How to Stop Worrying and Start Living Part 17

At fifty-three, Rockefeller was attacked by mystifying digestive maladies that swept away his hair, even the eyelashes and all but a faint wisp of eyebrow. "So serious was his condition," says Winkler, "that at one time John D. was compelled to exist on human milk." According to the doctors, he had alopecia, a form of baldness that often starts with sheer nerves. He looked so startling, with his stark bald dome, that he had to wear a skullcap. Later, he had wigs made-$500 apiece-and for the rest of his life he wore these silver wigs.

Rockefeller had originally been blessed with an iron const.i.tution. Reared on a farm, he had once had stalwart shoulders, an erect carriage, and a strong, brisk gait.

Yet at only fifty-three-when most men are at their prime- his shoulders drooped and he shambled when he walked. "When he looked in a gla.s.s," says John T. Flynn, another of his biographers, "he saw an old man. The ceaseless work, the endless worry, the streams of abuse, the sleepless nights, and the lack of exercise and rest" had exacted their toll; they had brought him to his knees. He was now the richest man in the world; yet he had to live on a diet that a pauper would have scorned. His income at the time was a million dollars a week- but two dollars a week would probably have paid for all the food he could eat. Acidulated milk and a few biscuits were all the doctors would allow him. His skin had lost its colour-it looked like old parchment drawn tight across his bones. And nothing but medical care, the best money could buy, kept him from dying at the age of fifty-three.

How did it happen? Worry. Shock. High-pressure and high-tension living. He "drove" himself literally to the edge of the grave. Even at the age of twenty-three, Rockefeller was already pursuing his goal with such grim determination that, according to those who knew him, "nothing lightened his countenance save news of a good bargain." When he made a big profit, he would do a little war dance-throw his hat on the floor and break into a jig. But if he lost money, he was ill! He once s.h.i.+pped $40,000 worth of grain by way of the Great Lakes. No insurance. It cost too much: $150. That night a vicious storm raged over Lake Erie. Rockefeller was so worried about losing his cargo that when his partner, George Gardner, reached the office in the morning, he found John D. Rockefeller there, pacing the floor.

"Hurry," he quavered. "Let's see if we can take out insurance now, if it isn't too late!" Gardner rushed uptown and got the insurance; but when he returned to the office, he found John D. in an even worse state of nerves. A telegram had arrived in the meantime: the cargo had landed, safe from the storm. He was sicker than ever now because they had "wasted" the $150! In fact, he was so sick about it that he had to go home and take to his bed. Think of it! At that time, his firm was doing gross business of $500,000 a year-yet he made himself so ill over $150 that he had to go to bed I He had no time for play, no time for recreation, no time for anything except making money and teaching Sunday school. When his partner, George Gardner, purchased a second-hand yacht, with three other men, for $2,000, John D. was aghast, refused to go out in it. Gardner found him working at the office one Sat.u.r.day afternoon, and pleaded: "Come on, John, let's go for a sail. It will do you good. Forget about business. Have a little fun." Rockefeller glared. "George Gardner," he warned, "you are the most extravagant man I ever knew. You are injuring your credit at the banks-and my credit too. First thing you know, you'll be wrecking our business. No, I won't go on your yacht-I don't ever want to see it!" And he stayed plugging in the office all Sat.u.r.day afternoon.

The same lack of humour, the same lack of perspective, characterised John D. all through his business career. Years later he said: "I never placed my head upon the pillow at night without reminding myself that my success might be only temporary."

With millions at his command, he never put his head upon his pillow without worrying about losing his fortune. No wonder worry wrecked his health. He had no time for play or recreation, never went to the theatre, never played cards, never went to a party. As Mark Hanna said, the man was mad about money. "Sane in every other respect, but mad about money." Rockefeller had once confessed to a neighbour in Cleveland, Ohio, that he "wanted to be loved"; yet he was so cold and suspicious that few people even liked him. Morgan once balked at having to do business with him at all. "I don't like the man," he snorted. "I don't want to have any dealings with him." Rockefeller's own brother hated him so much that he removed his children's bodies from the family plot. "No one of my blood," he said, " will ever rest in land controlled by John D." Rockefeller's employees and a.s.sociates lived in holy fear of him, and here is the ironic part: he was afraid of them- afraid they would talk outside the office and "give secrets away".

