FROM: http://www.amazon.com/How-Stop-Worrying-Start-Living/dp/0671733354
PREFACE:
• Our trouble is not ignorance, but inaction. Things need to be restated, illustrated, streamlined, air-conditioned...
NINE SUGGESTIONS ON HOW TO GET THE MOST OUT OF THIS BOOK
A deep, driving desire to learn, a vigorous determination stop worrying and start living
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.
PART ONE: FUNDAMENTAL FACTS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT WORRY
• Thomas Carlyle: “Our main business is not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand.”
• What, then, was the secret of his success? He stated that it was owing to what he called living in “day-tight compartments.” What did he mean by that? A few months before he spoke at Yale, Sir William Osler had crossed the Atlantic on a great ocean liner where the captain, standing on the bridge, could press a button and – presto! – there was a clanging of machinery and various parts of the ship were immediately shut off from one another – shut off into watertight compartments. “Now each one of you,” Dr. Osler said to those Yale students, “is much more marvelous organization than the great liner, and bound on a longer voyage. What I urge is that you so learn to control the machinery as to live with ‘day-tight compartments’ as the most certain way to ensure safety on the voyage. Get on the bridge, and see that at least the great bulkheads are in working order. Touch a button and hear, at every level of your life, the iron doors shutting out the Past – the dead yesterdays. Touch another and shut off, with a metal curtain, the Future – the unborn tomorrows. Then you are safe – safe for today!...Shut off the past! Let the dead past bury its dead.... Shut out the yesterdays which have lighted fools the way to dusty death.... The load of tomorrow, added to that of yesterday, carried today, makes the strongest falter. Shut off the future as tightly as the past.... The future is today [...]
• ...the best possible way to prepare for tomorrow is to concentrate with all your intelligence, all your enthusiasm, on doing today’s work superbly today. That is the only possible way you can prepare for the future.
• ...take thought for the tomorrow, yes careful thought and planning and preparation. But have no anxiety.
• “If a ship has been sunk,” Admiral King went on, “I can’t bring it up. If it is going to be sunk, I can’t stop it. I can use my time much better working on tomorrow’s problem than by fretting about yesterday’s. Besides, “if I let those things get me, I wouldn’t last long.”
• ...the chief difference between good thinking and bad thinking is this: good thinking deals with causes and effects and leads to logical, constructive planning; bad thinking frequently leads to tension and nervous breakdowns.
• “I ended up in an Army dispensary. An Army doctor gave me some advice which has completely changed my life. After giving me a thorough examination, he informed me that my troubles were mental. ‘Ted,’ he said, ‘I want you to think of your life as an hourglass. You know there are thousands of grains of sand in the tope of the hourglass; and they all pass slowly and evenly through the narrow neck in the middle. Nothing you or I could do would make more than one grain of sand pass through this narrow neck without impairing the hourglass. You and I and everyone else are like this hourglass. When we start in the morning, there are hundreds of tasks which we feel that we must accomplish that day, but if we do not take them one at a time and let them pass through the day slowly and evenly, as do the grains of sand passing through the narrow neck of the hourglass, then we are bound to break our own physical and mental structure.”
‘One grain of sand at a time.... One task at a time’
• You and I are standing this very second at the meeting of two eternities: the vast past that has endured forever, and the future that is plunging on to the last syllable of recorded time. We can’t possibly live in either of those eternities – no, not even for one split second. But by trying to do so, we can wreck both our bodies and our minds. So let’s be content to live the only time we can possible live: from now until bedtime. “Anyone can carry his burden, however hard, until nightfall,” wrote Robert Louis Stevenson. “Anyone can do his work, however hard, for one day. Anyone can live sweetly, patiently, lovingly, purely, till the sun goes down. And this is all that life really means.”
• ‘Every day is a new life to a wise man’ – I learned to forget the yesterdays and to not-think of the tomorrows. Each morning I said to myself, ‘Today is a new life.’
• One of the most tragic things I know about human nature is that all of us tend to put off living. We are all dreaming of some magical rose garden over the horizon – instead of enjoying the roses that are blooming outside our windows today.
• “How strange it is, our little procession of life!” wrote Stephen Leacock. “The child says, “When I am a big boy.’ But what is that? The big boy says, ‘When I grow up.’ And then, grown up, he says, ‘When I get married.’ But to be married, what is that after all? The thought changes to ‘When I’m able to retire.’ And then, when retirement comes, he looks back over the landscape traversed; a cold wind seems to sweep over it; somehow he has missed it all, and it is gone. Life, we learn too late, is in the living, in the tissue of very day and hour.”
