When I awoke the next morning, I was surprised to find that I was still alive. Going downstairs, I heard singing in a little chapel where devotional exercises were held each morning. I can still remember the hymn they were singing: “God will take care of you.” Going into the chapel, I listened with a weary heart to the singing, the reading of the Scripture lesson, and the prayer. Suddenly-something happened. I can’t explain it. I can only call it a miracle. I felt as if I had been instantly lifted out of the darkness of a dungeon into warm, brilliant sunlight. I felt as if I had been transported from hell to paradise. I felt the power of God as I had never felt it before. I realised then that I alone was responsible for all my troubles. I knew that God with His love was there to help me. From that day to this, my life has been free from worry. I am seventy-one years old, and the most dramatic and glorious twenty minutes of my life were those I spent in that chapel that morning: “God will take care of you.”
J.C. Penney learned to overcome worry almost instantaneously, because he discovered the one perfect cure.
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I Go To The Gym To Punch The Bag Or Take A Hike Outdoors
By
Colonel Eddie Eagan
New York Attorney, Rhodes Scholar Chairman, New York State Athletic Commission Former Olympic Light-Heavyweight Champion of the World
When I find myself worrying and mentally going round in endless circles like a camel turning a water wheel in Egypt, a good physical work-out helps me to chase those “blues” away. It may be running or a long hike in the country, or it may be a half-hour of bag punching or squash tennis at the gymnasium. Whichever it is, physical exercise clears my mental outlook. On a week-end I do a lot of physical sport, such as a run around the golf course, a game of paddle tennis, or a ski week-end in the Adirondacks. By my becoming physically tired, my mind gets a rest from legal problems, so that when I return to them, my mind has a new zest and power.
Quite often in New York, where I work, there is a chance for me to spend an hour at the Yale Club gym. No man can worry while he is playing squash tennis or skiing. He is too busy to worry. The large mental mountains of trouble become minute molehills that new thoughts and acts quickly smooth down.
I find the best antidote for worry is exercise. Use your muscles more and your brain less when you are worried, and you will be surprised at the result. It works that way with me-worry goes when exercise begins.
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I Was “The Worrying Wreck From Virginia Tech.”
By
Jim Birdsall
Plant Superintendent C.F. Muller Company 180 Baldwin Avenue, Jersey City, New Jersey
Seventeen years ago, when I was in military college at Blacks-burg, Virginia, I was known as “the worrying wreck from Virginia Tech”. I worried so violently that I often became ill. In fact, I was ill so often that I had a regular bed reserved for me at the college infirmary at all times. When the nurse saw me coming, she would run and give me a hypo. I worried about everything. Sometimes I even forgot what I was worrying about. I worried for fear I would be busted out of college because of my low grades. I had failed to pass my examinations in physics and other subjects, too. I knew I had to maintain an average grade of 75-84. I worried about my health, about my excruciating attacks of acute indigestion, about my insomnia. I worried about financial matters. I felt badly because I couldn’t buy my girl candy or take her to dances as often as I wanted to. I worried for fear she would marry one of the other cadets. I was in a lather day and night over a dozen intangible problems.
In desperation, I poured out my troubles to Professor Duke Baird, professor of business administration at V.P.I.
The fifteen minutes that I spent with Professor Baird did more for my health and happiness than all the rest of the four years I spent in college. “Jim,” he said, “you ought to sit down and face the facts. If you devoted half as much time and energy to solving your problems as you do to worrying about them, you wouldn’t have any worries. Worrying is just a vicious habit you have learned.”
He gave me three rules to break the worry habit:
Rule 1. Find out precisely what is the problem you are worrying about.
Rule 2. Find out the cause of the problem.
Rule 3. Do something constructive at once about solving the problem.
After that interview, I did a bit of constructive planning. Instead of worrying because I had failed to pass physics, I now asked myself why I had failed. I knew it wasn’t because I was dumb, for I was editor-in-chief of The Virginia Tech Engineer.
I figured that I had failed physics because I had no interest in the subject. I had not applied myself because I couldn’t see how it would help me in my work as an industrial engineer. But now I changed my attitude. I said to myself: “If the college authorities demand that I pass my physics examination before I obtain a degree, who am I to question their wisdom?”
So I enrolled for physics again. This time I passed because instead of wasting my time in resentment and worrying about how hard it was, I studied diligently.
I solved my financial worries by taking on some additional jobs, such as selling punch at the college dances, and by borrowing money from my father, which I paid back soon after graduation.
I solved my love worries by proposing to the girl that I feared might marry another cadet. She is now Mrs. Jim Birdsall.
