It was an angry letter, raising several embarrassing questions. If I had received such a letter, it would have sent me into a tailspin. I said: “Bill, how are you going to answer it?”
“Well,” Bill said, “I’ll tell you a little secret. Next time you’ve really got something to worry about, take a pencil and a piece of paper, and sit down and write out in detail just what’s worrying you. Then put that piece of paper in the lower right-hand drawer of your desk. Wait a couple of weeks, and then look at it. If what you wrote down still worries you when you read it, put that piece of paper back in your lower right-hand drawer. Let it sit there for another two weeks. It will be safe there. Nothing will happen to it. But in the meantime, a lot may happen to the problem that is worrying you. I have found that, if only I have patience, the worry that is trying to harass me will often collapse like a pricked balloon.”
That bit of advice made a great impression on me. I have been using Bill’s advice for years now, and, as a result, I rarely worry about anything.
Times solves a lot of things. Time may also solve what you are worrying about today.
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I Was Warned Not To Try To Speak Or To Move Even A Finger
By
Joseph L. Ryan
Supervisor, Foreign Division, Royal Typewriter Company 51 Judson Place, Rockville Centre, Long Island, New York
Several years ago I was a witness in a lawsuit that caused me a great deal of mental strain and worry. After the case was over, and I was returning home in the train, I had a sudden and violent physical collapse. Heart trouble. I found it almost impossible to breathe.
When I got home the doctor gave me an injection. I wasn’t in bed-I hadn’t been able to get any farther than the living-room settee. When I regained consciousness, I saw that the parish priest was already there to give me final absolution!
I saw the stunned grief on the faces of my family. I knew my number was up. Later, I found out that the doctor had prepared my wife for the fact that I would probably be dead in less than thirty minutes. My heart was so weak I was warned not to try to speak or to move even a finger.
I had never been a saint, but I had learned one thing-not to argue with God. So I closed my eyes and said: “Thy will be done. … If it has to come now, Thy will be done.”
As soon as I gave in to that thought, I seemed to relax all over. My terror disappeared, and I asked myself quickly what was the worst that could happen now. Well, the worst seemed to be a possible return of the spasms, with excruciating pains- then all would be over. I would go to meet my Maker and soon be at peace.
I lay on that settee and waited for an hour, but the pains didn’t return. Finally, I began to ask myself what I would do with my life if I didn’t die now. I determined that I would exert every effort to regain my health. I would stop abusing myself with tension and worry and rebuild my strength.
That was four years ago. I have rebuilt my strength to such a degree that even my doctor is amazed at the improvement my cardiograms show. I no longer worry. I have a new zest for life. But I can honestly say that if I hadn’t faced the worst- my imminent death-and then tried to improve upon it, I don’t believe I would be here today. If I hadn’t accepted the worst, I believe I would have died from my own fear and panic.
Mr. Ryan is alive today because he made use of the principle described in the Magic Formula-FACE THE WORST THAT CAN HAPPEN.
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I Am A Great Dismisser
By
Ordway Tead
Chairman of the Board of Higher Education New York, New York
WORRY is a habit-a habit that I broke long ago. I believe that my habit of refraining from worrying is due largely to three things.
First: I am too busy to indulge in self-destroying anxiety. I have three main activities-each one of which should be virtually a full-time job in itself. I lecture to large groups at Columbia University: I am also chairman of the Board of Higher Education of New York City. I also have charge of the Economic and Social Book Department of the publishing firm of Harper and Brothers. The insistent demands of these three tasks leave me no time to fret and stew and run around in circles.
Second: I am a great dismisser. When I turn from one task to another, I dismiss all thoughts of the problems I had been thinking about previously. I find it stimulating and refreshing to turn from one activity to another. It rests me. It clears my mind.
Third: I have had to school myself to dismiss all these problems from my mind when I close my office desk. They are always continuing. Each one always has a set of unsolved problems demanding my attention. If I carried these issues home with me each night, and worried about them, I would destroy my health; and, in addition, I would destroy all ability to cope with them.
Ordway Tead is a master of the Four Good Working Habits. Do you remember what they are?
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If I Had Mot Stopped Worrying, I Would Have Been In My Grave Long Ago
By
Connie Mack
I have been in professional baseball for over sixty-three years. When I first started, back in the eighties, I got no salary at all. We played on vacant lots, and stumbled over tin cans and discarded horse collars. When the game was over, we passed the hat. The pickings were pretty slim for me, especially since I was the main support of my widowed mother and my younger brothers and sisters. Sometimes the ball team would have to put on a strawberry supper or a clambake to keep going.
