Part Two In A Nutshell 1 страница

RULE 1: Get the facts. Remember that Dean Hawkes of Columbia University said that "

half the worry in the world is caused by people trying to make decisions before they

have sufficient knowledge on which to base a decision. "

RULE 2: After carefully weighing all the facts, come to a decision.

RULE 3: Once a decision is carefully reached, act! Get busy carrying out your decision-

and dismiss all anxiety about the outcome.

RULE 4: When you, or any of your associates are tempted to worry about a problem,

write out and answer the following questions:

a. What is the problem?

b. What is the cause of the problem?

c. What are all possible solutions?

d. What is the best solution?

~~~~~~~~~~

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.

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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