How to Stop Worrying and Start Living: Dale Carnegie

by Dale Carnegie

an old truth that the Greeks taught five hundred years before Christ was born: “The best things are the most difficult.”

Harry Emerson Fosdick repeated it again in the twentieth century: “Happiness is not mostly pleasure; it is mostly victory.” Yes, the victory that comes from a sense of achievement, of triumph,

The late William Bolitho, author of Twelve Against the Gods, put it like this: “The most important thing in life is not to capitalise on your gains. Any fool can do that. The really important thing is to profit from your losses. That requires intelligence; and it makes the difference between a man of sense and a fool.” Bolitho uttered those words after he had lost a leg in a railway accident.

Ben Fortson. I met him in a hotel elevator in Atlanta, Georgia. As I stepped into the elevator, I noticed this cheerful-looking man, who had both legs missing, sitting in a wheel-chair in a corner of the elevator. When the elevator stopped at his floor, he asked me pleasantly if I would step to one corner, so he could manage his chair better. “So sorry,” he said, “to inconvenience you”-and a deep, heart-warming smile lighted his face as he said it. When I left the elevator and went to my room, I could think of nothing but this cheerful cripple. So I hunted him up and asked him to tell me his story. “It happened in 1929,” he told me with a smile. “I had gone out to cut a load of hickory poles to stake the beans in my garden. I had loaded the poles on my Ford and started back home. Suddenly one pole slipped under the car and jammed the steering apparatus at the very moment I was making a sharp turn. The car shot over an embankment and hurled me against a tree. My spine was hurt. My legs were paralysed. “I was twenty-four when that happened, and I have never taken a step since.” Twenty-four years old, and sentenced to a wheel-chair for the rest of his life! I asked him how he managed to take it so courageously, and he said: “I didn’t.” He said he raged and rebelled. He fumed about his fate. But as the years dragged on, he found that his rebellion wasn’t getting him anything except bitterness. “I finally realised,” he said, “that other people were kind and courteous to me. So ...

Ben Fortson - The Man Who lost both his legs at 24

a man I knew who had never finished even grade school. He was brought up in blighting poverty. When his father died, his father’s friends had to chip in to pay for the coffin in which he was buried. After his father’s death, his mother worked in an umbrella factory ten hours a day and then brought piecework home and worked until eleven o'clock at night. The boy brought up in these circumstances went in for amateur dramatics put on by a club in his church. He got such a thrill out of acting that he decided to take up public speaking. This led him into politics. By the time he reached thirty, he was elected to the New York State legislature. But he was woefully unprepared for such a responsibility. In fact, he told me that frankly he didn’t know what it was all about. He studied the long, complicated bills that he was supposed to vote on-but, as far as he was concerned, those bills might as well have been written in the language of the Choctaw Indians. He was worried and bewildered when he was made a member of the committee on forests before he had ever set foot in a forest. He was worried and bewildered when he was made a member of the State Banking Commission before he had ever had a bank account. He himself told me that he was so discouraged that he would have resigned from the legislature if he hadn’t been ashamed to admit defeat to his mother. In despair, he decided to study sixteen hours a day and turn his lemon of ignorance into a lemonade of knowledge. By doing that,...

AL SMITH - THE GOVERNOR OF NYC WHO NEVER WENT TO SCHOOL

Nietzsche’s formula for the superior man was “not only to bear up under necessity but to love it”.

As William James said: “Our infirmities help us unexpectedly.” Yes, it is highly probable that Milton wrote better poetry because he was blind and that Beethoven composed better music because he was deaf. Helen Keller’s brilliant career was inspired and made possible because of her blindness and deafness.