I have had plenty of reason to worry. I am the only baseball manager who ever finished in last place for seven consecutive years. I am the only manager who ever lost eight hundred games in eight years. After a series of defeats, I used to worry until I could hardly eat or sleep. But I stopped worrying twenty-five years ago, and I honestly believe that if I hadn’t stopped worrying then, I would have been in my grave long ago.
As I looked back over my long life (I was born when Lincoln was President), I believe I was able to conquer worry by doing these things:
1. I saw how futile it was. I saw it was getting me nowhere and was threatening to wreck my career.
2. I saw it was going to ruin my health.
3. I kept myself so busy planning and working to win games in the future that I had no time to worry over games that were already lost.
4. I finally made it a rule never to call a player’s attention to his mistakes until twenty-four hours after the game. In my early days, I used to dress and undress with the players. If the team had lost, I found it impossible to refrain from criticising the players and from arguing with them bitterly over their defeats. I found this only increased my worries. Criticising a player in front of the others didn’t make him want to co-operate. It really made him bitter. So, since I couldn’t be sure of controlling myself and my tongue immediately after a defeat, I made it a rule never to see the players right after a defeat. I wouldn’t discuss the defeat with them until the next day. By that time, I had cooled off, the mistakes didn’t loom so large, and I could talk things over calmly and the men wouldn’t get angry and try to defend themselves.
5. I tried to inspire players by building them up with praise instead of tearing them down with faultfinding. I tried to have a good word for everybody.
6. I found that I worried more when I was tired; so I spend ten hours in bed every night, and I take a nap every afternoon. Even a five-minute nap helps a lot.
7. I believe I have avoided worries and lengthened my life by continuing to be active. I am eighty-five, but I am not going to retire until I begin telling the same stories over and over. When I start doing that, I’ll know then that I am growing old.
Connie Mack never read a book on HOW TO STOP WORRYING so he made out his own roles. Why don’t YOU make a list of the rules you have found helpful in the past-and write them out here?
Ways I Have Found Helpful in Overcoming Worry:
1 __________________
2 __________________
3 __________________
4 __________________
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One At A Time Gentleman, One At A Time
By
John Homer Miller
Author of Take a Look at Yourself
I Discovered years ago that I could not escape my worries by trying to ran away from them, but that I could banish them by changing my mental attitude toward them. I discovered that my worries were not outside but inside myself.
As the years have gone by, I have found that time automatically takes care of most of my worries. In fact, I frequently find it difficult to remember what I was worrying about a week ago. So I have a rule: never to fret over a problem until it is at least a week old. Of course, I can’t always put a problem completely out of mind for a week at a time, but I can refuse to allow it to dominate my mind until the allotted seven days have passed, either the problem has solved itself or I have so changed my mental attitude that it no longer has the power to trouble me greatly.
I have been greatly helped by reading the philosophy of Sir William Osier, a man who was not only a great physician, but a great artist in the greatest of all arts: the art of living. One of his statements has helped me immensely in banishing worries. Sir William said, at a dinner given in his honour: “More than to anything else, I owe whatever success I have had to the power of settling down to the day’s work and trying to do it well to the best of my ability and letting the future take care of itself.”
In handling troubles, I have taken as my motto the words of an old parrot that my father used to tell me about. Father told me of a parrot that was kept in a cage hanging over the doorway in a hunting club in Pennsylvania. As the members of the club passed through the door, the parrot repeated over and over the only words he knew: “One at a time, gentlemen, one at a time.” Father taught me to handle my troubles that way: “One at a time, gentlemen, one at a time.” I have found that taking my troubles one at a time has helped me to maintain calm and composure amidst pressing duties and unending engagements. “One at a time, gentlemen, one at a time.”
Here again, we have one of the basic principles in conquering worry: LIVE IN DAY-TIGHT COMPARTMENTS. Why don’t you turn back and read that chapter again?
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I Now Look For The Green Light
By
Joseph M. Cotter
1534 Fargo Avenue, Chicago, Illinois
From the time I was a small boy, throughout the early stages of young manhood, and during my adult life, I was a professional worrier. My worries were many and varied. Some were real; most of them were imaginary. Upon rare occasions I would find myself without anything to worry about-then I would worry for fear I might be overlooking something.