• “Think,” said Dante, “that this day will never dawn again.” Life is slipping away with incredible speed. We are racing through space at the rate of 19 miles every second. Today is our most precious possession. It is our only sure possession. (Psalm This is the day which the Lord hath made; we will rejoice and be glad in it
A MAGIC FORMULA FOR SOLVING WORRY SITUATIONS
1. Analyze the situation fearlessly and honestly and figure out what is worst that could possibly happen as a result of this failure. No one was going to jail me or shoot me.
2. After figuring out what was the worst that could possibly happen, I reconciled myself to accepting it, if necessary.
3. Calmly devote time and energy to try improve upon the worst which I had already accepted mentally.
• ...one of the worst features about worrying is that it destroys our ability to concentrate. When we worry, our minds jump here and there and everywhere, and we lose all power of decision. However, when we force ourselves to face the worst and accept it mentally, we then eliminate all these vague imaginings and put ourselves in a position in which we are able to concentrate on our problem.
• Why is Willis H. Carrier’s magic formula so valuable and practical, psychologically speaking? Because it yanks us down and out of the great gray clouds in which we fumble around when we are blinded by worry. It plants our feet good and solid on the earth. We know where we stand. And if we haven’t solid ground under us, how in creation can we ever hope to think anything through?
• Lin Yutang – Chinese philosopher: “True peace of mind comes from accepting the worst.”
• When we have accepted the worst, we have nothing more to loose.
• If you have a worry problem, apply the magic formula of Willis H. Carrier by doing these three things –
1. Ask yourself, “What is the worst that can possibly happen?”
2. Prepare to accept it if you have to.
3. Then calmly proceed to improve on the worst.
WHAT WORRY MAY DO TO YOU
• ...one person out of 10 now living in these United States will have a nervous breakdown – induced in the vast majority of cases by worry and emotional conflicts.
• Dr. O. F. Gober – one of the medical executives of the Santa Fe railway. His exact title was chief physician of the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe Hospital Association. In regards to the effects of worry he said: “70% of all patients who come to physicians could cure themselves if they only got rid of their fears and worries. Don’t think for a moment that I mean that their ills are imaginary,” he said. “Their ills are as real as throbbing toothache and sometimes a hundred times more serious. I refer to such illnesses as nervous indigestion, some stomach ulcers, heart disturbances, insomnia, some headaches, and some types of paralysis.
“Fear causes worry. Worry makes you tense and nervous and affects the nerves of your stomach and actually changes the gastric juices of your stomach from normal to abnormal and often leads to stomach ulcers.
Dr. Joseph F. Montague, author of the book Nervous Stomach Trouble, says much the same thing. He says: “You do not get stomach ulcers from what you eat. You get ulcers from what is eating you.”
Dr. W. C. Alvarez, of the Mayo Clinic, said: “Ulcers frequently flare up or subside according to the hills and valleys of emotional stress.
- That statement was backed up by a study of 15,000 patients treated for stomach ulcers at the Mayo Health Clinic. 4 out of 5 had no physical basis whatever for their stomach illnesses. Fear, worry, hate, supreme selfishness, and the inability to adjust themselves to the world of reality – these were largely the causes of their stomach illnesses and stomach ulcers... Stomach ulcers can kill you. According to Life Magazine, they now stand 10th in our list of fatal diseases.
The famous Mayo brother declared that more than half of our hospital beds are occupied by people with nervous troubles. Yet, when the nerves of these people are studied under a high-powered microscope in a post-mortem examination, their nerves in most cases are apparently as healthy as the nerves of Jack Dempsey. Their “nervous troubles” are caused not by a physical deterioration of the nerves, but by emotions of futility, frustration, anxiety, worry, fear, defeat, despair. Plato said that “the greatest mistake by physicians make is that they attempt to cure the body without attempting to cure the mind; yet the mind and body are one and should not be treated separately!”
But medical science has been unable to cope with the mental and physical wrecks caused, not by germs, but by emotions of worry, fear, hate, frustration, and despair.
How we destroy our bodies and minds by anxiety, frustration, hatred, resentment, rebellion and fear.
Advice that hung on a wall:
Relaxation and Recreation
The most relaxing recreating forces are a healthy religion, sleep, music, and laughter. Have faith in God – learn to sleep well – Love good music – see the funny side of life – And health and happiness will be yours.
