How to Stop Worrying and Start Living: Dale Carnegie

by Dale Carnegie

David Seabury said in his book How to Worry Successfully: “We come to maturity with as little preparation for the pressures of experience as a bookworm asked to do a ballet.”

“Science,” said the French philosopher Valery, “is a collection of successful recipes.”

In the spring of 1871, a young man picked up a book and read twenty-one words that had a profound effect on his future. A medical student at the Montreal General Hospital, he was worried about passing the final examination, worried about what to do, where to go, how to build up a practice, how to make a living. The twenty-one words that this young medical student read in 1871 helped him to become the most famous physician of his generation. He organised the world-famous Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. He became Regius Professor of Medicine at Oxford- the highest honour that can be bestowed upon any medical man in the British Empire. He was knighted by the King of England. When he died, two huge volumes containing 1,466 pages were required to tell the story of his life. His name was Sir William Osier. Here are the twenty-one words that he read in the spring of 1871-twenty-one words from Thomas Carlyle that helped him lead a life free from worry: “Our main business is not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand.”

Shut off the future as tightly as the past. ... The future is today. ... There is no tomorrow. The day of man’s salvation is now. Waste of energy, mental distress, nervous worries dog the steps of a man who is anxious about the future.

“Take therefore no thought for the morrow; for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.”

Three hundred years ago the word thought frequently meant anxiety. Modern versions of the Bible quote Jesus more accurately as saying: “Have no anxiety for the tomorrow.” By all means take thought for the tomorrow, yes, careful thought and planning and preparation. But have no anxiety. During the war, our military leaders planned for the morrow, but they could not afford to have any anxiety. “I have supplied the best men with the best equipment we have,” said Admiral Ernest J. King, who directed the United States Navy, “and have given them what seems to be the wisest mission. That is all I can do.” “If a ship has been sunk,” Admiral King went on, “I can’t bring it up. If it is going to be sunk, I can’t stop it. I can use my time much better working on tomorrow’s problem than by fretting about yesterday’s. Besides, if I let those things get me, I wouldn’t last long.” Whether in war or peace, the chief difference between good thinking and bad thinking is this: good thinking deals with causes and effects and leads to logical, constructive planning; bad thinking frequently leads to tension and nervous breakdowns.

five words from a church hymn: One step enough for me.

‘One grain of sand at a time. ... One task at a time.’

“Have no anxiety about the morrow”; or the words of Sir William Osier: “Live in day-tight compartments.”

“Anyone can carry his burden, however hard, until nightfall,”

Robert Louis Stevenson. “Anyone can do his work, however hard, for one day. Anyone can live sweetly, patiently, lovingly, purely, till the sun goes down. And this is all that life really means.”

‘Every day is a new life to a wise man.’ I typed that sentence out and pasted it on the windshield of my car, where I saw it every minute I was driving. I found it wasn’t so hard to live only one day at a time. I learned to forget the yesterdays and to not-think of the tomorrows. Each morning I said to myself: ‘today is a new life.’

Happy the man, and happy he alone, He, who can call to-day his own:

He who, secure within, can say: “To-morrow, do thy worst, for I have liv'd to-day.” Those words sound modern, don’t they? Yet they were written thirty years before Christ was born, by the Roman poet Horace.

One of the most tragic things I know about human nature is that all of us tend to put off living. We are all dreaming of some magical rose garden over the horizon-instead of enjoying the roses that are blooming outside our windows today.

Life, we learn too late, is in the living, in the tissue of every day and hour.”

Five hundred years before Christ was born, the Greek philosopher Heraclitus told his students that “everything changes except the law of change” .He said: “You cannot step in the same river twice.” The river changes every second; and so does the man who stepped in it. Life is a ceaseless change. The only certainty is today. Why mar the beauty of living today by trying to solve the problems of a future that is shrouded in ceaseless change and uncertainty-a

Kalidasa: Salutation To The Dawn Look to this day! For it is life, the very life of life. In its brief course Lie all the verities and realities of your existence: The bliss of growth The glory of action The splendour of achievement. For yesterday is but a dream And tomorrow is only a vision, But today well lived makes yesterday a dream of happiness And every tomorrow a vision of hope. Look well, therefore, to this day! Such is the salutation to the dawn.

