How To Stop Worrying And Start Living

"with the inexhaustible motive power that spins the universe"?

Even if you are not a religious person by nature or training- even if you are an out-and-out sceptic-prayer can help you much more than you believe, for it is a practical thing.

What do I mean, practical? I mean that prayer fulfills these three very basic psychological needs which all people share, whether they believe in God or not: 1. Prayer helps us to put into words exactly what is troubling us. We saw in Chapter 4

that it is almost impossible to deal with a problem while it remains vague and nebulous.

Praying, in a way, is very much like writing our problem down on paper. If we ask help for a problem-even from God-we must put it into words.

2. Prayer gives us a sense of sharing our burdens, of not being alone. Few of us are so strong that we can bear our heaviest burdens, our most agonising troubles, all by ourselves. Sometimes our worries are of so intimate a nature that we cannot discuss them even with our closest relatives or friends. Then prayer is the answer. Any psychiatrist will tell us that when we are pent-up and tense, and in an agony of spirit, it is

?How To Stop Worrying And Start Living? By Dale Carnegie 107

therapeutically good to tell someone our troubles. When we can't tell anyone else-we can always tell God.

3. Prayer puts into force an active principle of doing. It's a first step toward action. I doubt if anyone can pray for some fulfillment, day after day, without benefiting from it-in other words, without taking some steps to bring it to pass. A world-famous scientist said:

"Prayer is the most powerful form of energy one can generate." So why not make use of it? Call it God or Allah or Spirit-why quarrel with definitions as long as the mysterious powers of nature take us in hand?

Why not close this book right now, go to your bedroom, shut the door, kneel down, and unburden your heart? If you have lost your religion, beseech Almighty God to renew your faith. Say: "O God, I can no longer fight my battles alone. I need Your help, Your love. Forgive me for all my mistakes. Cleanse my heart of all evil. Show me the way to peace and quiet and health, and fill me with love even for my enemies."

If you don't know how to pray, repeat this beautiful and inspiring prayer written by St.

Francis seven hundred years ago:

Lord, make me an instrument of Thy Peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood, as to understand; to be loved, as to love; for it is in giving that we receive, it is in pardoning, that we are pardoned and it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.

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Part Six - How To Keep From Worrying About Criticism

Chapter 20 - Remember That No One Ever Kicks A Dead Dog

An event occurred in 1929 that created a national sensation in educational circles.

Learned men from all over America rushed to Chicago to witness the affair. A few years earlier, a young man by the name of Robert Hutchins had worked his way through Yale, acting as a waiter, a lumberjack, a tutor, and a clothes-line salesman. Now, only eight years later, he was being inaugurated as president of the fourth richest university in America, the University of Chicago. His age? Thirty. Incredible! The older educators shook their heads. Criticism came roaring down upon the "boy wonder" like a rockslide.

He was this and he was that-too young, inexperienced-his educational ideas were cockeyed. Even the newspapers joined in the attack.

The day he was inaugurated, a friend said to the father of Robert Maynard Hutchins: "I was shocked this morning to read that newspaper editorial denouncing your son."

"Yes," the elder Hutchins replied, "it was severe, but remember that no one ever kicks a dead dog."