How do I stop worrying about outcomes I can't control?
By Rabbi Shalom Landau.
Rabbi Landau teaches that worry makes you suffer today because you're afraid you might suffer tomorrow. You replay the conversation, predict every reaction, try to make sure nothing goes wrong, and the outcome is still uncertain. The only difference, he says, is that now you're exhausted.
He compares it to banging your head against a brick wall: “Your headache is not going to move the wall.” You can choose your words and you can give your best, but “you cannot guarantee what happens next.”
The Creator Himself made room for human choice, he explains. So when we wear ourselves out demanding a world that follows our script, “we are fighting the way He made the world.”
Faith, in his words, is “staying in your role while doing it fully”: “I will act, but I won't demand the ending.” He seals it with the pasuk “Hashlech al Hashem yehavcha v'hu yechalkelecha,” cast your burden on Hashem and He will sustain you.
Related concepts: You can suffer twice · Advice is not control
Going deeper: Rabbi Landau's teaching, level by level
Surface claim
Worry makes you suffer today over what might happen tomorrow, and it doesn't change the outcome.
Fear, vulnerability, or tension
“I can't control this, but I feel I must.” The mind keeps trying to guarantee an ending it cannot guarantee.
What may be behind it
Hashem made room for human choice, so the world will not follow one person's script. Demanding that it does is fighting the way He made the world.
Deepest human truth
Act fully and release the ending. That is what it means to cast your burden on Hashem.
More questions from this teaching
More answers: Wisdom, Perception, and the Inner Life · All questions · Questions about Rabbi Landau and Rivnitz