He had so little faith in human nature that once, when he signed a ten-year contract with an independent refiner, he made the man promise not to tell anyone, not even his wife! "Shut your mouth and ran your business"-that was his motto. Then at the very peak of his prosperity, with gold flowing into his coffers like hot yellow lava pouring down the sides of Vesuvius, his private world collapsed. Books and articles denounced the robber-baron war of the Standard Oil Company!- secret rebates with railroads, the ruthless cras.h.i.+ng of all rivals. In the oil fields of Pennsylvania, John D. Rockefeller was the most hated man on earth. He was hanged in effigy by the men he had crushed. Many of them longed to tie a rope around his withered neck and hang him to the limb of a sour-apple tree. Letters breathing fire and brimstone poured into his office -letters threatening his life.

He hired bodyguards to keep his enemies from killing him. He attempted to ignore this cyclone of hate. He had once said cynically: "You may kick me and abuse me provided you will let me have my own way." But he discovered that he was human after all. He couldn't take hate -and worry too. His health began to crack. He was puzzled and bewildered by this new enemy-illness-which attacked him from within. At first "he remained secretive about his occasional indispositions," tried to put his illness out of his mind. But insomnia, indigestion, and the loss of his hair-all physical symptoms of worry and collapse-were not to be denied. Finally, his doctors told him the shocking truth. He could take his choice: his money and his worries-or his life. They warned him he must either retire or die. He retired. But before he retired, worry, greed, fear had already wrecked his health.

When Ida Tarbell, America's most celebrated female writer of biographies, saw him, she was shocked. She wrote: "An awful age was in his face. He was the oldest man I have ever seen." Old? Why, Rockefeller was then several years younger than General MacArthur was when he recaptured the Philippines! But he was such a physical wreck that Ida Tarbell pitied him. She was working at that time on her powerful book which condemned the Standard Oil and all that it stood for; she certainly had no cause to love the man who had built up this "octopus". Yet, she said that when she saw John D. Rockefeller teaching a Sunday-school cla.s.s, eagerly watching the faces of all those around him-"I had a feeling which I had not expected, and which time intensified. I was sorry for him. I know no companion so terrible as fear."

When the doctors undertook to save Rockefeller's life, they gave him three rules-three rules which he observed, to the letter, for the rest of his life. Here they are: 1. Avoid worry. Never worry about anything, under any kind of circ.u.mstances.

2. Relax, and take plenty of mild exercise in the open air.

3. Watch your diet. Always stop eating while you're still a little hungry.

John D. Rockefeller obeyed those rules; and they probably saved his life. He retired. He learned to play golf. He went in for gardening. He chatted with his neighbours. He played games. He sang songs.

But he did something else too. "During days of torture and nights of insomnia," says Winkler, "John D. had time for reflection." He began to think of other people. He stopped thinking, for once, of how much money he could get; and he began to wonder how much that money could buy in terms of human happiness.

In short. Rockefeller now began to give his millions away! Some of the time it wasn't easy. When he offered money to a church, pulpits all over the country thundered back with cries of "tainted money!" But he kept on giving. He learned of a starving little college on the sh.o.r.es of Lake Michigan that was being foreclosed because of its mortgage. He came to its rescue and poured millions of dollars into that college and built it into the now world-famous University of Chicago. He tried to help the Negroes. He gave money to Negro universities like Tuskegee College, where funds were needed to carry on the work of George Was.h.i.+ngton Carver. He helped to fight hookworm. When Dr. Charles W. Stiles, the hookworm authority, said: "Fifty cents' worth of medicine will cure a man of this disease which ravages the South-but who will give the fifty cents?" Rockefeller gave it. He spent millions on hookworm, stamping out the greatest scourge that has ever handicapped the South. And then he went further. He established a great international foundation-the Rockefeller Foundation-which was to fight disease and ignorance all over the world.

