Авторизация
×
п»ї

How To Stop Worrying And Start Living / Как перестать беспокоиться и начать жить (by Dale Carnegie, 2006) - аудиокнига на английском

How To Stop Worrying And Start Living / Как перестать беспокоиться и начать жить (by Dale Carnegie, 2006) - аудиокнига на английском

How To Stop Worrying And Start Living / Как перестать беспокоиться и начать жить (by Dale Carnegie, 2006) - аудиокнига на английском

Кто из читателей мог бы подумать, что великий Карнеги в прошлом был человеком несчастным и зацикленным на собственных проблемах и неудачах. Беспокойство настолько поглотило его, что дошло до крайности. Мужчина день изо дня начал ощущать все большую ненависть к собственной жизни и положению вещей в частности. Пришло понимание, что ситуацию нужно менять, причем максимально быстро, но методов решения сложившейся душевной тяжбы он не знал. Так возникло безудержное желание менять все. Но для начала нужно было понять, как научиться и даже взять в привычку не беспокоиться. Автор нашел в собственном сознании скрытые истоки информации относительно того, как сделать жизнь приятной и полноценной. И эти познания он трансформировал в книгу, чтобы помочь людям быть счастливыми, а для начала осведомленными в природе своих мыслей и переживаний. Простые примеры – нюансы из обыденной жизни без глагольствования о высоких материях и философских проблемах. Все предельно ясно и доступно. Так мелкими шагами он вводит читателя в иное русло понимания себя и азов своего сознания, переходя к важным и более весомым аспектам. Самопомощь – это не рекомендация, а возможность изменить все вокруг посредством изменения собственного мышления.

Рейтинг:
Просмотров: 22 726
Название:
How To Stop Worrying And Start Living / Как перестать беспокоиться и начать жить (by Dale Carnegie, 2006) - аудиокнига на английском
Год выпуска аудиокниги:
2006
Автор:
Dale Carnegie
Рсполнитель:
Andrew Macmillan
Язык:
английский
Жанр:
Книги про саморазвитие и успех на английском / Аудиокниги на английском языке / Аудиокниги уровня upper-intermediate на английском
Уровень сложности:
upper-intermediate
Длительность аудио:
09:30:03
Битрейт аудио:
56 kbps
Формат:
mp3, pdf, doc

Слушать онлайн How To Stop Worrying And Start Living / Как перестать беспокоиться и начать жить аудиокнигу РЅР° английском языке:

Скачать текст книги в формате .doc (Word) по прямой ссылке dale_carnegie_-_how_to_stop_worrying_and_start_liv.doc [789.5 Kb] (cкачиваний: 488) .
Скачать текст книги в формате .pdf по прямой ссылке  dale_carnegie_-_how_to_stop_worrying_and_start_liv.pdf [2.14 Mb] (cкачиваний: 682) .
Скачать audiobook (MP3) бесплатно с файлообменника.


Слушать аудиокнигу в смартфоне через телеграм: How To Stop Worrying And Start Living

Читать книгу на английском онлайн:

(Чтобы переводить слова на русский язык и добавлять в словарь для изучения, щелкаем мышкой на нужное слово).