If Tchaikovsky had not been frustrated-and driven almost to suicide by his tragic marriage-if his own life had not been pathetic, he probably would never have been able to compose his immortal “Symphonic Pathetique”. If Dostoevsky and Tolstoy had not led tortured lives, they would probably never have been able to write their immortal novels. “If I had not been so great an invalid,” wrote the man who changed the scientific concept of life on earth-"if I had not been so great an invalid, I should not have done so much work as I have accomplished.” That was Charles Darwin’s confession that his infirmities had helped him unexpectedly. The same day that Darwin was born in England another baby was born in a log cabin in the forests of Kentucky. He, too, was helped by his infirmities. His name was Lincoln- Abraham Lincoln. If he had been reared in an aristocratic family and had had a law degree from Harvard and a happy married life, he would probably never have found in the depths of his heart the haunting words that he immortalised at Gettysburg, nor the sacred poem that he spoke at his second inauguration-the most beautiful and noble phrases ever uttered by a ruler of men: “With malice toward none; with charity for all ...”

Harry Emerson Fosdick says in his book, The Power to See it Through; “There is a Scandinavian saying which some of us might well take as a rallying cry for our lives: ‘the north wind made the Vikings.’ Wherever did we get the idea that secure and pleasant living, the absence of difficulty, and the comfort of ease, ever of themselves made people either good or happy? Upon the contrary, people who pity themselves go on pitying themselves even when they are laid softly on a cushion, but always in history character and happiness have come to people in all sorts of c...

Once when Ole Bull, the world-famous violinist, was giving a concert in Paris, the A string on his violin suddenly snapped. But Ole Bull simply finished the melody on three strings. “That is life,” says Harry Emerson Fosdick, “to have your A string snap and finish on three strings.” That is not only life. It is more than life. It is life triumphant!

I would have these words of William Bolitho carved in eternal bronze and hung in every schoolhouse in the land: The most important thing in life is not to capitalize on your gains. Any fool can do that. The really important thing is to profit from your losses. That requires intelligence; and it makes the difference between a man of sense and a fool.

Rule 6: When fate hands us a lemon, let’s try to make a lemonade.

the motto of the Prince of Wales: “Ich dien”-"I serve.”

This statement was made by Alfred Adler. He used to say to his melancholia patients: “You can be cured in fourteen days if you follow this prescription. Try to think every day how you can please someone.”

Dr. Adler’s splendid book, What Life Should Mean to You.

The most important task imposed by religion has always been 'Love thy neighbour’. ... It is the individual who is not interested in his fellow man who has the greatest difficulties in life and provides the greatest injury to others. It is from among such individuals that all human failures spring.

Dr. Adler urges us to do a good deed every day. And what is a good deed? “A good deed,” said the prophet Mohammed, “is one that brings a smile of joy to the face of another.” Why will doing a good deed every day produce such astounding efforts on the doer? Because trying to please others will cause us to stop thinking of ourselves: the very thing that produces worry and fear and melancholia.

that is approximately what Carl Jung said. And he ought to know -if anybody does. He said: “About one-third of my patients are suffering from no clinically definable neurosis, but from the senselessness and emptiness of their lives.” To put it another way, they are trying to thumb a ride through life-and the parade passes them by.

Aristotle called this kind of attitude “enlightened selfishness” .Zoroaster said: “Doing good to others is not a duty. It is a joy, for it increases your own health and happiness.” And Benjamin Franklin summed it up very simply-"When you are good to others,” said Franklin, “you are best to yourself.” “No discovery of modern psychology,” writes Henry C. Link, director of the Psychological Service Centre in New York, “no discovery of modern psychology is, in my opinion, so important as its scientific proof of the necessity of self-sacrifice or discipline to self- realisation and happiness.”

