How to Stop Worrying and Start Living Part 16

"If you do start worrying again, you'll have to come back here and I'll charge you a heavy fee again. How about it?"

I wish I could report that the lesson took effect that day and that I quit worrying immediately. I didn't. I took the pills for several weeks, whenever I felt a worry coming on. They worked. I felt better at once.

But I felt silly taking these pills. I am a big man physically. I am almost as tall as Abe Lincoln was-and I weigh almost two hundred pounds. Yet here I was taking little white pills to relax myself. I was acting like an hysterical woman. When my friends asked me why I was taking pills, I was ashamed to tell the truth. Gradually I began to laugh at myself. I said: "See here, Cameron s.h.i.+pp, you are acting like a fool. You are taking yourself and your little activities much, much too seriously. Bette Da vis and James Cagney and Edward G. Robinson were world-famous before you started to handle their publicity; and if you dropped dead tonight, Warner Brothers and their stars would manage to get along without you. Look at Eisenhower, General Marshall, MacArthur, Jimmy Doolittle and Admiral King-they are running the war without taking pills. And yet you can't serve as chairman of the War Activities Committee of the Screen Publicists Guild without taking little white pills to keep your stomach from twisting and turning like a Kansas whirlwind."

I began to take pride in getting along without the pills. A little while later, I threw the pills down the drain and got home each night in time to take a little nap before dinner and gradually began to lead a normal life. I have never been back to see that physician.

But I owe him much, much more than what seemed like a stiff fee at the time. He taught me to laugh at myself. But I think the really skilful thing he did was to refrain from laughing at me, and to refrain from telling me I had nothing to worry about. He took me seriously. He saved my face. He gave me an out in a small box. But he knew then, as well as I know now, that the cure wasn't in those silly little pills-the cure was in a change in my mental att.i.tude.

The moral of this story is that many a man who is now taking pills would do better to read Chapter 7, and relax.

I Learned To Stop Worrying By Watching My Wife Wash Dishes By Reverend William Wood.

204 Hurlbert Street, Charlevoix, Michigan.

A few years ago, I was suffering intensely from pains in my stomach. I would awaken two or three times each night, unable to sleep because of these terrific pains. I had watched my father die from cancer of the stomach, and I feared that I too had a stomach cancer-or, at least, stomach ulcers. So I went to Byrne's Clinic at Petosky, Michigan, for an examination. Dr. Lilga, a stomach specialist, examined me with a fluoroscope and took an X-ray of my stomach. He gave me medicine to make me sleep and a.s.sured me that I had no stomach ulcers or cancer. My stomach pains, he said, were caused by emotional strains. Since I am a minister, one of his first questions was: "Do you have an old crank on your church board?"

He told me what I already knew; I was trying to do too much. In addition to my preaching every Sunday and carrying the burdens of the various activities of the church, I was also chairman of the Red Cross, president of the Kiwanis. I also conducted two or three funerals each week and a number of other activities.

I was working under constant pressure. I could never relax. I was always tense, hurried, and high-strung. I got to the point where I worried about everything. I was living in a constant dither. I was in such pain that I gladly acted on Dr. Lilga's advice. I took Monday off each week, and began eliminating various responsibilities and activities.

One day while cleaning out my desk, I got an idea that proved to be immensely helpful. I was looking over an acc.u.mulation of old notes on sermons and other memos on matters that were now past and gone. I crumpled them up one by one and tossed them into the wastebasket. Suddenly I stopped and said to myself: "Bill, why don't you do the same thing with your worries that you are doing with these notes? Why don't you crumple up your worries about yesterday's problems and toss them into the wastebasket?" That one idea gave me immediate inspiration-gave me the feeling of a weight being lifted from my shoulders. From that day to this, I have made it a rule to throw into the wastebasket all the problems that I can no longer do anything about.

Then, one day while wiping the dishes as my wife washed them, I got another idea. My wife was singing as she washed the dishes, and I said to myself: "Look, Bill, how happy your wife is. We have been married eighteen years, and she has been was.h.i.+ng dishes all that time. Suppose when we got married she had looked ahead and seen all the dishes she would have to wash during those eighteen years that stretched ahead. That pile of dirty dishes would be bigger than a barn. The very thought of it would have appalled any woman."