“What emotional disturbance brought on this condition?” He warned my friend that, if he didn’t stop worrying, he could get other complications: heart trouble, stomach ulcers, or diabetes. “All of these conditions,” said the eminent doctor, “are cousins, first cousins.” (Dr. Israel Bram)
Few things can age and sour a woman and destroy her looks as quickly as worry. Worry curdles the expression. It makes us clench our jaws and lines our faces with wrinkles. It forms a permanent scowl. It may turn the hair gray, and, in some cases, even make it fall out. It can ruin the complexion – it can bring on all kinds of skin rashes, eruptions and pimples.
“The Lord may forgive us our sins,” said William James, “but the nervous system never does.”
Do you love life? Do you want to live long and enjoy good health? Here is how you can do it. I am quoting Dr. Alexis Carrel again: He said, “Those who keep the peace of their inner selves in the midst of the tumult of the modern city are immune from nervous diseases.”
HOW TO ANALYZE AND SOLVE WORRY PROBLEMS
The three basic steps of problem analysis
1) Get the facts
2) Analyze the facts
3) Arrive at a decision – and then act on that decision
Herbert E. Hawkes, Dean of Columbia College, Columbia University, for 22 years said, “confusion is the chief cause of worry.” “Half the worry is caused by people trying to make decisions before they have sufficient knowledge on which to base a decision. For example, if I have a problem which has to be faced at three o’clock next Tuesday, I refused to even try to make a decision about it until next Tuesday arrives. In the meantime, I concentrate on getting all the facts that bear on the problem. I don’t worry, I don’t agonize over my problem. I don’t lose any sleep, I simple concentrate on getting all the facts. And by the time Tuesday rolls around, if I’ve got all the facts the problem usually solves itself!”
Dean Hawkes: “If a man will devote his time to securing the facts in an impartial, objective way, his worries will usually evaporate in the light of knowledge.”
Keep our emotions out of our thinking; and as Dean Hawkes put it, we must secure the facts in an “impartial, objective” manner.
For years, whenever I was worried I had always gone to my typewriter and written down two questions – and the answers to these questions:
1) What am I worrying about?
2) What can I do about it?
I found that writing down both the questions and the answers clarifies my thinking.
“So I banish about 90% of my worries by taking these four steps:
1.) Writing down precisely what I am worrying about.
2.) Writing down what I can do about it.
3.) Deciding what to do. (Do something about it. Unless we carry out our action, all our fact-finding and analysis is whistling upwind – it’s a sheer waste of energy.
4.) Starting immediately to carry out that decision. (Go into action. Don’t stop to reconsider. Don’t begin to hesitate, worry and retrace your steps. Don’t lose yourself in self-doubting which begets other doubts. Don’t keep looking back over your shoulder. Waite Phillips, one of Oklahoma’s most prominent oil men, how he carried out decision – “I find that to keep thinking about our problems beyond a certain point is bound to create confusion and worry. There comes a time when any more investigation and thinking are harmful. There comes a time when we must decide and act and never look back.”
HOW TO ELIMINATE FIFTY PER CENT OF YOUR BUSINESS WORRIES
Rule: Everyone who wishes to present a problem to me must first prepare and submit a memorandum answering these four questions:
1) What is the problem?
2) What is the cause of the problem?
3) What are all possible solutions to the problem?
4) What solution do you suggest?
HOW TO CROWN WORRY OUT OF YOUR MIND
It is difficult to worry while you are busy doing something that requires planning and thinking. Resolve to keep busy.
I am so busy 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.”
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.
Law: that it is utterly impossible for any human mind, no matter how brilliant, to think of more than one thing at any given time.
One kind of emotion drives out the other.
“Keep ‘em busy” as a cure.
Any psychiatrist will tell you that work – keeping busy – is one of the best anesthetics ever known for sick nerves.
“I must lose myself in action, lest I wither in despair.”
Most of us have little trouble “losing ourselves in action” while we have our noses in the grindstone and are doing our day’s work. But the hours after work – they are the dangerous ones.
When we are not busy, our minds tend to become a near vacuum.
Nature also rushes in to fill the vacant mind. With what? Usually with emotions. Why? Because emotions of worry, fear, hate, jealousy, and envy are driven by primeval vigor and the dynamic energy of the jungle. Such emotions are so violent that they tend to drive out of our minds all peaceful, happy thoughts and emotions.
