constant worrying is affecting your performance, I wouldn’t worry too much.

Contrary to popular opinion, a little bit of worrying and anxiety is essential at work.

“Constructive worry enables you to develop an adversity plan, in the sense that you’re worrying about all the things that could go wrong and how you’re going to fix them,” US psychologist Gregg Steinberg says in a Wall Street Journal interview by Sue Shellenbarger.

“This can prepare you very well for whatever might come.”

You might be glad to know that certain professions such as engineering and your chosen field, accounting, are better suited for pessimists. Research shows that pessimists tend to be more detail-oriented and realistic, which are necessary when it comes to dealing with, say, finances.

Shellenbarger also quotes US accounting firm owner Julie Brufke Wenger, who worries about an employee who seems to be always upbeat.

“That scares me, because things aren’t always good. When you’re doing taxes, there are many land mines.”

So who is better at work:  a pessimist or an optimist? It depends.

Shellenberger quotes research saying that optimists tend to be “more creative, healthier, willing to explore, [have] better relationships,” while pessimists are often “more attentive to detail, more motivated to work, more polite and attentive to others, vigilant for risks and threats.”

On the downside, optimists tend to be “prone to overlooking threats and angers, open to unwise risks, more gullible, lacking appropriate embarrassment or guilt,” while pessimists are often “overcautious, less creative, at risk of becoming too stressed, more close-minded.”

Health risks

A caveat:  worry is no longer constructive if you stress out about things that are beyond your control, such as the stock market.

National Heart Center Singapore (NHCS) scientists have discovered that whenever stock prices change, hospitalization rates increase for heart failure patients.

From 2001 to 2012, researchers looked at daily stock changes from the Singapore Exchange and correlated these with the number of deaths, heart attacks, strokes, and heart failure cases in the country.

Fortunately, there appeared to be no relationship between stock changes and death rates, heart attacks or strokes.

However, hospitalization rates went up not only when stock prices went down, but also when they rose.  Scientists link the “broken heart syndrome” to “rapid and severe muscle weakness” brought about by extreme volatile emotions.

Singaporean financial consultant Poa Kheng Sin tells The Straits Times, “People who invest need to be financially and mentally prepared for the worst.  If you’re not prepared, then you shouldn’t invest.”

Schools and billionaires

Which schools give the most return on investment?

Education is not the only factor that determines wealth, of course, but for those who are interested, the Wealth-X and UBS Billionaire Census said in 2016 that the University of Pennsylvania has produced the most number of world billionaires (25), followed by Harvard (22), Yale (20), the University of Southern California (26) and Princeton (14).

The only non-US school in the top ten is the University of Mumbai (12).