by Dale Carnegie
Available in 159 free installments
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RULE 1: If you want to avoid worry, do what Sir William Osier did: Live in "day-tight compartments". Don't stew about the future. Just live each day until bedtime.
RULE 2: The next time Trouble-with a capital T- comes gunning for you and backs you up in a corner, try the magic formula of Willis H. Carrier: a. Ask yourself, "What is the worst that can possibly happen if I can't solve my problem?"
b. Prepare yourself mentally to accept the worst-if necessary.
c. Then calmly try to improve upon the worst-which you have already mentally ? agreed to accept.
RULE 3: Remind yourself of the exorbitant price you can pay for worry in terms of your health. "Business men who do not know how to fight worry die young."
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Part Two - Basic Techniques In Analysing Worry
Chapter 4 - How To Analyse And Solve Worry Problems
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I keep six honest serving-men
(They taught me all I knew):
Their names are What and Why and When
And How and Where and Who.
-Rudyard Kipling
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Will the magic formula of Willis H. Carrier, described in Part One, Chapter 2, solve all worry problems? No, of course not. Then what is the answer? The answer is that we must equip ourselves to deal with different kinds of worries by learning the three basic steps of problem analysis. The three steps are:
1. Get the facts.
2. Analyse the facts.
3. Arrive at a decision-and then act on that decision.
?How To Stop Worrying And Start Living? By Dale Carnegie 25
Obvious stuff? Yes, Aristotle taught it-and used it. And you and I must use it too if we are going to solve the problems that are harassing us and turning our days and nights into veritable hells.
Let's take the first rule: Get the facts. Why is it so important to get the facts? Because unless we have the facts we can't possibly even attempt to solve our problem intelligently. Without the facts, all we can do is stew around in confusion. My idea? No, that was the idea of the late Herbert E. Hawkes, Dean of Columbia College, Columbia University, for twenty-two years. He had helped two hundred thousand students solve their worry problems; and he told me that "confusion is the chief cause of worry". He put it this way-he said: "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. For example," he said, "if I have a problem which has to be faced at three o'clock next Tuesday, I refuse even to 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," he said, "I don't agonise over my problem. I don't lose any sleep. I simply concentrate on getting the facts. And by the time Tuesday rolls around, if I've got all the facts, the problem usually solves itself!"
I asked Dean Hawkes if this meant he had licked worry entirely. "Yes," he said, "I think I can honestly say that my live is now almost totally devoid of worry. I have found," he went on, "that if a man will devote his time to securing facts in an impartial, objective way, his worries usually evaporate in the light of knowledge."
Let me repeat that: "If a man will devote his time to securing facts in an impartial, objective way, his worries will usually evaporate in the light of knowledge."
But what do most of us do ? If we bother with facts at all- and Thomas Edison said in all seriousness: "There is no expedient to which a man will not resort to avoid the labour of thinking"-if we bother with facts at all, we hunt like bird dogs after the facts that bolster up what we already think-and ignore all the others! We want only the facts that justify our acts-the facts that fit in conveniently with our wishful thinking and justify our preconceived prejudices!