James L. Mursell, professor of education, Teachers College, Columbia, put it very well when he said, “Worry is most apt to ride you ragged not when you are in action, but when the day’s work is done. Your imagination can run riot then and bring up all sorts of ridiculous possibilities and magnify each little blunder. At such time, your mind is like a motor operating without its load. It races and threatens to burn its bearings or even to tear itself to bits. The remedy for worry is to get completely occupied doing something constructive.
Worry is a habit; and I had to break that habit.
I got so busy with problems demanding all my faculties that I had no time to worry.
George Bernard Shaw said: “The secret of being miserable is to have the leisure to bother about wether you are happy or not.” So don’t bother thinking about it!
Get busy. Keep busy. It’s the cheapest kind of medicine there is on this earth – and one of the best.
DON’T LET THE BEETLES GET YOU DOWN
Admiral Byrd, “little things like that have the power to drive even disciplined men to the edge of insanity.”
Judge Joseph Sabath of Chicago, after acting as arbiter in more than forty thousand unhappy marriages, declared: “Trivialities are at the bottom of most martial unhappiness”; and Frank S. Hogan, former District Attorney of New York County, says, “Fully half the cases in our criminal courts originate in little things...It is the small blows to our self-esteem, the indignities, the little jolts to our vanity, which cause half the heartaches in the world.”
“Laugh the thing off.”
Much of the time, all we need to overcome the annoyance of trifles is to affect a shifting of emphasis – set up a new, and pleasurable, point of view in the mind.
Petty worries – we exaggerate their importance.
André Maurois in This Week magazine, “often we allow ourselves to be upset by small things we should despise and forget... Here we are on this earth, with only a few more decades to live, and we lose many irreplaceable hours brooding over grievances that, in a year’s time, will be forgotten by us and by everybody. No, let us devote our life to worthwhile actions and feelings, to great thoughts, real affections and enduring undertakings. For life it too short to be little.”
On the slope of Long’s Peak in Colorado lies the ruin of a gigantic tree. Naturalists tell us that it stood for some four hundred years. It was a seedling when Columbus landed at San Salvador, and half grown when the Pilgrims settled at Plymouth. During the course of its long life it was struck by lightning fourteen times, and the innumerable avalanches and storm of four centuries thundered past it. It survived them all. In the end, however, an army of beetles attacked the tree and leveled it to the ground. The insects ate the way through the bark and gradually destroyed the inner strength of the tree by the tiny but incessant attacks. A forest giant which age had not withered, nor lightning blasted, nor storms subdued, fell at last forever before beetles so small that a man could crush them between his forefinger and his thumb.
Aren’t we all like that battling giant of the forest? Don’t we manage somehow to survive the rare storms and avalanches and lightning blasts of life, only to let our hearts be eaten out by little beetles of worry – little beetles that could be crushed between a finger and a thumb?
A LAW THAT WILL OUTLAW MANY OF YOUR WORRIES
As the years went by, I gradually discovered that 90% of the things I worried about never happened.
You and I could probably eliminate 9/10ths of our worries right now if we would cease fretting long enough to discover whether, by the law of averages, there was any real justification for our worries.
It has been said that nearly all of our worries and unhappiness come from our imagination and not from reality.
Al Smith once said, “let’s examine the record and see what basis there is, if any, for our gnawing anxieties.”
CO-OPERATE WITH THE INEVITABLE
An inscription on the ruins of a 15th Century cathedral in Amsterdam, Holland. This inscription says in Flemish: “It is so. It cannot be otherwise.” As you and I march across the decades of time, we are going to meet a lot of unpleasant situations that are so. They cannot be otherwise. We have our choice. We can either accept them as inevitable and adjust ourselves to them, or we can ruin our lives with rebellion and maybe end up with a nervous breakdown.
Carry on, no matter what happens. Hide your private sorrows under a smile and carry on.
I have ceased mourning over the past that is forever gone.
We must accept and cooperate with the inevitable. “It is so. It cannot be otherwise.” That is not an easy lesson to learn.
Obviously, circumstances alone do not make us happy or unhappy. It is the way we react to circumstances that determines our feelings.
I spent 12 years working with cattle; yet I never saw a Jersey cow running a temperature because the pasture was burning up from a lack of rain or because of sleet and cold or because her boy friend was paying too much attention to another heifer. The animals confront night, storms, and hunger calmly; so they never have nervous breakdowns or stomach ulcer; and they never go insane.