As I look back at it now, I can see that my problem was one of confusion, a disinclination to find the causes of my worry and face them realistically.
Jim Birdsall learned to stop worrying because he ANALYSED his troubles. In fact, he used the very principles described in the chapter “How to Analyse and Solve Worry Problems.”
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I Have Lived By This Sentence
By
Dr. Joseph R. Sizoo
President, New Brunswick Theological Seminary (The oldest theological seminary in the United States, founded in 1784)
Years ago, in a day of uncertainty and disillusionment, when my whole life seemed to be overwhelmed by forces beyond my control, one morning quite casually I opened my New Testament and my eyes fell upon this sentence: “He that sent me is with me-the Father hath not left me alone.” My life has never been the same since that hour. Everything for me has been for ever different after that. I suppose that not a day has passed that I have not repeated it to myself. Many have come to me for counseling during these years, and I have always sent them away with this sustaining sentence. Ever since that hour when my eyes fell upon it, I have lived by this sentence. I have walked with it and I have found in it my peace and strength. To me it is the very essence of religion. It lies at the rock bottom of everything that makes life worth living. It is the Golden Text of my life.
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I Hit Bottom And Survived
By
Ted Ericksen
16,237 South Cornuta Avenue, Bellflower, California Southern California Representative National Enameling and Stamping Company
I used to be a terrible “worry wart”. But no more. In the summer of 1942, I had an experience that banished worry from my life-for all time; I hope. That experience made every other trouble seem small by comparison.
For years I had wanted to spend a summer on a commercial fishing craft in Alaska, so in 1942 I signed on a thirty-two-foot salmon seining vessel out of Kodiak, Alaska. On a craft of this size, there is a crew of only three: the skipper who does the supervising, a No. 2 man who assists the skipper, and a general work horse, who is usually a Scandinavian. I am a Scandinavian.
Since salmon seining has to be done with the tides, I often worked twenty hours out of twenty-four. I kept up that schedule for a week at a time. I did everything that nobody else wanted to do. I washed the craft. I put away the gear. I cooked on a little wood-burning stove in a small cabin where the heat and fumes of the motor almost made me ill. I washed the dishes. I repaired the boat. I pitched the salmon from our boat into a tender that took the fish to a cannery. My feet were always wet in rubber boots. My boots were often filled with water, but I had no time to empty them. But all that was play compared to my main job, which was pulling what is called the “cork line”. That operation simply means placing your feet on the stem of the craft and pulling in the corks and the webbing of the net. At least, that is what you are supposed to do. But, in reality, the net was so heavy that when I tried to pull it in, it wouldn’t budge. What really happened was that in trying to pull in the cork line, I actually pulled in the boat. I pulled it along on my own power, since the net stayed where it was. I did all this for weeks on end It was almost the end of me, too. I ached horribly. I ached all over. I ached for months.
When I finally did have a chance to rest, I slept on a damp lumpy mattress piled on top of the provisions locker. I would put one of the lumps in the mattress under the part of my back that hurt most-and sleep as if I had been dragged. I was drugged by complete exhaustion.
I am glad now that I had to endure all that aching and exhaustion because it has helped me stop worrying. Whenever I am confronted by a problem now-instead of worrying about it, I say to myself: “Ericksen, could this possibly be as bad as pulling the cork line?” And Ericksen invariably answers: “No, nothing could be that bad!” So I cheer up and tackle it with courage. I believe it is a good thing to have to endure an agonising experience occasionally. It is good to know that we have hit bottom and survived. That makes all our daily problems seem easy by comparison.
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I Used To Be One Of The World’s Biggest Jackasses
By
Percy H. Whiting
Managing Director, Dale Carnegie and Company 50 East 42nd Street, New York, New York
I have died more times from more different diseases than any other man, living, dead, or half dead.
I was no ordinary hypochondriac. My father owned a drug-store, and I was practically brought up in it. I talked to doctors and nurses every day, so I knew the names and symptoms of more and worse diseases than the average layman. I was no ordinary hypo-I had symptoms! I could worry for an hour or two over a disease and then have practically all the symptoms of a man who was suffering from it. I recall once that, in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, the town in which I lived, we had a rather severe diphtheria epidemic. In my father’s drug-store, I had been selling medicines day after day to people who came from infected homes. Then the evil that I feared came upon me: I had diphtheria myself. I was positive I had it. I went to bed and worried myself into the standard symptoms. I sent for a doctor. He looked me over and said: “Yes, Percy, you’ve got it.” That relieved my mind. I was never afraid of any disease when I had it-so I turned over and went to sleep. The next morning I was in perfect health.