Then I said to myself: "The reason my wife doesn't mind was.h.i.+ng the dishes is because she washes only one day's dishes at a time." I saw what my trouble was. I was trying to wash today's dishes, yesterday's dishes and dishes that weren't even dirty yet.

I saw how foolishly I was acting. I was standing in the pulpit, Sunday mornings, telling other people how to live, yet, I myself was leading a tense, worried, hurried existence. I felt ashamed of myself.

Worries don't bother me any more now. No more stomach pains. No more insomnia. I now crumple up yesterday's anxieties and toss them into the wastebasket, and I have ceased trying to wash tomorrow's dirty dishes today.

Do you remember a statement quoted earlier in this book? "The load of tomorrow, added to that of yesterday, carried today, makes the strongest falter." ... Why even try it?

I Found The Answer-keep Busy!

By Del Hughes.

Public Accountant, 607 South Euclid Avenue, Bay City, Michigan In 1943 I landed in a. veterans' hospital in Albuquerque, New Mexico, with three broken ribs and a punctured lung. This had happened during a practice Marine amphibious landing off the Hawaiian Islands. I was getting ready to jump off the barge, on to the beach, when a big breaker swept in, lifted the barge, and threw me off balance and smashed me on the sands. I fell with such force that one of my broken ribs punctured my right lung.

After spending three months in the hospital, I got the biggest shock of my life. The doctors told me that I showed absolutely no improvement. After some serious thinking, I figured that worry was preventing me from getting well. I had been used to a very active life, and during these three months I had been flat on my back twenty-four hours a day with nothing to do but think. The more I thought, the more I worried: worried about whether I would ever be able to take my place in the world. I worried about whether I would remain a cripple the rest of my life, and about whether I would ever be able to get married and live a normal life.

I urged my doctor to move me up to the next ward, which was called the "Country Club" because the patients were allowed to do almost anything they cared to do.

In this "Country Club" ward, I became interested in contract bridge. I spent six weeks learning the game, playing bridge with the other fellows, and reading Culbertson's books on bridge. After six weeks, I was playing nearly every evening for the rest of my stay in the hospital. I also became interested in painting with oils, and I studied this art under an instructor every afternoon from three to five. Some of my paintings were so good that you could almost tell what they were! I also tried my hand at soap and wood carving, and read a number of books on the subject and found it fascinating. I kept myself so busy that I had no time to worry about my physical condition. I even found time to read books on psychology given to me by the Red Cross. At the end of three months, the entire medical staff came to me and congratulated me on "making an amazing improvement". Those were the sweetest words I had ever heard since the days I was born. I wanted to shout with joy.

The point I am trying to make is this: when I had nothing to do but lie on the flat of my back and worry about my future, I made no improvement whatever. I was poisoning my body with worry. Even the broken ribs couldn't heal. But as soon as I got my mind off myself by playing contract bridge, painting oil pictures, and carving wood, the doctors declared I made "an amazing improvement".

I am now leading a normal healthy life, and my lungs are as good as yours.

Remember what George Bernard Shaw said? "The secret of being miserable is to have the leisure to bother about whether you are happy or not." Keep active, keep busy!

Time Solves A Lot Of Things.

By Louis T. Montant, Jr.

Sales and Market a.n.a.lyst 114 West 64th Street, New York, New York Worry caused me to lose ten years of my life. Those ten years should have been the most fruitful and richest years of any young man's life-the years from eighteen to twenty-eight.

I realise now that losing those years was no one's fault but my own.

I worried about everything: my job, my health, my family, and my feeling of inferiority. I was so frightened that I used to cross the street to avoid meeting people I knew. When I met a friend on the street, I would often pretend not to notice him, because I was afraid of being snubbed.

I was so afraid of meeting strangers-so terrified in their presence-that in one s.p.a.ce of two weeks I lost out on three different jobs simply because I didn't have the courage to tell those three different prospective employers what I knew I could do.