Mother Goose rhyme...
For every ailment under the sun,
There is a remedy, or there is none;
If there be one, try to find it;
If there be none, never mind it.
J.C. Penney – I don’t see what is to be gained by worrying.
Henry Ford – When I can’t handle events. I let them handle themselves.
K.T. Keller – then president of Chrysler Corporation. How he kept from worrying. “When I am up against a tough situation, if I can do anything about it, I do it. If I can’t, I just forget about it. I never worry about the future, because I know no man living can possibly figure out what is going to happen in the future. There are so many forces that will affect the future! Nobody can tell what prompts those forces – or understand them. So why worry about them?”
“I saw it happen on a farm I own in Missouri. I planted a score of trees on that farm. At first, they grew with astonishing rapidity. Then a sleetstorm encrusted each twig and branch with a heavy coating of ice. Instead of bowing gracefully to their burden, these trees proudly resisted and broke and split under the load – and had to be destroyed. They hadn’t learned the wisdom of the forests of the North. I have traveled hundreds of miles through the evergreen forests of Canada. Yet I have never seen a spruce or a pine broken by sleet or ice. These evergreen forests know how to bend, how to bow down their branches, how to co-operate with the inevitable.”
Prayer written by Dr. Reinhold Niebuhr
God grant me the serenity
To accept the things I cannot change,
The courage to change the things I can;
And the wisdom to know the difference.
DON’T TRY TO SAW SAWDUST
There is only one way on God’s green footstool that the past can be constructive; and that is by calmly analyzing our past mistakes and profiting by them – and forgetting them.
Knowledge isn’t power until it is applied.
Fred Fuller Shedd who had a gift for stating an old truth in a new and picturesque way. While editor of the Philadelphia Bulletin and addressing a college graduating class, he asked: “How many of you 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 down with, you’re merely trying to saw sawdust.”
EIGHT WORDS THAT CAN TRANSFORM YOUR LIFE
“Our life is what our thoughts make it.” Philosopher of the Roman Empire, Marcus Aurelius
The most vital lesson I have ever learned is the importance of what we think. Our thoughts make us what we are. Emerson said: “A man is what he thinks about all day long.” . . . How could he possible be anything else?
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.
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 what you think you are; but what you think, you are,” said Norman Vicent Peale.
We need to be concerned about our problems, but not worried.
I am deeply convinced that our peace of mind and the joy we get out of living depends not on where we are, or what we have, or who we are, but solely upon our mental attitude. Outward conditions have little to do with it.
300 year old saying:
The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a heaven in Hell, a hell of Heaven.
- Napoleon had everything men usually crave – glory, power, riches – yet he said at Saint Helena, “I have never know six happy days in my life”; while Helen Keller – blind, deaf, dumb – declared: “I have found life so beautiful.”
“Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.”
Epictetus, the great Stoic Philosopher, warned that we ought to be more concerned about removing wrong thoughts from the mind than about removing “tumors and abscesses from the body.”
Montaigne, the great French Philosopher, adopted these seventeen words as the motto of his life: “A man is not hurt so much by what happens, as by his opinion of what happens.” And our opinion of what happens is entirely up to us.
William James, who has never been topped in his knowledge of practical psychology, once made this observation: “Action seems to follow feeling, but really action and feeling go together; and by regulating the action, which us under the more direct control of the will, we can indirectly regulate the feeling, which is not.” In other words, William James tells us that we cannot instantly change our emotions just by “making up our minds to” – but that we can change our actions. And that when we change our actions, we will automatically change our feelings. “Thus the sovereign voluntary path to cheerfulness, if your cheerfulness be lost, is to sit up cheerfully and to act and speak as if cheerfulness were already there.” Does that simple trick work? Try it yourself. Put a big, broad, honest-to-God smile on your face; throw back your shoulders; take a good, deep breath; and sing a snatch of a song. If you can’t whistle, hum. You will quickly discover what William James was talking about – that it is physically impossible to remain blue or depressed while you are acting out the symptoms of being radiantly happy!
Let me ask you a question: If merely acting cheerful and thinking positive thoughts of health and courage could save this man’s life, why should you and I tolerate for one minute more our minor glooms and depressions? Why make ourselves, and everyone around us, unhappy and blue, when it is possible for us to start creating happiness by merely acting cheerful?
