How To Stop Worrying And Start Living

Now, a year later, I have a very happy, successful husband, a beautiful home that I can work in sixteen hours a day, and three healthy, happy children-and for myself, peace of mind!

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Setbacks (*)

By

Ferenc Molnar

Noted Hungarian Playwright "Work is the best narcotic!"

?How To Stop Worrying And Start Living? By Dale Carnegie 182

Exactly fifty years ago my father gave me the words I have lived by ever since. He was a physician. I had just started to study law at the Budapest University. I failed one examination. I thought I could not survive the shame so I sought escape in the consolation of failure's closest friend, alcohol, always at hand: apricot brandy to be exact.

My father called on me unexpectedly. Like a good doctor, he discovered both the trouble and the bottle, in a second. I confessed why I had to escape reality.

The dear old man then and there improvised a prescription. He explained to me that there can be no real escape in alcohol or sleeping pills-or in any drug. For any sorrow there is only one medicine, better and more reliable than all the drugs in the world: work!

How right my father was! Getting used to work might be hard. Sooner or later you succeed. It has, of course, the quality of all the narcotics. It becomes habit-forming. And once the habit is formed, sooner or later, it becomes impossible to break one's self of it.

I have never been able to break myself of the habit for fifty years.

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[*] Reprinted with permission of the author, from Words to Live By-A Little Treasury of Inspiration and Wisdom, published by Simon and Schuster, Inc., copyright, 1947, by William Nichols.

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I Was So Worried I Didn't Eat A Bite Of Solid Food For Eighteen Days By

Kathryne Holcombe Farmer

Sheriff's Office, Mobile, Alabama

Three months ago, I was so worried that I didn't sleep for four days and nights; and I did not eat a bite of solid food for eighteen days. Even the smell of food made me violently sick. I cannot find words to describe the mental anguish I endured. I wonder whether hell has any worse tortures than what I went through. I felt as if I would go insane or die.

I knew that I couldn't possibly continue living as I was.

The turning point of my life was the day I was given an advance copy of this book.

During the last three months, I have practically lived with this book, studying every page, desperately trying to find a new way of life. The change that has occurred in my mental outlook and emotional stability is almost unbelievable. I am now able to endure the battles of each passing day. I now realise that in the past, I was being driven half mad not by today's problems but by the bitterness and anxiety over something that had happened yesterday or that I feared might happen tomorrow.

But now, when I find myself starting to worry about anything, I immediately stop and start to apply some of the principles I learned from studying this book. If I am tempted to tense up over something that must be done today, I get busy and do it immediately and get it off my mind.

When I am faced with the kind of problems that used to drive me half crazy, I now calmly set about trying to apply the three steps outlined in Chapter 2, Part One. First, I ask myself what is the worst that can possibly happen. Second, I try to accept it

?How To Stop Worrying And Start Living? By Dale Carnegie 183

mentally. Third, I concentrate on the problem and see how I can improve the worst which I am already willing to accept- if I have to.

When I find myself worrying about a thing I cannot change -and do not want to accept-I stop myself short and repeat this little prayer:

"God grant me the serenity

to accept the things I cannot change,

the courage to change the things I can,