Dale Carnegie - How To Stop Worrying And Start Living ----------------------------- Preface How This Book Was Written-and Why Thirty-Five years ago, I was one of the unhappiest lads in New York. I was selling motortrucks for a living. I didn't know what made a motor-truck run. That wasn't all: I didn't want to know. I despised my job. I despised living in a cheap furnished room on West Fifty-sixth Street-a room infested with cockroaches. I still remember that I had a bunch of neckties hanging on the walls; and when I reached out of a morning to get a fresh necktie, the cockroaches scattered in all directions. I despised having to eat in cheap, dirty restaurants that were also probably infested with cockroaches. I came home to my lonely room each night with a sick headache-a headache bred and fed by disappointment, worry, bitterness, and rebellion. I was rebelling because the dreams I had nourished back in my college days had turned into nightmares. Was this life? Was this the vital adventure to which I had looked forward so eagerly? Was this all life would ever mean to me-working at a job I despised, living with cockroaches, eating vile food-and with no hope for the future? . I longed for leisure to read, and to write the books I had dreamed of writing back in my college days. I knew I had everything to gain and nothing to lose by giving up the job I despised. I wasn't interested in making a lot of money, but I was interested in making a lot of living. In short, I had come to the Rubicon-to that moment of decision which faces most young people when they start out in life. So I made my decision-and that decision completely altered my future. It has made the last thirty-five years happy and rewarding beyond my most Utopian aspirations. My decision was this: I would give up the work I loathed; and, since I had spent four years studying in the State Teachers' College at Warrensburg, Missouri, preparing to teach, I would make my living teaching adult classes in night schools. Then I would have my days free to read books, prepare lectures, write novels and short stories. I wanted "to live to write and write to live". What subject should I teach to adults at night? As I looked back and evaluated my own college training, I saw that the training and experience I had had in public speaking had been of more practical value to me in business-and in life-than everything else I had studied in college all put together. Why? Because it had wiped out my timidity and lack of confidence and given me the courage and assurance to deal with people. It had also made clear that leadership usually gravitates to the man who can get up and say what he thinks I applied for a position teaching public speaking in the night extension courses both at Columbia University and New York University, but these universities decided they could struggle along somehow without my help. I was disappointed then-but I now thank God that they did turn me down, because I started teaching in Y.M.C.A. night schools, where I had to show concrete results and show them quickly. What a challenge that was! These adults didn't come to my classes because they wanted college credits or social prestige. They came for one reason only: they wanted to solve their problems. They wanted to be able to stand up on their own feet and say a few words at a business meeting without fainting from fright. Salesmen wanted to be able to call on a tough customer without having to walk around the block three times to get up courage. They wanted to develop poise and self-confidence. They wanted to get ahead in business. They wanted to have more money for their families. And since they were paying their tuition on an installment basis-and they stopped paying if they didn't get results-and since I was being paid, not a salary, but a percentage of the profits, I had to be practical if I wanted to eat. I felt at the time that I was teaching under a handicap, but I realise now that I was getting priceless training. I had to motivate my students. I had to help them solve their problems. I had to make each session so inspiring that they wanted to continue coming. It was exciting work. I loved it. I was astounded at how quickly these business men developed self-confidence and how quickly many of them secured promotions and increased pay. The classes were succeeding far beyond my most optimistic hopes. Within three seasons, the Y.M.C.A.s, which had refused to pay me five dollars a night in salary, were paying me thirty dollars a night on a percentage basis. At first, I taught only public speaking, but, as the years went by, I saw that these adults also needed the ability to win friends and influence people. Since I couldn't find an adequate textbook on human relations, I wrote one myself. It was written-no, it wasn't written in the usual way. It grew and evolved out of the experiences of the adults in these classes. I called it How to Win Friends and Influence People. Since it was written solely as a textbook for my own adult classes, and since I had written four other books that no one had ever heard of, I never dreamed that it would have a large sale: I am probably one of the most astonished authors now living. As the years went by, I realised that another one of the biggest problems of these adults was worry. A large majority of my students were business men-executives, salesmen, engineers, accountants: a cross section of all the trades and professions-and most of them had problems! There were women in the classes-business women and housewives. They, too, had problems! Clearly, what I needed was a textbook on how to conquer worry-so again I tried to find one. I went to New York's great public library at Fifth Avenue and Forty-second Street and discovered to my astonishment that this library had only twenty-two books listed under the title WORRY. I also noticed, to my amusement, that it had one hundred and eighty-nine books listed under WORMS. Almost nine times as many books about worms as about worry! Astounding, isn't it? Since worry is one of the biggest problems facing mankind, you would think, wouldn't you, that every high school and college in the land would give a course on "How to Stop Worrying"? Yet, if there is even one course on that subject in any college in the land, I have never heard of it. No wonder 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." The result? More than half of our hospital beds are occupied by people with nervous and emotional troubles. I looked over those twenty-two books on worry reposing on the shelves of the New York Public Library. In addition, I purchased all the books on worry I could find; yet I couldn't discover even one that I could use as a text in my course for adults. So I resolved to write one myself. I began preparing myself to write this book seven years ago. How? By reading what the philosophers of all ages have said about worry. I also read hundreds of biographies, all the way from Confucius to Churchill. I also interviewed scores of prominent people in many walks of life, such as Jack Dempsey, General Omar Bradley, General Mark Clark, Henry Ford, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Dorothy Dix. But that was only a beginning. I also did something else that was far more important than the interviews and the reading. I worked for five years in a laboratory for conquering worry-a laboratory conducted in our own adult classes. As far as I know, it is the first and only laboratory of its kind in the world. This is what we did. We gave students a set of rules on how to stop worrying and asked them to apply these rules in their own lives and then talk to the class on the results they had obtained. Others reported on techniques they had used in the past. As a result of this experience, I presume I have listened to more talks on "How I Conquered Worry" than has any other individual who ever walked this earth. In addition, I read hundreds of other talks on "How I Conquered Worry" talks that were sent to me by mail-talks that had won prizes in our classes that are held in more than a hundred and seventy cities throughout the United States and Canada. So this book didn't come out of an ivory tower. Neither is it an academic preachment on how worry might be conquered. Instead, I have tried to write a fast-moving, concise, documented report on how worry has been conquered by thousands of adults. One thing is certain: this book is practical. You can set your teeth in it. I am happy to say that you won't find in this book stories about an imaginary "Mr. B--" or a vague "Mary and John|' whom no one can identify. Except in a few rare cases, this book names names and gives street addresses. It is authentic. It is documented. It is vouched for-and certified. "Science," said the French philosopher Valery, "is a collection of successful recipes." That is what this book is, a collection of successful and time-tested recipes to rid our lives of worry. However, let me warn you: you won't find anything new in it, but you will find much that is not generally applied. And when it comes to that, you and I don't need to be told anything new. We already know enough to lead perfect lives. We have all read the golden rule and the Sermon on the Mount. Our trouble is not ignorance, but inaction. The purpose of this book is to restate, illustrate, streamline, air-condition, and glorify a lot of ancient and basic truths-and kick you in the shins and make you do something about applying them. You didn't pick up this book to read about how it was written. You are looking for action. All right, let's go. Please read the first forty-four pages of this book-and if by that time you don't feel that you have acquired a new power and a new inspiration to stop worry and enjoy life-then toss this book into the dust-bin. It is no good for you. DALE CARNEGIE -------------------------------- Part One - Fundamental Facts You Should Know About Worry Chapter 1 - Live in "Day-tight Compartments" 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 Oxfordthe 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." Forty-two years later, on a soft spring night when the tulips were blooming on the campus, this man, Sir William Osier, addressed the students of Yale University. He told those Yale students that a man like himself who had been a professor in four universities and had written a popular book was supposed to have "brains of a special quality". He declared that that was untrue. He said that his intimate friends knew that his brains were "of the most mediocre character". What, then, was the secret of his success? He stated that it was owing to what he called living in "day-tight compartments." What did he mean by that? A few months before he spoke at Yale, Sir William Osier had crossed the Atlantic on a great ocean liner where the captain standing on the bridge, could press a button and-presto!-there was a clanging of machinery and various parts of the ship were immediately shut off from one another-shut off into watertight compartments. "Now each one of you," Dr. Osier said to those Yale students, "is a much more marvelous organisation than the great liner, and bound on a longer voyage. What I urge is that you so learn to control the machinery as to live with 'day-tight compartments' as the most certain way to ensure safety on the voyage. Get on the bridge, and see that at least the great bulkheads are in working order. 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! . Shut off the past! Let the dead past bury its dead. . Shut out the yesterdays which have lighted fools the way to dusty death. . The load of tomorrow, added to that of yesterday, carried today, makes the strongest falter. 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. . Shut close, then the great fore and aft bulkheads, and prepare to cultivate the habit of life of 'day-tight compartments'." Did Dr. Osier mean to say that we should not make any effort to prepare for tomorrow? No. Not at all. But he did go on in that address to say that the 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. Sir William Osier urged the students at Yale to begin the day with Christ's prayer: "Give us this day our daily bread." Remember that that prayer asks only for today's bread. It doesn't complain about the stale bread we had to eat yesterday; and it doesn't say: "Oh, God, it has been pretty dry out in the wheat belt lately and we may have another drought-and then how will I get bread to eat next autumn-or suppose I lose my job-oh, God, how could I get bread then?" No, this prayer teaches us to ask for today's bread only. Today's bread is the only kind of bread you can possibly eat. Years ago, a penniless philosopher was wandering through a stony country where the people had a hard time making a living. One day a crowd gathered about him on a hill, and he gave what is probably the most-quoted speech ever delivered anywhere at any time. This speech contains twenty-six words that have gone ringing down across the centuries: "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." Many men have rejected those words of Jesus: "Take no thought for the morrow." They have rejected those words as a counsel of perfection, as a bit of Oriental mysticism. "I must take thought for the morrow," they say. "I must take out insurance to protect my family. I must lay aside money for my old age. I must plan and prepare to get ahead." Right! Of course you must. The truth is that those words of Jesus, translated over three hundred years ago, don't mean today what they meant during the reign of King James. 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. I recently had the privilege of interviewing Arthur Hays Sulzberger, publisher of one of the most famous newspapers in the world, The New York Times. Mr. Sulzberger told me that when the Second World War flamed across Europe, he was so stunned, so worried about the future, that he found it almost impossible to sleep. He would frequently get out of bed in the middle of the night, take some canvas and tubes of paint, look in the mirror, and try to paint a portrait of himself. He didn't know anything about painting, but he painted anyway, to get his mind off his worries. 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. Lead, kindly Light . Keep thou my feet: I do not ask to see The distant scene; one step enough for me. At about the same time, a young man in uniform-somewhere in Europe-was learning the same lesson. His name was Ted Bengermino, of 5716 Newholme Road, Baltimore, Maryland-and he had worried himself into a first-class case of combat fatigue. "In April, 1945," writes Ted Bengermino, "I had worried until I had developed what doctors call a 'spasmodic transverse colon'-a condition that produced intense pain. If the war hadn't ended when it did, I am sure I would have had a complete physical breakdown. "I was utterly exhausted. I was a Graves Registration, Noncommissioned Officer for the 94th Infantry Division. My work was to help set up and maintain records of all men killed in action, missing in action, and hospitalised. I also had to help disinter the bodies of both Allied and enemy soldiers who had been killed and hastily buried in shallow graves during the pitch of battle. I had to gather up the personal effects of these men and see that they were sent back to parents or closest relatives who would prize these personal effects so much. I was constantly worried for fear we might be making embarrassing and serious mistakes. I was worried about whether or not I would come through all this. I was worried about whether I would live to hold my only child in my arms-a son of sixteen months, whom I had never seen. I was so worried and exhausted that I lost thirty-four pounds. I was so frantic that I was almost out of my mind. I looked at my hands. They were hardly more than skin and bones. I was terrified at the thought of going home a physical wreck. I broke down and sobbed like a child. I was so shaken that tears welled up every time I was alone. There was one period soon after the Battle of the Bulge started that I wept so often that I almost gave up hope of ever being a normal human being again. "I ended up in an Army dispensary. An Army doctor gave me some advice which has completely changed my life. After giving me a thorough physical examination, he informed me that my troubles were mental. 'Ted', he said, '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 practised 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.' That advice saved me physically and mentally during the war; and it has also helped me in my present position in business. I am a Stock Control Clerk for the Commercial Credit Company in Baltimore. I found the same problems arising in business that had arisen during the war: a score of things had to be done at once-and there was little time to do them. We were low in stocks. We had new forms to handle, new stock arrangements, changes of address, opening and closing offices, and so on. Instead of getting taut and nervous, I remembered what the doctor had told me. 'One grain of sand at a time. One task at a time.' By repeating those words to myself over and over, I accomplished my tasks in a more efficient manner and I did my work without the confused and jumbled feeling that had almost wrecked me on the battlefield." One of the most appalling comments on our present way of life is that half of all the beds in our hospitals are reserved for patients with nervous and mental troubles, patients who have collapsed under the crushing burden of accumulated yesterdays and fearful tomorrows. Yet a vast majority of those people would be walking the streets today, leading happy, useful lives, if they had only heeded the words of Jesus: "Have no anxiety about the morrow"; or the words of Sir William Osier: "Live in day-tight compartments." You and I are standing this very second at the meeting-place of two eternities: the vast past that has endured for ever, and the future that is plunging on to the last syllable of recorded time. We can't possibly live in either of those eternities-no, not even for one split second. But, by trying to do so, we can wreck both our bodies and our minds. 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, that is all that life requires of us; but Mrs. E. K. Shields, 815, Court Street, Saginaw, Michigan, was driven to despair- even to the brink of suicide-before she learned to live just till bedtime. "In 1937, I lost my husband," Mrs. Shields said as she told me her story. "I was very depressed-and almost penniless. I wrote my former employer, Mr. Leon Roach, of the Roach-Fowler Company of Kansas City, and got my old job back. I had formerly made my living selling books to rural and town school boards. I had sold my car two years previously when my husband became ill; but I managed to scrape together enough money to put a down payment on a used car and started out to sell books again. "I had thought that getting back on the road would help relieve my depression; but driving alone and eating alone was almost more than I could take. Some of the territory was not very productive, and I found it hard to make those car payments, small as they were. "In the spring of 1938, I was working out from Versailles, Missouri. The schools were poor, the roads bad; I was so lonely and discouraged that at one time I even considered suicide. It seemed that success was impossible. I had nothing to live for. I dreaded getting up each morning and facing life. I was afraid of everything: afraid I could not meet the car payments; afraid I could not pay my room rent; afraid I would not have enough to eat. I was afraid my health was failing and I had no money for a doctor. All that kept me from suicide were the thoughts that my sister would be deeply grieved, and that I did not have enough money to pay my funeral expenses. "Then one day I read an article that lifted me out of my despondence and gave me the courage to go on living. I shall never cease to be grateful for one inspiring sentence in that article. 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. I learned to forget the yesterdays and to not-think of the tomorrows. Each morning I said to myself: 'Today is a new life.' "I have succeeded in overcoming my fear of loneliness, my fear of want. I am happy and fairly successful now and have a lot of enthusiasm and love for life. I know now that I shall never again be afraid, regardless of what life hands me. I know now that I don't have to fear the future. I know now that I can live one day at a time-and that 'Every day is a new life to a wise man.'" Who do you suppose wrote this verse: 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. Why are we such fools-such tragic fools? "How strange it is, our little procession of life I" wrote Stephen Leacock. "The child says: 'When I am a big boy.' But what is that? The big boy says: 'When I grow up.' And then, grown up, he says: 'When I get married.' But to be married, what is that after all? The thought changes to 'When I'm able to retire." And then, when retirement comes, he looks back over the landscape traversed; a cold wind seems to sweep over it; somehow he has missed it all, and it is gone. Life, we learn too late, is in the living, in the tissue of every day and hour." The late Edward S. Evans of Detroit almost killed himself with worry before he learned that life "is in the living, in the tissue of every day and hour." Brought up in poverty, Edward Evans made his first money by selling newspapers, then worked as a grocer's clerk. Later, with seven people dependent upon him for bread and butter, he got a job as an assistant librarian. Small as the pay was, he was afraid to quit. Eight years passed before he could summon up the courage to start out on his own. But once he started, he built up an original investment of fifty-five borrowed dollars into a business of his own that made him twenty thousand dollars a year. Then came a frost, a killing frost. He endorsed a big note for a friend-and the friend went bankrupt. Quickly on top of that disaster came another: the bank in which he had all his money collapsed. He not only lost every cent he had, but was plunged into debt for sixteen thousand dollars. His nerves couldn't take it. "I couldn't sleep or eat," he told me. "I became strangely ill. Worry and nothing but worry," he said, "brought on this illness. One day as I was walking down the street, I fainted and fell on the sidewalk. I was no longer able to walk. I was put to bed and my body broke out in boils. These boils turned inward until just lying in bed was agony. I grew weaker every day. Finally my doctor told me that I had only two more weeks to live. I was shocked. I drew up my will, and then lay back in bed to await my end. No use now to struggle or worry. I gave up, relaxed, and went to sleep. I hadn't slept two hours in succession for weeks; but now with my earthly problems drawing to an end, I slept like a baby. My exhausting weariness began to disappear. My appetite returned. I gained weight. "A few weeks later, I was able to walk with crutches. Six weeks later, I was able to go back to work. I had been making twenty thousand dollars a year; but I was glad now to get a job for thirty dollars a week. I got a job selling blocks to put behind the wheels of automobiles when they are shipped by freight. I had learned my lesson now. No more worry for me-no more regret about what had happened in the past- no more dread of the future. I concentrated all my time, energy, and enthusiasm into selling those blocks." Edward S. Evans shot up fast now. In a few years, he was president of the company. His company-the Evans Product Company-has been listed on the New York Stock Exchange for years. When Edward S. Evans died in 1945, he was one of the most progressive business men in the United States. If you ever fly over Greenland, you may land on Evans Field - a flying-field named in his honour. Here is the point of the story: Edward S. Evans would never have had the thrill of achieving these victories in business and in living if he hadn't seen the folly of worrying if he hadn't learned to live in day-tight compartments. 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 future that no one can possibly foretell? The old Romans had a word for it. In fact, they had two words for it. Carpe diem. "Enjoy the day. " Or, "Seize the day." Yes, seize the day, and make the most of it. That is the philosophy of Lowell Thomas. I recently spent a week-end at his farm; and I noticed that he had these words from Psalm CXVIII framed and hanging on the walls of his broadcasting studio where he would see them often: "This is the day which the Lord hath made; we will rejoice and be glad in it." John Ruskin had on his desk a simple piece of stone on which was carved one word: TODAY. And while I haven't a piece of stone on my desk, I do have a poem pasted on my mirror where I can see it when I shave every morning-a poem that Sir William Osier always kept on his desk - a poem written by the famous Indian dramatist, 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. So, the first thing you should know about worry is this: if you want to keep it out of your life, do what Sir William Osier did - 1. Shut the iron doors on the past and the future. Live in Day-tight Compartments Why not ask yourself these questions, and write down the answers? 1.Do I tend to put off living in the present in order to worry about the future, or to yearn for some "magical rose garden over the horizon"? 2.Do I sometimes embitter the present by regretting things that happened in the pastthat are over and done with? 3.Do I get up in the morning determined to "Seize the day"-to get the utmost out of these twenty-four hours? 4.Can I get more out of life by "living in day-tight compartments" ? 5.When shall I start to do this? Next week? Tomorrow? . Today? ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Chapter 2 - A Magic Formula For Solving Worry Situations Would you like a quick, sure-fire recipe for handling worry situations-a technique you can start using right away, before you go any further in reading this book? Then let me tell you about the method worked out by Willis H. Carrier, the brilliant engineer who launched the air-conditioning industry, and who is now head of the worldfamous Carrier Corporation in Syracuse, New York. It is one of the best techniques I ever heard of for solving worry problems, and I got it from Mr. Carrier personally when we were having lunch together one day at the Engineers' Club in New York. "When I was a young man," Mr. Carrier said, "I worked for the Buffalo Forge Company in Buffalo, New York. I was handed the assignment of installing a gas-cleaning device in a plant of the Pittsburgh Plate Glass Company at Crystal City, Missouri-a plant costing millions of dollars. The purpose of this installation was to remove the impurities from the gas so it could be burned without injuring the engines. This method of cleaning gas was new. It had been tried only once before- and under different conditions. In my work at Crystal City, Missouri, unforeseen difficulties arose. It worked after a fashion -but not well enough to meet the guarantee we had made. "I was stunned by my failure. It was almost as if someone had struck me a blow on the head. My stomach, my insides, began to twist and turn. For a while I was so worried I couldn't sleep. "Finally, common sense reminded me that worry wasn't getting me anywhere; so I figured out a way to handle my problem without worrying. It worked superbly. I have been using this same anti-worry technique for more than thirty years. It is simple. Anyone can use it. It consists of three steps: "Step I. I analysed 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 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 realise 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 reduce the loss of twenty thousand dollars that we faced. I made several tests and finally figured out that if we spent 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 mentally, we then eliminate all those vague imaginings and put ourselves in a position in which we are able to concentrate on our problem. "This incident that I have related occurred many years ago. It worked so superbly that I have been using it ever since; and, as a result, my life has been almost completely free from worry." Now, why is Willis H. Carrier's magic formula so valuable and so practical, psychologically speaking? Because it yanks us down out of the great grey clouds in which we fumble around when we are blinded by worry. It plants our feet good and solid on the earth. We know where we stand. And if we haven't solid ground under us, how in creation can we ever hope to think anything through? Professor William James, the father of applied psychology, has been dead for thirtyeight 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." 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. Would you like to see how someone else adopted Willis H. Carrier's magic formula and applied it to his own problem? Well, here is one example, from a New York oil dealer who was a student in my classes. "I was being blackmailed!" this student began. "I didn't believe it was possible-I didn't believe it could happen outside of the movies-but I was actually being blackmailed! What happened was this: the oil company of which I was the head had a number of delivery trucks and a number of drivers. At that time, OPA regulations were strictly in force, and we were rationed on the amount of oil we could deliver to any one of our customers. I didn't know it, but it seems that certain of our drivers had been delivering oil short to our regular customers, and then reselling the surplus to customers of their own. "The first inkling I had of these illegitimate transactions was when a man who claimed to be a government inspector came to see me one day and demanded hush money. He had got documentary proof of what our drivers had been doing, and he threatened to turn this proof over to the District Attorney's office if I didn't cough up. "I knew, of course, that I had nothing to worry about-personally, at least. But I also knew that the law says a firm is responsible for the actions of its employees. What's more, I knew that if the case came to court, and it was aired in the newspapers, the bad publicity would ruin my business. And I was proud of my business-it had been founded by my father twenty-four years before. "I was so worried I was sick! I didn't eat or sleep for three days and nights. I kept going around in crazy circles. Should I pay the money-five thousand dollars-or should I tell this man to go ahead and do his damnedest? Either way I tried to make up my mind, it ended in nightmare. "Then, on Sunday night, I happened to pick up the booklet on How to Stop Worrying which I had been given in my Carnegie class in public speaking. I started to read it, and came across the story of Willis H. Carrier. 