How to Stop Worrying and Start Living (with Summary) by Dale Carnegie

Notes
Fundamental facts you should know about worry
1. If you want to avoid worry, do what Sir William Osler did: Live in “day-tight compartments.” Don’t stew about the futures. Just live each day until bedtime.
2. The next time Trouble–with a Capital T–backs you up in a corner, try the magic formula of Willis H. Carrier:
a) Ask yourself, “What is the worst that can possibly happen if I can’t solve my problem?
b) Prepare yourself mentally to accept the worst–if necessary.
c) Then calmly try to improve upon the worst–which you have already mentally agreed to accept.
3. Remind yourself of the exorbitant price you can pay for worry in terms of your health. “Those who do not know how to fight worry die young.”

Basic techniques in analysing worry
1. Get the facts. Remember that Dean Hawkes of Columbia University said that “half the worry in the world is caused by people trying to make decisions before they have sufficient knowledge on which to base a decision.”
2. After carefully weighing all the facts, come to a decision.
3. Once a decision is carefully reached, act! Get busy carrying out your decision–and dismiss all anxiety about the outcome.
4. When you, or any of your associates, are tempted to worry about a problem, write out and answer the following questions:
a) What is the problem?
b) What is the cause of the problem?
c) What are all possible solutions?
d) What is the best solution?

How to break the worry habit before it breaks you
1. Crowd worry out of your mind by keeping busy. Plenty of action is one of the best therapies ever devised for curing “wibber gibbers.”
2. Don’t fuss about trifles. Don’t permit little things–the mere termites of life–to ruin your happines.
3. Use the law of averages to outlaw your worries. Ask yourself: “What are the odds against this thing’s happening at all?”
4. Co-operate with the inevitable. If you know a circumstance is beyond your power to change or revise, say to yourself: “It is so; it cannot be otherwise.”
5. Put a “stop-loss” order on your worries. Decide just how much anxiety a thing may be worth–and refuse to give it anymore.
6. Let the past bury its dead. Don’t saw sawdust.

Seven ways to cultivate a mental attitude that will bring you peace and happiness
1. Let’s fill our minds with thoughts of peace, courage, health, and hope, for “our life is what our thoughts make it.”
2. Let’s never try to get even with our enemies, because if we do we will hurt ourselves far more than we hurt them. Let’s do as General Eisenhower does: let’s never waste a minute thinking about people we don’t like.
3. a) Instead of worrying about ingratitude, let’s expect it. Let’s remember that Jesus healed ten lepers in one day–and only one thanked Him. Why should we expect more gratitude than Jesus got?
b) Let’s remember that the only way to find happiness is not to expect gratitude–but to give for the joy of giving.
c) Let’s remember that gratitude is a “cultivated” trait; so if we want our children to be grateful, we must train them to be grateful.
4. Count your blessings–not your troubles!
5. Let’s not imitate others. Let’s find ourselves and be ourselves, for “envy is ignorance” and “imitation is suicide.”
6. When fate hands us a lemon, let’s try to make a lemonade.
7. Let’s forget our own unhappiness–by trying to create a little happiness for others. “When you are good to others, you are best to yourself.”

The perfect way to conquer worry – Prayer

How to keep from worrying about criticism
1. Unjust criticism is often a disguised compliment. It often means that you have aroused jealousy and envy. Remember that no one ever kicks a dead dog.
2. Do the very best you can; and then put up your old umbrella and keep the rain of criticism from running down the back of your neck.
3. Let’s keep a record of the fool things we have done and criticize ourselves. Since we can’t hope to be perfect, let’s do what E.H. Little did: let’s ask for unbiased, helpful, constructive criticism.

Six ways to prevent fatigue and worry and keep your energy and spirits high
1. Rest before you get tired.
2. Learn to relax at your work.
3. Learn to relax at home.
5. Apply these four good workings habits:
a) Clear your desk of all papers except those relating to the immediate problem at hand.
b) Do things in the order of their importance.
c) When you face a problem, solve it then and there if you have the facts to make a decision.
d) Learn to organise, deputise, and supervise.
To prevent worry and fatigue, put enthusiasm into your work.
6. Remember, no one was ever killed by lack of sleep. It is worrying about insomnia that does the damage–not the insomnia.

When the doctors undertook to save Rockefeller’s life, they gave him three rules which he observed, to the letter, for the rest of his life. Here they are :
– Avoid worry. Never worry about anything, under any kind of circumstances.
– Relax, and take plenty of mild exercises in the open air.
– Watch your diet. Always stop eating while you are still a little hungry.

