Part Two In A Nutshell
RULE 1: Get the facts. Remember that Dean Hawkes of Columbia University said that ” half the worry in the world is caused by people trying to make decisions before they have sufficient knowledge on which to base a decision.”
RULE 2: After carefully weighing all the facts, come to a decision.
RULE 3: Once a decision is carefully reached, act! Get busy carrying out your decision-and dismiss all anxiety about the outcome.
RULE 4: When you, or any of your associates are tempted to worry about a problem, write out and answer the following questions:
a. What is the problem?
b. What is the cause of the problem?
c. What are all possible solutions?
d. What is the best solution?
~~~~~~~~~~
Nine Suggestions on How to Get the Most Out of This Book
1. If you wish to get the most out of this book, there is one indispensable requirement, one essential infinitely more important than any rules or technique. Unless you have this one fundamental requisite a thousand rules on how to study will avail little. And if you do have this cardinal endowment, then you can achieve wonders without reading any suggestions for getting the most out of a book.
What is this magic requirement? Just this: a deep, driving desire to learn, a vigorous determination to stop worrying and start living.
How can you develop such an urge? By constantly reminding yourself of how important these principles are to you. Picture to yourself how their mastery will aid you in living a richer, happier life. Say to yourself over and over: “My peace of mind, my happiness, my health, and perhaps even my income will, in the long run, depend largely on applying the old, obvious, and eternal truths taught in this book.”
2. Read each chapter rapidly at first to get a bird’s-eye view of it. You will probably be tempted then to rush on to the next one. But don’t. Unless you are reading merely for entertainment. But if you are reading because you want to stop worrying and start living, then go back and re-read each chapter thoroughly. In the long run, this will mean saving time and getting results.
3. Stop frequently in your reading to think over what you are reading. Ask yourself just how and when you can apply each suggestion. That kind of reading will aid you far more than racing ahead like a whippet chasing a rabbit.
4. Read with a red crayon, pencil, or fountain-pen in your hand; and when you come across a suggestion that you feel you can use, draw a line beside it. If it is a four-star suggestion, then underscore every sentence, or mark it with “XXXX”. Marking and underscoring a book make it more interesting, and far easier to review rapidly.
5. I know a man who has been office manager for a large insurance concern for fifteen years. He reads every month all the insurance contracts his company issues. Yes, he reads the same contracts over month after month, year after year. Why? Because experience has taught him that that is the only way he can keep their provisions clearly in mind.
I once spent almost two years writing a book on public speaking; and yet I find I have to keep going back over it from time to time in order to remember what I wrote in my own book. The rapidity with which we forget is astonishing.
So, if you want to get a real, lasting benefit out of this book, don’t imagine that skimming through it once will suffice. After reading it thoroughly, you ought to spend a few hours reviewing it every month. Keep it on your desk in front of you every day. Glance through it often. Keep constantly impressing yourself with the rich possibilities for improvement that still lie in the offing. Remember that the use of these principles can be made habitual and unconscious only by a constant and vigorous campaign of review and application. There is no other way.
6. Bernard Shaw once remarked: “If you teach a man anything, he will never learn.” Shaw was right. Learning is an active process. We learn by doing. So, if you desire to master the principles you are studying in this book, do something about them. Apply these rules at every opportunity. If you don’t you will forget them quickly. Only knowledge that is used sticks in your mind.
You will probably find it difficult to apply these suggestions all the time. I know, because I wrote this book, and yet frequently I find it difficult to apply everything I have advocated here. So, as you read this book, remember that you are not merely trying to acquire information. You are attempting to form new habits. Ah yes, you are attempting a new way of life. That will require time and persistence and daily application.
So refer to these pages often. Regard this as a working handbook on conquering worry; and when you are confronted with some trying problem-don’t get all stirred up. Don’t do the natural thing, the impulsive thing. That is usually wrong.
Instead, turn to these pages and review the paragraphs you have underscored. Then try these new ways and watch, them achieve magic for you.
7. Offer your wife a shilling every time she catches you violating one of the principles advocated in this book. She will break you!
8. Please turn to pages 193-4 of this book and read how the Wall Street banker, H.P. Howell, and old Ben Franklin corrected their mistakes. Why don’t you use the Howell and Franklin techniques to check up on your application of the principles discussed in this book? If you do, two things will result.
First, you will find yourself engaged in an educational process that is both intriguing and priceless.
Second, you will find that your ability to stop worrying and start living will grow and spread like a green bay tree.
9. Keep a diary-a diary in which you ought to record your triumphs in the application of these principles. Be specific. Give names, dates, results. Keeping such a record will inspire you to greater efforts; and how fascinating these entries will be when you chance upon them some evening, years from now!