“A man will find that as he alters his thoughts toward things and other people, things and other people will alter towards him...Let a man radically alter his thoughts, and he will be astonished at the rapid transformation it will effect in the material conditions of his life. Men do not attract that which they want, but that which they are...The divinity that shapes our ends is in ourselves. It is our very self... All that a man achieves is the direct result of his own thoughts...A man can only rise, conquer and achieve by lifting up his thoughts. He can only remain week and abject and miserable by refusing to lift up his thoughts.
Let’s fight for our happiness!
Let’s fight for our happiness by following a daily program of cheerful and constructive thinking.
The following was written by the late Sibyl F. Partridge.
JUST FOR TODAY
1) Just for today I will be happy. This assumes that what Abraham Lincoln said is true, that “most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.” Happiness is from within; it is not a matter of externals
2) Just for today I will try to adjust myself to what is, and not try to adjust everything to my own desires. I will take my family, my business, and my luck as they come and fit myself to them.
3) Just for today I will take care of my body. I will exercise it, care for it, nourish it, not abuse it nor neglect it, so that it will be a perfect machine for my bidding.
4) Just for today I will try to strengthen my mind. I will learn something useful. I will not be a mental loafer. I will read something that requires effort, thought and concentration.
5) Just for today I will exercise my soul in three ways; I will do somebody a good turn and not get found out. I will do at least two things I don’t want to do, as William James suggests, just for exercise.
6) Just for today, I will be agreeable. I will look as well as I can, dress as becomingly as possible, talk low, act courteously, be liberal with praise, criticize not at all, nor find fault with anything and not try to regulate nor improve anyone.
7) Just for today I will try to live through this day only, not to tackle my whole life problem at once. I can do things for twelve hours that would appall me if I had to keep them up for a lifetime.
8) Just for today I will have a program. I will write down what I expect to do every hour. I may not follow it exactly, but I will have it. It will eliminate two pests, hurrying and indecision.
9) Just for today I will have a quiet half-hour all by myself and relax. In this half-hour sometimes I will think of God, so as to get a little more perspective into my life.
10) Just for today I will be unafraid, especially I will not be afraid to be happy, to enjoy what is beautiful, to love, and to believe that those I love, love me.
If we want to develop a mental attitude that will bring us peace and happiness, here is Rule 1:
Think and act cheerfully, and you will feel cheerful.
THE HIGH COST OF GETTING EVEN
When we hate our enemies, we are giving them power over us: power over our sleep, our appetites, our blood pressure, our health, and our happiness. Our enemies would dance with joy if only they knew how they were worrying us, lacerating us, and getting even with us! Our hate is not hurting them at all, but our hate is turning our own days and nights into a hellish turmoil.
How will trying to get even hurt you? In many ways. According to Life magazine, it may even wreck your health. “The chief personality characteristic of persons with hypertension [high blood pressure] is resentment,” said Life. “When resentment is chronic, chronic hypertension and heart trouble follow.” So you see that when Jesus said, “Love your enemies,” he was not only preaching sound ethics. He was also preaching twentieth-century medicine. When he said, “Forgive seventy times seven,” Jesus was telling you and me how to keep from having high blood pressure, heart trouble, stomach ulcers, and many other ailments.
Hatred destroys our ability to enjoy even our food.
Wouldn’t our enemies rub their hands with glee if they knew that our hate for them was exhausting us, making us tired and nervous, ruining our looks, giving us heart trouble, and probably shortening our lives?
Let’s love ourselves so much that we won’t permit our enemies to control our happiness, our health, and our looks.
I once asked General Eisenhower’s son, John, if his father ever nourished resentments. “No, Dad never wastes a minute thinking about people he doesn’t like.”
Let’s never waste a minute thinking about people we don’t like.
Bernard Baruch – advisor of 6 presidents. “No man can humiliate me or disturb me, I won’t let him.”
No one can humiliate or disturb you and me, either – unless we let him.
One sure way to forgive and forget our enemies is to become absorbed in some cause infinitely bigger than ourselves. Then the insults and the enmities we encounter won’t matter because we will be oblivious of everything but our cause.
Laurence Jones, a black teacher and preacher in 1918 in Mississippi. When asked afterward it he didn’t hate the men who had dragged him up the road to hang him and burn him, he replied that he was too busy with his cause to hate – too absorbed in something bigger than himself. “I have no time to quarrel,” he said, “no time for regrets, and no man can force me to stoop low enough to hate him.”
We reap what we sow. Epictetus said, “In the long run, every man will pay the penalty for his own misdeeds.”