A Chinese proverb puts it this way: “A bit of fragrance always clings to the hand that gives you roses.”

let’s turn for advice to a couple of atheists. First, let’s take the late A. E. Housman, professor at Cambridge University, and one of the most distinguished scholars of his generation. In 1936, he gave an address at Cambridge University on “The Name and Nature of Poetry” .It that address, he declared that “the greatest truth ever uttered and the most profound moral discovery of all time were those words of Jesus: ‘He that findeth his life shall lose it: and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it.’ ”

let’s turn for advice to the most distinguished American atheist of the twentieth century: Theodore Dreiser. Dreiser ridiculed all religions as fairy tales and regarded life as “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” Yet Dreiser advocated the one great principle that Jesus taught- service to others. “If he [man] is to extract any joy out of his span,” Dreiser said, “he must think and plan to make things better not only for himself but for others, since joy for himself depends upon his joy in others and theirs in him.” If we are going “to make things better for others”-as Dreiser advocated-let’s be quick about it. Time is a-wastin’. “I shall pass this way but once. Therefore any good that I can do or any kindness that I can show-let me do it now. Let me not defer nor neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.”

So if you want to banish worry and cultivate peace and happiness, here is Rule 7: Forget yourself by becoming interested in others. Do every day a good deed that will put a smile of joy on someone’s face.

Part Four in a Nutshell - Seven Ways to Cultivate a Mental Attitude That Will Bring You Peace and Happiness RULE 1: Let’s fill our minds with thoughts of peace, courage, health, and hope, for ' 'our life is what our thoughts make it”. RULE 2: Let’s never try to get even with our enemies, because if we do we will hurt ourselves far more than we hurt them. Let’s do as General Eisenhower does: let’s never waste a minute thinking about people we don’t like. RULE 3: A. Instead of worrying about ingratitude, let’s expect it. Let’s remember that Jesus healed ten lepers in one day-and only one thanked Him. Why should we expect more gratitude than Jesus got? B. Let’s remember that the only way to find happiness is not to expect gratitude-but to give for the joy of giving. C. Let’s remember that gratitude is a “cultivated” trait; so if we want our children to be grateful, we must train them to be grateful. RULE 4: Count your blessings-not your troubles! RULE 5: Let’s not imitate others. Let’s find ourselves and be ourselves, for...

Charles F. Kettering, the guiding genius of General Motors Research Laboratories, has been giving Antioch College thirty thousand dollars a year out of his own pocket to try to discover why grass is green. He declares that if we knew how grass is able to transform sunlight, water, and carbon dioxide into food sugar, we could transform civilisation.

Even the operation of the engine in your car is a profound mystery. General Motors Research Laboratories have spent years of time and millions of dollars trying to find out how and why a spark in the cylinder sets off an explosion that makes your car run; and they don’t know the answer.

At long last, I realise the wisdom of Santayana’s words: “Man is not made to understand life, but to live it.”

Francis Bacon was right when he said, three hundred and fifty years ago: “A little philosophy inclineth man’s mind to atheism; but depth in philosophy bringeth men’s minds about to religion.”

Yes, the Christian religion is an inspiring, health-giving activity. Jesus said: “I came that ye might have life and have it more abundantly.” Jesus denounced and attacked the dry forms and dead rituals that passed for religion in His day. He was a rebel. He preached a new kind of religion-a religion that threatened to upset the world. That is why He was crucified. He preached that religion should exist for man- not man for religion; that the Sabbath was made for man- not man for the Sabbath. He talked more about fear than He did about sin. The wrong kind of fear is a sin-a sin against your health, a sin against the richer, fuller, happier, courageous life that Jesus advocated. Emerson spoke of himself as a “Professor of the Science of Joy” .Jesus, too, was a teacher of “the Science of Joy” .He commanded His disciples to “rejoice and leap for joy”. Jesus declared that there were only two important things about religion: loving God with all our heart, and our neighbour as ourselves. Any man who does that is religious, regardless of whether he knows it.

One of the most distinguished psychiatrists living, Dr. Carl Jung, says in his book Modern Man in Search of a Soul (): “During the past thirty years, people from all the civilised countries of the earth have consulted me. I have treated many hundreds of patients. Among all my patients in the second half of life-that is to say, over thirty-five-there has not been one whose problem in the last resort was not that of finding a religious outlook on life. It is safe to say that every one of them fell ill because he had lost that which the living religions of every age have given to their followers, and none of them has been really healed who did not regain his religious outlook.”

