How To Stop Worrying And Start Living

Am I advocating an habitual Pollyanna attitude toward all our problems? No, unfortunately, life isn't so simple as all that. But I am advocating that we assume a positive attitude instead of a negative attitude. In other words, we need to be concerned about our problems, but not worried. What is the difference between concern and worry? Let me illustrate. Every time I cross the traffic-jammed streets of New York, I am concerned about what I am doing-but not worried. Concern means realising what the problems are and calmly taking steps to meet them. Worrying means going around in maddening, futile circles.

A man can be concerned about his serious problems and still walk with his chin up and a carnation in his buttonhole. I have seen Lowell Thomas do just that. I once had the privilege of being associated with Lowell Thomas in presenting his famous films on the Allenby-Lawrence campaigns in World War I. He and his assistants had photographed the war on half a dozen fronts; and, best of all, had brought back a pictorial record of T.

E. Lawrence and his colourful Arabian army, and a film record of Allenby's conquest of the Holy Land. His illustrated talks entitled "With Allenby in Palestine and Lawrence in Arabia" were a sensation in London-and around the world. The London opera season was postponed for six weeks so that he could continue telling his tale of high adventure

?How To Stop Worrying And Start Living? By Dale Carnegie 60

and showing his pictures at Covent Garden Royal Opera House. After his sensational success in London came a triumphant tour of many countries. Then he spent two years preparing a film record of life in India and Afghanistan. After a lot of incredibly bad luck, the impossible happened: he found himself broke in London. I was with him at the time.

I remember we had to eat cheap meals at cheap restaurants. We couldn't have eaten even there if we had not borrowed money from a Scotsman-James McBey, the renowned artist. Here is the point of the story: even when Lowell Thomas was facing huge debts and severe disappointments, he was concerned, but not worried. He knew that if he let his reverses get him down, he would be worthless to everyone, including his creditors. So each morning before he started out, he bought a flower, put it in his buttonhole, and went swinging down Oxford Street with his head high and his step spirited. He thought positive, courageous thoughts and refused to let defeat defeat him.

To him, being licked was all part of the game-the useful training you had to expect if you wanted to get to the top.

Our mental attitude has an almost unbelievable effect even on our physical powers. The famous British psychiatrist, J. A. Hadfield, gives a striking illustration of that fact in his splendid book, The Psychology of Power. "I asked three men," he writes, "to submit themselves to test the effect of mental suggestion on their strength, which was measured by gripping a dynamometer." He told them to grip the dynamometer with all their might. He had them do this under three different sets of conditions.

When he tested them under normal waking conditions, their average grip was 101

pounds.

When he tested them after he had hypnotised them and told them that they were very weak, they could grip only 29 pounds -less than a third of their normal strength. (One of these men was a prize fighter; and when he was told under hypnosis that he was weak, he remarked that his arm felt "tiny, just like a baby's".) When Captain Hadfield then tested these men a third time, telling them under hypnosis that they were very strong, they were able to grip an average of 142 pounds. When their minds were filled with positive thoughts of strength, they increased their actual physical powers almost five hundred per cent.

Such is the incredible power of our mental attitude.

To illustrate the magic power of thought, let me tell you one of the most astounding stories in the annals of America. I could write a book about it; but let's be brief. On a frosty October night, shortly after the close of the Civil War, a homeless, destitute woman, who was little more than a wanderer on the face of the earth, knocked at the door of "Mother" Webster, the wife of a retired sea captain, living in Amesbury, Massachusetts.