Lincoln believed, according to Herndon, his law partner, that “No man was to be eulogized for what he did; or censured for what he did or did not do,” because “all of us are the children of conditions, of circumstances, of environment, of education, of acquired habits and of heredity molding men as they are and will forever be.”
Perhaps Lincoln was right. If you and I inherited the same physical, mental, and emotional characteristics that our enemies have inherited, and if life had done to us what it has done to them, we would act exactly as they do. We couldn’t possibly do anything else.
Let’s be charitable enough to repeat the prayer of the Sioux Indians:
“O great Spirit, keep me from ever judging and criticizing a man until I have walked in his moccasins for two weeks.”
So instead of hating our enemies, let’s pity them and thank God that life has not made us what they are. Instead of heaping condemnation and revenge upon our enemies, let’s give them our understanding, our sympathy, our help, our forgiveness, and our prayers.
IF YOU DO THIS, YOU WILL NEVER WORRY ABOUT INGRATITUDE
Confucius: “An angry man is always full of poison.”
A human and distressing mistake: expecting gratitude
Marcus Aurelius, ruled the Roman Empire wrote one day in his diary, “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.”
Here is the 1st 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 headaches.
Aristotle: “The ideal man takes joy in doing favors for others.”
Here is the 2nd point: If we want to find happiness, let’s stop thinking about gratitude or ingratitude and give for the inner joy of giving.
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.
Instead of worrying about ingratitude, let’s expect it. Let’s remember that Jesus healed 10 lepers in one day – and only one thanked him. Why should we expect more gratitude than Jesus got?
WOULD YOU TAKE A MILLION DOLLARS FOR WHAT YOU HAVE?
I have known Harold Abbott for years. He lived in 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 will never forget.
“I used to worry a lot, 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 10 seconds, but during those 10 seconds I learned more about how to live than I had learned in the previous 10 years. For 2 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 and took me 7 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. I walked like a beaten man. I had lost all my fight and faith. Then suddenly I saw coming down the street a man who had no legs. He was sitting on a little wooden platform equipped with wheels from roller skates. He propelled himself along the street with a block of wood in each hand. I met him just after he had crossed the street and was starting to lift himself up a few inches over the curb to the sidewalk. As he tilted his little wooden platform to an angle, his eyes met mine. He greeted me with a grand smile. ‘Good morning, sir. It is a fine morning, isn’t it?’ he said with spirit. As I stood looking at him, I realized how rich I was. I had two legs. I could walk. I felt ashamed of my self-pity. I said to myself if he can be happy, cheerful, and confident without legs, I certainly can with legs.
“I know have the following words pasted on my bathroom mirror, and I read them every morning as I shave:
I had the blues because I had no shoes,
Until upon the street, I met a man who had no feet.”
These words ought to be inscribed on our hearts, too: Think and Thank. Think of all we have to be grateful for, and thank God for all our boons and bounties.
You and I may have the services of “Doctor Merryman” free every hour of the day by keeping our attention fixed on all the incredible riches we possess – riches exceeding by far the fabled treasures of Ali Baba. Would you sell both your eyes for a billion dollars? What would you take for your two legs? Your hands? Your hearing? Your children? Your family? Add up your assets, and you will find that you won’t sell what you have for all the gold ever amassed by the Rockefellers, the Fords and the Morgan combined.
But do we appreciate all this? Ah, no. As Schopenhauer said: “We seldom think of what we have but always of what we lack.” Yes, the tendency to “seldom think of what we have but always of what we lack” is the greatest tragedy on earth. It has probably caused more misery than all the wars and diseases in history.
Lucile Blake: I resolved to think only the thoughts I wanted to live by: thoughts of joy, happiness, health. I forced myself each morning, as soon as I awoke, to go over all the things I had to be grateful for. My eyesight, hearing, music, time to read, good food, good friends.
The habit I formed then of counting my blessings each morning still remains with me. It is one of the most precious possessions. I am ashamed to realize that I never really learned to live until I feared I was going to die.
Dr. Samuel Johnson (eminent writer and celebrated conversationalist) : “The habit of looking at the best side of every event is worth more than a thousand pounds a year.”
Logan Pearsall: There are two things to aim at in life: first, to get what you want; and after that, enjoy it. Only the wisest of mankind achieve the second.”
You and I ought to be ashamed of ourselves. All the days of our years we have been living in a fairyland of beauty, but we have been too blind to see, too satiated to enjoy.