William James said approximately the same thing: “Faith is one of the forces by which men live,” he declared, “and the total absence of it means collapse.”

A mere man alone can easily be defeated, but a man alive with the power of God within him is invincible. I know. I saw it work in my own life. ” 'Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.’ ”

“he-man” Jack Dempsey told me that he never goes to bed without saying his prayers. He told me that he never eats a meal without first thanking God for it. He told me that he prayed every day when he was training for a bout, and that when he was fighting, he always prayed just before the bell sounded for each round. “Praying,” he said, “helped me fight with courage and confidence.”

“He-man” J. Pierpont Morgan, the greatest financier of his age, often went alone to Trinity Church, at the head of Wall Street, on Saturday afternoons and knelt in prayer.

When “he-man” Eisenhower flew to England to take supreme command of the British and American forces, he took only one book on the plane with him-the Bible. “He-man” General Mark Clark told me that he read his Bible every day during the war and knelt down in prayer. So did Chiang Kai-shek, and General Montgomery-"Monty of El Alamein” .So did Lord Nelson at Trafalgar. So did General Washington, Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and scores of other great military leaders. These “he-men” discovered the truth of William James’s statement: “We and God have business with each other; and in opening ourselves to His influence, our deepest destiny is fulfilled.”

Dr. Alexis Carrel, who wrote Man, the Unknown and won the greatest honour that can be bestowed upon any scientist, the Nobel prize. Dr. Carrel said in a Reader’s Digest article: “Prayer is the most powerful form of energy one can generate. It is a force as real as terrestrial gravity. As a physician, I have seen men, after all other therapy had failed, lifted out of disease and melancholy by the serene effort of prayer. ... Prayer like radium is a source of luminous, self-generating energy. ... In prayer, human beings seek to augment their finite energy by addressing themselves to the Infinite source of all energy. When we pray, we link ourselves with the inexhaustible motive power that spins the universe. We pray that a part of this power be apportioned to our needs. Even in asking, our human deficiencies are filled and we arise strengthened and repaired. ... Whenever we address God in fervent prayer, we change both soul and body for the better. It could not happen that any man or woman could pray for a single moment without some good result.”

Admiral Byrd knows what it means to “link ourselves with the inexhaustible motive power that spins the universe” .His ability to do that pulled him through the most trying ordeal of his life. He tells the story in his book Alone. () In 1934, he spent five months in a hut buried beneath the icecap of Ross Barrier deep in the Antarctic. He was the only living creature south of latitude seventy-eight. Blizzards roared above his shack; the cold plunged down to eighty-two degrees below zero; he was completely surrounded by unending night. And then he found, to his horror, he was being slowly poisoned by carbon monoxide that escaped from his stove! What could he do? The nearest help was 123 miles away, and could not possibly reach him for several months. He tried to fix his stove and ventilating system, but the fumes still escaped. They often knocked him out cold. He lay on the floor completely unconscious. He couldn’t eat; he couldn’t sleep; he became so feeble that he could hardly leave his bunk. He frequently feared he wouldn’t live until morning. He was convinced he would die in that cabin, and his body would be hidden by perpetual snows. What saved his life? One day, in the depths of his despair, he reached for his diary and tried to set down his philosophy of life. “The human race,” he wrote, “is not alone in the universe.” He thought of the stars overhead, of the orderly swing of the constellations and planets; of how the everlasting sun would, in its time, return to ligh...

I am not alone

Why does religious faith bring us such peace and calm and fortitude? I’ll let William James answer that. He says: “The turbulent billows of the fretful surface leave the deep parts of the ocean undisturbed; and to him who has a hold on vaster and more permanent realities, the hourly vicissitudes of his personal destiny seem relatively insignificant things. The really religious person is accordingly unshakable and full of equanimity, and calmly ready for any duty that the day may bring forth.”

beautiful and inspiring prayer written by St. Francis seven hundred years ago: Lord, make me an instrument of Thy Peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; where there is sadness, joy. O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood, as to understand; to be loved, as to love; for it is in giving that we receive, it is in pardoning, that we are pardoned and it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.