Willis H. Carrier, the brilliant engineer who launched the air-conditioning industry,

“I probably would never have been able to do this if I had kept on worrying, because one of the worst features about worrying is that it destroys our ability to concentrate. When we worry, our minds jump here and there and everywhere, and we lose all power of decision. However, when we force ourselves to face the worst and accept it mentally, we then eliminate all those vague imaginings and put ourselves in a position in which we are able to concentrate on our problem.

Professor William James, the father of applied psychology, has been dead for thirty- eight years. But if he were alive today, and could hear his formula for facing the worst, he would heartily approve it. How do I know that? Because he told his own students: “Be willing to have it so ... .Be willing to have it so,” he said, because ”... Acceptance of what has happened is the first step in overcoming the consequences of any misfortune.” The same idea was expressed by Lin Yutang in his widely read book, The Importance of Living. “True peace of mind,” said this Chinese philosopher, “comes from accepting the worst. Psychologically, I think, it means a release of energy.” That’s it, exactly! Psychologically, it means a new release of energy! When we have accepted the worst, we have nothing more to lose. And that automatically means-we have everything to gain! “After facing the worst,” Willis H. Carrier reported, “I immediately relaxed and felt a sense of peace that I hadn’t experienced in days. From that time on, I was able to think.”

damnedest?

Omar: Ah, make the most of what we yet may spend, Before we too into the Dust descend; Dust into Dust, and under Dust, to lie, Sans Wine, sans Song, sans Singer, and-sans End!

magic formula of Willis H. Carrier by doing these three things— 1. Ask yourself,' 'What is the worst that can possibly happen?” 2. Prepare to accept it if you have to. 3. Then calmly proceed to improve on the worst. 

The great Nobel prizewinner in medicine, Dr. Alexis Carrel, said: “Business men who do not know how to fight worry die young.”

Dr. Joseph F. Montague, author of the book Nervous Stomach Trouble, says much the same thing. He says: “You do not get stomach ulcers from what you eat. You get ulcers from what is eating you.” Dr. W.C. Alvarez, of the Mayo Clinic, said “Ulcers frequently flare up or subside according to the hills and valleys of emotional stress.” That statement was backed up by a study of 15,000 patients treated for stomach disorders at the Mayo Clinic. Four out of five had no physical basis whatever for their stomach illnesses. Fear, worry, hate, supreme selfishness, and the inability to adjust themselves to the world of reality-these were largely the causes of their stomach illnesses and stomach ulcers.

Plato said that “the greatest mistake physicians make is that they attempt to cure the body without attempting to cure the mind; yet the mind and body are one and should not be treated separately!”

Another illuminating book about worry is lion Against Himself, by Dr. Karl Menninger, one of the “Mayo brothers of psychiatry.” Dr. Menninger’s book is a startling revelation of what you do to yourself when you permit destructive emotions to dominate your life. If you want to stop working against yourself, get this book.

When Montaigne, the illustrious French philosopher, was elected Mayor of his home town-Bordeaux-he said to his fellow citizens: “I am willing to take your affairs into my hands but not into my liver and lungs.”

The most relaxing recreating forces are a healthy religion, sleep, music, and laughter. Have faith in God-learn to sleep well-Love good music-see the funny side of life- And health and happiness will be yours.

“The Lord may forgive us our sins,” said William James, “but the nervous system never does.”

“Those who keep the peace of their inner selves in the midst of the tumult of the modern city are immune from nervous diseases.”

Most of us are stronger than we realise. We have inner resources that we have probably never tapped. As Thoreau said in his immortal book, Walden: “I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavour. ... If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavours to live the life he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.”

fighting words of Dr. McCaffery: ‘Face the facts: Quite worrying; then do something about it!'”

