How to Stop Worrying and Start Living / Как перестать беспокоиться и начать жить
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“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” 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 —
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”?
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2. Do I sometimes embitter the present by regretting things that happened in the past – that are over and done with?
_____________
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3. Do I get up in the morning determined to “Seize the day” – to get the utmost out of these twenty-four hours?
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4. Can I get more out of life by “living in day-tight compartments”?
_____________
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5. When shall I start to do this? Next week? … Tomorrow?… Today?
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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 world-famous 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 thirty-eight years. But if he were alive today, and could hear his formula for facing the worst, he would heartily approve it. How do I know that? Because he told his own students: “Be willing to have it so… Be willing to have it so,” he said, because “… Acceptance of what has happened is the first step in overcoming the consequences of any misfortune.”
The same idea was expressed by Lin Yutang in his widely read book, The Importance of Living. “True peace of mind,” said this Chinese philosopher, “comes from accepting the worst.
Psychologically, I think, it means a release of energy.”
That’s it, exactly! Psychologically, it means a new release of energy! When we have accepted the worst, we have nothing more to lose. And that automatically means – we have everything to gain! “After facing the worst,” Willis H. Carrier reported, “I immediately relaxed and felt a sense of peace that I hadn’t experienced in days. From that time on, I was able to think.”
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 —
Ask yourself,“What is the worst that can possibly happen?”
Prepare to accept it if you have to.
Then calmly proceed to improve on the worst.
3 – What Worry May Do To You
Business men who do not know how to fight worry die young.
Dr. Alexis CarrelSome 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.