How To Stop Worrying And Start Living

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 Osier 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. Osier said to those Yale students, "is a much more marvelous organisation 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 -

?How To Stop Worrying And Start Living? By Dale Carnegie 8

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. ...

There is no tomorrow. The day of man's salvation is now. Waste of energy, mental distress, nervous worries dog the steps of a man who is anxious about the future. ...

Shut close, then the great fore and aft bulkheads, and prepare to cultivate the habit of life of 'day-tight compartments'."

Did Dr. Osier mean to say that we should not make any effort to prepare for tomorrow?

No. Not at all. But he did go on in that address to say that 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.

Sir William Osier urged the students at Yale to begin the day with Christ's prayer: "Give us this day our daily bread."

Remember that that prayer asks only for today's bread. It doesn't complain about the stale bread we had to eat yesterday; and it doesn't say: "Oh, God, it has been pretty dry out in the wheat belt lately and we may have another drought-and then how will I get bread to eat next autumn-or suppose I lose my job-oh, God, how could I get bread then?"

No, this prayer teaches us to ask for today's bread only. Today's bread is the only kind of bread you can possibly eat.

Years ago, a penniless philosopher was wandering through a stony country where the people had a hard time making a living. One day a crowd gathered about him on a hill, and he gave what is probably the most-quoted speech ever delivered anywhere at any time. This speech contains twenty-six words that have gone ringing down across the centuries: "Take therefore no thought for the morrow; for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof."

Many men have rejected those words of Jesus: "Take no thought for the morrow." They have rejected those words as a counsel of perfection, as a bit of Oriental mysticism. "I must take thought for the morrow," they say. "I must take out insurance to protect my family. I must lay aside money for my old age. I must plan and prepare to get ahead."

Right! Of course you must. The truth is that those words of Jesus, translated over three hundred years ago, don't mean today what they meant during the reign of King James.

Three hundred years ago the word thought frequently meant anxiety. Modern versions of the Bible quote Jesus more accurately as saying: "Have no anxiety for the tomorrow."

By all means take thought for the tomorrow, yes, careful thought and planning and preparation. But have no anxiety.

During the war, our military leaders planned for the morrow, but they could not afford to have any anxiety. "I have supplied the best men with the best equipment we have," said Admiral Ernest J. King, who directed the United States Navy, "and have given them what seems to be the wisest mission. That is all I can do."