How to Stop Worrying and Start Living: Dale Carnegie

by Dale Carnegie

the same thing is true in the field of emotions. We cannot be pepped up and enthusiastic about doing something exciting and feel dragged down by worry at the very same time. One kind of emotion drives out the other. And it was that simple discovery that enabled Army psychiatrists to perform such miracles during the war. When men came out of battle so shaken by the experience that they were called “psychoneurotic", Army doctors prescribed “Keep 'em busy” as a cure. Every waking minute of these nerve-shocked men was filled with activity-usually outdoor activity, such as fishing, hunting, playing ball, golf, taking pictures, making gardens, and dancing. They were given no time for brooding over their terrible experiences. “Occupational therapy” is the term now used by psychiatry when work is prescribed as though it were a medicine. It is not new. The old Greek physicians were advocating it five hundred years before Christ was born!