'Face the worst', it said. So I asked myself: 'What is the worst that can happen if I refuse to pay up, and these blackmailers turn their records over to the District Attorney?' "The answer to that was: The ruin of my business-that's the worst that can happen. I can't go to jail. All that can happen is that I shall be ruined by the publicity.' "I then said to myself: 'All right, the business is ruined. I accept that mentally. What happens next?' "Well, with my business ruined, I would probably have to look for a job. That wasn't bad. I knew a lot about oil- there were several firms that might be glad to employ me. . I began to feel better. The blue funk I had been in for three days and nights began to lift a little. My emotions calmed down. . And to my astonishment, I was able to think. "I was clear-headed enough now to face Step III-improve on the worst. As I thought of solutions, an entirely new angle presented itself to me. If I told my attorney the whole situation, he might find a way out which I hadn't thought of. I know it sounds stupid to say that this hadn't even occurred to me before-but of course I hadn't been thinking, I had only been worrying! I immediately made up my mind that I would see my attorney first thing in the morning-and then I went to bed and slept like a log! "How did it end? Well, the next morning my lawyer told me to go and see the District Attorney and tell him the truth. I did precisely that. When I finished I was astonished to hear the D.A. say that this blackmail racket had been going on for months and that the man who claimed to be a 'government agent' was a crook wanted by the police. What a relief to hear all this after I had tormented myself for three days and nights wondering whether I should hand over five thousand dollars to this professional swindler! "This experience taught me a lasting lesson. Now, whenever I face a pressing problem that threatens to worry me, I give it what I call 'the old Willis H. Carrier formula'." At just about the same time Willis H. Carrier was worrying over the gas-cleaning equipment he was installing in a plant in Crystal City, Missouri, a chap from Broken Bow, Nebraska, was making out his will. His name was Earl P. Haney, and he had duodenal ulcers. Three doctors, including a celebrated ulcer specialist, had pronounced Mr. Haney an "incurable case". They had told him not to eat this or that, and not to worry or fret-to keep perfectly calm. They also told him to make out his will! These ulcers had already forced Earl P. Haney to give up a fine and highly paid position. So now he had nothing to do, nothing to look forward to except a lingering death. Then he made a decision: a rare and superb decision. "Since I have only a little while to live," he said, "I may as well make the most of it. I have always wanted to travel around the world before I die. If I am ever going to do it, I'll have to do it now." So he bought his ticket. The doctors were appalled. "We must warn you," they said to Mr. Haney, "that if you do take this trip, you will be buried at sea." "No, I won't," he replied. "I have promised my relatives that I will be buried in the family plot at Broken Bow, Nebraska. So I am going to buy a casket and take it with me." He purchased a casket, put it aboard ship, and then made arrangements with the steamship company-in the event of his death-to put his corpse in a freezing compartment and keep it there till the liner returned home. He set out on his trip, imbued with the spirit of old 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! However, he didn't make the trip "sans wine". "I drank highballs, and smoked long cigars on that trip," Mr. Haney says in a letter that I have before me now. "I ate all kinds of foods-even strange native foods which were guaranteed to kill me. I enjoyed myself more than I had in years! We ran into monsoons and typhoons which should have put me in my casket, if only from fright-but I got an enormous kick out of all this adventure. "I played games aboard the ship, sang songs, made new friends, stayed up half the night. When we reached China and India, I realised that the business troubles and cares that I had faced back home were paradise compared to the poverty and hunger in the Orient. I stopped all my senseless worrying and felt fine. When I got back to America, I had gained ninety pounds. I had almost forgotten I had ever had a stomach ulcer. I had never felt better in my life. I promptly sold the casket back to the undertaker, and went back to business. I haven't been ill a day since." At the time this happened, Earl P. Haney had never even heard of Willis H. Carrier and his technique for handling worry. "But I realise now," he told me quite recently, "that I was unconsciously using the selfsame principle. I reconciled myself to the worst that could happen-in my case, dying. And then I improved upon it by trying to get the utmost enjoyment out of life for the time I had left. . If," he continued, "if I had gone on worrying after boarding that ship, I have no doubt that I would have made the return voyage inside of that coffin. But I relaxed-I forgot it. And this calmness of mind gave me a new birth of energy which actually saved my life." (Earl P. Haney is now living at 52 Wedgemere Ave., Winchester, Mass.) Now, if Willis H. Carrier could save a twenty-thousand-dollar contract, if a New York business man could save himself from blackmail, if Earl P. Haney could actually save his life, by using this magic formula, then isn't it possible that it may be the answer to some of your troubles? Isn't it possible that it may even solve some problems you thought were unsolvable? So, 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. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Chapter 3 - What Worry May Do To You ~~~~ Business men who do not know how to fight worry die young. -DR. Alexis Carrel. ~~~~ Some time ago, a neighbour rang my doorbell one evening and urged me and my family to be vaccinated against smallpox. He was only one of thousands of volunteers who were ringing doorbells all over New York City. Frightened people stood in lines for hours at a time to be vaccinated. Vaccination stations were opened not only in all hospitals, but also in fire-houses, police precincts, and in large industrial plants. More than two thousand doctors and nurses worked feverishly day and night, vaccinating crowds. The cause of all this excitement? Eight people in New York City had smallpox-and two had died. Two deaths out of a population of almost eight million. Now, I have lived in New York for over thirty-seven years, and no one has ever yet rung my doorbell to warn me against the emotional sickness of worry-an illness that, during the last thirty-seven years, has caused ten thousand times more damage than smallpox. No doorbell ringer has ever warned me that one person out of ten now living in these United States will have a nervous breakdown-induced in the vast majority of cases by worry and emotional conflicts. So I am writing this chapter to ring your doorbell and warn you. The great Nobel prizewinner in medicine, Dr. Alexis Carrel, said: "Business men who do not know how to fight worry die young." And so do housewives and horse doctors and bricklayers. A few years ago, I spent my vacation motoring through Texas and New Mexico with Dr. O. F. Gober-one of the medical executives of the Santa Fe railway. His exact title was chief physician of the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe Hospital Association. 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, some stomach ulcers, heart disturbances, insomnia, some headaches, and some types of paralysis. "These illnesses are real. I know what I am talking about," said Dr. Gober, "for I myself suffered from a stomach ulcer for twelve years. "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. 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. . Stomach ulcers can kill you. According to Life magazine, they now stand tenth in our list of fatal diseases. I recently had some correspondence with Dr. Harold C. Habein of the Mayo Clinic. He read a paper at the annual meeting of the American Association of Industrial Physicians and Surgeons, saying that he had made a study of 176 business executives whose average age was 44.3 years. He reported that slightly more than a third of these executives suffered from one of three ailments peculiar to high-tension living-heart disease, digestive-tract ulcers, and high blood pressure. Think of it- a third of our business executives are wrecking their bodies with heart disease, ulcers, and high blood pressure before they even reach forty-five. What price success! And they aren't even buying success! Can any man possibly be a success who is paying for business advancement with stomach ulcers and heart trouble? What shall it profit a man if he gains the whole world-and loses his health? Even if he owned the whole world, he could sleep in only one bed at a time and eat only three meals a day. Even a ditch-digger can do that-and probably sleep more soundly and enjoy his food more than a high-powered executive. Frankly, I would rather be a share-cropper down in Alabama with a banjo on my knee than wreck my health at forty-five by trying to run a railroad or a cigarette company. And speaking of cigarettes-the best-known cigarette manufacturer in the world recently dropped dead from heart failure while trying to take a little recreation in the Canadian woods. He amassed millions-and fell dead at sixty-one. He probably traded years of his life for what is called "business success". In my estimation, this cigarette executive with all his millions was not half as successful as my father-a Missouri farmer- who died at eighty-nine without a dollar. The famous Mayo brothers declared that more than half of our hospital beds are occupied by people with nervous troubles. Yet, when the nerves of these people are studied under a high-powered microscope in a post-mortem examination, their nerves in most cases are apparently as healthy as the nerves of Jack Dempsey. Their "nervous troubles" are caused not by a physical deterioration of the nerves, but by emotions of futility, frustration, anxiety, worry, fear, defeat, despair. 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 recognise 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. It is high time we were doing that, for medical science has largely wiped out the terrible diseases caused by physical germs--diseases such as smallpox, cholera, yellow fever, and scores of other scourges that swept untold millions into untimely graves. But medical science has been unable to cope with the mental and physical wrecks caused, not by germs, but by emotions of worry, fear, hate, frustration, and despair. Casualties caused by these emotional diseases are mounting and spreading with catastrophic rapidity. Doctors figure that one American in every twenty now alive will spend a part of his life in an institution for the mentally ill. One out of every six of our young men called up by the draft in the Second World War was rejected as mentally diseased or defective. What causes insanity? No one knows all the answers. But it is highly probable that in many cases fear and worry are contributing factors. The anxious and harassed individual who is unable to cope with the harsh world of reality breaks off all contact with his environment and retreats into a private dream world of his own making, and this solves his worry problems. As I write I have on my desk a book by Dr. Edward Podolsky entitled Stop Worrying and Get Well. Here are some of the chapter titles in that book: What Worry Does To The Heart High Blood Pressure Is Fed By Worry Rheumatism Can Be Caused By Worry Worry Less For Your Stomach's Sake How Worry Can Cause A Cold Worry And The Thyroid The Worrying Diabetic 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. Read it. Give it to your friends. It costs four dollars-and is one of the best investments you can make in this life. Worry can make even the most stolid person ill. General Grant discovered that during the closing days of the Civil War. The story goes like this: Grant had been besieging Richmond for nine months. General Lee's troops, ragged and hungry, were beaten. Entire regiments were deserting at a time. Others were holding prayer meetings in their tents-shouting, weeping, seeing visions. The end was close. Lee's men set fire to the cotton and tobacco warehouses in Richmond, burned the arsenal, and fled from the city at night while towering flames roared up into darkness. Grant was in hot pursuit, banging away at the Confederates from both sides and the rear, while Sheridan's cavalry was heading them off in front, tearing up railway lines and capturing supply trains. Grant, half blind with a violent sick headache, fell behind his army and stopped at a farmhouse. "I spent the night," he records in his Memoirs, "in bathing my feet in hot water and mustard, and putting mustard plasters on my wrists and the back part of my neck, hoping to be cured by morning." The next morning, he was cured instantaneously. And the tiling that cured him was not a mustard plaster, but a horseman galloping down the road with a letter from Lee, saying he wanted to surrender. "When the officer [bearing the message] reached me," Grant wrote, "I was still suffering with the sick headache, but the instant I saw the contents of the note, I was cured." Obviously it was Grant's worries, tensions, and emotions that made him ill. He was cured instantly the moment his emotions took on the hue of confidence, achievement, and victory. Seventy years later, Henry Morgenthau, Jr., Secretary of the Treasury in Franklin D. Roosevelt's cabinet, discovered that worry could make him so ill that he was dizzy. He records in his diary that he was terribly worried when the President, in order to raise the price of wheat, bought 4,400,000 bushels in one day. He says in his diary: "I felt literally dizzy while the thing was going on. I went home and went to bed for two hours after lunch." If I want to see what worry does to people, I don't have to go to a library or a physician. I can look out of the window of my home where I am writing this book; and I can see, within one block, one house where worry caused a nervous breakdown-and another house where a man worried himself into diabetes. 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." This neighbour of mine took the affairs of the stock market into the blood stream-and almost killed himself. Worry can put you into a wheel chair with rheumatism and arthritis. Dr. Russell L. Cecil, of the Cornell University Medical School, is a world-recognised authority on arthritis; and he has listed four of the commonest conditions that bring on arthritis: 1.Marital shipwreck. 2.Financial disaster and grief. 3.Loneliness and worry. 4.Long-cherished resentments. Naturally, these four emotional situations are far from being the only causes of arthritis. There are many different kinds of arthritis-due to various causes. But, to repeat, the commonest conditions that bring on arthritis are the four listed by Dr. Russell L. Cecil. For example, a friend of mine was so hard bit during the depression that the gas company shut off the gas and the bank foreclosed the mortgage on the house. His wife suddenly had a painful attack of arthritis-and, in spite of medicine and diets, the arthritis continued until their financial situation improved. Worry can even cause tooth decay. Dr. William I.L. McGonigle said in an address before the American Dental Association that "unpleasant emotions such as those caused by worry, fear, nagging . may upset the body's calcium balance and cause tooth decay". Dr. McGonigle told of a patient of his who had always had a perfect set of teeth until he began to worry over his wife's sudden illness. During the three weeks she was in the hospital, he developed nine cavities- cavities brought on by worry. Have you ever seen a person with an acutely over-active thyroid? I have, and I can tell you they tremble; they shake; they look like someone half scared to death-and that's about what it amounts to. The thyroid gland, the gland that regulates the body, has been thrown out of kilter. It speeds up the heart -the whole body is roaring away at full blast like a furnace with all its draughts wide open. And if this isn't checked, by operation or treatment, the victim may die, may "burn himself out". A short time ago I went to Philadelphia with a friend of mine who has this disease. We went to see a famous specialist, a doctor who has been treating this type of ailment for thirty-eight years. And what sort of advice do you suppose he had hanging on the wall of his waiting-room-painted on a large wooden sign so all his patients could see it? Here it is. I copied it down on the back of an envelope while I was waiting: 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. The first question he asked this friend of mine was: "What emotional disturbance brought on this condition?" He warned my friend that, if he didn't stop worrying, he could get other complications: heart trouble, stomach ulcers, or diabetes. "All of these diseases," said that eminent doctor, "are cousins, first cousins." Sure, they're first cousins-they're all worry diseases! When I interviewed Merle Oberon, she told me that she refused to worry because she knew that worry would destroy her chief asset on the motion-picture screen: her good looks. "When I first tried to break into the movies," she told me, "I was worried and scared. I had just come from India, and I didn't know anyone in London, where I was trying to get a job. I saw a few producers, but none of them hired me; and the little money I had began to give out. For two weeks I lived on nothing but crackers and water. I was not only worried now. I was hungry. I said to myself: 'Maybe you're a fool. Maybe you will neuer break into the movies. After all, you have no experience, you've never acted at all-what have you to offer but a rather pretty face?' "I went to the mirror. And when I looked in that mirror, I saw what worry was doing to my looks! I saw the lines it was forming. I saw the anxious expression. So I said to myself: 'You've got to stop this at once! You can't afford to worry. The only thing you have to offer at all is your looks, and worry will ruin them I'" Few things can age and sour a woman and destroy her looks as quickly as worry. Worry curdles the expression. It makes us clench our jaws and lines our faces with wrinkles. It forms a permanent scowl. It may turn the hair grey, and in some cases, even make it fall out. It can ruin the complexion- it can bring on all kinds of skin rashes, eruptions, and pimples. Heart disease, is the number-one killer in America today. During the Second World War, almost a third of a million men were killed in combat; but during that same period, heart disease killed two million civilians-and one million of those casualties were caused by the kind of heart disease that is brought on by worry and high-tension living. Yes, heart disease is one of the chief reasons why Dr. Alexis Carrel said: "Business men who do not know how to fight worry die young." The Negroes down south and the Chinese rarely have the kind of heart disease brought on by worry, because they take things calmly. Twenty times as many doctors as farm workers die from heart failure. The doctors lead tense lives-and pay the penalty. "The Lord may forgive us our sins," said William James, "but the nervous system never does." Here is a startling and almost incredible fact: more Americans commit suicide each year than die from the five most common communicable diseases. Why? The answer is largely: "Worry." When the cruel Chinese war lords wanted to torture their prisoners, they would tie their prisoners hand and foot and put them under a bag of water that constantly dripped . dripped . dripped . day and night. These drops of water constantly falling on the head finally became like the sound of hammer blows-and drove men insane. This same method of torture was used during the Spanish Inquisition and in German concentration camps under Hitler. Worry is like the constant drip, drip, drip of water; and the constant drip, drip, drip of worry often drives men to insanity and suicide. When I was a country lad in Missouri, I was half scared to death by listening to Billy Sunday describe the hell-fires of the next world. But he never ever mentioned the hellfires of physical agony that worriers may have here and now. For example, if you are a chronic worrier, you may be stricken some day with one of the most excruciating pains ever endured by man: angina pectoris. Boy, if that ever hits you, you will scream with agony. Your screams will make the sounds in Dante's Inferno sound like Babes in Toyland. You will say to yourself then: "Oh, God, oh, God, if I can ever get over this, I will never worry about anything-ever." (If you think I am exaggerating, ask your family physician.) Do you love life? Do you want to live long and enjoy good health? Here is how you can do it. I am quoting Dr. Alexis Carrel again. He said: "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 modem city? If you are a normal person, the answer is "yes". "Emphatically yes." 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." Surely, many of the readers of this book have as much will power and as many inner resources as Olga K. Jarvey has. Her address is Box 892, Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. She discovered that under the most tragic circumstances she could banish worry. I firmly believe that you and I can also-if we apply the old, old truths discussed in this volume. Here is Olga K. Jarvey's story as she wrote it for me: "Eight and a half years ago, I was condemned to die-a slow, agonising death-of cancer. The best medical brains of the country, the Mayo brothers, confirmed the sentence. I was at a dead-end street, the ultimate gaped at me! I was young. I did not want to die! In my desperation, I phoned to my doctor at Kellogg and cried out to him the despair in my heart. Rather impatiently he upbraided me: 'What's the matter, Olga, haven't you any fight in you? Sure, you will die if you keep on crying. Yes, the worst has overtaken you. O.K.-face the facts! Quit worrying 1 And then do something about it!' Right then and there I took an oath, an oath so solemn that the nails sank deep into my flesh and cold chills ran down my spine: 'I am not going to worry! I am not going to cry! And if there is anything to mind over matter, I am going to win! I am going to LIVE!' "The usual amount of X-ray in such advanced cases, where they cannot apply radium, is 10 1/2 minutes a day for 30 days. They gave me X-ray for 14 1/2 minutes a day for 49 days; and although my bones stuck out of my emaciated body like rocks on a barren hillside, and although my feet were like lead, I did not worry! Not once did I cry! I smiled! Yes, I actually forced myself to smile. "I am not so foolish as to imagine that merely smiling can cure cancer. But I do believe that a cheerful mental attitude helps the body fight disease. At any rate, I experienced one of the miracle cures of cancer. I have never been healthier than in the last few years, thanks to those challenging, fighting words of Dr. McCaffery: 'Face the facts: Quite worrying; then do something about it!'" I am going to close this chapter by repeating its title: the words of Dr. Alexis Carrel: "Business men who do not know how to fight worry die young." The fanatical followers of the prophet Mohammed often had verses from the Koran tattooed on their breasts. I would like to have the title of this chapter tattooed on the breast of every reader of this book: "Business men who do not know how to fight worry die young." Was Dr. Carrel speaking of you? Could be. ~~~~~~~ Part One In A Nutshell RULE 1: If you want to avoid worry, do what Sir William Osier 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- comes gunning for you and 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. c.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. "Business men who do not know how to fight worry die young." -------------------------------- Part Two - Basic Techniques In Analysing Worry Chapter 4 - How To Analyse And Solve Worry Problems ---- 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 ---- Will the magic formula of Willis H. Carrier, described in Part One, Chapter 2, solve all worry problems? No, of course not. Then what is the answer? The answer is that we must equip ourselves to deal with different kinds of worries by learning 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. And you and I must use it too if we are going to solve the problems that are harassing us and turning our days and nights into veritable hells. Let's take the first rule: 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. For example," he said, "if I have a problem which has to be faced at three o'clock next Tuesday, I refuse even to try to make a decision about it until next Tuesday arrives. In the meantime, I concentrate on getting all the facts that bear on the problem. I don't worry," he said, "I don't agonise over my problem. I don't lose any sleep. I simply concentrate on getting the facts. And by the time Tuesday rolls around, if I've got all the facts, the problem usually solves itself!" I asked Dean Hawkes if this meant he had licked worry entirely. "Yes," he said, "I think I can honestly say that my live is now almost totally devoid of worry. I have found," he went on, "that if a man will devote his time to securing facts in an impartial, objective way, his worries usually evaporate in the light of knowledge." 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." But what do most of us do ? If we bother with facts at all- and Thomas Edison said in all seriousness: "There is no expedient to which a man will not resort to avoid the labour of thinking"-if we bother with facts at all, we hunt like bird dogs after the facts that bolster up what we already think-and ignore all the others! We want only the facts that justify our acts-the facts that fit in conveniently with our wishful thinking and justify our preconceived prejudices! 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." Is it any wonder, then, that we find it so hard to get at the answers to our problems? Wouldn't we have the same trouble trying to solve a second-grade arithmetic problem, if we went ahead on the assumption that two plus two equals five? Yet there are a 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! What can we do about it? We have to keep our emotions out of our thinking; and, as Dean Hawkes put it, we must secure the facts in "an impartial, objective" manner. That is not an easy task when we are worried. When we are worried, our emotions are riding high. 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. 2.While trying to collect the facts about the problem that is worrying me, I sometimes pretend that I am a lawyer preparing to argue the other side of the issue. In other words, I try to get all the facts against myself-all the facts that are damaging to my wishes, all the facts I don't like to face. Then I write down both my side of the case and the other side of the case-and I generally find that the truth lies somewhere in between these two extremities. Here is the point I am trying to make. 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 analyse them and interpret them. I have found from costly experience that it is much easier to analyse the facts after writing them Sown. In fact, merely writing the facts on a piece of paper and stating our problem clearly goes a long way toward helping us to reach a sensible decision. As Charles Kettering puts it: "A problem well stated is a problem half solved." Let me show you all this as it works out in practice. Since the Chinese say one picture is worth ten thousand words, suppose I show you a picture of how one man put exactly what we are talking about into concrete action. Let's take the case of Galen Litchfield-a man I have known for several years; one of the most successful American business men in the Far East. Mr. Litchfield was in China in 1942, when the Japanese invaded Shanghai. And here is his story as he told it to me while a guest in my home: "Shortly after the Japs took Pearl Harbour," Galen Litchfield began, "they came swarming into Shanghai. I was the manager of the Asia Life Insurance Company in Shanghai. They sent us an 'army liquidator'-he was really an admiral- and gave me orders to assist this man in liquidating our assets. I didn't have any choice in the matter. I could co-operate-or else. And the 'or else' was certain death. "I went through the motions of doing what I was told, because I had no alternative. But there was one block of securities, worth $750,000, which I left off the list I gave to the admiral. I left that block of securities off the list because they belonged to our Hong Kong organisation and had nothing to do with the Shanghai assets. All the same, I feared I might be in hot water if the Japs found out what I had done. And they soon found out. "I wasn't in the office when the discovery was made, but my head accountant was there. He told me that the Jap admiral flew into a rage, and stamped and swore, and called me a thief and a traitor! I had defied the Japanese Army! I knew what that meant. I would be thrown into the Bridge house! "The Bridge house 1 The torture chamber of the Japanese Gestapo! I had had personal friends who had killed themselves rather than be taken to that prison. I had had other friends who had died in that place after ten days of questioning and torture. Now I was slated for the Bridge house myself! "What did I do? I heard the news on Sunday afternoon. I suppose I should have been terrified. And I would have been terrified if I hadn't had a definite technique for solving my problems. For years, whenever I was worried I had always gone to my typewriter and written down two questions-and the answers to these questions: "1. What am I worrying about? "2. What can I do about it? "I used to try to answer those questions without writing them down. But I stopped that years ago. I found that writing down both the questions and the answers clarifies my thinking. So, that Sunday afternoon, I went directly to my room at the Shanghai Y.M.C.A. and got out my typewriter. I wrote: "I. What am I worrying about? I am afraid I will be thrown into the Bridge house tomorrow morning. "Then I typed out the second question: "2. What can I do about it? "I spent hours thinking out and writing down the four courses of action I could take-and what the probable consequence of each action would be. 1.I can try to explain to the Japanese admiral. But he "no speak English". If I try to explain to him through an interpreter, I may stir him up again. That might mean death, for he is cruel, would rather dump me in the Bridge house than bother talking about it. 2.I can try to escape. Impossible. They keep track of me all the time. I have to check in and out of my room at the Y.M.C.A. If I try to escape, I'll probably be captured and shot. 3.I can stay here in my room and not go near the office again. If I do, the Japanese admiral will be suspicion, will probably send soldiers to get me and throw me into the Bridge-house without giving me a chance to say a word. 4.I can go down to the office as usual on Monday morning. If I do, there is a chance that the Japanese admiral may be so busy that he will not think of what I did. Even if he does think of it, he may have cooled off and may not bother me. If this happens, I am all right. Even if he does bother me, I'll still have a chance to try to explain to him. So, going down to the office as usual on Monday morning, and acting as if nothing had gone wrong gives me two chances to escape the Bridge-house. "As soon as I thought it all out and decided to accept the fourth plan-to go down to the office as usual on Monday morning-I felt immensely relieved. "When I entered the office the next morning, the Japanese admiral sat there with a cigarette dangling from his mouth. He glared at me as he always did; and said nothing. Six weeks later-thank God-he went back to Tokyo and my worries were ended. "As I have already said, I probably saved my life by sitting down that Sunday afternoon and writing out all the various steps I could take and then writing down the probable consequences of each step and calmly coming to a decision. If I hadn't done that, I might have floundered and hesitated and done the wrong thing on the spur of the moment. If I hadn't thought out my problem and come to a decision, I would have been frantic with worry all Sunday afternoon. I wouldn't have slept that night. I would have gone down to the office Monday morning with a harassed and worried look; and that alone might have aroused the suspicion of the Japanese admiral and spurred him to act. "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." Galen Litchfield is now the Far Eastern Director for Starr, Park and Freeman, Inc., III John Street, New York, representing large insurance and financial interests. In fact, as I said before, Galen Litchfield today is one of the most important American business men in Asia; and he confesses to me that he owes a large part of his success to this method of analysing worry and meeting it head-on. Why is his method so superb? Because it is efficient, concrete, and goes directly to the heart of the problem. On top of all that, it is climaxed by the third and indispensable rule: Do something about it. Unless we carry out our action, all our fact-finding and analysis is whistling upwind-it's a sheer waste of energy. 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".) He meantonce you have made a careful decision based on facts, go into action. Don't stop to reconsider. Don't begin to hesitate worry and retrace your steps. Don't lose yourself in self-doubting which begets other doubts. Don't keep looking back over your shoulder. I once asked Waite Phillips, one of Oklahoma's most prominent oil men, how he carried out decisions. He replied: "I find that to keep thinking about our problems beyond a certain point is bound to create confusion and worry. There comes a time when any more investigation and thinking are harmful. There comes a time when we must decide and act and never look back." Why don't you employ Galen Litchfield's technique to one of your worries right now? 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? ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Chapter 5 - How to Eliminate Fifty Per Cent of Tour Business Worries IF you are a business man, you are probably saying to yourself right now: "The title of this chapter is ridiculous. I have been running my business for nineteen years; and I certainly know the answers if anybody does. The idea of anybody trying to tell me how I can eliminate fifty per cent of my business worries-it's absurd I" Fair enough-I would have felt exactly the same way myself a few years ago if I had seen this title on a chapter. It promises a lot-and promises are cheap. Let's be very frank about it: maybe I won't be able to help you eliminate fifty per cent of your business worries. In the last analysis, no one can do that, except yourself. But what I can do is to show you how other people have done it-and leave the rest to you! You may recall that on page 25 of this book I quoted the world-famous Dr. Alexis Carrel as saying: "Business men who do not know how to fight worry die young." Since worry is that serious, wouldn't you be satisfied if I could help you eliminate even ten per cent of your worries? . Yes? . Good! Well, I am going to show you how one business executive eliminated not fifty per cent of his worries, but seventy-five per cent of all the time he formerly spent in conferences, trying to solve business problems. Furthermore, I am not going to tell you this story about a "Mr. Jones" or a "Mr. X" or "or a man I know in Ohio"- vague stories that you can't check up on. It concerns a very real person-Leon Shimkin, a partner and general manager of one of the foremost publishing houses in the United States: Simon and Schuster, Rockefeller Centre, New York 20, New York. Here is Leon Shimkin's experience in his own words: "For fifteen years I spent almost half of every business day holding conferences, discussing problems. Should we do this or that-do nothing at all? We would get tense; twist in our chairs; walk the floor; argue and go around in circles. When night came, I would be utterly exhausted. I fully expected to go on doing this sort of thing for the rest of my life. I had been doing it for fifteen years, and it never occurred to me that there was a better way of doing it. If anyone had told me that I could eliminate three-fourths of all the time I spent in those worried conferences, and three-fourths of my nervous strain-I would have thought he was a wild-eyed, slap-happy, armchair optimist. Yet I devised a plan that did just that. I have been using this plan for eight years. It has performed wonders for my efficiency, my health, and my happiness. "It sounds like magic-but like all magic tricks, it is extremely simple when you see how it is done. "Here is the secret: First, I immediately stopped the procedure I had been using in my conferences for fifteen years-a procedure that began with my troubled associates reciting all the details of what had gone wrong, and ending up by asking: 'What shall we do?' Second, I made a new rule-a rule that everyone who wishes to present a problem to me must first prepare and submit a memorandum answering these four questions: "Question 1: What is the problem? ("In the old days we used to spend an hour or two in a worried conference without anyone's knowing specifically and concretely what the real problem was. We used to work ourselves into a lather discussing our troubles without ever troubling to write out specifically what our problem was.) "Question 2: What is the cause of the problem? ("As I look back over my career, I am appalled at the wasted hours I have spent in worried conferences without ever trying to find out clearly the conditions which lay at the root of the problem.) "Question 3: What are all possible solutions of the problem? ("In the old days, one man in the conference would suggest one solution. Someone else would argue with him. Tempers would flare. We would often get clear off the subject, and at the end of the conference no one would have written down all the various things we could do to attack the problem.) "Question 4: What solution do you suggest? ("I used to go into a conference with a man who had spent hours worrying about a situation and going around in circles without ever once thinking through all possible solutions and then writing down: 'This is the solution I recommend.') "My associates rarely come to me now with their problems. Why? Because they have discovered that in order to answer these four questions they have to get all the facts and think their problems through. And after they have done that they find, in threefourths of the cases, they don't have to consult me at all, because the proper solution has popped out like a piece of bread popping out from an electric toaster. Even in those cases where consultation is necessary, the discussion takes about one-third the time formerly required, because it proceeds along an orderly, logical path to a reasoned conclusion. "Much less time is now consumed in the house of Simon and Schuster in worrying and talking about what is wrong; and a lot more action is obtained toward making those things right." My friend, Frank Bettger, one of the top insurance men in America, tells me he not only reduced his business worries, but nearly doubled his income, by a similar method. "Years ago," says Frank Bettger, "when I first started to sell insurance, I was filled with a boundless enthusiasm and love for my work. Then something happened. I became so discouraged that I despised my work and thought of giving it up. I think I would have quit-if I hadn't got the idea, one Saturday morning, of sitting down and trying to get at the root of my worries. "1. I asked myself first: 'Just what is the problem?.' The problem was: that I was not getting high enough returns for the staggering amount of calls I was making. I seemed to do pretty well at selling a prospect, until the moment came for closing a sale. Then the customer would say: 'Well, I'll think it over, Mr. Bettger. Come and see me again.' It was the time I wasted on these follow-up calls that was causing my depression. "2. I asked myself: 'What are the possible solutions?' But to get the answer to that one, I had to study the facts. I got out my record book for the last twelve months and studied the figures. "I made an astounding discovery! Right there in black and white, I discovered that seventy per cent of my sales had been closed on the very first interview! Twenty-three per cent of my sales had been closed on the second interview! And only seven per cent of my sales had been closed on those third, fourth, fifth, etc., interviews, which were running me ragged and taking up my time. In other words, I was wasting fully one half of my working day on a part of my business which was responsible for only seven per cent of my sales! "3. 'What is the answer?' The answer was obvious. I immediately cut out all visits beyond the second interview, and spent the extra time building up new prospects. The results were unbelievable. In a very short time, I had almost doubled the cash value of every visit I made from a call!" As I said, Frank Bettger is now one of the best-known life-insurance salesmen in America. He is with Fidelity Mutual of Philadelphia, and writes a million dollars' worth of policies a year. But he was on the point of giving up. He was on the point of admitting failure-until analysing the problem gave him a boost on the road to success. Can you apply these questions to your business problems? To repeat my challenge-they can reduce your worries by fifty per cent. Here they are again: 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 decisionand 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? ~~~~~~~~~~ Nine Suggestions on How to Get the Most Out of This Book 1.If you wish to get the most out of this book, there is one indispensable requirement, one essential infinitely more important than any rules or technique. Unless you have this one fundamental requisite a thousand rules on how to study will avail little. And if you do have this cardinal endowment, then you can achieve wonders without reading any suggestions for getting the most out of a book. What is this magic requirement? Just this: a deep, driving desire to learn, a vigorous determination to stop worrying and start living. How can you develop such an urge? By constantly reminding yourself of how important these principles are to you. Picture to yourself how their mastery will aid you in living a richer, happier life. Say to yourself over and over: "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." 2.Read each chapter rapidly at first to get a bird's-eye view of it. You will probably be tempted then to rush on to the next one. But don't. Unless you are reading merely for entertainment. But if you are reading because you want to stop worrying and start living, then go back and re-read each chapter thoroughly. In the long run, this will mean saving time and getting results. 3.Stop frequently in your reading to think over what you are reading. Ask yourself just how and when you can apply each suggestion. That kind of reading will aid you far more than racing ahead like a whippet chasing a rabbit. 4.Read with a red crayon, pencil, or fountain-pen in your hand; and when you come across a suggestion that you feel you can use, draw a line beside it. If it is a four-star suggestion, then underscore every sentence, or mark it with "XXXX". Marking and underscoring a book make it more interesting, and far easier to review rapidly. 5.I know a man who has been office manager for a large insurance concern for fifteen years. He reads every month all the insurance contracts his company issues. Yes, he reads the same contracts over month after month, year after year. Why? Because experience has taught him that that is the only way he can keep their provisions clearly in mind. I once spent almost two years writing a book on public speaking; and yet I find I have to keep going back over it from time to time in order to remember what I wrote in my own book. The rapidity with which we forget is astonishing. So, if you want to get a real, lasting benefit out of this book, don't imagine that skimming through it once will suffice. After reading it thoroughly, you ought to spend a few hours reviewing it every month. Keep it on your desk in front of you every day. Glance through it often. Keep constantly impressing yourself with the rich possibilities for improvement that still lie in the offing. Remember that the use of these principles can be made habitual and unconscious only by a constant and vigorous campaign of review and application. There is no other way. 6.Bernard Shaw once remarked: "If you teach a man anything, he will never learn." Shaw was right. 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. You will probably find it difficult to apply these suggestions all the time. I know, because I wrote this book, and yet frequently I find it difficult to apply everything I have advocated here. So, as you read this book, remember that you are not merely trying to acquire information. You are attempting to form new habits. Ah yes, you are attempting a new way of life. That will require time and persistence and daily application. So refer to these pages often. Regard this as a working handbook on conquering worry; and when you are confronted with some trying problem-don't get all stirred up. Don't do the natural thing, the impulsive thing. That is usually wrong. Instead, turn to these pages and review the paragraphs you have underscored. Then try these new ways and watch, them achieve magic for you. 7.Offer your wife a shilling every time she catches you violating one of the principles advocated in this book. She will break you! 8.Please turn to pages 193-4 of this book and read how the Wall Street banker, H.P. Howell, and old Ben Franklin corrected their mistakes. Why don't you use the Howell and Franklin techniques to check up on your application of the principles discussed in this book? If you do, two things will result. First, you will find yourself engaged in an educational process that is both intriguing and priceless. Second, you will find that your ability to stop worrying and start living will grow and spread like a green bay tree. 9.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! ~~~~~~~ In A Nutshell 1.Develop a deep, driving desire to master the principles of conquering worry. 2.Read each chapter twice before going on to the next one. 3.As you read, stop frequently to ask yourself how you can apply each suggestion. 4.Underscore each important idea. 5.Review this book each month. 6.Apply these principles at every opportunity. Use this volume as a working handbook to help you solve your daily problems. 7.Make a lively game put of your learning by offering some friend a shilling every time he catches you violating one of these principles. 8.Check up each week on the progress you are making. Ask yourself what mistakes you have made, what improvement, what lessons you have learned for the future. 9.Keep a diary in the back of this book showing how and when you have applied these principles. ------------------------------------- Part Three - How To Break The Worry Habit Before It Breaks You Chapter 6 - How To Crowd Worry Out Of Tour Mind I shall never forget the night, a few years ago, when Marion J. Douglas was a student in one of my classes. (I have not used his real name. He requested me, for personal reasons, not to reveal his identity.) But here is his real story as he told it before one of our adult-education classes. He told us how tragedy had struck at his home, not once, but twice. The first time he had lost his five-year-old daughter, a child he adored. He and his wife thought they couldn't endure that first loss; but, as he said: "Ten months later, God gave us another little girl-and she died in five days." This double bereavement was almost too much to bear. "I couldn't take it," this father told us. "I couldn't sleep, I couldn't eat, I couldn't rest or relax. My nerves were utterly shaken and my confidence gone." At last he went to doctors; one recommended sleeping pills and another recommended a trip. He tried both, but neither remedy helped. He said: "My body felt as if it were encased in a vice, and the jaws of the vice were being drawn tighter and tighter." The tension of grief-if you have ever been paralysed by sorrow, you know what he meant. "But thank God, I had one child left-a four-year-old son. He gave me the solution to my problem. One afternoon as I sat around feeling sorry for myself, he asked: 'Daddy, will you build a boat for me?' I was in no mood to build a boat; in fact, I was in no mood to do anything. But my son is a persistent little fellow! I had to give in. "Building that toy boat took about three hours. By the time it was finished, I realised that those three hours spent building that boat were the first hours of mental relaxation and peace that I had had in months! "That discovery jarred me out of my lethargy and caused me to do a bit of thinking-the first real thinking I had done in months. I realised that it is difficult to worry while you are busy doing something that requires planning and thinking. In my case, building the boat had knocked worry out of the ring. So I resolved to keep busy. "The following night, I went from room to room in the house, compiling a list of jobs that ought to be done. Scores of items needed to be repaired: bookcases, stair steps, storm windows, window-shades, knobs, locks, leaky taps. Astonishing as it seems, in the course of two weeks I had made a list of 242 items that needed attention. "During the last two years I have completed most of them. Besides, I have filled my life with stimulating activities. Two nights per week I attend adult-education classes in New York. I have gone in for civic activities in my home town and I am now chairman of the school board. I attend scores of meetings. I help collect money for the Red Cross and No time for worry! That is exactly what 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." The great scientist, Pasteur, spoke of "the peace that is found in libraries and laboratories." Why is peace found there? Because the men in libraries and laboratories are usually too absorbed in their tasks to worry about themselves. Research men rarely have nervous breakdowns. They haven't time for such luxuries. Why does such a simple thing as keeping busy help to drive out anxiety? Because of a law-one of the most fundamental laws ever revealed by psychology. And that law is: that it is utterly impossible for any human mind, no matter how brilliant, to think of more than one thing at any given time. You don't quite believe it? Very well, then, let's try an experiment. Suppose you lean right back now, close your eyes, and try, at the same instant, to think of the Statue of Liberty and of what you plan to do tomorrow morning. (Go ahead, try it.) You found out, didn't you, that you could focus on either thought in turn, but never on both simultaneously? Well, 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! The Quakers were using it in Philadelphia in Ben Franklin's time. A man who visited a Quaker sanatorium in 1774 was shocked to see that the patients who were mentally ill were busy spinning flax. He thought these poor unfortunates were being exploited-until the Quakers explained that they found that their patients actually improved when they did a little work. It was soothing to the nerves. Any psychiatrist will tell you that work-keeping busy- is one of the best anesthetics ever known for sick nerves. Henry W. Longfellow found that out for himself when he lost his young wife. His wife had been melting some sealing-wax at a candle one day, when her clothes caught on fire. Longfellow heard her cries and tried to reach her in time; but she died from the burns. For a while, Longfellow was so tortured by the memory of that dreadful experience that he nearly went insane; but, fortunately for him, his three small children needed his attention. In spite of his own grief, Longfellow undertook to be father and mother to his children. He took them for walks, told them stories, played games with them, and immortalised their companionship in his poem The Children's Hour. He also translated Dante; and all these duties combined kept him so busy that he forgot himself entirely, and regained his peace of mind. As Tennyson declared when he lost his most intimate friend, Arthur Hallam: "I must lose myself in action, lest I wither in despair." Most of us have little trouble "losing ourselves in action" while we have our noses to the grindstone and are doing our day's work. But the hours after work-they are the dangerous ones. Just when we're free to enjoy our own leisure, and ought to be happiest-that's when the blue devils of worry attack us. That's when we begin to wonder whether we're getting anywhere in life; whether we're in a rut; whether the boss "meant anything" by that remark he made today; or whether we're getting bald. When we are not busy, our minds tend to become a near-vacuum. Every student of physics knows that "nature abhors a vacuum". The nearest thing to a vacuum that you and I will probably ever see is the inside of an incandescent electric-light bulb. Break that bulb-and nature forces air in to fill the theoretically empty space. Nature also rushes in to fill the vacant mind. With what? Usually with emotions. Why? Because emotions of worry, fear, hate, jealousy, and envy are driven by primeval vigour and the dynamic energy of the jungle. Such emotions are so violent that they tend to drive out of our minds all peaceful, nappy thoughts and emotions. James L. Mursell, professor of education, Teachers' College, Columbia, puts it very well when he says: "Worry is most apt to ride you ragged not when you are in action, but when the day's work is done. Your imagination can run riot then and bring up all sorts of ridiculous possibilities and magnify each little blunder. At such a time," he continues, "your mind is like a motor operating without its load. It races and threatens to burn out its bearings or even to tear itself to bits. The remedy for worry is to get completely occupied doing something constructive." But you don't have to be a college professor to realise this truth and put it into practice. During the war, I met a housewife from Chicago who told me how she discovered for herself that "the remedy for worry is to get completely occupied doing something constructive." I met this woman and her husband in the dining-car while I was travelling from New York to my farm in Missouri. (Sorry I didn't get their names-I never like to give examples without using names and street addresses- details that give authenticity to a story.) This couple told me that their son had joined the armed forces the day after Pearl Harbour. The woman told me that she had almost wrecked her health worrying over that only son. Where was he? Was he safe? Or in action? Would he be wounded? Killed? When I asked her how she overcame her worry, she replied: "I got busy." She told me that at first she had dismissed her maid and tried to keep busy by doing all her housework herself. But that didn't help much. "The trouble was," she said, "that I could do my housework almost mechanically, without using my mind. So I kept on worrying. While making the beds and washing the dishes I realised I needed some new kind of work that would keep me busy both mentally and physically every hour of the day. So I "That did it," she said. "I immediately found myself in a whirlwind of activity: customers swarming around me, asking for prices, sizes, colours. Never a second to think of anything except my immediate duty; and when night came, I could think of nothing except getting off my aching feet. As soon as I ate dinner, I fell into bed and instantly became unconscious. I had neither the time nor the energy to worry." She discovered for herself what John Cowper Powys meant when he said, in The Art of Forgetting the Unpleasant: "A certain comfortable security, a certain profound inner peace, a kind of happy numbness, soothes the nerves of the human animal when absorbed in its allotted task." And what a blessing that it is so! Osa Johnson, the world's most famous woman explorer, recently told me how she found release from worry and grief. You may have read the story of her life. It is called I Married Adventure. If any woman ever married adventure, she certainly did. Martin Johnson married her when she was sixteen and lifted her feet off the sidewalks of Chanute, Kansas, and set them down on the wild jungle trails of Borneo. For a quarter of a century, this Kansas couple travelled all over the world, making motion pictures of the vanishing wild life of Asia and Africa. Back in America nine years ago, they were on a lecture tour, showing their famous films. They took a plane out of Denver, bound for the Coast. The plane plunged into a mountain. Martin Johnson was killed instantly. The doctors said Osa would never leave her bed again. But they didn't know Osa Johnson. Three months later, she was in a wheel chair, lecturing before large audiences. In fact, she addressed over a hundred audiences that season-all from a wheel chair. When I asked her why she did it, she replied: "I did it so that I would have no time for sorrow and worry." Osa Johnson had discovered the same truth that Tennyson had sung about a century earlier: "I must lose myself in action, lest I wither in despair." Admiral Byrd discovered this same truth when he lived all alone for five months in a shack that was literally buried in the great glacial ice-cap that covers the South Pole-an ice-cap that holds nature's oldest secrets-an ice-cap covering an unknown continent larger than the United States and Europe combined. Admiral Byrd spent five months there alone. No other living creature of any kind existed within a hundred miles. The cold was so intense that he could hear his breath freeze and crystallise as the wind blew it past his ears. In his book Alone, Admiral Byrd tells all about those five months he spent in bewildering and soul-shattering darkness. The days were as black as the nights. He had to keep busy to preserve his sanity. "At night," he says, "before blowing out the lantern, I formed the habit of blocking out the morrow's work. It was a case of assigning myself an hour, say, to the Escape Tunnel, half an hour to leveling drift, an hour to straightening up the fuel drums, an hour to cutting bookshelves in the walls of the food tunnel, and two hours to renewing a broken bridge in the man-hauling sledge. . "It was wonderful," he says, "to be able to dole out time in this way. It brought me an extraordinary sense of command over myself. ." And he adds: "Without that or an equivalent, the days would have been without purpose; and without purpose they would have ended, as such days always end, in disintegration." Note that last again: "Without purpose, the days would have ended, as such days always end, in disintegration." If you and I are worried, let's remember that we can use good old-fashioned work as a medicine. That was said by no less an authority than the late Dr. Richard C. Cabot, formerly professor of clinical medicine at Harvard. In his book What Men Live By, Dr. Cabot says: "As a physician, I have had the happiness of seeing work cure many persons who have suffered from trembling palsy of the soul which results from overmastering doubts, hesitations, vacillation and fear. . Courage given us by our work is like the self-reliance which Emerson has made for ever glorious." If you and I don't keep busy-if we sit around and brood- we will hatch out a whole flock of what Charles Darwin used to call the "wibber gibbers". And the "wibber gibbers" are nothing but old-fashioned gremlins that will run us hollow and destroy our power of action and our power of will. I know a business man in New York who fought the "wibber gibbers" by getting so busy that he had no time to fret and stew. His name is Tremper Longman, and his office is at 40 Wall Street. He was a student in one of my adult-education classes; and his talk on conquering worry was so interesting, so impressive, that I asked him to have supper with me after class; and we sat in a restaurant until long past midnight, discussing his experiences. Here is the story he told me: "Eighteen years ago, I was so worried I had insomnia. I was tense, irritated, and jittery. I felt I was headed for a nervous breakdown. "I had reason to be worried. I was treasurer of the Crown Fruit and Extract Company, 418 West Broadway, New York. We had half a million dollars invested in strawberries packed in gallon tins. For twenty years, we had been selling these gallon tins of strawberries to manufactures of ice cream. Suddenly our sales stopped because the big ice-cream makers, such as National Dairy and Borden's, were rapidly increasing their production and were saving money and time by buying strawberries packed in barrels. "Not only were we left with half a million dollars in berries we couldn't sell, but we were also under contract to buy a million dollars more of strawberries in the next twelve months! We had already borrowed $350,000 from the banks. We couldn't possibly pay off or renew these loans. No wonder I was worried! "I rushed out to Watsonville, California, where our factory was located, and tried to persuade our president that conditions had changed, that we were facing ruin. He refused to believe it. He blamed our New York office for all the trouble-poor salesmanship. "After days of pleading, I finally persuaded him to stop packing more strawberries and to sell our new supply on the fresh berry market in San Francisco. That almost solved our problems. I should have been able to stop worrying then; but I couldn't. Worry is a habit; and I had that habit. "When I returned to New York, I began worrying about everything; the cherries we were buying in Italy, the pineapples we were buying in Hawaii, and so on. I was tense, jittery, couldn't sleep; and, as I have already said, I was heading for a nervous breakdown. "In despair, I adopted a way of life that cured my insomnia and stopped my worries. I got busy. I got so busy with problems demanding all my faculties that I had no time to worry. I had been working seven hours a day. I now began working fifteen and sixteen hours a day. I got down to the office every morning at eight o'clock and stayed there every night until almost midnight. I took on new duties, new responsibilities. When I got home at midnight, I was so exhausted when I fell in bed that I became unconscious in a few seconds. "I kept up this programme for about three months. I had broken the habit of worry by that time, so I returned to a normal working day of seven or eight hours. This event occurred eighteen years ago. I have never been troubled with insomnia or worry since then." George Bernard Shaw was right. He summed it all up when he said: "The secret of being miserable is to have the leisure to bother about whether you are happy or not." So don't bother to think about it! Spit on your hands and get busy. Your blood will start circulating; your mind will start ticking -and pretty soon this whole positive upsurge of life in your body will drive worry from your mind. Get busy. Keep busy. It's the cheapest kind of medicine there is on this earth-and one of the best. To break the worry habit, here is Rule 1: Keep busy. The worried person must lose himself in action, lest be wither in despair. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Chapter 7 - Don't Let the Beetles Get You Down Here is a dramatic story that I'll probably remember as long as I live. It was told to me by Robert Moore, of 14 Highland Avenue, Maplewood, New Jersey. "I learned the biggest lesson of my life in March, 1945," he said, "I learned it under 276 feet of water off the coast of Indo-China. I was one of eighty-eight men aboard the submarine Baya S.S. 318. We had discovered by radar that a small Japanese convoy was coming our way. As daybreak approached, we submerged to attack. I saw through the periscope a Jap destroyer escort, a tanker, and a minelayer. We fired three torpedoes at the destroyer escort, but missed. Something went haywire in the mechanics of each torpedo. The destroyer, not knowing that she had been attacked, continued on. We were getting ready to attack the last ship, the minelayer, when suddenly she turned and came directly at us. (A Jap plane had spotted us under sixty feet of water and had radioed our position to the Jap minelayer.) We went down to 150 feet, to avoid detection, and rigged for a depth charge. We put extra bolts on the hatches; and, in order to make our sub absolutely silent, we turned off the fans, the cooling system, and all electrical gear. "Three minutes later, all hell broke loose. Six depth charges exploded all around us and pushed us down to the ocean floor -a depth of 276 feet. We were terrified. To be attacked in less than a thousand feet of water is dangerous-less than five hundred feet is almost always fatal. And we were being attacked in a trifle more than half of five hundred feet of water -just about knee-deep, as far as safety was concerned. For fifteen hours, that Jap minelayer kept dropping depth charges. If a depth charge explodes within seventeen feet of a sub, the concussion will blow a hole in it. Scores of these depth charges exploded within fifty feet of us. We were ordered 'to secure'- to lie quietly in our bunks and remain calm. I was so terrified I could hardly breathe. 'This is death,' I kept saying to myself over and over. 