Contents

Preface – How This Book Was Written-and Why
Nine Suggestions on How to Get the Most Out of This Book

Part One – Fundamental Facts You Should Know About Worry
1 – Live in “Day-tight Compartments”
2 – A Magic Formula for Solving Worry Situations
3 – What Worry May Do to You

Part Two – Basic Techniques In Analysing Worry
4 – How to Analyse and Solve Worry Problems
5 – How to Eliminate Fifty Per Cent of Your Business Worries

Part Three – How To Break The Worry Habit Before It Breaks You
6 – How to Crowd Worry out of Your Mind
7 – Don’t Let the Beetles Get You Down
8 – A Law That Will Outlaw Many of Your Worries
9 – Co-operate with the Inevitable
10 – Put a “Stop-Loss” Order on Your Worries
11 – Don’t Try to Saw Sawdust

Part Four – Seven Ways To Cultivate A Mental Attitude That Will Bring You Peace And Happiness
12 – Eight Words that Can Transform Your Life
13 – The High, Cost of Getting Even
14 – If You Do This, You Will Never Worry About Ingratitude
15 – Would You Take a Million Dollars for What You Have?
16 – Find Yourself and Be Yourself: Remember There Is No One Else on Earth Like You
17 – If You Have a Lemon, Make a Lemonade
18 – How to Cure Melancholy in Fourteen Days

Part Five – The Golden Rule For Conquering Worry
19 – How My Mother and Father Conquered Worry Part Six – How To Keep From Worrying About Criticism
20 – Remember That No One Ever Kicks a Dead Dog
21 – Do This-and Criticism Can’t Hurt You
22 – Fool Things I Have Done

Part Seven – Six Ways To Prevent Fatigue And Worry And Keep Your Energy And Spirits High
23 – How to Add One Hour a Day to Your Waking Life
24 – What Makes You Tired-and What You Can Do About It
25 – How the Housewife Can Avoid Fatigue-and Keep Looking Young
26 – Four Good Working Habits That Will Help Prevent Fatigue and Worry
27 – How to Banish the Boredom That Produces Fatigue, Worry, and Resentment
28 – How to Keep from Worrying About Insomnia

Part Eight – How To Find The Kind Of Work In Which You May Be Happy And Successful
29 – The Major Decision of Your Life

Part Nine – How To Lessen Your Financial Worries
30 – “Seventy Per Cent of All Our Worries …”

Part Ten – “How I Conquered Worry” (32 True Stories)
“Six Major Troubles Hit Me All At Once” By C.I. Blackwood
“I Can Turn Myself into a Shouting Optimist Within an Hour” By Roger W. Babson
“How I Got Rid of an Inferiority Complex” By Elmer Thomas
“I Lived in the Garden of Allah” BY R.V.C. Bodley
“Five Methods I Use to Banish Worry” By Professor William Lyon Phelps
“I Stood Yesterday. I Can Stand Today” By Dorothy Dix
“I Did Not Expect to Live to See the Dawn” BY J.C. Penney
“I Go to the Gym to Punch the Bag or Take a Hike Outdoors” By Colonel Eddie Eagan
“I Was ‘The Worrying Wreck from Virginia Tech'” By Jim Birdsall
“I Have Lived by This Sentence” By Dr. Joseph R. Sizoo
“I Hit Bottom and Survived” By Ted Ericksen
“I Used to Be One of the World’s Biggest Jackasses” By Percy H. Whiting
“I Have Always Tried to Keep My Line of Supplies Open” By Gene Autry
“I Heard a Voice in India” BY E. Stanley Jones
“When the Sheriff Came in My Front Door” By Homer Croy
“The Toughest Opponent I Ever Fought Was Worry” By Jack Dempsey
“I Prayed to God to Keep Me Out of an Orphan’s Home” By Kathleen Halter
“I Was Acting Like an Hysterical Woman” By Cameron Shipp
“I Learned to Stop Worrying by Watching My Wife Wash Dishes” By Rev. William Wood
“I Found the Answer-Keep Busy!” By Del Hughes
“Time Solves a Lot of Things” By Louis T. Montant, Jr.
“I Was Warned Not to Try to Speak or to Move Even a Finger” By Joseph L. Ryan
“I Am a Great Dismisser” By Ordway Tead
“If I Had Not Stopped Worrying, I Would Have Been in My Grave Long Ago” By Connie Mack
“One at a Time, Gentlemen, One at a Time” By John Homer Miller
“I Now Look for the Green Light” By Joseph M. Cotter
How John D. Rockefeller Lived on Borrowed Time for Forty-five Years
“Reading a Book on Sex Prevented My Marriage from Going on the Rocks” BY B.R.W.
“I Was Committing Slow Suicide Because I Didn’t Know How to Relax” By Paul Sampson
“A Real Miracle Happened to Me” By Mrs. John Burger
“Setbacks” BY Ferenc Molnar
“I Was So Worried I Didn’t Eat a Bite of Solid Food for Eighteen Days” By Kathryne Holcombe Farmer

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