How To Stop Worrying And Start Living

A third of the people who rush to psychiatrists for help could probably cure themselves if they would only do as Margaret Yates did: get interested in helping others. My idea? No, that is approximately what Carl Jung said. And he ought to know -if anybody does. He said: "About one-third of my patients are suffering from no clinically definable neurosis, but from the senselessness and emptiness of their lives." To put it another way, they are trying to thumb a ride through life-and the parade passes them by. So they rush to a psychiatrist with their petty, senseless, useless lives. Having missed the boat, they stand on the wharf, blaming everyone except themselves and demanding that the world cater to their self-centred desires.

You may be saying to yourself now: "Well, I am not impressed by these stories. I myself could get interested in a couple of orphans I met on Christmas Eve; and if I had been at Pearl Harbour, I would gladly have done what Margaret Tayler Yates did. But with me things are different: I live an ordinary humdrum life. I work at a dull job eight hours a day.

Nothing dramatic ever happens to me. How can I get interested in helping others? And why should I? What is there in it for me?"

A fair question. I'll try to answer it. However humdrum your existence may be, you surely meet some people every day of your life. What do you do about them? Do you merely stare through them, or do you try to find out what it is that makes them tick? How about the postman, for example-he walks hundreds of miles every year, delivering mail to your door; but have you ever taken the trouble to find out where he lives, or ask to see a snapshot of his wife and his kids? Did you ever ask him if his feet get tired, or if he ever gets bored?

?How To Stop Worrying And Start Living? By Dale Carnegie 93

What about the grocery boy, the newspaper vendor, the chap at the corner who polishes your shoes? These people are human -bursting with troubles, and dreams, and private ambitions. They are also bursting for the chance to share them with someone. But do you ever let them? Do you ever show an eager, honest interest in them or their lives?

That's the sort of thing I mean. You don't have to become a Florence Nightingale or a social reformer to help improve the world-your own private world; you can start tomorrow morning with the people you meet!

What's in it for you? Much greater happiness! Greater satisfaction, and pride in yourself!

Aristotle called this kind of attitude "enlightened selfishness". Zoroaster said: "Doing good to others is not a duty. It is a joy, for it increases your own health and happiness."

And Benjamin Franklin summed it up very simply-"When you are good to others," said Franklin, "you are best to yourself."

"No discovery of modern psychology," writes Henry C. Link, director of the Psychological Service Centre in New York, "no discovery of modern psychology is, in my opinion, so important as its scientific proof of the necessity of self-sacrifice or discipline to self-realisation and happiness."

Thinking of others will not only keep you from worrying about yourself; it will also help you to make a lot of friends and have a lot of fun. How? Well, I once asked Professor William Lyon Phelps, of Yale, how he did it; and here is what he said:

"I never go into a hotel or a barber-shop or a store without saying something agreeable to everyone I meet. I try to say something that treats them as an individual-not merely a cog in a machine. I sometimes compliment the girl who waits on me in the store by telling her how beautiful her eyes are-or her hair. I will ask a barber if he doesn't get tired standing on his feet all day. I'll ask him how he came to take up barbering- how long he has been at it and how many heads of hair he has cut. I'll help him figure it out. I find that taking an interest in people makes them beam with pleasure. I frequently shake hands with a redcap who has carried my grip. It gives him a new lift and freshens him up for the whole day. One extremely hot summer day, I went into the dining car of the New Haven Railway to have lunch. The crowded car was almost like a furnace and the service was slow.