Count your blessings – not your troubles!
FIND YOUSELF AND BE YOURSELF: REMEMBER THERE IS NO ONE ELSE ON EARTH LIKE YOU
The renowned William James was speaking of people who had never developed themselves when he declared that the average person develops only 10% of his or her latent mental abilities. “Compared to what we ought to be, we are only half awake. We are making use of only a small part of our physical and mental resources. Stating the thing broadly, human individuals thus live far within their limits. They possess power of various sorts which they habitually fail to use.”
You and I have such abilities, so let’s not waste a second worrying because we are not like other people. You are something new in this world. Never before, since the beginning of time, has there ever been anybody exactly like you; and never again throughout all the ages to come will there ever be anybody exactly like you again. The science of genetics informs us that you are what you are largely as a result of 24 chromosomes contributed by your father and 24 chromosomes by your mother. These 48 chromosomes comprise everything that determines what you inherit. In each chromosome there may be, says Amram Scheinfeld, “anywhere from scores to hundreds of genes – with a single gene, in some cases, able to change the whole life of the individual.” Truly, we are “fearfully and wonderfully” made.
Even after you mother and father met and mated, there was only 1 chance in 300,000 billion that the person who is specifically you would be born! In other words, if you had 300,000 billion brothers and sisters, they might have all been different from you. Is all this guesswork? No. It is a scientific fact.
You are something new in this world. Be glad of it. Make the most of what nature gave you. In the last analysis, all art is autobiographical. You can sing only what you are. You can paint only what you are. You must be what your experiences, your environment, and your heredity have made you. For better or for worse, you must cultivate your own little garden. For better or for worse, you must play your own little instrument in the orchestra of life.
The late poet Douglas Malloch:
If you can’t be a pine on the top of the hill,
Be a scrub in the valley – but be
The best little scrub by the side of the hill;
Be a bush, if you can’t be a tree.
If you can’t be a bush, be a bit of the grass,
And some highway happier make;
If you can’t be a muskie, then just be a bass –
But the liveliest bass in the lake!
We can’t all be captains, we’ve got to be crew,
There’s something for all of us here.
There’s big work to do and there’s lesser to do
And the task we must do is the near.
If you can’t be a highway, then just be a trail,
If you can’t be the sun, be a star;
It isn’t by size that you win or you fail –
Be the best of whatever you are!
Let’s not imitate others. Let’s find ourselves and be ourselves.
IF YOU HAVE A LEMON, MAKE A LEMONADE
When you have a lemon, make lemonade. That is what the great educator does. But the fool does the exact opposite. If he finds that life has handed him a lemon, he gives up and says, “I am beaten. It is fate. I haven’t got a chance.” Then he proceeds to rail against the world and indulge in an orgy of self-pity. But when the wise man is handed a lemon, he says: “What lesson can I learn from this misfortune? How can I improve my situation? How can I turn this lemon into lemonade?”
Two men looked out from prison bars,
One saw the mud, the other saw the stars
I made up my mind I would find out what was good in my present situation; I would look for the stars.
Harry Emerson Fosdick repeated it again in the 20th century: “Happiness is not mostly pleasure; it is mostly victory.” Yes, the victory that comes from a sense of achievement, of triumph, of turning lemons into lemonade.
The late William Bolitho, author of Twelve Against the Gods, put it like this: “The most important thing in life is not to capitalize on your gains. Any fool can do that. The really important thing is to profit from your losses. That requires intelligence; and it makes the difference between a man of sense and a fool.”
Nietzsche’s formula for the superior man was “not only to bear up under necessity but to love it.”
The more I have studied the careers of men of achievement the more deeply I have been convinced that a surprisingly large number of them succeeded because they started out with handicaps that spurred them on to great endeavor and great rewards. As William James said: “Our infirmities help us unexpectedly.”
Abraham Lincoln: “With malice toward none; with charity for all...”
HOW TO CURE DEPRESSION IN FOURTEEN DAYS
Dr. Loope had the inner glow of a man with a purpose, a mission. He had the joy of knowing that he was being used by an idea for nobler and more significant than himself, instead of being, as Shaw put it, “a self-centered, little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world would not devote itself to making him happy.”
Psychiatrist Alfred Adler: “...Try to think every day how you can please someone.”
Why will doing a good deed every day produce such astounding effects on the doer? Because trying to please others will cause us to stop thinking of ourselves: the very thing that produces worry and fear and melancholia.