How to Stop Worrying and Start Living

by Dale Carnegie

leadership usually gravitates to the man who can get up and say what he thinks.

“My peace of mind, my happiness, my health, and perhaps even my income will, in the long run, depend largely on applying the old, obvious, and eternal truths taught in this book.”

The rapidity with which we forget is astonishing.

Learning is an active process. We learn by doing. So, if you desire to master the principles you are studying in this book, do something about them. Apply these rules at every opportunity. If you don’t, you will forget them quickly. Only knowledge that is used sticks in your mind.

Keep a diary—a diary in which you ought to record your triumphs in the application of these principles. Be specific. Give names, dates, results. Keeping such a record will inspire you to greater efforts; and how fascinating these entries will be when you chance upon them some evening, years from now!

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.”

Touch a button and hear, at every level of your life, the iron doors shutting out the Past—the dead yesterdays. Touch another and shut off, with a metal curtain, the Future—the unborn tomorrows. Then you are safe—safe for today!

best possible way to prepare for tomorrow is to concentrate with all your intelligence, all your enthusiasm, on doing today’s work superbly today.

That is the only possible way you can prepare for the future.

By all means take thought for the tomorrow, yes, careful thought and planning and preparation. But have no anxiety.

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.

Mr. Sulzberger told me that he was never able to banish his worries and find peace until he had adopted as his motto five words from a church hymn: One step enough for me.

‘I want you to think of your life as an hourglass. You know there are thousands of grains of sand in the top of the hourglass; and they all pass slowly and evenly through the narrow neck in the middle. Nothing you or I could do would make more than one grain of sand pass through this narrow neck without impairing the hourglass. You and I and everyone else are like this hourglass. When we start in the morning, there are hundreds of tasks which we feel that we must accomplish that day, but if we do not take them one at a time and let them pass through the day slowly and evenly, as do the grains of sand passing through the narrow neck of the hourglass, then we are bound to break our own physical or mental structure.’

“I have practiced that philosophy ever since that memorable day that an Army doctor gave it to me. ‘One grain of sand at a time…. One task at a time.’

So let’s be content to live the only time we can possibly live: from now until bedtime. “Anyone can carry his burden, however hard, until nightfall,” wrote 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.” Yes,

It said: ‘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.

Each morning I said to myself, ‘Today is a new life.’

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.

In its brief course Lie all the verities and realities of your existence: The bliss of growth The glory of action The splendor of beauty, For yesterday is but a dream And tomorrow is only a vision, But today well lived makes every 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.

if you want to keep it out of your life, do what Sir William Osler did— 1. Shut the iron doors on the past and the future. Live in Day-tight Compartments.

same anti-worry technique for more than thirty years. It is simple. Anyone can use it. It consists of three steps: “Step I. I analyzed the situation fearlessly and honestly and figured out what was the worst that could possibly happen as a result of this failure. No one was going to jail me or shoot me. That was certain. True, there was also a chance that I would lose my position; and there was also a chance that my employers would have to remove the machinery and lose the twenty thousand dollars we had invested.

“Step II. After figuring out what was the worst that could possibly happen, I reconciled myself to accepting it, if necessary. I said to myself: This failure will be a blow to my record, and it might possibly mean the loss of my job; but if it does, I can always get another position. Conditions could be much worse; and as far as my employers are concerned—well, they realize that we are experimenting with a new method of cleaning gas, and if this experience costs them twenty thousand dollars, they can stand it. They can charge it up to research, for it is an experiment.

“After discovering the worst that could possibly happen and reconciling myself to accepting it, if necessary, an extremely important thing happened: I immediately relaxed and felt a sense of peace that I hadn’t experienced in days. “Step III. From that time on, I calmly devoted my time and energy to trying to improve upon the worst which I had already accepted mentally. “I now tried to figure out ways and means by which I might reduc...

another five thousand for additional equipment, our problem would be solved. We did this, and instead of the firm losing twenty thousand, we made fifteen thousand. “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 mentall...

acceptance of what has happened is the first step in overcoming the consequences of any misfortune.”