Then one day eight years ago, I conquered worry in one afternoon-and have rarely worried since then. That afternoon I was in the office of a man who had had far more troubles than I had ever faced, yet he was one of the most cheerful men I had ever known. He had made a fortune in 1929, and lost every cent. He had made another fortune in 1933, and lost that; and another fortune in 1937, and lost that, too. He had gone through bankruptcy and had been hounded by enemies and creditors. Troubles that would have broken some men and driven them to suicide rolled off him like water off a duck's back.

As I sat in his office that day eight years ago, I envied him and wished that G.o.d had made me like him.

As we were talking, he tossed a letter to me that he had received that morning and said: "Read that."

It was an angry letter, raising several embarra.s.sing questions. If I had received such a letter, it would have sent me into a tailspin. I said: "Bill, how are you going to answer it?"

"Well," Bill said, "I'll tell you a little secret. Next time you've really got something to worry about, take a pencil and a piece of paper, and sit down and write out in detail just what's worrying you. Then put that piece of paper in the lower right-hand drawer of your desk. Wait a couple of weeks, and then look at it. If what you wrote down still worries you when you read it, put that piece of paper back in your lower right-hand drawer. Let it sit there for another two weeks. It will be safe there. Nothing will happen to it. But in the meantime, a lot may happen to the problem that is worrying you. I have found that, if only I have patience, the worry that is trying to hara.s.s me will often collapse like a p.r.i.c.ked balloon."

That bit of advice made a great impression on me. I have been using Bill's advice for years now, and, as a result, I rarely worry about anything.

Times solves a lot of things. Time may also solve what you are worrying about today.

I Was Warned Not To Try To Speak Or To Move Even A Finger.

By Joseph L. Ryan.

Supervisor, Foreign Division, Royal Typewriter Company 51 Judson Place, Rockville Centre, Long Island, New York Several years ago I was a witness in a lawsuit that caused me a great deal of mental strain and worry. After the case was over, and I was returning home in the train, I had a sudden and violent physical collapse. Heart trouble. I found it almost impossible to breathe.

When I got home the doctor gave me an injection. I wasn't in bed-I hadn't been able to get any farther than the living-room settee. When I regained consciousness, I saw that the parish priest was already there to give me final absolution!

I saw the stunned grief on the faces of my family. I knew my number was up. Later, I found out that the doctor had prepared my wife for the fact that I would probably be dead in less than thirty minutes. My heart was so weak I was warned not to try to speak or to move even a finger.

I had never been a saint, but I had learned one thing-not to argue with G.o.d. So I closed my eyes and said: "Thy will be done. ... If it has to come now, Thy will be done."

As soon as I gave in to that thought, I seemed to relax all over. My terror disappeared, and I asked myself quickly what was the worst that could happen now. Well, the worst seemed to be a possible return of the spasms, with excruciating pains- then all would be over. I would go to meet my Maker and soon be at peace.

I lay on that settee and waited for an hour, but the pains didn't return. Finally, I began to ask myself what I would do with my life if I didn't die now. I determined that I would exert every effort to regain my health. I would stop abusing myself with tension and worry and rebuild my strength.

That was four years ago. I have rebuilt my strength to such a degree that even my doctor is amazed at the improvement my cardiograms show. I no longer worry. I have a new zest for life. But I can honestly say that if I hadn't faced the worst- my imminent death-and then tried to improve upon it, I don't believe I would be here today. If I hadn't accepted the worst, I believe I would have died from my own fear and panic.

Mr. Ryan is alive today because he made use of the principle described in the Magic Formula-FACE THE WORST THAT CAN HAPPEN.

I Am A Great Dismisser.

By Ordway Tead.

Chairman of the Board of Higher Education New York, New York WORRY is a habit-a habit that I broke long ago. I believe that my habit of refraining from worrying is due largely to three things.

First: I am too busy to indulge in self-destroying anxiety. I have three main activities-each one of which should be virtually a full-time job in itself. I lecture to large groups at Columbia University: I am also chairman of the Board of Higher Education of New York City. I also have charge of the Economic and Social Book Department of the publis.h.i.+ng firm of Harper and Brothers. The insistent demands of these three tasks leave me no time to fret and stew and run around in circles.

Second: I am a great dismisser. When I turn from one task to another, I dismiss all thoughts of the problems I had been thinking about previously. I find it stimulating and refres.h.i.+ng to turn from one activity to another. It rests me. It clears my mind.