~~~~~~~
In A Nutshell
1. Develop a deep, driving desire to master the principles of conquering worry.
2. Read each chapter twice before going on to the next one.
3. As you read, stop frequently to ask yourself how you can apply each suggestion.
4. Underscore each important idea.
5. Review this book each month.
6. Apply these principles at every opportunity. Use this volume as a working handbook to help you solve your daily problems.
7. Make a lively game put of your learning by offering some friend a shilling every time he catches you violating one of these principles.
8. Check up each week on the progress you are making. Ask yourself what mistakes you have made, what improvement, what lessons you have learned for the future.
9. Keep a diary in the back of this book showing how and when you have applied these principles.
————————————-
Part Three – How To Break The Worry Habit Before It Breaks You
Chapter 6 – How To Crowd Worry Out Of Tour Mind
I shall never forget the night, a few years ago, when Marion J. Douglas was a student in one of my classes. (I have not used his real name. He requested me, for personal reasons, not to reveal his identity.) But here is his real story as he told it before one of our adult-education classes. He told us how tragedy had struck at his home, not once, but twice. The first time he had lost his five-year-old daughter, a child he adored. He and his wife thought they couldn’t endure that first loss; but, as he said: “Ten months later, God gave us another little girl-and she died in five days.”
This double bereavement was almost too much to bear. “I couldn’t take it,” this father told us. “I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t rest or relax. My nerves were utterly shaken and my confidence gone.” At last he went to doctors; one recommended sleeping pills and another recommended a trip. He tried both, but neither remedy helped. He said: “My body felt as if it were encased in a vice, and the jaws of the vice were being drawn tighter and tighter.” The tension of grief-if you have ever been paralysed by sorrow, you know what he meant.
“But thank God, I had one child left-a four-year-old son. He gave me the solution to my problem. One afternoon as I sat around feeling sorry for myself, he asked: ‘Daddy, will you build a boat for me?’ I was in no mood to build a boat; in fact, I was in no mood to do anything. But my son is a persistent little fellow! I had to give in.
“Building that toy boat took about three hours. By the time it was finished, I realised that those three hours spent building that boat were the first hours of mental relaxation and peace that I had had in months!
“That discovery jarred me out of my lethargy and caused me to do a bit of thinking-the first real thinking I had done in months. I realised that it is difficult to worry while you are busy doing something that requires planning and thinking. In my case, building the boat had knocked worry out of the ring. So I resolved to keep busy.
“The following night, I went from room to room in the house, compiling a list of jobs that ought to be done. Scores of items needed to be repaired: bookcases, stair steps, storm windows, window-shades, knobs, locks, leaky taps. Astonishing as it seems, in the course of two weeks I had made a list of 242 items that needed attention.
“During the last two years I have completed most of them. Besides, I have filled my life with stimulating activities. Two nights per week I attend adult-education classes in New York. I have gone in for civic activities in my home town and I am now chairman of the school board. I attend scores of meetings. I help collect money for the Red Cross and other activities. I am so busy now that I have no time for worry.”
No time for worry! That is exactly what Winston Churchill said when he was working eighteen hours a day at the height of the war. When he was asked if he worried about his tremendous responsibilities, he said: “I’m too busy. I have no time for worry.”
Charles Kettering was in that same fix when he started out to invent a self-starter for automobiles. Mr. Kettering was, until his recent retirement, vice-president of General Motors in charge of the world-famous General Motors Research Corporation. But in those days, he was so poor that he had to use the hayloft of a barn as a laboratory. To buy groceries, he had to use fifteen hundred dollars that his wife had made by giving piano lessons; later, had to borrow five hundred dollars on his life insurance. I asked his wife if she wasn’t worried at a time like that. “Yes,” she replied, “I was so worried I couldn’t sleep; but Mr. Kettering wasn’t. He was too absorbed in his work to worry.”
The great scientist, Pasteur, spoke of “the peace that is found in libraries and laboratories.” Why is peace found there? Because the men in libraries and laboratories are usually too absorbed in their tasks to worry about themselves. Research men rarely have nervous breakdowns. They haven’t time for such luxuries.
Why does such a simple thing as keeping busy help to drive out anxiety? Because of a law-one of the most fundamental laws ever revealed by psychology. And that law is: that it is utterly impossible for any human mind, no matter how brilliant, to think of more than one thing at any given time. You don’t quite believe it? Very well, then, let’s try an experiment.
Suppose you lean right back now, close your eyes, and try, at the same instant, to think of the Statue of Liberty and of what you plan to do tomorrow morning. (Go ahead, try it.)