'This is death! . This is death!' With the fans and cooling system turned off, the air inside the sub was over a hundred degrees; but I was so chilled with fear that I put on a sweater and a furlined jacket; and still I trembled with cold. My teeth chattered. I broke out in a cold, clammy sweat. The attack continued for fifteen hours. Then ceased suddenly. Apparently the Jap minelayer had exhausted its supply of depth charges, and steamed away. Those fifteen hours of attack seemed like fifteen million years. All my life passed before me in review. I remembered all the bad things I had done, all the little absurd things I had worried about. I had been a bank clerk before I joined the Navy. I had worried about the long hours, the poor pay, the poor prospects of advancement. I had worried because I couldn't own my own home, couldn't buy a new car, couldn't buy my wife nice clothes. How I had hated my old boss, who was always nagging and scolding! I remembered how I would come home at night sore and grouchy and quarrel with my wife over trifles. I had worried about a scar on my forehead-a nasty cut from an auto accident. "How big all these worries seemed years ago! But how absurd they seemed when depth charges were threatening to blow me to kingdom come. I promised myself then and there that if I ever saw the sun and the stars again, I would never, never worry again. Never! Never! I Never!!! I learned more about the art of living in those fifteen terrible hours in that submarine than I had learned by studying books for four years in Syracuse University." We often face the major disasters of life bravely-and then let the trifles, the "pains in the neck", get us down. For example, Samuel Pepys tells in his Diary about seeing Sir Harry Vane's head chopped off in London. As Sir Harry mounted the platform, he was not pleading for his life, but was pleading with the executioner not to hit the painful boil on his neck! That was another thing that Admiral Byrd discovered down in the terrible cold and darkness of the polar nights-that his men fussed more about the ' 'pains in the neck" than about the big things. They bore, without complaining, the dangers, the hardships, and the cold that was often eighty degrees below zero. "But," says Admiral Byrd, "I know of bunkmates who quit speaking because each suspected the other of inching his gear into the other's allotted space; and I knew of one who could not eat unless he could find a place in the mess hall out of sight of the Fletcherist who solemnly chewed his food twenty-eight times before swallowing. "In a polar camp," says Admiral Byrd, "little things like that have the power to drive even disciplined men to the edge of insanity." And you might have added, Admiral Byrd, that "little things" in marriage drive people to the edge of insanity and cause "half the heartaches in the world." At least, that is what the authorities say. For example, Judge Joseph Sabath of Chicago, after acting as arbiter in more than forty thousand unhappy marriages, declared: "Trivialities are at the bottom of most marital unhappiness"; and Frank S. Hogan, District Attorney of New York County, says: "Fully half the cases in our criminal courts originate in little things. Bar-room bravado, domestic wrangling, an insulting remark, a disparaging word, a rude action-those are the little things that lead to assault and murder. Very few of us are cruelly and greatly wronged. It is the small blows to our selfesteem, the indignities, the little jolts to our vanity, which cause half the heartaches in the world." When Eleanor Roosevelt was first married, she "worried for days" because her new cook had served a poor meal. "But if that happened now," Mrs. Roosevelt says, "I would shrug my shoulders and forget it." Good. That is acting like an adult emotionally. Even Catherine the Great, an absolute autocrat, used to laugh the thing off when the cook spoiled a meal. Mrs. Carnegie and I had dinner at a friend's house in Chicago. While carving the meat, he did something wrong. I didn't notice it; and I wouldn't have cared even if I had noticed it But his wife saw it and jumped down his throat right in front of us. "John," she cried, "watch what you are doing! Can't you ever learn to serve properly!" Then she said to us: "He is always making mistakes. He just doesn't try." Maybe he didn't try to carve; but I certainly give him credit for trying to live with her for twenty years. Frankly, I would rather have eaten a couple of hot dogs with mustard-in an atmosphere of peace-than to have dined on Peking duck and shark fins while listening to her scolding. Shortly after that experience, Mrs. Carnegie and I had some friends at our home for dinner. Just before they arrived, Mrs. Carnegie found that three of the napkins didn't "I rushed to the cook," she told me later, "and found that the other three napkins had gone to the laundry. The guests were at the door. There was no time to change. I felt like bursting into tears! All I could think was: 'Why did this stupid mistake have to spoil my whole evening?' Then I thought-well-why let it? I went in to dinner, determined to have a good time. And I did. I would much rather our friends think I was a sloppy housekeeper," she told me, "than a nervous, bad-tempered one. And anyhow, as far as I could make out, no one noticed the napkins!" A well-known legal maxim says: De minimis non curat lex- "the law does not concern itself with trifles." And neither should the worrier-if he wants peace of mind. Much of the time, all we need to overcome the annoyance of trifles is to affect a shifting of emphasis-set up a new, and pleasurable, point of view in the mind. My friend Homer Croy, who wrote They Had to See Paris and a dozen other books, gives a wonderful example of how this can be done. He used to be driven half crazy, while working on a book, by the rattling of the radiators in his New York apartment. The steam would bang and sizzle-and he would sizzle with irritation as he sat at his desk. "Then," says Homer Croy, "I went with some friends on a camping expedition. While listening to the limbs crackling in the roaring fire, I thought how much they sounded like the crackling of the radiators. Why should I like one and hate the other? When I went home I said to myself: 'The crackling of the limbs in the fire was a pleasant sound; the sound of the radiators is about the same-I'll go to sleep and not worry about the noise.' And I did. For a few days I was conscious of the radiators; but soon I forgot all about them. "And so it is with many petty worries. We dislike them and get into a stew, all because we exaggerate their importance. ." Disraeli said: "Life is too short to be little." "Those words," said Andre Maurois in This Week magazine, "have helped me through many a painful experience: often we allow ourselves to be upset by small things we should despise and forget. . Here we are on this earth, with only a few more decades to live, and we lose many irreplaceable hours brooding over grievances that, in a year's time, will be forgotten by us and by everybody. No, let us devote our life to worth-while actions and feelings, to great thoughts, real affections and enduring undertakings. For life is too short to be little." Even so illustrious a figure as Rudyard Kipling forgot at times that "Life is too short to be little". The result? He and his brother-in-law fought the most famous court battle in the history of Vermont-a battle so celebrated that a book has been written about it: Rudyard Kipling's Vermont Feud. The story goes like this: Kipling married a Vermont girl, Caroline Balestier, built a lovely home in Brattleboro, Vermont; settled down and expected to spend the rest of his life there. His brother-in-law, Beatty Balestier, became Kipling's best friend. The two of them worked and played together. Then Kipling bought some land from Balestier, with the understanding that Balestier would be allowed to cut hay off it each season. One day, Balestier found Kipling laying out a flower garden on this hayfield. His blood boiled. He hit the ceiling. Kipling fired right back. The air over the Green Mountains of Vermont turned blue! A few days later, when Kipling was out riding his bicycle, his brother-in-law drove a wagon and a team of horses across the road suddenly and forced Kipling to take a spill. And Kipling the man who wrote: "If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you"- he lost his own head, and swore out a warrant for Balestier's arrest I A sensational trial followed. Reporters from the big cities poured into the town. The news flashed around the world. Nothing was settled. This quarrel caused Kipling and his wife to abandon their American home for the rest of their lives. All that worry and bitterness over a mere trifle! A load of hay. Pericles said, twenty-four centuries ago: "Come, gentlemen, we sit too long on trifles." We do, indeed! Here is one of the most interesting stories that Dr. Harry Emerson Fosdick ever told-a story about the battles won and lost by a giant of the forest: On the slope of Long's Peak in Colorado lies the ruin of 3 gigantic tree. Naturalists tell us that it stood for some four hundred years. It was a seedling when Columbus landed at San Salvador, and half grown when the Pilgrims settled at Plymouth. During the course of its long life it was struck by lightning fourteen times, and the innumerable avalanches and storms of four centuries thundered past it. It survived them all. In the end, however, an army of beetles attacked the tree and leveled it to the ground. The insects ate their way through the bark and gradually destroyed the inner strength of the tree by their tiny but incessant attacks. A forest giant which age had not withered, nor lightning blasted, nor storms subdued, fell at last before beetles so small that a man could crush them between his forefinger and his thumb. Aren't we all like that battling giant of the forest? Don't we manage somehow to survive the rare storms and avalanches and lightning blasts of We, only to let our hearts be eaten out by little beetles of worry-little beetles that could be crushed between a finger and a thumb? A few years ago, I travelled through the Teton National Park, in Wyoming, with Charles Seifred, highway superintendent for the state of Wyoming, and some of his friends. We were all going to visit the John D. Rockefeller estate in the park. But the car in which I was riding took the wrong turn, got lost, and drove up to the entrance of the estate an hour after the other cars had gone in. Mr. Seifred had the key that unlocked the private gate, so he waited in the hot, mosquito-infested woods for an hour until we arrived. The mosquitoes were enough to drive a saint insane. But they couldn't triumph over Charles Seifred. While waiting for us, he cut a limb off an aspen tree-and made a whistle of it. When we arrived, was he cussing the mosquitoes? No, he was playing his whistle. I have kept that whistle as a memento of a man who knew how to put trifles in their place. To break the worry habit before it breaks you, here is Rule 2: Let's not allow ourselves to be upset by small things we should despise and forget. Remember "Life is too short to be little." ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Chapter 8 - A Law That Will Outlaw Many of Tour Worries As a child, I grew up on a Missouri farm; and one day, while helping my mother pit cherries, I began to cry. My mother said: "Dale, what in the world are you crying about?" I blubbered: "I'm afraid I am going to be buried alive!" I was full of worries in those days. When thunderstorms came, I worried for fear I would be killed by lightning. When hard times came, I worried for fear we wouldn't have enough to eat. I worried for fear I would go to hell when I died. I was terrified for fear an older boy, Sam White, would cut off my big ears-as he threatened to do. I worried for fear girls would laugh at me if I tipped my hat to them. I worried for fear no girl would ever be willing to marry me. I worried about what I would say to my wife immediately after we were married. I imagined that we would be married in some country church, and then get in a surrey with fringe on the top and ride back to the farm . but how would I be able to keep the conversation going on that ride back to the farm? How? How? I pondered over that earth-shaking problem for many an hour as I walked behind the plough. As the years went by, I gradually discovered that ninety-nine per cent of the things I worried about never happened. For example, as I have already said, I was once terrified of lightning; but I now know that the chances of my being killed by lightning in any one year are, according to the National Safety Council, only one in three hundred and fifty thousand. My fear of being buried alive was even more absurd: I don't imagine that one person in ten million is buried alive; yet I once cried for fear of it. One person out of every eight dies of cancer. If I had wanted something to worry about, I should have worried about cancer -instead of being killed by lightning or being buried alive. To be sure, I have been talking about the worries of youth and adolescence. But many of our adult worries are almost as absurd. You and I could probably eliminate nine-tenths of our worries right now if we would cease our fretting long enough to discover whether, by the law of averages, there was any real justification for our worries. The most famous insurance company on earth-Lloyd's of London-has made countless millions out of the tendency of everybody to worry about things that rarely happen. Lloyd's of London bets people that the disasters they are worrying about will never occur. However, they don't call it betting. They call it insurance. But it is really betting based on the law of averages. This great insurance firm has been going strong for two hundred years; and unless human nature changes, it will still be going strong fifty centuries from now by insuring shoes and ships and sealing-wax against disasters that, by the law of average, don't happen nearly so often as people imagine. If we examine the law of averages, we will often be astounded at the facts we uncover. For example, if I knew that during the next five years I would have to fight in a battle as bloody as the Battle of Gettysburg, I would be terrified. I would take out all the life insurance I could get. I would draw up my will and set all my earthly affairs in order. I would say: "I'll probably never live through that battle, so I had better make the most of the few years I have left." Yet the facts are that, according to the law of averages, it is just as dangerous, just as fatal, to try to live from age fifty to age fifty-five in peacetime as it was to fight in the Battle of Gettysburg. What I am trying to say is this: in times of peace, just as many people die per thousand between the ages of fifty and fifty-five as were killed per thousand among the 163,000 soldiers who fought at Gettysburg. I wrote several chapters of this book at James Simpson's Num-Ti-Gah Lodge, on the shore of Bow Lake in the Canadian Rockies. While stopping there one summer, I met Mr. and Mrs. Herbert H. Salinger, of 2298 Pacific Avenue, San Francisco. Mrs. Salinger, a poised, serene woman, gave me the impression that she had never worried. One evening in front of the roaring fireplace, I asked her if she had ever been troubled by worry. "Troubled by it?" she said. "My life was almost ruined by it. Before I learned to conquer worry, I lived through eleven years of self-made hell. I was irritable and hot-tempered. I lived under terrific tension. I would take the bus every week from my home in San Mateo to shop in San Francisco. But even while shopping, I worried myself into a dither: maybe I had left the electric iron connected on the ironing board. Maybe the house had caught fire. Maybe the maid had run off and left the children. Maybe they had been out on their bicycles and been killed by a car. In the midst of my shopping, I would often worry myself into a cold perspiration and rush out and take the bus home to see if everything was all right. No wonder my first marriage ended in disaster. "My second husband is a lawyer-a quiet, analytical man who never worries about anything. When I became tense and anxious, he would say to me: 'Relax. Let's think this out. . What are you really worrying about? Let's examine the law of averages and see whether or not it is likely to happen.' "For example, I remember the time we were driving from Albuquerque, New Mexico, to the Carlsbad Caverns-driving on a dirt road-when we were caught in a terrible rainstorm. "The car was slithering and sliding. We couldn't control it. I was positive we would slide off into one of the ditches that flanked the road; but my husband kept repeating to me: 'I am driving very slowly. Nothing serious is likely to happen. Even if the car does slide into the ditch, by the law of averages, we won't be hurt.' His calmness and confidence quieted me. "One summer we were on a camping trip in the Touquin Valley of the Canadian Rockies. One night we were camping seven thousand feet above sea level, when a storm threatened to tear our tents to shreds. The tents were tied with guy ropes to a wooden platform. The outer tent shook and trembled and screamed and shrieked in the wind. I expected every minute to see our tent torn loose and hurled through the sky. I was terrified! But my husband kept saying: 'Look, my dear, we are travelling with Brewster's guides. Brewster's know what they are doing. They have been pitching tents in these mountains for sixty years. This tent has been here for many seasons. It hasn't blown down yet and, by the law of averages, it won't blow away tonight; and even if it does, we can take shelter in another tent. So relax. . I did; and I slept soundly the balance of the night. "A few years ago an infantile-paralysis epidemic swept over our part of California. In the old days, I would have been hysterical. But my husband persuaded me to act calmly. We took all the precautions we could; we kept our children away from crowds, away from school and the movies. By consulting the Board of Health, we found out that even during the worst infantile-paralysis epidemic that California had ever known up to that time, only 1,835 children had been stricken in the entire state of California. And that the usual number was around two hundred or three hundred. Tragic as those figures are, we nevertheless felt that, according to the law of averages, the chances of any one child being stricken were remote. " 'By the law of averages, it won't happen.' That phrase has destroyed ninety per cent of my worries; and it has made the past twenty years of my life beautiful and peaceful beyond my highest expectations." General George Crook-probably the greatest Indian fighter in American history-says in his Autobiography that "nearly all the worries and unhappiness" of the Indians "came from their imagination, and not from reality." As I look back across the decades, I can see that that is where most of my worries came from also. Jim Grant told me that that had been his experience, too. He owns the James A. Grant Distributing Company, 204 Franklin Street, New York City. He orders from ten to fifteen car-loads of Florida oranges and grapefruit at a time. He told me that he used to torture himself with such thoughts as: What if there's a train wreck? What if my fruit is strewn all over the countryside? What if a bridge collapses as my cars are going across it? Of course, the fruit was insured; but he feared that if he didn't deliver his fruit on time, he might risk the loss of his market. He worried so much that he feared he had stomach ulcers and went to a doctor. The doctor told him there was nothing wrong with him except jumpy nerves. "I saw the light then," he said, "and began to ask myself questions. I said to myself: 'Look here, Jim Grant, how many fruit cars have you handled over the years?' The answer was: 'About twenty-five thousand.' Then I asked myself: 'How many of those cars were ever wrecked?' The answer was: 'Oh-maybe five.' Then I said to myself: 'Only five-out of twenty-five thousand? Do you know what that means? A ratio of five thousand to one! In other words, by the law of averages, based on experience, the chances are five thousand to one against one of your cars ever being wrecked. So what are you worried about?' "Then I said to myself: 'Well, a bridge may collapse!' Then I asked myself: 'How many cars have you actually lost from a bridge collapsing?' The answer was-'None.' Then I said to myself: 'Aren't you a fool to be worrying yourself into stomach ulcers over a bridge which has never yet collapsed, and over a railroad wreck when the chances are five thousand to one against it!' "When I looked at it that way," Jim Grant told me, "I felt pretty silly. I decided then and there to let the law of averages do the worrying for me-and I have not been troubled with my 'stomach ulcer' since!" When Al Smith was Governor of New York, I heard him answer the attacks of his political enemies by saying over and over: "Let's examine the record . let's examine the record." Then he proceeded to give the facts. The next time you and I are worrying about what may happen, let's take a tip from wise old Al Smith: let's examine the record and see what basis there is, if any, for our gnawing anxieties. That is precisely what Frederick J. Mahlstedt did when he feared he was lying in his grave. Here is his story as he told it to one of our adult-education classes in New York: "Early in June, 1944, I was lying in a slit trench near Omaha Beach. I was with the 999th Signal Service Company, and we had just 'dug in' in Normandy. As I looked around at that slit trench-just a rectangular hole in the ground-I said to myself: 'This looks just like a grave.' When I lay down and tried to sleep in it, it felt like a grave. I couldn't help saying to myself: 'Maybe this is my grave.' When the German bombers began coming over at 11 p.m., and the bombs started falling, I was scared stiff. For the first two or three nights I couldn't sleep at all. By the fourth or fifth night, I was almost a nervous wreck. I knew that if I didn't do something, I would go stark crazy. So I reminded myself that five nights had passed, and I was still alive; and so was every man in our outfit. Only two had been injured, and they had been hurt, not by German bombs, but by falling flak, from our own anti-aircraft guns. I decided to stop worrying by doing something constructive. So I built a thick wooden roof over my slit trench, to protect myself from flak. I thought of the vast area over which my unit was spread. I told myself that the only way I could be killed in that deep, narrow slit trench was by a direct hit; and I figured out that the chance of a direct hit on me was not one in ten thousand. After a couple of nights of looking at it in this way, I calmed down and slept even through the bomb raids!" The United States Navy used the statistics of the law of averages to buck up the morale of their men. One ex-sailor told me that when he and his shipmates were assigned to high-octane tankers, they were worried stiff. They all believed that if a tanker loaded with high-octane gasoline was hit by a torpedo, it exploded and blew everybody to kingdom come. But the U.S. Navy knew otherwise; so the Navy issued exact figures, showing that out of one hundred tankers hit by torpedoes sixty stayed afloat; and of the forty that did sink, only five sank in less than ten minutes. That meant time to get off the ship-it also meant casualties were exceedingly small. Did this help morale? "This knowledge of the law of averages wiped out my jitters," said Clyde W. Maas, of 1969 Walnut Street, St. Paul, Minnesota-the man who told this story. "The whole crew felt better. We knew we had a chance; and that, by the law of averages, we probably wouldn't be killed." To break the worry habit before it breaks you-here is Rule 3: "Let's examine the record." Let's ask ourselves: "What are the chances, according to the law of averages, that this event I am worrying about will ever occur?" ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Chapter 9 - Co-Operate With The Inevitable When I was a little boy, I was playing with some of my friends in the attic of an old, abandoned log house in north-west Missouri. As I climbed down out of the attic, I rested my feet on a window-sill for a moment-and then jumped. I had a ring on my left forefinger; and as I jumped, the ring caught on a nailhead and tore off my finger. I screamed. I was terrified. I was positive I was going to die. But after the hand healed, I never worried about it for one split second. What would have been the use? . I accepted the inevitable. Now I often go for a month at a time without even thinking about the fact that I have only three fingers and a thumb on my left hand. A few years ago, I met a man who was running a freight elevator in one of the downtown office buildings in New York. I noticed that his left hand had been cut off at the wrist. I asked him if the loss of that hand bothered him. He said: "Oh, no, I hardly ever think about it. I am not married; and the only time I ever think about it is when I try to thread a needle." It is astonishing how quickly we can accept almost any situation-if we have to-and adjust ourselves to it and forget about it. I often think of an inscription on the ruins of a fifteenth-century cathedral in Amsterdam, Holland. This inscription says in Flemish: "It is so. It cannot be otherwise." As you and I march across the decades of time, we are going to meet a lot of unpleasant situations that are so. They cannot be otherwise. We have our choice. We can either accept them as inevitable and adjust ourselves to them, or we can ruin our lives with rebellion and maybe end up with a nervous breakdown. Here is a bit of sage advice from one of my favourite philosophers, William James. "Be willing to have it so," he said. "Acceptance of what has happened is the first step to overcoming the consequence of any misfortune." Elizabeth Connley, of 2840 NE 49th Avenue, Portland, Oregon, had to find that out the hard way. Here is a letter that she wrote me recently: "On the very day that America was celebrating the victory of our armed forces in North Africa," the letter says, "I received a telegram from the War Department: my nephew- the person I loved most-was missing in action. A short time later, another telegram arrived saying he was dead. "I was prostrate with grief. Up to that time, I had felt that life had been very good to me. I had a job I loved. I had helped to raise this nephew. He represented to me all that was fine and good in young manhood. I had felt that all the bread I had cast upon the waters was coming back to me as cake! . Then came this telegram. My whole world collapsed. I felt there was nothing left to live for. I neglected my work; neglected my friends. I let everything go. I was bitter and resentful. Why did my loving nephew have to be taken? Why did this good boy-with life all before him-why did he have to be killed? I couldn't accept it. My grief was so overwhelming that I decided to give up my work, and go away and hide myself in my tears and bitterness. "I was clearing out my desk, getting ready to quit, when I came across a letter that I had forgotten-a letter from this nephew who had been killed, a letter he had written to me when my mother had died a few years ago. 'Of course, we will miss her,' the letter said, 'and especially you. But I know you'll carry on. Your own personal philosophy will make you do that. I shall never forget the beautiful truths you taught me. Wherever I am, or how far apart we may be, I shall always remember that you taught me to smile, and to take whatever comes, like a man.' "I read and reread that letter. It seemed as if he were there beside me, speaking to me. He seemed to be saying to me: 'Why don't you do what you taught me to do? Carry on, no matter what happens. Hide your private sorrows under a smile and carry on.' "So, I went back to my work. I stopped being bitter and rebellious. I kept saying to myself: 'It is done. I can't change it. But I can and will carry on as he wished me to do.' I threw all my mind and strength into my work. I wrote letters to soldiers-to other people's boys. I joined an adult-education class at night-seeking out new interests and making new friends. I can hardly believe the change that has come over me. I have ceased mourning over the past that is for ever gone. I am living each day now with joyjust as my nephew would have wanted me to do. I have made peace with life. I have accepted my fate. I am now living a fuller and more complete life than I had ever known." Elizabeth Connley, out in Portland, Oregon, learned what all of us will have to learn sooner or later: namely, that we must accept and co-operate with the inevitable. "It is so. It cannot be otherwise." That is not an easy lesson to learn. Even kings on their thrones have to keep reminding themselves of it. The late George V had these framed words hanging on the wall of his library in Buckingham Palace: "Teach me neither to cry for the moon nor over spilt milk." The same thought is expressed by Schopenhauer in this way: "A good supply of resignation is of the first importance in providing for the journey of life." Obviously, circumstances alone do not make us happy or unhappy. It is the way we react to circumstances that determines our feelings. Jesus said that the kingdom of heaven is within you. That is where the kingdom of hell is, too. We can all endure disaster and tragedy and triumph over them-if we have to. We may not think we can, but we have surprisingly strong inner resources that will see us through if we will only make use of them. We are stronger than we think. The late Booth Tarkington always said: "I could take anything that life could force upon me except one thing: blindness. I could never endure that." Then one day, when he was along in his sixties, Tarkington glanced down at the carpet on the floor. The colours were blurred. He couldn't see the pattern. He went to a specialist. He learned the tragic truth: he was losing his sight. One eye was nearly blind; the other would follow. That which he feared most had come upon him. And how did Tarkington react to this "worst of all disasters"? Did he feel: "This is it! This is the end of my life"? No, to his amazement, he felt quite gay. He even called upon his humour. Floating "specks" annoyed him; they would swim across his eyes and cut off his vision. Yet when the largest of these specks would swim across his sight, he would say: "Hello! There's Grandfather again! Wonder where he's going on this fine morning!" How could fate ever conquer a spirit like that? The answer is it couldn't. When total blindness closed in, Tarkington said: "I found I could take the loss of my eyesight, just as a man can take anything else. If I lost all five of my senses, I know I could live on inside my mind. For it is in the mind we see, and in the mind we live, whether we know it or not." In the hope of restoring his eyesight, Tarkington had to go through more than twelve operations within one year. With local anaesthetic! Did he rail against this? He knew it had to be done. He knew he couldn't escape it, so the only way to lessen his suffering was to take it with grace. He refused a private room at the hospital and went into a ward, where he could be with other people who had troubles, too. He tried to cheer them up. And when he had to submit to repeated operations-fully conscious of what was being done to his eyes-he tried to remember how fortunate he was. "How wonderful!" he said. "How wonderful, that science now has the skill to operate on anything so delicate as the human eye!" The average man would have been a nervous wreck if he had had to endure more than twelve operations and blindness. Yet Tarkington said: "I would not exchange this experience for a happier one." It taught him acceptance. It taught him that nothing life could bring him was beyond his strength to endure. It taught him, as John Milton discovered, that "It is not miserable to be blind, it is only miserable not to be able to endure blindness." Margaret Fuller, the famous New England feminist, once offered as her credo: "I accept the Universe!" When grouchy old Thomas Carlyle heard that in England, he snorted: "By gad, she'd better!" Yes, and by gad, you and I had better accept the inevitable, too! If we rail and kick against it and grow bitter, we won't change the inevitable; but we will change ourselves. I know. I have tried it. I once refused to accept an inevitable situation with which I was confronted. I played the fool and railed against it, and rebelled. I turned my nights into hells of insomnia. I brought upon myself everything I didn't want. Finally, after a year of self-torture, I had to accept what I knew from the outset I couldn't possibly alter. I should have cried out years ago with old Walt Whitman: Oh, to confront night, storms, hunger, Ridicule, accident, rebuffs as the trees and animals do. I spent twelve years working with cattle; yet I never saw a Jersey cow running a temperature because the pasture was burning up from a lack of rain or because of sleet and cold or because her boy friend was paying too much attention to another heifer. The animals confront night, storms, and hunger calmly; so they never have nervous breakdowns or stomach ulcers; and they never go insane. Am I advocating that we simply bow down to all the adversities that come our way? Not by a long shot! That is mere fatalism. As long as there is a chance that we can save a situation, let's fight! But when common sense tells us that we are up against something that is so-and cannot be otherwise- then, in the name of our sanity, let's not look before and after and pine for what is not. The late Dean Hawkes of Columbia University told me that he had taken a Mother Goose rhyme as one of his mottoes: For every ailment under the sun. There is a remedy, or there is none; If there be one, try to find it; If there be none, never mind it. While writing this book, I interviewed a number of the leading business men of America; and I was impressed by the fact that they co-operated with the inevitable and led lives singularly free from worry. If they hadn't done that, they would have cracked under the strain. Here are a few examples of what I mean: J.C. Penney, founder of the nation-wide chain of Penney stores, said to me: "I wouldn't worry if I lost every cent I have because I don't see what is to be gained by worrying. I do the best job I possibly can; and leave the results in the laps of the gods." Henry Ford told me much the same thing. "When I can't handle events," he said, "I let them handle themselves." When I asked K.T. Keller, president of the Chrysler Corporation, how he kept from worrying, he said: "When I am up against a tough situation, if I can do anything about it, I do it. If I can't, I just forget it. I never worry about the future, because I know no man living can possibly figure out what is going to happen in the future. There are so many forces that will affect that future! Nobody can tell what prompts those forces-or understand them. So why worry about them?" K. T. Keller would be embarrassed if you told him he is a philosopher. He is just a good business man, yet he has stumbled on the same philosophy that Epictetus taught in Rome nineteen centuries ago. "There is only one way to happiness," Epictetus taught the Romans, "and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power of our will." Sarah Bernhardt, the "divine Sarah" was an illustrious example of a woman who knew how to co-operate with the inevitable. For half a century, she had been the reigning queen of the theatre on four continents-the best-loved actress on earth. Then when she was seventy-one and broke-she had lost all her money-her physician, Professor Pozzi of Paris, told her he would have to amputate her leg. While crossing the Atlantic, she had fallen on deck during a storm, and injured her leg severely. Phlebitis developed. Her leg shrank. The pain became so intense that the doctor felt her leg had to be amputated. He was almost afraid to tell the stormy, tempestuous "divine Sarah" what had to be done. He fully expected that the terrible news would set off an explosion of hysteria. But he was wrong. Sarah looked at him a moment, and then said quietly: "If it has to be, it has to be." It was fate. As she was being wheeled away to the operating room, her son stood weeping. She waved to him with a gay gesture and said cheerfully: "Don't go away. I'll be right back." On the way to the operating room she recited a scene from one of her plays. Someone asked her if she were doing this to cheer herself up. She said: "No, to cheer up the doctors and nurses. It will be a strain on them." After recovering from the operation, Sarah Bernhardt went on touring the world and enchanting audiences for another seven years. "When we stop fighting the inevitable," said Elsie Mac-Cormick in a Reader's Digest article, "we release energy which enables us to create a richer life." No one living has enough emotion and vigour to fight the inevitable and, at the same time, enough left over to create a new life. Choose one or the other. You can either bend with the inevitable sleet-storms of life-or you can resist them and break! I saw that happen on a farm I own in Missouri. I planted a score of trees on that farm. At first, they grew with astonishing rapidity. Then a sleet-storm encrusted each twig and branch with a heavy coating of ice. Instead of bowing gracefully to their burden, these trees proudly resisted and broke and split under the load-and had to be destroyed. They hadn't learned the wisdom of the forests of the north. I have travelled hundreds of miles through the evergreen forests of Canada, yet I have never seen a spruce or a pine broken by sleet or ice. These evergreen forests know how to bend, how to bow down their branches, how to co-operate with the inevitable. The masters of jujitsu teach their pupils to "bend like the willow; don't resist like the oak." Why do you think your automobile tyres stand up on the road and take so much punishment? At first, the manufacturers tried to make a tyre that would resist the shocks of the road. It was soon cut to ribbons. Then they made a tyre that would absorb the shocks of the road. That tyre could "take it". You and I will last longer, and enjoy smoother riding, if we learn to absorb the shocks and jolts along the rocky road of life. What will happen to you and me if we resist the shocks of life instead of absorbing them? What will happen if we refuse to "bend like the willow" and insist on resisting like the oak? The answer is easy. We will set up a series of inner conflicts. We will be worried, tense, strained, and neurotic. If we go still further and reject the harsh world of reality and retreat into a dream world of our own making, we will then be insane. During the war, millions of frightened soldiers had either to accept the inevitable or break under the strain. To illustrate, let's take the case of William H. Casselius, 7126 76th Street, Glendale, New York. Here is a prize-winning talk he gave before one of my adult-education classes in New York: "Shortly after I joined the Coast Guard, I was assigned to one of the hottest spots on this side of the Atlantic. I was made a supervisor of explosives. Imagine it. Me! A biscuit salesman becoming a supervisor of explosives! The very thought of finding yourself standing on top of thousands of tons of T.N.T. is enough to chill the marrow in a cracker salesman's bones. I was given only two days of instruction; and what I learned filled me with even more terror. I'll never forget my first assignment. On a dark, cold, foggy day, I was given my orders on the open pier of Caven Point, Bayonne, New Jersey. "I was assigned to Hold No. 5 on my ship. I had to work down in that hold with five longshoremen. They had strong backs, but they knew nothing whatever about explosives. And they were loading blockbusters, each one of which contained a ton of T.N.T.