Third: I have had to school myself to dismiss all these problems from my mind when I close my office desk. They are always continuing. Each one always has a set of unsolved problems demanding my attention. If I carried these issues home with me each night, and worried about them, I would destroy my health; and, in addition, I would destroy all ability to cope with them.

Ordway Tead is a master of the Four Good Working Habits. Do you remember what they are?

If I Had Mot Stopped Worrying, I Would Have Been In My Grave Long Ago.

By Connie Mack.

I have been in professional baseball for over sixty-three years. When I first started, back in the eighties, I got no salary at all. We played on vacant lots, and stumbled over tin cans and discarded horse collars. When the game was over, we pa.s.sed the hat. The pickings were pretty slim for me, especially since I was the main support of my widowed mother and my younger brothers and sisters. Sometimes the ball team would have to put on a strawberry supper or a clambake to keep going.

I have had plenty of reason to worry. I am the only baseball manager who ever finished in last place for seven consecutive years. I am the only manager who ever lost eight hundred games in eight years. After a series of defeats, I used to worry until I could hardly eat or sleep. But I stopped worrying twenty-five years ago, and I honestly believe that if I hadn't stopped worrying then, I would have been in my grave long ago.

As I looked back over my long life (I was born when Lincoln was President), I believe I was able to conquer worry by doing these things: 1. I saw how futile it was. I saw it was getting me nowhere and was threatening to wreck my career.

2. I saw it was going to ruin my health.

3. I kept myself so busy planning and working to win games in the future that I had no time to worry over games that were already lost.

4. I finally made it a rule never to call a player's attention to his mistakes until twenty-four hours after the game. In my early days, I used to dress and undress with the players. If the team had lost, I found it impossible to refrain from criticising the players and from arguing with them bitterly over their defeats. I found this only increased my worries. Criticising a player in front of the others didn't make him want to co-operate. It really made him bitter. So, since I couldn't be sure of controlling myself and my tongue immediately after a defeat, I made it a rule never to see the players right after a defeat. I wouldn't discuss the defeat with them until the next day. By that time, I had cooled off, the mistakes didn't loom so large, and I could talk things over calmly and the men wouldn't get angry and try to defend themselves.

5. I tried to inspire players by building them up with praise instead of tearing them down with faultfinding. I tried to have a good word for everybody.

6. I found that I worried more when I was tired; so I spend ten hours in bed every night, and I take a nap every afternoon. Even a five-minute nap helps a lot.

7. I believe I have avoided worries and lengthened my life by continuing to be active. I am eighty-five, but I am not going to retire until I begin telling the same stories over and over. When I start doing that, I'll know then that I am growing old.

Connie Mack never read a book on HOW TO STOP WORRYING so he made out his own roles. Why don't YOU make a list of the rules you have found helpful in the past-and write them out here?

Ways I Have Found Helpful in Overcoming Worry: 1 __________________.

2 __________________.

3 __________________.

4 __________________.

One At A Time Gentleman, One At A Time By John Homer Miller Author of Take a Look at Yourself I Discovered years ago that I could not escape my worries by trying to ran away from them, but that I could banish them by changing my mental att.i.tude toward them. I discovered that my worries were not outside but inside myself.

As the years have gone by, I have found that time automatically takes care of most of my worries. In fact, I frequently find it difficult to remember what I was worrying about a week ago. So I have a rule: never to fret over a problem until it is at least a week old. Of course, I can't always put a problem completely out of mind for a week at a time, but I can refuse to allow it to dominate my mind until the allotted seven days have pa.s.sed, either the problem has solved itself or I have so changed my mental att.i.tude that it no longer has the power to trouble me greatly.

I have been greatly helped by reading the philosophy of Sir William Osier, a man who was not only a great physician, but a great artist in the greatest of all arts: the art of living. One of his statements has helped me immensely in banis.h.i.+ng worries. Sir William said, at a dinner given in his honour: "More than to anything else, I owe whatever success I have had to the power of settling down to the day's work and trying to do it well to the best of my ability and letting the future take care of itself."