“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,”

Makes sense, doesn’t it? Yet millions of people have wrecked their lives in angry turmoil, because they refused to accept the worst; refused to try to improve upon it; refused to salvage what they could from the wreck. Instead of trying to reconstruct their fortunes, they engaged in a bitter and “violent contest with experience”—and ended up victims of that brooding fixation known as melancholia.

Rule 2 is: If you have a worry problem, apply the 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.

We got to talking about the effects of worry, and he said: “Seventy per cent of all patients who come to physicians could cure themselves if they only got rid of their fears and worries. Don’t think for a moment that I mean that their ills are imaginary,” he said. “Their ills are as real as a throbbing toothache and sometimes a hundred times more serious. I refer to such illnesses as nervous indigestion,

“Fear causes worry. Worry makes you tense and nervous and affects the nerves of your stomach and actually changes the gastric juices of your stomach from normal to abnormal and often leads to stomach ulcers.”

Dr. W. C. Alvarez, of the Mayo Clinic, said: “Ulcers frequently flare up or subside according to the hills and valleys of emotional stress.”

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”! It took medical science twenty-three hundred years to recognize this great truth. We are just now beginning to develop a new kind of medicine called psychosomatic medicine—a medicine that treats both the mind and the body.

When the stock market went down, the sugar in his blood and urine went up. 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.”

Relaxation and Recreation 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.

“Those who keep the peace of their inner selves in the midst of the tumult of the modern city are immune from nervous diseases.” Can you keep the peace of your inner self in the midst of the tumult of a modern city? If you are a normal person, the answer is “yes.” “Emphatically yes.” Most of us are stronger than we realize.

‘Face the facts: Quit worrying; then do something about it!’ “

“Those who do not know how to fight worry die young.”

Part One in a Nutshell Fundamental Facts You Should Know About Worry RULE

1: IF YOU WANT TO AVOID WORRY, DO WHAT SIR WILLIAM OSLER DID: LIVE IN “DAY-TIGHT COMPARTMENTS.” DON’T STEW ABOUT THE FUTURE. JUST LIVE EACH DAY UNTIL BEDTIME. RULE 2: THE NEXT TIME TROUBLE—WITH A CAPITAL T—BACKS YOU UP IN A CORNER, TRY THE MAGIC FORMULA OF WILLIS H. CARRIER: a. Ask yourself, “What is the worst that can possibly happen if I can’t solve my problem?” b. Prepare yourself mentally to accept the worst—if necessary.

Then calmly try to improve upon the worst—which you have already mentally agreed to accept. RULE 3: REMIND YOURSELF OF THE EXORBITANT PRICE YOU CAN PAY FOR WORRY IN TERMS OF YOUR HEALTH. “T...

Their names are What and Why and When And How and Where and Who.

1. Get the facts. 2. Analyze the facts. 3. Arrive at a decision—and then act on that decision

“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.

Let me repeat that: “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.”

lot of people in this world who make life a hell for themselves and others by insisting that two plus two equals five—or maybe five hundred!

But here are two ideas that I have found helpful when trying to step aside from my problems, in order to see the facts in a clear, objective manner. 1. When trying to get the facts, I pretend that I am collecting this information not for myself, but for some other person. This helps me to take a cold,

impartial view of the evidence. This helps me eliminate my emotions.

Neither you nor I nor Einstein nor the Supreme Court of the United States is brilliant enough to reach an intelligent decision on any problem without first getting the facts. 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. So Rule 1 for solving our problems is: Get the facts. Let’s do what Dean Hawkes did: let’s not even attempt to solve our problems without first collecting all the facts in an impartial manner. However, getting all the facts in the world won’t do us any good until we analyze them and interpret them.

analyze the facts after writing them down.