-enough explosive to blow that old ship to kingdom come. These blockbusters were being lowered by two cables. I kept saying to myself: Suppose one of those cables slipped-or broke! Oh, boy! Was I scared! I trembled. My mouth was dry. My knees sagged. My heart pounded. But I couldn't run away. That would be desertion. I would be disgraced-my parents would be disgraced-and I might be shot for desertion. I couldn't run. I had to stay. I kept looking at the careless way those longshoremen were handling those blockbusters. The ship might blow up any minute. After an hour or more of this spine-chilling terror, I began to use a little common sense. I gave myself a good talking to. I said: 'Look here! So you are blown up. So what! You will never know the difference! It will be an easy way to die. Much better than dying by cancer. Don't be a fool. You can't expect to live for ever! You've got to do this job-or be shot. So you might as well like it." "I talked to myself like that for hours; and I began to feel at ease. Finally, I overcame my worry and fears by forcing myself to accept an inevitable situation. "I'll never forget that lesson. Every time I am tempted now to worry about something I can't possibly change, I shrug my shoulders and say: 'Forget it.' I find that it works-even for a biscuit salesman." Hooray! Let's give three cheers and one cheer more for the biscuit salesman of the Pinafore. Outside the crucifixion of Jesus, the most famous death scene in all history was the death of Socrates. Ten thousand centuries from now, men will still be reading and cherishing Plato's immortal description of it-one of the most moving and beautiful passages in all literature. Certain men of Athens- jealous and envious of old barefooted Socrates-trumped up charges against him and had him tried and condemned to death. When the friendly jailer gave Socrates the poison cup to drink, the jailer said: "Try to bear lightly what needs must be." Socrates did. He faced death with a calmness and resignation that touched the hem of divinity. "Try to bear lightly what needs must be." Those words were spoken 399 years before Christ was born; but this worrying old world needs those words today more than ever before: "Try to bear lightly what needs must be." During the past eight years, I have been reading practically every book and magazine article I could find that dealt even remotely with banishing worry. . Would you like to know what is the best single bit of advice about worry that I have ever discovered in all that reading? Well, here it is-summed up in twenty-seven words-words that you and I ought to paste on our bathroom mirrors, so that each time we wash our faces we could also wash away all worry from our minds. This priceless prayer was written by Dr. Reinhold Niebuhr, Professor of Applied Christianity, Union Theological Seminary, Broadway and 120th Street, New York. God grant me the serenity To accept the things I cannot change; The courage to change the things I can; And the wisdom to know the difference. To break the worry habit before it breaks you, Rule 4 is: Co-operate with the inevitable. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Chapter 10 - Put A " Stop-Loss" Order On Your Worries WOULD you like to know how to make money on the Stock Exchange? Well, so would a million other people-and if I knew the answer, this book would sell for a fabulous price. However, there's one good idea that some successful operators use. This story was told to me by Charles Roberts, an investment counselor with offices at 17 East 42nd Street, New York. "I originally came up to New York from Texas with twenty thousand dollars which my friends had given me to invest in the stock market," Charles Roberts told me. "I thought," he continued, "that I knew the ropes in the stock market; but I lost every cent. True, I made a lot of profit on some deals; but I ended up by losing everything. "I did not mind so much losing my own money," Mr. Roberts explained, "but I felt terrible about having lost my friends' money, even though they could well afford it. I dreaded facing them again after our venture had turned out so unfortunately, but, to my astonishment, they not only were good sports about it, but proved to be incurable optimists. "I knew I had been trading on a hit-or-miss basis and depending largely on luck and other people's opinions. As H. I. Phillips said, I had been 'playing the stock market by ear'. "I began to think over my mistakes and I determined that before I went back into the market again, I would try to find out what it was all about. So I sought out and became acquainted with one of the most successful speculators who ever lived: Burton S. Castles. I believed I could learn a great deal from him because he had long enjoyed the reputation of being successful year after year and I knew that such a career was not the result of mere chance or luck. "He asked me a few questions about how I had traded before and then told me what I believe is the most important principle in trading. He said: 'I put a stop-loss order on every market commitment I make. If I buy a stock at, say, fifty dollars a share, I immediately place a stop-loss order on it at forty-five.' That means that when and if the stock should decline as much as five points below its cost, it would be sold automatically, thereby, limiting the loss to five points. " 'If your commitments are intelligently made in the first place,' the old master continued, 'your profits will average ten, twenty-five, or even fifty points. Consequently, by limiting your losses to five points, you can be wrong more than half of the time and still make plenty of money?' "I adopted that principle immediately and have used it ever since. It has saved my clients and me many thousands of dollars. "After a while I realised that the stop-loss principle could be used in other ways besides in the stock market. I began to place a stop-loss order on any and every kind of annoyance and resentment that came to me. It has worked like magic. "For example, I often have a luncheon date with a friend who is rarely on time. In the old days, he used to keep me stewing around for half my lunch hour before he showed up. Finally, I told him about my stop-loss orders on my worries. I said: 'Bill, my stop-loss order on waiting for you is exactly ten minutes. If you arrive more than ten minutes late, our luncheon engagement will be sold down the river-and I'll be gone.' " Man alive! How I wish I had had the sense, years ago, to put stop-loss orders on my impatience, on my temper, on my desire for self-justification, on my regrets, and on all my mental and emotional strains. Why didn't I have the horse sense to size up each situation that threatened to destroy my peace of mind and say to myself: "See here, Dale Carnegie, this situation is worth just so much fussing about and no more"? . Why didn't I? However, I must give myself credit for a little sense on one occasion, at least. And it was a serious occasion, too-a crisis in my life-a crisis when I stood watching my dreams and my plans for the future and the work of years vanish into thin air. It happened like this. In my early thirties, I had decided to spend my life writing novels. I was going to be a second Frank Norris or Jack London or Thomas Hardy. I was so in earnest that I spent two years in Europe - where I would live cheaply with dollars during the period of wild, printing-press money that followed the First World War. I spent two years there, writing my magnum opus. I called it The Blizzard. The title was a natural, for the reception it got among publishers was as cold as any blizzard that ever howled across the plains of the Dakotas. When my literary agent told me it was worthless, that I had no gift, no talent, for fiction, my heart almost stopped. I left his office in a daze. I couldn't have been more stunned if he had hit me across the head with a club. I was stupefied. I realised that I was standing at the crossroads of life, and had to make a tremendous decision. What should I do? Which way should I turn? Weeks passed before I came out of the daze. At that time, I had never heard of the phrase "put a stop-loss order on your worries". But as I look back now, I can see that I did just that. I wrote off my two years of sweating over that novel for just what they were worth - a noble experiment - and went forward from there. I returned to my work of organising and teaching adult-education classes, and wrote biographies in my spare time - biographies and non-fiction books such as the one you are reading now. Am I glad now that I made that decision? Glad? Every time I think about it now I feel like dancing in the street for sheer joy! I can honestly say that I have never spent a day or an hour since, lamenting the fact that I am not another Thomas Hardy. One night a century ago, when a screech owl was screeching in the woods along the shore of Walden Pond, Henry Thoreau dipped his goose quill into his homemade ink and wrote in his diary: "The cost of a thing is the amount of what I call life, which is required to be exchanged for it immediately or in the long run." To put it another way: we are fools when we overpay for a thing in terms of what it takes out of our very existence. Yet that is precisely what Gilbert and Sullivan did. They knew how to create gay words and gay music, but they knew distressingly little about how to create gaiety in their own lives. They created some of the loveliest light operas that ever delighted the world: Patience, Pinafore, The Mikado. But they couldn't control their tempers. They embittered their years over nothing more than the price of a carpet! Sullivan ordered a new carpet for the theatre they had bought. When Gilbert saw the bill, he hit the roof. They battled it out in court, and never spoke to one another again as long as they lived. When Sullivan wrote the music for a new production, he mailed it to Gilbert; and when Gilbert wrote the words, he mailed it back to Sullivan. Once they had to take a curtain call together, but they stood on opposite sides of the stage and bowed in different directions, so they wouldn't see one another. They hadn't the sense to put a stop-loss order on their resentments, as Lincoln did. Once, during the Civil War, when some of Lincoln's friends were denouncing his bitter enemies, Lincoln said: "You have more of a feeling of personal resentment than I have. Perhaps I have too little of it; but I never thought it paid. A man doesn't have the time to spend half his life in quarrels. If any man ceases to attack me, I never remember the past against him." I wish an old aunt of mine-Aunt Edith-had had Lincoln's forgiving spirit. She and Uncle Frank lived on a mortgaged farm that was infested with cockleburs and cursed with poor soil and ditches. They had tough going-had to squeeze every nickel. But Aunt Edith loved to buy a few curtains and other items to brighten up their bare home. She bought these small luxuries on credit at Dan Eversole's drygoods store in Maryville, Missouri. Uncle Frank worried about their debts. He had a farmer's horror of running up bills, so he secretly told Dan Eversole to stop letting his wife buy on credit. When she heard that, she hit the roof-and she was still hitting the roof about it almost fifty years after it had happened. I have heard her tell the story-not once, but many times. The last time I ever saw her, she was in her late seventies. I said to her; "Aunt Edith, Uncle Frank did wrong to humiliate you; but don't you honestly feel that your complaining about it almost half a century after it happened is infinitely worse than what he did?" (I might as well have said it to the moon.) Aunt Edith paid dearly for the grudge and bitter memories that she nourished. She paid for them with her own peace of mind. When Benjamin Franklin was seven years old, he made a mistake that he remembered for seventy years. When he was a lad of seven, he fell in love with a whistle. He was so excited about it that he went into the toyshop, piled all his coppers on the counter, and demanded the whistle without even asking its price. "I then came home," he wrote to a friend seventy years later, "and went whistling all over the house, much pleased with my whistle." But when his older brothers and sisters found out that he had paid far more for his whistle than he should have paid, they gave him the horse laugh; and, as he said: "I cried with vexation." Years later, when Franklin was a world-famous figure, and Ambassador to France, he still remembered that the fact that he had paid too much for his whistle had caused him "more chagrin than the whistle gave him pleasure." But the lesson it taught Franklin was cheap in the end. "As I grew up," he said, "and came into the world and observed the actions of men, I thought I met with many, very many, who gave too much for the whistle. In short, I conceive that a great part of the miseries of mankind are brought upon them by the false estimates they have made of the value of things, and by their giving too much for their whistles. Gilbert and Sullivan paid too much for their whistle. So did Aunt Edith. So did Dale Carnegie-on many occasions. And so did the immortal Leo Tolstoy, author of two of the world's greatest novels, War and Peace and Anna Karenina. According to The Encyclopedia Britannica, Leo Tolstoy was, during the last twenty years of his life, "probably the most venerated man in the whole world." For twenty years before he died-from 1890 to 1910-an unending stream of admirers made pilgrimages to his home in order to catch a glimpse of his face, to hear the sound of his voice, or even touch the hem of his garment. Every sentence he uttered was taken down in a notebook, almost as if it were a "divine revelation". But when it came to living-to ordinary living-well, Tolstoy had even less sense at seventy than Franklin had at seven! He had no sense at all. Here's what 1 mean. Tolstoy married a girl he loved very dearly. In fact, they were so happy together that they used to get on their knees and pray to God to let them continue their lives in such sheer, heavenly ecstasy. But the girl Tolstoy married was jealous by nature. She used to dress herself up as a peasant and spy on his movements, even out in the woods. They had fearful rows. She became so jealous, even of her own children, that she grabbed a gun and shot a hole in her daughter's photograph. She even rolled on the floor with an opium bottle held to her lips, and threatened to commit suicide, while the children huddled in a corner of the room and screamed with terror. And what did Tolstoy do? Well, I don't blame the man for up and smashing the furniturehe had good provocation. But he did far worse than that. He kept a private diary! Yes, a diary, in which he placed all the blame on his wife! That was his "whistle"! He was determined to make sure that coming generations would exonerate him and put the blame on his wife. And what did his wife do, in answer to this? Why, she tore pages out of his diary and burned them, of course. She started a diary of her own, in which she made him the villain. She even wrote a novel, entitled Whose Fault? in which she depicted her husband as a household fiend and herself as a martyr. All to what end? Why did these two people turn the only home they had into what Tolstoy himself called "a lunatic asylum"? Obviously, there were several reasons. One of those reasons was their burning desire to impress you and me. Yes, we are the posterity whose opinion they were worried about! Do we give a hoot in Hades about which one was to blame? No, we are too concerned with our own problems to waste a minute thinking about the Tolstoy's. What a price these two wretched people paid for their whistle! Fifty years of living in a veritable hell-just because neither of them had the sense to say: "Stop!" Because neither of them had enough judgment of values to say: "Let's put a stop-loss order on this thing instantly. We are squandering our lives. Let's say 'Enough' now!" Yes, I honestly believe that this is one of the greatest secrets to true peace of mind-a decent sense of values. And I believe we could annihilate fifty per cent of all our worries at once if we would develop a sort of private gold standard-a gold standard of what things are worth to us in terms of our lives. So, to break the worry habit before it breaks you, here is Rule 5: Whenever we are tempted to throw good money after bad in terms of human living, let's stop and ask ourselves these three Questions: 1.How much does this thing I am worrying about really matter to me? 2.At what point shall I set a "stop-loss" order on this worry -and forget it? 3.Exactly how much shall I pay for this whistle? Have I already paid more than it is worth? ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Chapter 11 - Don't Try To Saw Sawdust As I write this sentence, I can look out of my window and see some dinosaur tracks in my garden-dinosaur tracks embedded in shale and stone. I purchased those dinosaur tracks from the Peabody Museum of Yale University; and I have a letter from the curator of the Peabody Museum, saying that those tracks were made 180 million years ago. Even a Mongolian idiot wouldn't dream of trying to go back 180 million years to change those tracks. Yet that would not be any more foolish than worrying because we can't go back and change what happened 180 seconds ago-and a lot of us are doing just that To be sure, we may do something to modify the effects of what happened 180 seconds ago; but we can't possibly change the event that occurred then. There is only one way on God's green footstool that the past can be constructive; and that is by calmly analysing our past mistakes and profiting by them-and forgetting them. I know that is true; but have I always had the courage and sense to do it? To answer that question, let me tell you about a fantastic experience I had years ago. I let more than three hundred thousand dollars slip through my fingers without making a penny's profit. It happened like this: I launched a large-scale enterprise in adult education, opened branches in various cities, and spent money lavishly in overhead and advertising. I was so busy with teaching that I had neither the time nor the desire to look after finances. I was too naive to realise that I needed an astute business manager to watch expenses. Finally, after about a year, I discovered a sobering and shocking truth. I discovered that in spite of our enormous intake, we had not netted any profit whatever. After discovering that, I should have done two things. First, I should have had the sense to do what George Washington Carver, the Negro scientist, did when he lost forty thousand dollars in a bank crash-the savings of a lifetime. When someone asked him if he knew he was bankrupt, he replied: "Yes, I heard"-and went on with his teaching. He wiped the loss out of his mind so completely that he never mentioned it again. Here is the second thing I should have done: I should have analysed my mistakes and learned a lasting lesson. But frankly, I didn't do either one of these things. Instead, I went into a tailspin of worry. For months I was in a daze. I lost sleep and I lost weight. Instead of learning a lesson from this enormous mistake, I went right ahead and did the same thing again on a smaller scale! It is embarrassing for me to admit all this stupidity; but I discovered long ago that "it is easier to teach twenty what were good to be done than to be one of twenty to follow mine own teaching." How I wish that I had had the privilege of attending the George Washington High School here in New York and studying under Mr. Brandwine-the same teacher who taught Allen Saunders, of 939 Woodycrest Avenue, Bronx, New York! Mr. Saunders told me that the teacher of his hygiene class, Mr. Brandwine, taught him one of the most valuable lessons he had ever learned. "I was only in my teens," said Allen Saunders as he told me the story, "but I was a worrier even then. I used to stew and fret about the mistakes I had made. If I turned in an examination paper, I used to lie awake and chew my fingernails for fear I hadn't passed. I was always living over the things I had done, and wishing I'd done them differently; thinking over the things I had said, and wishing I'd said them better. "Then one morning, our class filed into the science laboratory, and there was the teacher, Mr. Brandwine, with a bottle of milk prominently displayed on the edge of the desk. We all sat down, staring at the milk, and wondering what it had to do with the hygiene course he was teaching. Then, all of a sudden, Mr. Brandwine stood up, swept the bottle of milk with a crash into the sink-and shouted: 'Don't cry over spilt milk!' "He then made us all come to the sink and look at the wreckage. 'Take a good look,' he told us, 'because I want you to remember this lesson the rest of your lives. That milk is gone you can see it's down the drain; and all the fussing and hair-pulling in the world won't bring back a drop of it. With a little thought and prevention, that milk might have been saved. But it's too late now-all we can do is write it off, forget it, and go on to the next thing.' "That one little demonstration," Allen Saunders told me, "stuck with me long after I'd forgotten my solid geometry and Latin. In fact, it taught me more about practical living than anything else in my four years of high school. It taught me to keep from spilling milk if I could; but to forget it completely, once it was spilled and had gone down the drain." Some readers are going to snort at the idea of making so much over a hackneyed proverb like "Don't cry over spilt milk." I know it is trite, commonplace, and a platitude. I know you have heard it a thousand times. But I also know that these hackneyed proverbs contain the very essence of the distilled wisdom of all ages. They have come out of the fiery experience of the human race and have been handed down through countless generations. If you were to read everything that has ever been written about worry by the great scholars of all time, you would never read anything more basic or more profound than such hackneyed proverbs as "Don't cross your bridges until you come to them" and "Don't cry over spilt milk." If we only applied those two proverbs-instead of snorting at them-we wouldn't need this book at all. In fact, if we applied most of the old proverbs, we would lead almost perfect lives. However, knowledge isn't power until it is applied; and the purpose of this book is not to tell you something new. The purpose of this book is to remind you of what you already know and to kick you in the shins and inspire you to do something about applying it. I have always admired a man like the late Fred Fuller Shedd, who had a gift for stating an old truth in a new and picturesque way. He was editor of the Philadelphia Bulletin; and, while addressing a college graduating class, he asked: "How many of you have ever sawed wood? Let's see your hands." Most of them had. Then he inquired: "How many of you have ever sawed sawdust?" No hands went up. "Of course, you can't saw sawdust!" Mr. Shedd exclaimed. "It's already sawed! And it's the same with the past. When you start worrying about things that are over and done with, you're merely trying to saw sawdust." When Connie Mack, the grand old man of baseball, was eighty-one years old, I asked him if he had ever worried over games that were lost. "Oh, yes, I used to," Connie Mack told me. "But I got over that foolishness long years ago. I found out it didn't get me anywhere at all. You can't grind any grain," he said, "with water that has already gone down the creek." No, you can't grind any grain-and you can't saw any logs with water that has already gone down the creek. But you can saw wrinkles in your face and ulcers in your stomach. I had dinner with Jack Dempsey last Thanksgiving; and he told me over the turkey and cranberry sauce about the fight in which he lost the heavyweight championship to Tunney Naturally, it was a blow to his ego. "In the midst of that fight," he told me, "I suddenly realised I had become an old man. . At the end of the tenth round, I was still on my feet, but that was about all. My face was puffed and cut, and my eyes were nearly closed. . I saw the referee raise Gene Tunney's hand in token of victory. . I was no longer champion of the world. I started back in the rain-back through the crowd to my dressing-room. As I passed, some people tried to grab my hand. Others had tears in their eyes. "A year later, I fought Tunney again. But it was no use. I was through for ever. It was hard to keep from worrying about it all, but I said to myself: 'I'm not going to live in the past or cry over spilt milk. I am going to take this blow on the chin and not let it floor me.' " And that is precisely what Jack Dempsey did. How? By saying to himself over and over: "I won't worry about the past"? No, that would merely have forced him to think of his past worries. He did it by accepting and writing off his defeat and then concentrating on plans for the future. He did it by running the Jack Dempsey Restaurant on Broadway and the Great Northern Hotel on 57th Street. He did it by promoting prize fights and giving boxing exhibitions. He did it by getting so busy on something constructive that he had neither the time nor the temptation to worry about the past. "I have had a better time during the last ten years," Jack Dempsey said, "than I had when I was champion." As I read history and biography and observe people under trying circumstances, I am constantly astonished and inspired by some people's ability to write off their worries and tragedies and go on living fairly happy lives. I once paid a visit to Sing Sing, and the thing that astonished me most was that the prisoners there appeared to be about as happy as the average person on the outside. I commented on it to Lewis E. Lawes-then warden of Sing Sing-and he told me that when criminals first arrive at Sing Sing, they are likely to be resentful and bitter. But after a few months, the majority of the more intelligent ones write off their misfortunes and settle down and accept prison life calmly and make the best of it. Warden Lawes told me about one Sing Sing prisoner- a gardener-who sang as he cultivated the vegetables and flowers inside the prison walls. That Sing Sing prisoner who sang as he cultivated the flowers showed a lot more sense than most of us do. He knew that The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line, Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it. So why waste the tears? Of course, we have been guilty of blunders and absurdities! And so what? Who hasn't? Even Napoleon lost one-third of all the important battles he fought. Perhaps our batting average is no worse than Napoleon's. Who knows? And, anyhow, all the king's horses and all the king's men can't put the past together again. So let's remember Rule 7: Don't try to saw sawdust. ~~~~ Part Three In A Nutshell - How To Break The Worry Habit Before It Breaks You RULE 1: Crowd worry out of your mind by keeping busy. Plenty of action is one of the best therapies ever devised for curing "wibber gibbers". RULE 2: Don't fuss about trifles. Don't permit little things-the mere termites of life-to ruin your happiness. RULE 3: Use the law of averages to outlaw your worries. Ask yourself: "What are the odds against this thing's happening at all?" RULE 4: Co-operate with the inevitable. If you know a circumstance is beyond your power to change or revise, say to yourself "It is so; it cannot be otherwise." RULE 5: Put a "stop-loss" order on your worries. Decide just how much anxiety a thing may be worth-and refuse to give it any more. RULE 6: Let the past bury its dead. Don't saw sawdust. ---------------------------------- Part Four - Seven Ways To Cultivate A Mental Attitude That Will Bring You Peace And Happiness Chapter 12 - Eight Words That Can Transform Your Life A Few years ago, I was asked to answer this question on a radio programme: "What is the biggest lesson you have ever learned?" That was easy: by far the most vital lesson I have ever learned is the importance of what we think. If I knew what you think, I would know what you are. Our thoughts make us what we are. Our mental attitude is the X factor that determines our fate. Emerson said: "A man is what he thinks about all day long." . How could he possibly be anything else? I now know with a conviction beyond all doubt that the biggest problem you and I have to deal with-in fact, almost the only problem we have to deal with-is choosing the right thoughts. If we can do that, we will be on the highroad to solving all our problems. The great philosopher who ruled the Roman Empire, Marcus Aurelius, summed it up in eight words-eight words that can determine your destiny: "Our life is what our thoughts make it." Yes, if we think happy thoughts, we will be happy. If we think miserable thoughts, we will be miserable. If we think fear thoughts, we will be fearful. If we think sickly thoughts, we will probably be ill. If we think failure, we will certainly fail. If we wallow in self-pity, everyone will want to shun us and avoid us. "You are not," said Norman Vincent Peale, "you are not what you think you are; but what you think, you are." Am I advocating an habitual Pollyanna attitude toward all our problems? No, unfortunately, life isn't so simple as all that. But I am advocating that we assume a positive attitude instead of a negative attitude. In other words, we need to be concerned about our problems, but not worried. What is the difference between concern and worry? Let me illustrate. Every time I cross the traffic-jammed