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.
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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.
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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.