How to Stop Worrying and Start Living by Carnegie, Dale

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 seventy-eight 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 self-pitying 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 natural-like 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.

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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.

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