I speak with feeling of this work, for there is a possibility that I may owe my life to the Rockefeller Foundation. How well I remember that when I was in China in 1932, cholera was raging all over the nation. The Chinese peasants were dying like flies; yet in the midst of all this horror, we were able to go to the Rockefeller Medical College in Peking and get a vaccination to protect us from the plague. Chinese and "foreigners" alike, we were able to do that. And that was when I got my first understanding of what Rockefeller's millions were doing for the world.

Never before in history has there ever been anything even remotely like the Rockefeller Foundation. It is something unique. Rockefeller knew that all over the world there are many fine movements that men of vision start. Research is undertaken; colleges are founded; doctors struggle on to fight a disease-but only too often this high-minded work has to die for lack of funds. He decided to help these pioneers of humanity-not to "take them over", but to give them some money and help them help themselves. Today you and I can thank John D. Rockefeller for the miracles of penicillin, and for dozens of other discoveries which his money helped to finance. You can thank him for the fact that your children no longer die from spinal meningitis, a disease that used to kill four out of five. And you can thank him for part of the inroads we have made on malaria and tuberculosis, on influenza and diphtheria, and many other diseases that still plague the world.

And what about Rockefeller? When he gave his money away, did he gain peace of mind? Yes, he was contented at last. "If the public thought of him after 1900 as brooding over the attacks on the Standard Oil," said Allan Kevins, "the public was much mistaken."

Rockefeller was happy. He had changed so completely that he didn't worry at all. In fact, he refused even to lose one night's sleep when he was forced to accept the greatest defeat of his career!

That defeat came when the corporation he had built, the huge Standard Oil, was ordered to pay "the heaviest fine in history". According to the United States Government, the Standard Oil was a monopoly, in direct violation of the ant.i.trust laws. The battle raged for five years. The best legal brains in the land fought on interminably in what was, up to then, the longest court war in history. But Standard Oil lost.

When Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis handed down his decision, lawyers for the defence feared that old John D. would take it very hard. But they didn't know how much he'd changed.

That night one of the lawyers got John D. on the phone. He discussed the decision as gently as he could, and then said with concern: "I hope you won't let this decision upset you, Mr. Rockefeller. I hope you'll get your night's sleep!"

And old John D.? Why, he crackled right back across the wire: "Don't worry, Mr. Johnson, I intend to get a night's sleep. And don't let it bother you either. Good night!"

That from the man who had once taken to his bed because he had lost $150! Yes, it took a long time for John D. to conquer worry. He was "dying" at fifty-three-but he lived to ninety-eight!

Reading A Book On s.e.x Prevented My Marriage From Going On The Rocks.

By B.R.W.

I hate to make this story anonymous. But it is so intimate that I could not possibly use my name. However, Dale Carnegie will vouch for the truth of this story. I first told it to him twelve years ago.

After leaving college, I got a job with a large industrial organisation, and five years later, this company sent me across the Pacific to act as one of its representatives in the Far East. A week before leaving America, I married the sweetest and most lovable woman I have ever known. But our honeymoon was a tragic disappointment for both of us-especially for her. By the time we reached Hawaii she was so disappointed, so heartbroken, that she would have returned to the States, had she not been ashamed to face her old friends and admit failure in what can be-and should be-life's most thrilling adventure.

We lived together two miserable years in the Orient. I was so unhappy that I had sometimes thought of suicide. Then one day I chanced upon a book that changed everything. I have always been a lover of books, and one night while visiting some American friends in the Far East, I was glancing over their well-stocked library when I suddenly saw a book ent.i.tled Ideal Marriage, by Dr. Van de Velde. The t.i.tle sounded like a preachy, goody-goody doc.u.ment. But, out of idle curiosity, I opened it. I saw that it dealt almost entirely with the s.e.xual side of marriage-and dealt with it frankly and without any touch of vulgarity.