I keep six honest serving-men (They taught me all I knew): Their names are What and Why and When And How and Where and Who. —Rudyard Kipling

the three basic steps of problem analysis. The three steps are: 1. Get the facts. 2. Analyse the facts. 3. Arrive at a decision-and then act on that decision. Obvious stuff? Yes, Aristotle taught it-and used it.

Get the facts. Why is it so important to get the facts? Because unless we have the facts we can’t possibly even attempt to solve our problem intelligently. Without the facts, all we can do is stew around in confusion. My idea? No, that was the idea of the late Herbert E. Hawkes, Dean of Columbia College, Columbia University, for twenty-two years. He had helped two hundred thousand students solve their worry problems; and he told me that “confusion is the chief cause of worry” .He put it this way-he said: “Half the worry in the world is caused by people trying to make decisions before they have sufficient knowledge on which to base a decision.

“If a man will devote his time to securing facts in an impartial, objective way, his worries will usually evaporate in the light of knowledge.”

Thomas Edison said in all seriousness: “There is no expedient to which a man will not resort to avoid the labour of thinking”-if

As Andre Maurois put it: “Everything that is in agreement with our personal desires seems true. Everything that is not puts us into a rage.”

Thomas Edison knew that. At the time of his death, he had two thousand five hundred notebooks filled with facts about the problems he was facing.

As Charles Kettering puts it: “A problem well stated is a problem half solved.”

“Experience has proved to me, time after time, the enormous value of arriving at a decision. It is the failure to arrive at a fixed purpose, the inability to stop going round and round in maddening circles, that drives men to nervous breakdowns and living hells. I find that fifty per cent of my worries vanishes once I arrive at a clear, definite decision; and another forty per cent usually vanishes once I start to carry out that decision. “So I banish about ninety per cent of my worries by taking these four steps: “1. Writing down precisely what I am worrying about. “2. Writing down what I can do about it. “3. Deciding what to do. “4. Starting immediately to carry out that decision.”

William James said this: “When once a decision is reached and execution is the order of the day, dismiss absolutely all responsibility and care about the outcome.” In this case, William James undoubtedly used the word “care” as a synonym for “anxiety”.)

Here is question No. 1 -What am I worrying about? (Please pencil the answer to that question in the space below.) Question No. 2 -What can I do about it? (Please write your answer to that question in the space below.) Question No. 3 -Here is what I am going to do about it. Question No. 4 -When am I going to start doing it? 

1. What is the problem? 2. What is the CAUSE of the problem? 3. What are all possible solutions to the problem? 4. What solution do you suggest?

Part Two In A Nutshell RULE 1: Get the facts. Remember that Dean Hawkes of Columbia University said that ” half the worry in the world is caused by people trying to make decisions before they have sufficient knowledge on which to base a decision.” RULE 2: After carefully weighing all the facts, come to a decision. RULE 3: Once a decision is carefully reached, act! Get busy carrying out your decision- and dismiss all anxiety about the outcome. RULE 4: When you, or any of your associates are tempted to worry about a problem, write out and answer the following questions: a. What is the problem? b. What is the cause of the problem? c. What are all possible solutions? d. What is the best solution?

Bernard Shaw once remarked: “If you teach a man anything, he will never learn.”

Only knowledge that is used sticks in your mind.

Winston Churchill said when he was working eighteen hours a day at the height of the war. When he was asked if he worried about his tremendous responsibilities, he said: “I'm too busy. I have no time for worry.” Charles Kettering was in that same fix when he started out to invent a self-starter for automobiles. Mr. Kettering was, until his recent retirement, vice-president of General Motors in charge of the world-famous General Motors Research Corporation. But in those days, he was so poor that he had to use the hayloft of a barn as a laboratory. To buy groceries, he had to use fifteen hundred dollars that his wife had made by giving piano lessons; later, had to borrow five hundred dollars on his life insurance. I asked his wife if she wasn’t worried at a time like that. “Yes,” she replied, “I was so worried I couldn’t sleep; but Mr. Kettering wasn’t. He was too absorbed in his work to worry.”