In handling troubles, I have taken as my motto the words of an old parrot that my father used to tell me about. Father told me of a parrot that was kept in a cage hanging over the doorway in a hunting club in Pennsylvania. As the members of the club pa.s.sed through the door, the parrot repeated over and over the only words he knew: "One at a time, gentlemen, one at a time." Father taught me to handle my troubles that way: "One at a time, gentlemen, one at a time." I have found that taking my troubles one at a time has helped me to maintain calm and composure amidst pressing duties and unending engagements. "One at a time, gentlemen, one at a time."

Here again, we have one of the basic principles in conquering worry: LIVE IN DAY-TIGHT COMPARTMENTS. Why don't you turn back and read that chapter again?

I Now Look For The Green Light.

By Joseph M. Cotter.

1534 Fargo Avenue, Chicago, Illinois.

From the time I was a small boy, throughout the early stages of young manhood, and during my adult life, I was a professional worrier. My worries were many and varied. Some were real; most of them were imaginary. Upon rare occasions I would find myself without anything to worry about-then I would worry for fear I might be overlooking something.

Then, two years ago, I started out on a new way of living. This required making a self-a.n.a.lysis of my faults-and a very few virtues-a "searching and fearless moral inventory" of myself. This brought out clearly what was causing all this worry.

The fact was that I could not live for today alone. I was fretful of yesterday's mistakes and fearful of the future.

I was told over and over that "today was the tomorrow I had worried about yesterday". But it wouldn't work on me. I was advised to live on a twenty-four-hour programme. I was told that today was the only day over which I had any control and that I should make the most of my opportunities each day. I was told that if I did that, I would be so busy I would have no time to worry about any other day-past or future. That advise was logical, but somehow I found it hard to put these darned ideas to work for me.

Then like a shot from out of the dark, I found the answer- and where do you suppose I found it? On a North-western Railroad platform at seven P.M. on May 31, 1945. It was an important hour for me. That is why I remember it so clearly.

We were taking some friends to the train. They were leaving on The City of Los Angeles, a streamliner, to return from a vacation. War was still on-crowds were heavy that year. Instead of boarding the train with my wife, I wandered down the tracks towards the front of the train. I stood looking at the big s.h.i.+ny engine for a minute. Presently I looked down the track and saw a huge semaph.o.r.e. An amber light was showing. Immediately this light turned to a bright green. At that moment, the engineer started clanging a bell; I heard the familiar "All aboard!" and, in a matter of seconds, that huge streamliner began to move out of that station on its 2,300-mile trip.

My mind started spinning. Something was trying to make sense to me. I was experiencing a miracle. Suddenly it dawned on me. The engineer had given me the answer I had been seeking. He was starting out on that long journey with only one green light to go by. If I had been in his place, I would want to see all the green lights for the entire journey. Impossible, of course, yet that was exactly what I was trying to do with my life-sitting in the station, going no place, because I was trying too hard to see what was ahead for me.

My thoughts kept coming. That engineer didn't worry about trouble that he might encounter miles ahead. There probably would be some delays, some slowdowns, but wasn't that why they had signal systems ? Amber lights-reduce speed and take it easy. Red lights-real danger up ahead-stop. That was what made train travel safe. A good signal system.

I asked myself why I didn't have a good signal system for my life. My answer was-I did have one. G.o.d had given it to me. He controls it, so it has to be foolproof. I started looking for a green light. Where could I find it? Well, if G.o.d created the green lights, why not ask Him? I did just that.

And now by praying each morning, I get my green light for that day. I also occasionally get amber lights that slow me down. Sometimes I get red lights that stop me before I crack up. No more worrying for me since that day two years ago when I made this discovery. During those two years, over seven hundred green lights have shown for me, and the trip through life is so much easier without the worry of what colour the next light will be. No matter what colour it may be, I will know what to do.

How John D. Rockefeller Lived on Borrowed Time for Forty-five Tears John D. Rockefeller, Sr., had acc.u.mulated his first million at the age of thirty-three. At the age of forty-three, he had built up the largest monopoly the world has ever seen-the great Standard Oil Company. But where was he at fifty-three? Worry had got him at fifty-three. Worry and high-tension living had already wrecked his health. At fifty-three he "looked like a mummy," says John K. Winkler, one of his biographers.