streets of New York, I am concerned about what I am doing-but not worried. Concern means realising what the problems are and calmly taking steps to meet them. Worrying means going around in maddening, futile circles. A man can be concerned about his serious problems and still walk with his chin up and a carnation in his buttonhole. I have seen Lowell Thomas do just that. I once had the privilege of being associated with Lowell Thomas in presenting his famous films on the Allenby-Lawrence campaigns in World War I. He and his assistants had photographed the war on half a dozen fronts; and, best of all, had brought back a pictorial record of T. E. Lawrence and his colourful Arabian army, and a film record of Allenby's conquest of the Holy Land. His illustrated talks entitled "With Allenby in Palestine and Lawrence in Arabia" were a sensation in London-and around the world. The London opera season was postponed for six weeks so that he could continue telling his tale of high adventure and showing his pictures at Covent Garden Royal Opera House. After his sensational success in London came a triumphant tour of many countries. Then he spent two years preparing a film record of life in India and Afghanistan. After a lot of incredibly bad luck, the impossible happened: he found himself broke in London. I was with him at the time. I remember we had to eat cheap meals at cheap restaurants. We couldn't have eaten even there if we had not borrowed money from a Scotsman-James McBey, the renowned artist. Here is the point of the story: even when Lowell Thomas was facing huge debts and severe disappointments, he was concerned, but not worried. He knew that if he let his reverses get him down, he would be worthless to everyone, including his creditors. So each morning before he started out, he bought a flower, put it in his buttonhole, and went swinging down Oxford Street with his head high and his step spirited. He thought positive, courageous thoughts and refused to let defeat defeat him. To him, being licked was all part of the game-the useful training you had to expect if you wanted to get to the top. Our mental attitude has an almost unbelievable effect even on our physical powers. The famous British psychiatrist, J. A. Hadfield, gives a striking illustration of that fact in his splendid book, The Psychology of Power. "I asked three men," he writes, "to submit themselves to test the effect of mental suggestion on their strength, which was measured by gripping a dynamometer." He told them to grip the dynamometer with all their might. He had them do this under three different sets of conditions. When he tested them under normal waking conditions, their average grip was 101 pounds. When he tested them after he had hypnotised them and told them that they were very weak, they could grip only 29 pounds -less than a third of their normal strength. (One of these men was a prize fighter; and when he was told under hypnosis that he was weak, he remarked that his arm felt "tiny, just like a baby's".) When Captain Hadfield then tested these men a third time, telling them under hypnosis that they were very strong, they were able to grip an average of 142 pounds. When their minds were filled with positive thoughts of strength, they increased their actual physical powers almost five hundred per cent. Such is the incredible power of our mental attitude. To illustrate the magic power of thought, let me tell you one of the most astounding stories in the annals of America. I could write a book about it; but let's be brief. On a frosty October night, shortly after the close of the Civil War, a homeless, destitute woman, who was little more than a wanderer on the face of the earth, knocked at the door of "Mother" Webster, the wife of a retired sea captain, living in Amesbury, Massachusetts. Opening the door, "Mother" Webster saw a frail little creature, "scarcely more than a hundred pounds of frightened skin and bones". The stranger, a Mrs. Glover, explained she was seeking a home where she could think and work out a great problem that absorbed her day and night. "Why not stay here?" Mrs. Webster replied. "I'm all alone in this big house." Mrs. Glover might have remained indefinitely with "Mother" Webster, if the latter's sonin-law, Bill Ellis, hadn't come up from New York for a vacation. When he discovered Mrs. Glover's presence, he shouted: "I'll have no vagabonds in this house"; and he shoved this homeless woman out of the door. A driving rain was falling. She stood shivering in the rain for a few minutes, and then started down the road, looking for shelter. Here is the astonishing part of the story. That "vagabond" whom Bill Ellis put out of the house was destined to have as much influence on the thinking of the world as any other woman who ever walked this earth. She is now known to millions of devoted followers as Mary Baker Eddy-the founder of Christian Science. Yet, until this time, she had known little in life except sickness, sorrow, and tragedy. Her first husband had died shortly after their marriage. Her second husband had deserted her and eloped with a married woman. He later died in a poor-house. She had only one child, a son; and she was forced, because of poverty, illness, and jealousy, to give him up when he was four years old. She lost all track of him and never saw him again for thirty-one years. Because of her own ill health, Mrs. Eddy had been interested for years in what she called "the science of mind healing". But the dramatic turning point in her life occurred in Lynn, Massachusetts. Walking downtown one cold day, she slipped and fell on the icy pavement-and was knocked unconscious. Her spine was so injured that she was convulsed with spasms. Even the doctor expected her to die. If by some miracle she lived, he declared that she would never walk again. Lying on what was supposed to be her deathbed, Mary Baker Eddy opened her Bible, and was led, she declared, by divine guidance to read these words from Saint Matthew: "And, behold, they brought to him a man sick of the palsy, lying on a bed: and Jesus . said unto the sick of the palsy: Son, be of good cheer; thy sins be forgiven thee. . Arise, take up thy bed, and go unto thine house. And he arose, and departed to his house." These words of Jesus, she declared, produced within her such a strength, such a faith, such a surge of healing power, that she "immediately got out of bed and walked". "That experience," Mrs. Eddy declared, "was the falling apple that led me to the discovery of how to be well myself, and how to make others so. . I gained the scientific certainty that all causation was Mind, and every effect a mental phenomenon." Such was the way in which Mary Baker Eddy became the founder and high priestess of a new religion: Christian Science -the only great religious faith ever established by a woman- a religion that has encircled the globe. You are probably saying to yourself by now: "This man Carnegie is proselytising for Christian Science." No. You are wrong. I am not a Christian Scientist. But the longer I live, the more deeply I am convinced of the tremendous power of thought. As a result of thirty-five years spent in teaching adults, I know men and women can banish worry, fear, and various kind of illness, and can transform their lives by changing their thoughts. I know! I know! ! I know! ! ! I have seen such incredible transformations performed hundreds of times. I have seen them so often that I no longer wonder at them. For example, one of these transformations happened to one of my students, Frank J. Whaley, of 1469 West Idaho Street, Saint Paul, Minnesota. He had a nervous breakdown. What brought it on? Worry. Frank Whaley tells me: "I worried about everything: I worried because I was too thin; because I thought I was losing my hair; because I feared I would never make enough money to get married; because I felt I would never make a good father; because I feared I was losing the girl I wanted to marry; because I felt I was not living a good life. I worried about the impression I was making on other people. I worried because I thought I had stomach ulcers. I could no longer work; I gave up my job. I built up tension inside me until I was like a boiler without a safety valve. The pressure got so unbearable that something had to give-and it did. If you have never had a nervous breakdown, pray God that you never do, for no pain of the body can exceed the excruciating pain of an agonised mind. "My breakdown was so severe that I couldn't talk even to my own family. I had no control over my thoughts. I was filled with fear. I would jump at the slightest noise. I avoided everybody. I would break out crying for no apparent reason at all. "Every day was one of agony. I felt that I was deserted by everybody-even God. I was tempted to jump into the river and end it all. "I decided instead to take a trip to Florida, hoping that a change of scene would help me. As I stepped on the train, my father handed me a letter and told me not to open it until I reached Florida. I landed in Florida during the height of the tourist season. Since I couldn't get in a hotel, I rented a sleeping room in a garage. I tried to get a job on a tramp freighter out of Miami, but had no luck. So I spent my time at the beach. I was more wretched in Florida than I had been at home; so I opened the envelope to see what Dad had written. His note said: 'Son, you are 1,500 miles from home, and you don't feel any different, do you? I knew you wouldn't, because you took with you the one thing that is the cause of all your trouble, that is, yourself. There is nothing wrong with either your body or your mind. It is not the situations you have met that have thrown you; it is what you think of these situations. "As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he." When you realise that, son, come home, for you will be cured.' "Dad's letter made me angry. I was looking for sympathy, not instruction. I was so mad that I decided then and there that I would never go home. That night as I was walking down one of the side streets of Miami, I came to a church where services were going on. Having no place to go, I drifted in and listened to a sermon on the text: 'He who conquers his spirit is mightier than he who taketh a city.' Sitting in the sanctity of the house of God and hearing the same thoughts that my Dad had written in his letter-all this swept the accumulated litter out of my brain. I was able to think clearly and sensibly for the first time in my life. I realised what a fool I had been. I was shocked to see myself in my true light: here I was, wanting to change the whole world and everyone in it- when the only thing that needed changing was the focus of the lens of the camera which was my mind. "The next morning I packed and started home. A week later I was back on the job. Four months later I married the girl I had been afraid of losing. We now have a happy family of five children. God has been good to me both materially and mentally. At the time of the breakdown I was a night foreman of a small department handling eighteen people. I am now superintendent of carton manufacture in charge of over four hundred and fifty people. Life is much fuller and friendlier. I believe I appreciate the true values of life now. When moments of uneasiness try to creep in (as they will in everyone's life) I tell myself to get that camera back in focus, and everything is O.K. "I can honestly say that I am glad I had the breakdown, because I found out the hard way what power our thoughts can have over our mind and our body. Now I can make my thoughts work for me instead of against me. I can see now that Dad was right when he said it wasn't outward situations that had caused all my suffering, but what I thought of those situations. And as soon as I realised that, I was cured-and stayed cured." Such was the experience of Frank J. Whaley. I am deeply convinced that our peace of mind and the joy we get out of living depends not on where we are, or what we have, or who we are, but solely upon our mental attitude. Outward conditions have very little to do with it. For example, let's take the case of old John Brown, who was hanged for seizing the United States arsenal at Harpers Ferry and trying to incite the slaves to rebellion. He rode away to the gallows, sitting on his coffin. The jailer who rode beside him was nervous and worried. But old John Brown was calm and cool. Looking up at the Blue Ridge mountains of Virginia, he exclaimed: "What a beautiful country! I never had an opportunity to really see it before." Or take the case of Robert Falcon Scott and his companions- the first Englishman ever to reach the South Pole. Their return trip was probably the cruelest journey ever undertaken by man. Their food was gone-and so was their fuel. They could no longer march because a howling blizzard roared down over the rim of the earth for eleven days and nights-a wind so fierce and sharp that it cut ridges in the polar ice. Scott and his companions knew they were going to die; and they had brought a quantity of opium along for just such an emergency. A big dose of opium, and they could all lie down to pleasant dreams, never to wake again. But they ignored the drug, and died "singing ringing songs of cheer". We know they did because of a farewell letter found with their frozen bodies by a searching party, eight months later. Yes, if we cherish creative thoughts of courage and calmness, we can enjoy the scenery while sitting on our coffin, riding to the gallows; or we can fill our tents with "ringing songs of cheer", while starving and freezing to death. Milton in his blindness discovered that same truth three hundred years ago: The mind is its own place, and in itself Can make a heaven of Hell, a hell of Heaven. Napoleon and Helen Keller are perfect illustrations of Milton's statement: Napoleon had everything men usually crave-glory, power, riches-yet he said at St. Helena: "I have never known six happy days in my life"; while Helen Keller- blind, deaf, dumb-declared: "I have found life so beautiful." If half a century of living has taught me anything at all, it has taught me that "Nothing can bring you peace but yourself." I am merely trying to repeat what Emerson said so well in the closing words of his essay on "Self-Reliance" : "A political victory, a rise in rents, the recovery of your sick, or the return of your absent friend, or some other quite external event, raises your spirits, and you think good days are preparing for you. Do not believe it. It can never be so. Nothing can bring you peace but yourself." Epictetus, the great Stoic philosopher, warned that we ought to be more concerned about removing wrong thoughts from the mind than about removing "tumours and abscesses from the body." Epictetus said that nineteen centuries ago, but modern medicine would back him up. Dr. G. Canby Robinson declared that four out of five patients admitted to Johns Hopkins Hospital were suffering from conditions brought on in part by emotional strains and stresses. This was often true even in cases of organic disturbances. "Eventually," he declared, "these trace back to maladjustments to life and its problems." Montaigne, the great French philosopher, adopted these seventeen words as the motto of his life: "A man is not hurt so much by what happens, as by his opinion of what happens." And our opinion of what happens is entirely up to us. What do I mean? Have I the colossal effrontery to tell you to your face-when you are mowed down by troubles, and your nerves are sticking out like wires and curling up at the ends-have I the colossal effrontery to tell you that, under those conditions, you can change your mental attitude by an effort of will? Yes, I mean precisely that! And that is not all. I am going to show you how to do it. It may take a little effort, but the secret is simple. William James, who has never been topped in his knowledge of practical psychology, once made this observation: "Action seems to follow feeling, but really action and feeling go together; and by regulating the action, which is under the more direct control of the will, we can indirectly regulate the feeling, which is not." In other words, William James tells us that we cannot instantly change our emotions just by "making up our minds to"-but that we can change our actions. And that when we change our actions, we will automatically change our feelings. "Thus," he explains, "The sovereign voluntary path to cheerfulness, if your cheerfulness be lost, is to sit up cheerfully and to act and speak as if cheerfulness were already there." Does that simple trick work? It works like plastic surgery! Try it yourself. Put a big, broad, honest-to-God smile on your face; throw back your shoulders; take a good, deep breath; and sing a snatch of song. If you can't sing, whistle. If you can't whistle, hum. You will quickly discover what William James was talking about-that it is physically impossible to remain blue or depressed while you are acting out the symptoms of being radiantly happy! This is one of the little basic truths of nature that can easily work miracles in all our lives. I know a woman in California -I won't mention her name-who could wipe out all of her miseries in twenty-fours if only she knew this secret. She's old, and she's a widowthat's sad, I admit-but does she try to act happy? No; if you ask her how she is feeling, she says: "Oh, I'm all right"-but the expression on her face and the whine in her voice say: "Oh, God, if you only knew the troubles I've seen!" She seems to reproach you for being happy in her presence. Hundreds of women are worse off that she is: her husband left her enough insurance to last the rest of her life, and she has married children to give her a home. But I've rarely seen her smile. She complains that all three of her sonsin-law are stingy and selfish-although she is a guest in their homes for months at a time. And she complains that her daughters never give her presents-although she hoards her own money carefully, "for my old age". She is a blight on herself and her unfortunate family! But does it have to be so? That is the pity of it-she could change herself from a miserable, bitter, and unhappy old woman into an honoured and beloved member of the family-if she wanted to change. And all she would have to do to work this transformation would be to start acting cheerful; start acting as though she had a little love to give away-instead of squandering it all on her own unhappy and embittered self. I know a man in Indiana-H. J. Englert, of 1335 nth Street, Tell City, Indiana-who is still alive today because he discovered this secret. Ten years ago Mr. Englert had a case of scarlet fever; and when he recovered, he found he had developed nephritis, a kidney disease. He tried all kinds of doctors, "even quacks", he informs me, but nothing could cure him. Then, a short time ago, he got other complications. His blood pressure soared. He went to a doctor, and was told that his blood pressure was hitting the top at 214. He was told that it was fatal-that the condition was progressive, and he had better put his affairs in order at once. "I went home," he says, "and made sure that my insurance was all paid up, and then I apologised to my Maker for all my mistakes, and settled down to gloomy meditations. "I made everyone unhappy. My wife and family were miserable, and I was buried deep in depression myself. However, after a week of wallowing in self-pity, I said to myself: 'You're acting like a fool! You may not die for a year yet, so why not try to be happy while you're here?' "I threw back my shoulders, put a smile on my face, and attempted to act as though everything were normal. I admit it was an effort at first-but I forced myself to be pleasant and cheerful; and this not only helped my family, but it also helped me. "The first thing I knew, I began to feel better-almost as well as I pretended to feel! The improvement went on. And today-months after I was supposed to be in my grave-I am not only happy, well, and alive, but my blood pressure is down! I know one thing for certain: the doctor's prediction would certainly have come true if I had gone on thinking 'dying' thoughts of defeat. But I gave my body a chance to heal itself, by nothing in the world but a change of mental attitude!" Let me ask you a question: If merely acting cheerful and thinking positive thoughts of health and courage can save this man's life, why should you and I tolerate for one minute more our minor glooms and depressions? Why make ourselves, and everyone around us, unhappy and blue, when it is possible for us to start creating happiness by merely acting cheerful? Years ago, I read a little book that had a lasting and profound effect on my life. It was called As a Man Thinketh (*) by James Lane Allen, and here's what it said: "A man will find that as he alters his thoughts towards things and other people, things and other people will alter towards him. . Let a man radically alter his thoughts, and he will be astonished at the rapid transformation it will effect in the material conditions of his life. Men do not attract that which they want, but that which they are. . The divinity that shapes our ends is in ourselves. It is our very self. . All that a man achieves is the direct result of his own thoughts. . A man can only rise, conquer and achieve by lifting up his thoughts. He can only remain weak and abject and miserable by refusing to lift up his thoughts." ---- According to the book of Genesis, the Creator gave man dominion over the whole wide earth. A mighty big present. But I am not interested in any such super-royal prerogatives. All I desire is dominion over myself-dominion over my thoughts; dominion over my fears; dominion over my mind and over my spirit. And the wonderful thing is that I know that I can attain this dominion to an astonishing degree, any time I want to, by merely controlling my actions-which in turn control my reactions. So let us remember these words of William James: "Much of what we call Evil . can often be converted into a bracing and tonic good by a simple change of the sufferer's inner attitude from one of fear to one of fight." Let's fight for our happiness! Let's fight for our happiness by following a daily programme of cheerful and constructive thinking. Here is such a programme. It is entitled "Just for Today". I found this programme so inspiring that I gave away hundreds of copies. It was written thirty-six years ago by the late Sibyl F. Partridge. If you and I follow it, we will eliminate most of our worries and increase immeasurably our portion of what the French call la joie de vivre. ~~~~ Just For Today 1.Just for today I will be happy. This assumes that what Abraham Lincoln said is true, that "most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be." Happiness is from within; it is not a matter of externals. 2.Just for today I will try to adjust myself to what is, and not try to adjust everything to my own desires. I will take my family, my business, and my luck as they come and fit myself to them. 3.Just for today I will take care of my body. I will exercise it, care for it, nourish it, not abuse it nor neglect it, so that it will be a perfect machine for my bidding. 4.Just for today I will try to strengthen my mind. I will learn something useful. I will not be a mental loafer. I will read something that requires effort, thought and concentration. 5.Just for today I will exercise my soul in three ways: I will do somebody a good turn and not get found out. I will do at least two things I don't want to do, as William James suggests, just for exercise. 6.Just for today I will be agreeable. I will look as well as I can, dress as becomingly as possible, talk low, act courteously, be liberal with praise, criticise not at all, nor find fault with anything and not try to regulate nor improve anyone. 7.Just for today I will try to live through this day only, not to tackle my whole life problem at once. I can do things for twelve hours that would appall me if I had to keep them up for a lifetime. 8.Just for today I will have a programme. I will write down what I expect to do every hour. I may not follow it exactly, but I will have it. It will eliminate two pests, hurry and indecision. 9.Just for today I will have a quiet half-hour all by myself and relax. In this half-hour sometimes I will think of God, so as to get a little more perspective into my life. 10.Just for today I will be unafraid, especially I will not be afraid to be happy, to enjoy what is beautiful, to love, and to believe that those I love, love me. If we want to develop a mental attitude that will bring us peace and happiness, here is Rule 1: Think and act cheerfully, and you will feel cheerful. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Chapter 13 - The High Cost Of Getting Even One night, years ago, as I was travelling through Yellowstone Park, I sat with other tourists on bleachers facing a dense growth of pine and spruce. Presently the animal which we had been waiting to see, the terror of the forests, the grizzly bear, strode out into the glare of the lights and began devouring the garbage that had been dumped there from the kitchen of one of the park hotels. A forest ranger, Major Martindale, sat on a horse and talked to the excited tourists about bears. He told us that the grizzly bear can whip any other animal in the Western world, with the possible exception of the buffalo and the Kadiak bear; yet I noticed that night that there was one animal, and only one, that the grizzly permitted to come out of the forest and eat with him under the glare of the lights: a skunk. The grizzly knew that he could liquidate a skunk with one swipe of his mighty paw. Why didn't he do it? Because he had found from experience that it didn't pay. I found that out, too. As a farm boy, I trapped four-legged skunks along the hedgerows in Missouri; and, as a man, I encountered a few two-legged skunks on the sidewalks of New York. I have found from sad experience that it doesn't pay to stir up either variety. When we hate our enemies, we are giving them power over us: power over our sleep, our appetites, our blood pressure, our health, and our happiness. Our enemies would dance with joy if only they knew how they were worrying us, lacerating us and getting even with us! Our hate is not hurting them, but our hate is turning our own days and nights into a hellish turmoil. Who do you suppose said this: "If selfish people try to take advantage of you, cross them off your list, but don't try to get even. When you try to get even, you hurt yourself more than you hurt the other fellow"? . Those words sound as if they might have been uttered by some starry-eyed idealist. But they weren't. Those words appeared in a bulletin issued by the Police Department of Milwaukee. How will trying to get even hurt you? In many ways. According to Life magazine, it may even wreck your health. "The chief personality characteristic of persons with hypertension [high blood pressure] is resentment," said Life. "When resentment is chronic, chronic hypertension and heart trouble follow." So you see that when Jesus said: "Love your enemies", He was not only preaching sound ethics. He was also preaching twentieth-century medicine. When He said: "Forgive seventy time seven", Jesus was telling you and me how to keep from having high blood pressure, heart trouble, stomach ulcers, and many other ailments. A friend of mine recently had a serious heart attack. Her physician put her to bed and ordered her to refuse to get angry about anything, no matter what happened. Physicians know that if you have a weak heart, a fit of anger can kill you. Did I say can kill you? A fit of anger did kill a restaurant owner in Spokane, Washington, a few years ago. I have in front of me now a letter from Jerry Swartout, chief of the Police Department, Spokane, Washington, saying: "A few years ago, William Falkaber, a man of sixty-eight who owned a caf6 here in Spokane, killed himself by flying into a rage because his cook insisted on drinking coffee out of his saucer. The cafe owner was so indignant that he grabbed a revolver and started to chase the cook and fell dead from heart failure-with his hand still gripping the gun. The coroner's report declared that anger had caused the heart failure." When Jesus said: "Love your enemies", He was also telling us how to improve our looks. I know women-and so do you-whose faces have been wrinkled and hardened by hate and disfigured by resentment. All the beauty treatments in Christendom won't improve their looks half so much as would a heart full of forgiveness, tenderness, and love. Hatred destroys our ability to enjoy even our food. The Bible puts it this way "Better is a dinner of herbs where love is, than a stalled ox and hatred therewith." Wouldn't our enemies rub their hands with glee if they knew that our hate for them was exhausting us, making us tired and nervous, ruining our looks, giving us heart trouble, and probably shortening our lives? Even if we can't love our enemies, let's at least love ourselves. Let's love ourselves so much that we won't permit our enemies to control our happiness, our health and our looks. As Shakespeare put it: Heat not a furnace for your foe so hot That it do singe yourself. When Jesus said that we should forgive our enemies "seventy times seven", He was also preaching sound business. For example, I have before me as I write a letter I received from George Rona, Fradegata'n 24, Uppsala, Sweden. For years, George Rona was an attorney in Vienna; but during the Second World War, he fled to Sweden. He had no money, needed work badly. Since he could speak and write several languages, he hoped to get a position as correspondent for some firm engaged in importing or exporting. Most of the firms replied that they had no need of such services because of the war, but they would keep his name on file . and so on. One man, however, wrote George Rona a letter saying: "What you imagine about my business is not true. You are both wrong and foolish. I do not need any correspondent. Even if I did need one, I wouldn't hire you because you can't even write good Swedish. Your letter is full of mistakes." When George Rona read that letter, he was as mad as Donald Duck. What did this Swede mean by telling him he couldn't write the language! Why, the letter that this Swede himself had written was full of mistakes! So George Rona wrote a letter that was calculated to burn this man up. Then he paused. He said to himself: "Wait a minute, now. How do I know this man isn't right? I have studied Swedish, but it's not my native language, so maybe I do make mistakes I don't know anything about. If I do, then I certainly have to study harder if I ever hope to get a job. This man has possibly done me a favour, even though he didn't mean to. The mere fact that he expressed himself in disagreeable terms doesn't alter my debt to him. Therefore, I am going to write him and thank him for what he has done." So George Rona tore up the scorching letter he had already written, and wrote another that said: "It was kind of you to go to the trouble of writing to me, especially when you do not need a correspondent. I am sorry I was mistaken about your firm. The reason that I wrote you was that I made inquiry and your name was given me as a leader in your field. I did not know I had made grammatical errors in my letter. I am sorry and ashamed of myself. I will now apply myself more diligently to the study of the Swedish language and try to correct my mistakes. I want to thank you for helping me get started on the road to self-improvement." Within a few days, George Rona got a letter from this man, asking Rona to come to see him. Rona went-and got a job. George Rona discovered for himself that "a soft answer turneth away wrath". We may not be saintly enough to love our enemies, but, for the sake of our own health and happiness, let's at least forgive them and forget them. That is the smart thing to do. "To be wronged or robbed," said Confucius, "is nothing unless you continue to remember it." I once asked General Eisenhower's son, John, if his father ever nourished resentments. "No," he replied, "Dad never wastes a minute thinking about people he doesn't like." There is an old saying that a man is a fool who can't be angry, but a man is wise who won't be angry. That was the policy of William J. Gaynor, former Mayor of New York. Bitterly denounced by the yellow press, he was shot by a maniac and almost killed. As he lay in the hospital, fighting for his life, he said: "Every night, I forgive everything and everybody." Is that too idealistic? Too much sweetness and light? If so, let's turn for counsel to the great German philosopher, Schopenhauer, author of Studies in Pessimism. He regarded life as a futile and painful adventure. Gloom dripped from him as he walked; yet out of the depths of his despair, Schopenhauer cried: "If possible, no animosity should be felt for anyone." I once asked Bernard Baruch-the man who was the trusted adviser to six Presidents: Wilson, Harding, Coolidge, Hoover, Roosevelt, and Truman-whether he was ever disturbed by the attacks of his enemies. "No man can humiliate me or disturb me," he replied. "I won't let him." No one can humiliate or disturb you and me, either-unless we let him. But words can never hurt me. "Throughout the ages mankind has burned