How To Stop Worrying And Start Living

Maybe H.P. Howell borrowed his idea from Ben Franklin. Only Franklin didn't wait until Saturday night. He gave himself a severe going-over every night. He discovered that he had thirteen serious faults. Here are three of them: wasting time, stewing around over trifles, arguing and contradicting people. Wise old Ben Franklin realised that, unless he eliminated these handicaps, he wasn't going to get very far. So he battled with one of his shortcomings every day for a week, and kept a record of who had won each day's slugging match. The next day, he would pick out another bad habit, put on the gloves, and when the bell rang he would come out of his corner fighting. Franklin kept up this battle with his faults every week for more than two years.

No wonder he became one of the best-loved and most influential men America ever produced!

Elbert Hubbard said: "Every man is a damn fool for at least five minutes every day.

Wisdom consists in not exceeding that limit."

The small man flies into a rage over the slightest criticism, but the wise man is eager to learn from those who have censured him and reproved him and "disputed the passage with him". Walt Whitman put it this way: "Have you learned lessons only of those who admired you, and were tender with you, and stood aside for you? Have you not learned great lessons from those who rejected you, and braced themselves against you, or disputed the passage with you?"

Instead of waiting for our enemies to criticise us or our work, let's beat them to it. Let's be our own most severe critic. Let's find and remedy all our weaknesses before our enemies get a chance to say a word. That is what Charles Darwin did. In fact, he spent fifteen years criticising-well, the story goes like this: When Darwin completed the manuscript of his immortal book, The Origin of Species, he realised that the publication of his revolutionary concept of creation would rock the intellectual and religious worlds.

?How To Stop Worrying And Start Living? By Dale Carnegie 113

So he became his own critic and spent another fifteen years, checking his data, challenging his reasoning, criticising his conclusions.

Suppose someone denounced you as "a damn fool"-what would you do? Get angry?

Indignant? Here is what Lincoln did: Edward M. Stanton, Lincoln's Secretary of War, once called Lincoln "a damn fool". Stanton was indignant because Lincoln had been meddling in his affairs. In order to please a selfish politician, Lincoln had signed an order transferring certain regiments. Stanton not only refused to carry out Lincoln's orders but swore that Lincoln was a damn fool for ever signing such orders. What happened?

When Lincoln was told what Stanton had said, Lincoln calmly replied: "If Stanton said I was a damned fool, then I must be, for he is nearly always right. I'll just step over and see for myself."

Lincoln did go to see Stanton. Stanton convinced him that the order was wrong, and Lincoln withdrew it. Lincoln welcomed criticism when he knew it was sincere, founded on knowledge, and given in a spirit of helpfulness.

You and I ought to welcome that kind of criticism, too, for we can't even hope to be right more than three times out of four. At least, that was all Theodore Roosevelt said he could hope for, when he was in the White House. Einstein, the most profound thinker now living, confesses that his conclusions are wrong ninety-nine per cent of the time!

"The opinions of our enemies," said La Rochefoucauld, "come nearer to the truth about us than do our own opinions."

I know that statement may be true many times; yet when anyone starts to criticise me, if I do not watch myself, I instantly and automatically leap to the defensive-even before I have the slightest idea what my critic is going to say. I am disgusted with myself every time I do it. We all tend to resent criticism and lap up praise, regardless of whether either the criticism or the praise be justified. We are not creatures of logic. We are creatures of emotions. Our logic is like a canoe tossed about on a deep, dark, stormy sea of emotion. Most of us have a pretty good opinion of ourselves as we are now. But in forty years from now, we may look back and laugh at the persons we are today.