Then, two years ago, I started out on a new way of living. This required making a self-analysis of my faults-and a very few virtues-a “searching and fearless moral inventory” of myself. This brought out clearly what was causing all this worry.
The fact was that I could not live for today alone. I was fretful of yesterday’s mistakes and fearful of the future.
I was told over and over that “today was the tomorrow I had worried about yesterday”. But it wouldn’t work on me. I was advised to live on a twenty-four-hour programme. I was told that today was the only day over which I had any control and that I should make the most of my opportunities each day. I was told that if I did that, I would be so busy I would have no time to worry about any other day-past or future. That advise was logical, but somehow I found it hard to put these darned ideas to work for me.
Then like a shot from out of the dark, I found the answer- and where do you suppose I found it? On a North-western Railroad platform at seven P.M. on May 31, 1945. It was an important hour for me. That is why I remember it so clearly.
We were taking some friends to the train. They were leaving on The City of Los Angeles, a streamliner, to return from a vacation. War was still on-crowds were heavy that year. Instead of boarding the train with my wife, I wandered down the tracks towards the front of the train. I stood looking at the big shiny engine for a minute. Presently I looked down the track and saw a huge semaphore. An amber light was showing. Immediately this light turned to a bright green. At that moment, the engineer started clanging a bell; I heard the familiar “All aboard!” and, in a matter of seconds, that huge streamliner began to move out of that station on its 2,300-mile trip.
My mind started spinning. Something was trying to make sense to me. I was experiencing a miracle. Suddenly it dawned on me. The engineer had given me the answer I had been seeking. He was starting out on that long journey with only one green light to go by. If I had been in his place, I would want to see all the green lights for the entire journey. Impossible, of course, yet that was exactly what I was trying to do with my life-sitting in the station, going no place, because I was trying too hard to see what was ahead for me.
My thoughts kept coming. That engineer didn’t worry about trouble that he might encounter miles ahead. There probably would be some delays, some slowdowns, but wasn’t that why they had signal systems ? Amber lights-reduce speed and take it easy. Red lights-real danger up ahead-stop. That was what made train travel safe. A good signal system.
I asked myself why I didn’t have a good signal system for my life. My answer was-I did have one. God had given it to me. He controls it, so it has to be foolproof. I started looking for a green light. Where could I find it? Well, if God created the green lights, why not ask Him? I did just that.
And now by praying each morning, I get my green light for that day. I also occasionally get amber lights that slow me down. Sometimes I get red lights that stop me before I crack up. No more worrying for me since that day two years ago when I made this discovery. During those two years, over seven hundred green lights have shown for me, and the trip through life is so much easier without the worry of what colour the next light will be. No matter what colour it may be, I will know what to do.
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How John D. Rockefeller Lived on Borrowed Time for Forty-five Tears
John D. Rockefeller, Sr., had accumulated his first million at the age of thirty-three. At the age of forty-three, he had built up the largest monopoly the world has ever seen-the great Standard Oil Company. But where was he at fifty-three? Worry had got him at fifty-three. Worry and high-tension living had already wrecked his health. At fifty-three he “looked like a mummy,” says John K. Winkler, one of his biographers.
At fifty-three, Rockefeller was attacked by mystifying digestive maladies that swept away his hair, even the eyelashes and all but a faint wisp of eyebrow. “So serious was his condition,” says Winkler, “that at one time John D. was compelled to exist on human milk.” According to the doctors, he had alopecia, a form of baldness that often starts with sheer nerves. He looked so startling, with his stark bald dome, that he had to wear a skullcap. Later, he had wigs made-$500 apiece-and for the rest of his life he wore these silver wigs.
Rockefeller had originally been blessed with an iron constitution. Reared on a farm, he had once had stalwart shoulders, an erect carriage, and a strong, brisk gait.
Yet at only fifty-three-when most men are at their prime- his shoulders drooped and he shambled when he walked. “When he looked in a glass,” says John T. Flynn, another of his biographers, “he saw an old man. The ceaseless work, the endless worry, the streams of abuse, the sleepless nights, and the lack of exercise and rest” had exacted their toll; they had brought him to his knees. He was now the richest man in the world; yet he had to live on a diet that a pauper would have scorned. His income at the time was a million dollars a week- but two dollars a week would probably have paid for all the food he could eat. Acidulated milk and a few biscuits were all the doctors would allow him. His skin had lost its colour-it looked like old parchment drawn tight across his bones. And nothing but medical care, the best money could buy, kept him from dying at the age of fifty-three.