How To Stop Worrying And Start Living

"I played games aboard the ship, sang songs, made new friends, stayed up half the night. When we reached China and India, I realised that the business troubles and cares that I had faced back home were paradise compared to the poverty and hunger in the Orient. I stopped all my senseless worrying and felt fine. When I got back to America, I had gained ninety pounds. I had almost forgotten I had ever had a stomach ulcer. I had never felt better in my life. I promptly sold the casket back to the undertaker, and went back to business. I haven't been ill a day since."

At the time this happened, Earl P. Haney had never even heard of Willis H. Carrier and his technique for handling worry. "But I realise now," he told me quite recently, "that I was unconsciously using the selfsame principle. I reconciled myself to the worst that could happen-in my case, dying. And then I improved upon it by trying to get the utmost enjoyment out of life for the time I had left. ... If," he continued, "if I had gone on worrying after boarding that ship, I have no doubt that I would have made the return voyage inside of that coffin. But I relaxed-I forgot it. And this calmness of mind gave me a new birth of energy which actually saved my life." (Earl P. Haney is now living at 52

Wedgemere Ave., Winchester, Mass.)

Now, if Willis H. Carrier could save a twenty-thousand-dollar contract, if a New York business man could save himself from blackmail, if Earl P. Haney could actually save his life, by using this magic formula, then isn't it possible that it may be the answer to some of your troubles? Isn't it possible that it may even solve some problems you thought were unsolvable?

So, Rule 2 is: 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.

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Chapter 3 - What Worry May Do To You

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Business men who do not know how to fight worry

die young.

-DR. Alexis Carrel.

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Some time ago, a neighbour rang my doorbell one evening and urged me and my family to be vaccinated against smallpox. He was only one of thousands of volunteers who were ringing doorbells all over New York City. Frightened people stood in lines for hours at a time to be vaccinated. Vaccination stations were opened not only in all hospitals,

?How To Stop Worrying And Start Living? By Dale Carnegie 18

but also in fire-houses, police precincts, and in large industrial plants. More than two thousand doctors and nurses worked feverishly day and night, vaccinating crowds. The cause of all this excitement? Eight people in New York City had smallpox-and two had died. Two deaths out of a population of almost eight million.

Now, I have lived in New York for over thirty-seven years, and no one has ever yet rung my doorbell to warn me against the emotional sickness of worry-an illness that, during the last thirty-seven years, has caused ten thousand times more damage than smallpox.

No doorbell ringer has ever warned me that one person out of ten now living in these United States will have a nervous breakdown-induced in the vast majority of cases by worry and emotional conflicts. So I am writing this chapter to ring your doorbell and warn you.

The great Nobel prizewinner in medicine, Dr. Alexis Carrel, said: "Business men who do not know how to fight worry die young." And so do housewives and horse doctors and bricklayers.

A few years ago, I spent my vacation motoring through Texas and New Mexico with 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. We got to talking about the effects of worry, and he said: Seventy per cent of all patients who come to physicians could cure themselves if they only got rid of their fears and worries.