For years I distinguished myself and got a lot of attention and sympathy by specialising in unusual and fantastic disease-I died several times of both lockjaw and hydrophobia. Later on, I settled down to having the run-of-mill ailments-specialising on cancer and tuberculosis.
I can laugh about it now, but it was tragic then. I honestly and literally feared for years that I was walking on the edge of the grave. When it came time to buy a suit of clothes in the spring, I would ask myself: “Should I waste this money when I know I can’t possibly live to wear this suit out?”
However, I am happy to report progress: in the past ten years, I haven’t died even once.
How did I stop dying? By kidding myself out of my ridiculous imaginings. Every time I felt the dreadful symptoms coming on, I laughed at myself and said: “See here, Whiting, you have been dying from one fatal disease after another now for twenty years, yet you are in first-class health today. An insurance company recently accepted you for more insurance. Isn’t it about time, Whiting, that you stood aside and had a good laugh at the worrying jackass you are?”
I soon found that I couldn’t worry about myself and laugh at myself at one and the same time. So I’ve been laughing at myself ever since.
The point of this is: Don’t take yourself too seriously. Try “just laughing” at some of your sillier worries, and see if you can’t laugh them out of existence.
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I Have Always Tried To Keep My Line Of Supplies Open”
By
Gene Autry
The world’s most famous and beloved singing cowboy
I figure that most worries are about family troubles and money. I was fortunate in marrying a small-town Oklahoma girl who had the same background I had and enjoyed the same things. We both try to follow the golden rule, so we have kept our family troubles to a minimum.
I have kept my financial worries to a minimum also by doing two things. First, I have always followed a rule of absolute one hundred per cent integrity in everything. When I borrowed money, I paid back every penny. Few things cause more worry than dishonesty.
Second, when I started a new venture, I always kept on ace in the hole. Military experts say that the first principle of fighting a battle is to keep your line of supplies open. I figure that that principle applies to personal battles almost as much as to military battles. For example, as a lad down in Texas and Oklahoma, I saw some real poverty when the country was devastated by droughts. We had mighty hard scratching at times to make a living. We were so poor that my father used to drive across the country in a covered wagon with a string of horses and swap horses to make a living. I wanted something more reliable than that. So I got a job working for a railway-station agent and learned telegraphy in my spare time. Later, I got a job working as relief operator for the Frisco Railway. I was sent here, there, and yonder to relieve other station agents who were ill or on vacation or had more work than they could do. That job paid $150 per month. Later, when I started out to better myself, I always figured that that railroad job meant economic safety. So I always kept the road open back to that job. It was my line of supplies, and I never cut myself off from it until I was firmly established in a new and better position.
For example, back in 1928, when I was working as a relief operator for the Frisco Railway in Chelsea, .Oklahoma, a stranger drifted in one evening to send a telegram. He heard me playing the guitar and singing cowboy songs and told me I was good-told me that I ought to go to New York and get a job on the stage or radio. Naturally, I was flattered; and when I saw the name he signed to his telegram, I was almost breathless: Will Rogers.
Instead of rushing off to New York at once, I thought the matter over carefully for nine months. I finally came to the conclusion that I had nothing to lose and everything to gain by going to New York and giving the old town a whirl. I had a railroad pass: I could travel free. I could sleep sitting up in my seat, and I could carry some sandwiches and fruit for my meals.
So I went. When I reached New York, I slept in a furnished room for five dollars a week, ate at the Automat, and tramped the streets for ten weeks-and got nowhere. I would have been worried sick if I hadn’t had a job to go back to. I had already worked for the railway five years. That meant I had seniority rights; but in order to protect those rights, I couldn’t lay off longer than ninety days. By this time, I had already been in New York seventy days, so I rushed back to Oklahoma on my pass and began working again to protect my line of supply. I worked for a few months, saved money, and returned to New York for another try. This time I got a break. One day, while waiting for an interview in a recording-studio office, I played my guitar and sang a song to the girl receptionist: “Jeannine, I Dream of Lilac Time”. While I was singing that song, the man who wrote it-Nat Schildkraut- drifted into the office. Naturally, he was pleased to hear anyone singing his song. So he gave me a note of introduction and sent me down to the Victor Recording Company. I made a record. I was no good-too stiff and self-conscious. So I took the advice of the Victor Recording man: I went back to Tulsa, worked for the railway by day, and at night I sang cowboy songs on a sustaining radio programme. I liked that arrangement. It meant that I was keeping my line of supplies open- so I had no worries.