its candles before those Christlike individuals who bore no malice against their enemies. I have often stood in the Jasper National Park, in Canada, and gazed upon one of the most beautiful mountains in the Western world-a mountain named in honour of Edith Cavell, the British nurse who went to her death like a saint before a German firing squad on October 12, 1915. Her crime? She had hidden and fed and nursed wounded French and English soldiers in her Belgian home, and had helped them escape into Holland. As the English chaplain entered her cell in the military prison in Brussels that October morning, to prepare her for death, Edith Cavell uttered two sentences that have been preserved in bronze and granite: "I realise that patriotism is not enough. I must have no hatred or bitterness toward anyone." Four years later, her body was removed to England and memorial services were held in Westminster Abbey. Today, a granite statue stands opposite the National Portrait Gallery in London-a statue of one of England's immortals. "I realise that patriotism is not enough. I must have no hatred or bitterness toward anyone." One sure way to forgive and forget our enemies is to become absorbed in some cause infinitely bigger than ourselves. Then the insults and the enmities we encounter won't matter because we will be oblivious of everything but our cause. As an example, let's take an intensely dramatic event that was about to take place in the pine woods of Mississippi back in 1918. A lynching! Laurence Jones, a coloured teacher and preacher, was about to be lynched. A few years ago, I visited the school that Laurence Jones founded-the Piney Woods Country School-and I spoke before the student body. That school is nationally known today, but the incident I am going to relate occurred long before that. It occurred back in the highly emotional days of the First World War. A rumour had spread through central Mississippi that the Germans were arousing the Negroes and inciting them to rebellion. Laurence Jones, the man who was about to be lynched, was, as I have already said, a Negro himself and was accused of helping to arouse his race to insurrection. A group of white men-pausing outside the church-had heard Laurence Jones shouting to his congregation: "Life is a battle in which every Negro must gird on his armour and fight to survive and succeed." "Fight!" "Armour!" Enough! Galloping off into the night, these excited young men recruited a mob, returned to the church, put a rope round the preacher, dragged him for a mile up the road, stood him on a heap of faggots, lighted matches, and were ready to hang him and burn him at the same time, when someone shouted: "Let's make the blankety-blank-blank talk before he burns. Speech! Speech!" Laurence Jones, standing on the faggots, spoke with a rope around his neck, spoke for his life and his cause. He had been graduated from the University of Iowa in 1907. His sterling character, his scholarship and his musical ability had made him popular with both the students and the faculty. Upon graduation, he had turned down the offer of a hotel man to set him up in business, and had turned down the offer of a wealthy man to finance his musical education. Why? Because he was on fire with a vision. Reading the story of Booker T. Washington's life, he had been inspired to devote his own life to educating the povertystricken, illiterate members of his race. So he went to the most backward belt he could find in the South-a spot twenty-five miles south of Jackson, Mississippi. Pawning his watch for $1.65, he started his school in the open woods with a stump for a desk. Laurence Jones told these angry men who were waiting to lynch him of the struggle he had had to educate these unschooled boys and girls and to train them to be good farmers, mechanics, cooks, housekeepers. He told of the white men who had helped him in his struggle to establish Piney Woods Country School-white men who had given him land, lumber, and pigs, cows and money, to help him carry on his educational work. When Laurence Jones was asked afterward if he didn't hate the men who had dragged him up the road to hang him and burn him, he replied that he was too busy with his cause to hate-too absorbed in something bigger than himself. "I have no time to quarrel," he said, "no time for regrets, and no man can force me to stoop low enough to hate him." As Laurence Jones talked with sincere and moving eloquence as he pleaded, not for himself but his cause, the mob began to soften. Finally, an old Confederate veteran in the crowd said: "I believe this boy is telling the truth. I know the white men whose names he has mentioned. He is doing a fine work. We have made a mistake. We ought to help him instead of hang him." The Confederate veteran passed his hat through the crowd and raised a gift of fifty-two dollars and forty cents from the very men who had gathered there to hang the founder of Piney Woods Country School-the man who said: "I have no time to quarrel, no time for regrets, and no man can force me to stoop low enough to hate him." Epictetus pointed out nineteen centuries ago that we reap what we sow and that somehow fate almost always makes us pay for our malefactions. "In the long run," said Epictetus, "every man will pay the penalty for his own misdeeds. The man who remembers this will be angry with no one, indignant with no one, revile no one, blame no one, offend no one, hate no one." Probably no other man in American history was ever more denounced and hated and double-crossed than Lincoln. Yet Lincoln, according to Herndon's classic biography, "never judged men by his like or dislike for them. If any given act was to be performed, he could understand that his enemy could do it just as well as anyone. If a man had maligned him or been guilty of personal ill-treatment, and was the fittest man for the place, Lincoln would give him that place, just as soon as he would give it to a friend. . I do not think he ever removed a man because he was his enemy or because he disliked him." Lincoln was denounced and insulted by some of the very men he had appointed to positions of high power-men like McClellan, Seward, Stanton, and Chase. Yet Lincoln believed, according to Herndon, his law partner, that "No man was to be eulogised for what he did; or censured for what he did or did not do," because "all of us are the children of conditions, of circumstances, of environment, of education, of acquired habits and of heredity moulding men as they are and will for ever be." Perhaps Lincoln was right. If you and I had inherited the same physical, mental, and emotional characteristics that our enemies have inherited, and if life had done to us what it has done to them, we would act exactly as they do. We couldn't possibly do anything else. As Clarence Darrow used to say: "To know all is to understand all, and this leaves no room for judgment and condemnation." So instead of hating our enemies, let's pity them and thank God that life has not made us what they are. Instead of heaping condemnation and revenge upon our enemies, let's give them our understanding, our sympathy, our help, our forgiveness, and our prayers." I was brought up in a family which read the Scriptures or repeated a verse from the Bible each night and then knelt down and said "family prayers". I can still hear my father, in a lonely Missouri farmhouse, repeating those words of Jesus- words that will continue to be repeated as long as man cherishes his ideals: "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you." My father tried to live those words of Jesus; and they gave him an inner peace that the To cultivate a mental attitude that will bring you peace and happiness, remember that Rule 2 is: 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. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Chapter 14 - If You Do This, You Will Never Worry About Ingratitude I recently met a business man in Texas who was burned up with indignation. I was warned that he would tell me about it within fifteen minutes after I met him. He did. The incident he was angry about had occurred eleven months previously, but he was still burned up about it. He couldn't speak of anything else. He had given his thirty-four employees ten thousand dollars in Christmas bonuses-approximately three hundred dollars each-and no one had thanked him. "I am sorry," he complained bitterly, "that I ever gave them a penny!" "An angry man," said Confucius, "is always full of poison." This man was so full of poison that I honestly pitied him. He was about sixty years old. Now, life-insurance companies figure that, on the average, we will live slightly more than two-thirds of the difference between our present age and eighty. So this man-if he was lucky-probably had about fourteen or fifteen years to live. Yet he had already wasted almost one of his few remaining years by his bitterness and resentment over an event that was past and gone. I pitied him. Instead of wallowing in resentment and self-pity, he might have asked himself why he didn't get any appreciation. Maybe he had underpaid and overworked his employees. Maybe they considered a Christmas bonus not a gift, but something they had earned. Maybe he was so critical and unapproachable that no one dared or cared to thank him. Maybe they felt he gave the bonus because most of the profits were going for taxes, anyway. On the other hand, maybe the employees were selfish, mean, and ill-mannered. Maybe this. Maybe that. I don't know any more about it than you do. But I do know what Dr. Samuel Johnson said: "Gratitude is a fruit of great cultivation. You do not find it among gross people." Here is the point I am trying to make: this man made the human and distressing mistake of expecting gratitude. He just didn't know human nature. If you saved a man's life, would you expect him to be grateful? You might-but Samuel Leibowitz, who was a famous criminal lawyer before he became a judge, saved seventyeight men from going to the electric chair! How many of these men, do you suppose, stopped to thank Samuel Leibowitz, or ever took the trouble to send him a Christmas card? How many? Guess. . That's right-none. Christ healed ten lepers in one afternoon-but how many of those lepers even stopped to thank Him? Only one. Look it up in Saint Luke. When Christ turned around to His disciples and asked: "Where are the other nine?" they had all run away. Disappeared without thanks! Let me ask you a question: Why should you and I-or this business man in Texas-expect more thanks for our small favours than was given Jesus Christ? And when it comes to money matters! Well, that is even more hopeless. Charles Schwab told me that he had once saved a bank cashier who had speculated in the stock market with funds belonging to the bank. Schwab put up the money to save this man from going to the penitentiary. Was the cashier grateful? Oh, yes, for a little while. Then he turned against Schwab and reviled him and denounced him-the very man who had kept him out of jail! If you gave one of your relatives a million dollars, would you expect him to be grateful? Andrew Carnegie did just that. But if Andrew Carnegie had come back from the grave a little while later, he would have been shocked to find this relative cursing him! Why? Because Old Andy had left 365 million dollars to public charities-and had "cut him off with one measly million," as he put it. That's how it goes. Human nature has always been human nature-and it probably won't change in your lifetime. So why not accept it? Why not be as realistic about it as was old Marcus Aurelius, one of the wisest men who ever ruled the Roman Empire. He wrote in his diary one day: "I am going to meet people today who talk too much-people who are selfish, egotistical, ungrateful. But I won't be surprised or disturbed, for I couldn't imagine a world without such people." That makes sense, doesn't it? If you and I go around grumbling about ingratitude, who is to blame? Is it human nature-or is it our ignorance of human nature? Let's not expect gratitude. Then, if we get some occasionally, it will come as a delightful surprise. If we don't get it, we won't be disturbed. Here is the first point I am trying to make in this chapter: It is natural for people to forget to be grateful; so, if we go around expecting gratitude, we are headed straight for a lot of heartaches. I know a woman in New York who is always complaining because she is lonely. Not one of her relatives wants to go near her-and no wonder. If you visit her, she will tell you for hours what she did for her nieces when they were children: she nursed them through the measles and the mumps and the whooping-cough; she boarded them for years; she helped to send one of them through business school, and she made a home for the other until she got married. Do the nieces come to see her? Oh, yes, now and then, out of a spirit of duty. But they dread these visits. They know they will have to sit and listen for hours to half-veiled reproaches. They will be treated to an endless litany of bitter complaints and selfpitying sighs. And when this woman can no longer bludgeon, browbeat, or bully her nieces into coming to see her, she has one of her "spells". She develops a heart attack. Is the heart attack real? Oh, yes. The doctors say she has "a nervous heart", suffers from palpitations. But the doctors also say they can do nothing for her-her trouble is emotional. What this woman really wants is love and attention. But she calls it "gratitude". And she will never get gratitude or love, because she demands it. She thinks it's her due. There are thousands of women like her, women who are ill from "ingratitude", loneliness, and neglect. They long to be loved; but the only way in this world that they can ever hope to be loved is to stop asking for it and to start pouring out love without hope of return. Does that sound like sheer, impractical, visionary idealism? It isn't. It is just horse sense. It is a good way for you and me to find the happiness we long for. I know. I have seen it happen right in my own family. My own mother and father gave for the joy of helping others. We were poor-always overwhelmed by debts. Yet, poor as we were, my father and mother always managed to send money every year to an orphans' home-the Christian Home in Council Bluffs, Iowa. Mother and Father never visited that home. Probably no one thanked them for their gifts-except by letter-but they were richly repaid, for they had the joy of helping little children-without wishing for or expecting any gratitude in return. After I left home, I would always send Father and Mother a cheque at Christmas and urge them to indulge in a few luxuries for themselves. But they rarely did. When I came home a few days before Christmas, Father would tell me of the coal and groceries they had bought for some "widder woman" in town who had a lot of children and no money to buy food and fuel. What joy they got out of these gifts-the joy of giving without accepting anything whatever in return! I believe my father would almost have qualified for Aristotle's description of the ideal man-the man most worthy of being happy. "The ideal man," said Aristotle, "takes joy in doing favours for others; but he feels ashamed to have others do favours for him. For it is a mark of superiority to confer a kindness; but it is a mark of inferiority to receive it." Here is the second point I am trying to make in this chapter: If we want to find happiness, let's stop thinking about gratitude or ingratitude and give for the inner joy of giving. Parents have been tearing their hair about the ingratitude of children for ten thousand years. Even Shakespeare's King Lear cried out: "How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless child!" But why should children be thankful-unless we train them to be? Ingratitude is naturallike weeds. Gratitude is like a rose. It has to be fed and watered and cultivated and loved and protected. If our children are ungrateful, who is to blame? Maybe we are. If we have never taught them to express gratitude to others, how can we expect them to be grateful to us? I know a man in Chicago who has cause to complain of the ingratitude of his stepsons. He slaved in a box factory, seldom earning more than forty dollars a week. He married a widow, and she persuaded him to borrow money and send her two grown sons to college. Out of his salary of forty dollars a week, he had to pay for food, rent, fuel, clothes, and also for the payments on his notes. He did this for four years, working like a coolie, and never complaining. Did he get any thanks? No; his wife took it all for granted- and so did her sons. They never imagined that they owed their stepfather anything-not even thanks! Who was to blame? The boys? Yes; but the mother was even more to blame. She thought it was a shame to burden their young lives with "a sense of obligation". She didn't want her sons to "start out under debt". So she never dreamed of saying: "What a prince your stepfather is to help you through college!" Instead, she took the attitude: "Oh, that's the least he can do." She thought she was sparing her sons, but in reality, she was sending them out into life with the dangerous idea that the world owed them a living. And it was a dangerous idea- for one of those sons tried to "borrow" from an employer, and ended up in jail! We must remember that our children are very much what we make them. For example, my mother's sister-Viola Alexander, of 144 West Minnehala Parkway, Minneapolis -is a shining example of a woman who has never had cause to complain about the "ingratitude" of children. When I was a boy, Aunt Viola took her own mother into her home to love and take care of; and she did the same thing for her husband's mother. I can still close my eyes and see those two old ladies sitting before the fire in Aunt Viola's farmhouse. Were they any "trouble" to Aunt Viola? Oh, often, I suppose. But you would never have guessed it from her attitude. She loved those old ladies-so she pampered them, and spoiled them, and made them feel at home. In addition, Aunt Viola had six children of her own; but it never occurred to her that she was doing anything especially noble, or deserved any halos for taking these old ladies into her home. To her, it was the natural thing, the right thing, the thing she wanted to do. Where is Aunt Viola today? Well, she has now been a widow for twenty-odd years, and she has five grown-up children- five separate households-all clamouring to share her, and to have her come and live in their homes! Her children adore her; they never get enough of her. Out of "gratitude"? Nonsense! It is love-sheer love. Those children breathed in warmth and radiant human-kindness all during their childhoods. Is it any wonder that, now that the situation is reversed, they give back love? So let us remember that to raise grateful children, we have to be grateful. Let us remember "little pitchers have big ears"-and watch what we say. To illustrate-the next time we are tempted to belittle someone's kindness in the presence of our children, let's stop. Let's never say: "Look at these dishcloths Cousin Sue sent for Christmas. She knit them herself. They didn't cost her a cent!" The remark may seem trivial to us-but the children are listening. So, instead, we had better say: "Look at the hours Cousin Sue spent making these for Christmas! Isn't she nice? Let's write her a thank-you note right now." And our children may unconsciously absorb the habit of praise and appreciation. To avoid resentment and worry over ingratitude, here is 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. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Chapter 15 - Would You Take A Million Dollars For What You Have? I have known Harold Abbott for years. He lives at 820 South Madison Avenue, Webb City, Missouri. He used to be my lecture manager. One day he and I met in Kansas City and he drove me down to my farm at Belton, Missouri. During that drive, I asked him how he kept from worrying; and he told me an inspiring story that I shall never forget. "I used to worry a lot," he said, "but one spring day in 1934, I was walking down West Dougherty Street in Webb City when I saw a sight that banished all my worries. It all happened in ten seconds, but during those ten seconds I learned more about how to live than I had learned in the previous ten years. For two years I had been running a grocery store in Webb City," Harold Abbott said, as he told me the story. "I had not only lost all my savings, but I had incurred debts that took me seven years to pay back. My grocery store had been closed the previous Saturday; and now I was going to the Merchants and Miners Bank to borrow money so I could go to Kansas City to look for a job. I walked like a beaten man. I had lost all my fight and faith. Then suddenly I saw coming down the street a man who had no legs. He was sitting on a little wooden platform equipped with wheels from roller skates. He propelled himself along the street with a block of wood in each hand. I met him just after he had crossed the street and was starting to lift himself up a few inches over the kerb to the sidewalk. As he tilted his little wooden platform to an angle, his eyes met mine. He greeted me with a grand smile. 'Good morning, sir. It is a fine morning, isn't it?' he said with spirit. As I stood looking at him, I realised how rich I was. I had two legs. I could walk. I felt ashamed of my self-pity. I said to myself if he can be happy, cheerful, and confident without legs, I certainly can with legs. I could already feel my chest lifting. I had intended to ask the Merchants and Miners Bank for only one hundred dollars. But now I had courage to ask for two hundred. I had intended to say that I wanted to go to Kansas City to try to get a job. But now I announced confidently that I wanted to go to Kansas City to get a job. I got the loan; and I got the job. "I now have the following words pasted on my bathroom mirror, and I read them every morning as I shave: I had the blues because I had no shoes, Until upon the street, I met a man who had no feet." I once asked Eddie Rickenbacker what was the biggest lesson he had learned from drifting about with his companions in life rafts for twenty-one days, hopelessly lost in the Pacific. "The biggest lesson I learned from that experience," he said, "was that if you have all the fresh water you want to drink and all the food you want to eat, you ought never to complain about anything." Time ran an article about a sergeant who had been wounded on Guadalcanal. Hit in the throat by a shell fragment, this sergeant had had seven blood transfusions. Writing a note to his doctor, he asked: "Will I live?" The doctor replied: "Yes." He wrote another note, asking: "Will I be able to talk?" Again the answer was yes. He then wrote another note, saying: "Then what in hell am I worrying about?" Why don't you stop right now and ask yourself: "What in the hell am I worrying about?" You will probably find that it is comparatively unimportant and insignificant. About ninety per cent of the things in our lives are right and about ten per cent are wrong. If we want to be happy, all we have to do is to concentrate on the ninety per cent that are right and ignore the ten per cent that are wrong. If we want to be worried and bitter and have stomach ulcers, all we have to do is to concentrate on the ten per cent that are wrong and ignore the ninety per cent that are glorious. The words "Think and Thank" are inscribed in many of the Cromwellian churches of England. These words ought to be inscribed in our hearts, too: "Think and Thank". Think of all we have to be grateful for, and thank God for all our boons and bounties. Jonathan Swift, author of Gulliver's Travels, was the most devastating pessimist in English literature. He was so sorry that he had been born that he wore black and fasted on his birthdays; yet, in his despair, this supreme pessimist of English literature praised the great health-giving powers of cheerfulness and happiness. "The best doctors in the world," he declared, "are Doctor Diet, Doctor Quiet, and Doctor Merryman." You and I may have the services of "Doctor Merryman" free every hour of the day by keeping our attention fixed on all the incredible riches we possess-riches exceeding by far the fabled treasures of Ali Baba. Would you sell both your eyes for a billion dollars? What would you take for your two legs? Your hands? Your hearing? Your children? Your family? Add up your assets, and you will find that you won't sell what you have for all the gold ever amassed by the Rockefellers, the Fords and the Morgans combined. But do we appreciate all this? Ah, no. As Schopenhauer said: "We seldom think of what we have but always of what we lack." Yes, the tendency to "seldom think of what we have but always of what we lack" is the greatest tragedy on earth. It has probably caused more misery than all the wars and diseases in history. It caused John Palmer to turn "from a regular guy into an old grouch", and almost wrecked his home. I know because he told me so. Mr. Palmer lives at 30 19th Avenue, Paterson, New Jersey. "Shortly after I returned from the Army," he said, "I started in business for myself. I worked hard day and night. Things were going nicely. Then trouble started. I couldn't get parts and materials. I was afraid I would have to give up my business. I worried so much that I changed from a regular guy into an old grouch. I became so sour and cross that-well, I didn't know it then; but I now realise that I came very near to losing my happy home. Then one day a young, disabled veteran who works for me said: 'Johnny, you ought to be ashamed of yourself. You take on as if you were the only person in the world with troubles. Suppose you do have to shut up shop for a while-so what? You can start up again when things get normal. You've got a lot to be thankful for. Yet you are always growling. Boy, how I wish I were in your shoes I Look at me. I've got only one arm, and half of my face is shot away, and yet I am not complaining. If you don't stop your growling and grumbling, you will lose not only your business, but also your health, your home, and your friends!' "Those remarks stopped me dead in my tracks. They made me realise how well off I was. I resolved then and there that I would change and be my old self again-and I did." A friend of mine, Lucile Blake, had to tremble on the edge of tragedy before she learned to be happy about what she had instead of worrying over what she lacked. I met Lucile years ago, when we were both studying short-story writing in the Columbia University School of Journalism. Nine years ago, she got the shock of her life. She was living then in Tucson, Arizonia. She had-well, here is the story as she told it to me: "I had been living in a whirl: studying the organ at the University of Arizona, conducting a speech clinic in town, and teaching a class in musical appreciation at the Desert Willow Ranch, where I was staying. I was going in for parties, dances, horseback rides under the stars. One morning I collapsed. My heart! 'You will have to lie in bed for a year of complete rest,' the doctor said. He didn't encourage me to believe I would ever be strong again. "In bed for a year! To be an invalid-perhaps to die! I was terror-stricken! Why did all this have to happen to me? What had I done to deserve it? I wept and wailed. I was bitter and rebellious. But I did go to bed as the doctor advised. A neighbour of mine, Mr. Rudolf, an artist, said to me: 'You think now that spending a year in bed will be a tragedy. But it won't be. You will have time to think and get acquainted with yourself. You will make more spiritual growth in these next few months than you have made during all your previous life.' I became calmer, and tried to develop a new sense of values. I read books of inspiration. One day I heard a radio commentator say: 'You can express only what is in your own consciousness.' I had heard words like these many times before, but now they reached down inside me and took root. I resolved to think only the thoughts I wanted to live by: thoughts of joy, happiness, health. I forced myself each morning, as soon as I awoke, to go over all the things I had to be grateful for. No pain. A lovely young daughter. My eyesight. My hearing. Lovely music on the radio. Time to read. Good food. Good friends. I was so cheerful and had so many visitors that the doctor put up a sign saying that only one visitor at a time would be allowed in my cabinand only at certain hours. "Nine years have passed since then, and I now lead a full, active life. I am deeply grateful now for that year I spent in bed. It was the most valuable and the happiest year I spent in Arizona. The habit I formed then of counting my blessings each morning still remains with me. It is one of my most precious possessions. I am ashamed to realise that I never really learned to live until I feared I was going to die." My dear Lucile Blake, you may not realise it, but you learned the same lesson that Dr. Samuel Johnson learned two hundred years ago. "The habit of looking on the best side of every event," said Dr. Johnson, "is worth more than a thousand pounds a year." Those words were uttered, mind you, not by a professional optimist, but by a man who had known anxiety, rags, and hunger for twenty years-and finally became one of the most eminent writers of his generation and the most celebrated conversationalist of all time. Logan Pearsall Smith packed a lot of wisdom into a few words when he said: "There are two things to aim at in life: first, to get what you want; and, after that, to enjoy it. Only the wisest of mankind achieve the second." Would you like to know how to make even dishwashing at the kitchen sink a thrilling experience? If so, read an inspiring book of incredible courage by Borghild Dahl. It is called I Wanted to See. This book was written by a woman who was practically blind for half a century. "I had only one eye," she writes, "and it was so covered with dense scars that I had to do all my seeing through one small opening in the left of the eye. I could see a book only by holding it up close to my face and by straining my one eye as hard as I could to the left." But she refused to be pitied, refused to be considered "different". As a child, she wanted to play hopscotch with other children, but she couldn't see the markings. So after the other children had gone home, she got down on the ground and crawled along with her eyes near to the marks. She memorised every bit of the ground where she and her friends played and soon became an expert at running games. She did her reading at home, holding a book of large print so close to her eyes that her eyelashes brushed the pages. She earned two college degrees: an A B. from the University of Minnesota and a Master of Arts from Columbia University. She started teaching in the tiny village of Twin Valley, Minnesota, and rose until she became professor of journalism and literature at Augustana College in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. She taught there for thirteen years, lecturing before women's clubs and giving radio talks about books and authors. "In the back of my mind," she writes, "there had always lurked a fear of total blindness. In order to overcome this, I had adopted a cheerful, almost hilarious, attitude towards life." Then in 1943, when she was fifty-two years old, a miracle happened: an operation at the famous Mayo Clinic. She could now see forty times as well as she had ever been able to see before. A new and exciting world of loveliness opened before her. She now found it thrilling even to wash dishes in the kitchen sink. "I begin to play with the white fluffy suds in the dish-pan," she writes. "I dip my hands into them and I pick up a ball of tiny soap bubbles. I hold them up against the light, and in each of them I can see the brilliant colours of a miniature rainbow." As she looked through the window above the kitchen sink, she saw "the flapping greyblack wings of the sparrows flying through the thick, falling snow." She found such ecstasy looking at the soap bubbles and sparrows that she closed her book with these words: " 'Dear Lord,' I whisper, 'Our Father in Heaven, I thank Thee. I thank Thee.' " Imagine thanking God because you can wash dishes and see rainbows in bubbles and sparrows flying through the snow 1 You and I ought to be ashamed of ourselves. All the days of our years we have been living in a fairyland of beauty, but we have been too blind to see, too satiated to enjoy. If we want to stop worrying and start living. Rule 4 is: Count your blessings-not your troubles!

Как начать понимать английский на слух

Смотрите похожие фильмы

Информация

Посетители, находящиеся в группе Гости, не могут оставлять комментарии к данной публикации.

  • Популярные курсы

    Предоставляем для вашего внимания самые эффективные на сегодняшний день бесплатные онлайн курсы для изучения английского языка.

    Подробнее
  • Полезные статьи

    Добивайтесь успехов, умножая свои знания английского языка

    Подробнее
  • Учебники по английскому языку

    Мы предоставляем нашим студентам лучшие учебные материалы

    Подробнее
  • Форум

    Вы найдете ответы на все вопросы и сможете найти единомышленников для совместного изучения

    Подробнее

Полезные ссылки