An event occurred in 1929 that created a national sensation in educational circles. Learned men from all over America rushed to Chicago to witness the affair. A few years earlier, a young man by the name of Robert Hutchins had worked his way through Yale, acting as a waiter, a lumberjack, a tutor, and a clothes-line salesman. Now, only eight years later, he was being inaugurated as president of the fourth richest university in America, the University of Chicago. His age? Thirty. Incredible! The older educators shook their heads. Criticism came roaring down upon the “boy wonder” like a rockslide. He was this and he was that-too young, inexperienced-his educational ideas were cockeyed. Even the newspapers joined in the attack. The day he was inaugurated, a friend said to the father of Robert Maynard Hutchins: “I was shocked this morning to read that newspaper editorial denouncing your son.” “Yes,” the elder Hutchins replied, “it was severe, but remember that no one ever kicks a dead dog.”

the more important a dog is, the more satisfaction people get in kicking him. The Prince of Wales who later became Edward VIII (now Duke of Windsor) had that forcibly brought home to him. He was attending Dartmouth College in Devonshire at the time-a college that corresponds to the Naval Academy at Annapolis. The Prince was about fourteen. One day one of the naval officers found him crying, and asked him what was wrong. He refused to tell at first, but finally admitted the truth: he was being kicked by the naval cadets. The commodore of the college summoned the boys and explained to them that the Prince had not complained, but he wanted to find out why the Prince had been singled out for this rough treatment. After much hemming and hawing and toe scraping, the cadets finally confessed that when they themselves became commanders and captains in the King’s Navy, they wanted to be able to say that they had kicked the King!

Schopenhauer had said it years ago: “Vulgar people take huge delight in the faults and follies of great men.” One hardly thinks of the president of Yale as a vulgar man; yet a former president of Yale, Timothy Dwight, apparently took huge delight in denouncing a man who was running for President of the United States. The president of Yale warned that if this man were elected President, “we may see our wives and daughters the victims of legal prostitution, soberly dishonoured, speciously polluted; the outcasts of delicacy and virtue, the loathing of God and man.” Sounds almost like a denunciation of Hitler, doesn’t it? But it wasn’t. It was a denunciation of Thomas Jefferson. Which Thomas Jefferson? Surely not the immortal Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence, the patron saint of democracy? Yea, verily, that was the man. What American do you suppose was denounced as a “hypocrite", “an impostor", and as “little better than a murderer”? A newspaper cartoon depicted him on a guillotine, the big knife read to cut off his head. Crowds jeered at him and hissed him as he rode through the street. Who was he? George Washington.

Admiral Peary-the explorer who startled and thrilled the world by reaching the North Pole with dog sleds on April 6, 1909-a goal that brave men for centuries had suffered and died to attain. Peary himself almost died from cold and starvation; and eight of his toes were frozen so hard they had to be cut off. He was so overwhelmed with disasters that he feared he would go insane. His superior naval officers in Washington were burned up because Peary was getting so much publicity and acclaim. So they accused him of collecting money for scientific expeditions and then “lying around and loafing in the Arctic.” And they probably believed it, because it is almost impossible not to believe what you want to believe. Their determination to humiliate and block Peary was so violent that only a direct order from President McKinley enabled Peary to continued his career in the Arctic.

In 1862, General Grant won the first great decisive victory that the North had enjoyed-a victory that was achieved in one afternoon, a victory that made Grant a national idol overnight-a victory that had tremendous repercussions even in far-off Europe-a victory that set church bells ringing and bonfires blazing from Maine to the banks of the Mississippi. Yet within six weeks after achieving that great victory, Grant -hero of the North-was arrested and his army was taken from him. He wept with humiliation and despair. Why was General U.S. Grant arrested at the flood tide of his victory? Largely because he had aroused the jealousy and envy of his arrogant superiors.