If anyone had told me that I ought to read a book on s.e.x, I would have been insulted. Read one? I felt I could write one. But my own marriage was such a bust that I condescended to look this book over, anyway. So I got up the courage to ask my host if I could borrow it. I can truthfully say that reading that book turned out to be one of the important events of my life. My wife also read it. That book turned a tragic marriage into a happy, blissful companions.h.i.+p. If I had a million dollars, I would buy the rights to publish that book and give free copies of it to the countless thousands of bridal couples.

I once read that Dr. John B. Watson, the distinguished psychologist, said: "s.e.x is admittedly the most important subject in life. It is admittedly the thing which causes the most s.h.i.+pwrecks in the happiness of men and women."

If Dr. Watson is correct-and I am persuaded that his statement, sweeping as it is, is almost, if not wholly, true-then why does civilisation permit millions of s.e.xual ignoramuses to marry each year and wreck all chances for married happiness?

If we want to know what is wrong with marriage, we ought to read a book ent.i.tled What is Wrong With Marriage? by Dr. G. V. Hamilton and Kenneth MacGowan. Dr. Hamilton spent four years investigating what is wrong with marriage before writing that book, and he says: "It would take a very reckless psychiatrist to say that most married friction doesn't find its sources in s.e.xual maladjustment. At any rate, the frictions which arise from other difficulties would be ignored in many, many cases if the s.e.xual relation itself were satisfactory."

I know that statement is true. I know from tragic experience.

The book that saved my marriage from s.h.i.+pwreck, Dr. Van de Velde's Ideal Marriage, can be found in most large public libraries, or bought at any bookshop. If you want to give a little gift to some bride and groom, don't give them a carving set. Give them a copy of Ideal Marriage. That book will do more to increase their happiness than all the carving sets in the world.

[Note by Dale Carnegie: If you find Ideal Marriage too expensive, here is another book I can recommend: A Marriage Manual, by Drs. Hannah and Abraham Stone.]

I Was Committing Slow Suicide Because I Didn't Know How To Relax.

By Paul Sampson.

Direct-Mail Advertising, 12815 Sycamore, Wyandotte, Michigan.

UP to six months ago, I was rus.h.i.+ng through life in high gear. I was always tense, never relaxed. I arrived home from work every night worried and exhausted from nervous fatigue Why? Because no one ever said to me: "Paul, you are killing yourself. Why don't you slow down? Why don't you relax?"

I would get up fast in the morning, eat fast, shave fast, dress fast, and drive to work as if I were afraid the steering wheel would fly out the window if I didn't have a death grip on it. I worked fast, hurried home, and at night I even tried to sleep fast.

I was in such a state that I went to see a famous nerve specialist in Detroit. He told me to relax. (By the way, he gave me the same principles for relaxation that are advocated in Chapter 24 of this book.) He told me to think of relaxing all the time-to think about it when I was working, driving, eating, and trying to go to sleep. He told me that I was committing slow suicide because I didn't know how to relax.

Ever since then I have practised relaxation. When I go to bed at night, I don't try to go to sleep until I've consciously relaxed my body and my breathing. And now I wake up in the morning rested-a big improvement, because I used to wake up in the morning tired and tense. I relax now when I eat and when I drive. To be sure, I am alert when driving, but I drive with my mind now instead of my nerves. The most important place I relax is at my work. Several times a day I stop everything and take inventory of myself to see if I am entirely relaxed. When the phone rings now, no longer do I grab it as though someone were trying to beat me to it; and when someone is talking to me, I'm as relaxed as a sleeping baby.

The result? Life is much more pleasant and enjoyable; and I'm completely free of nervous fatigue and nervous worry.

A Real Miracle Happened To Me.

By Mrs. John Burger.

3,940 Colorado Avenue, Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Worry had completely defeated me. My mind was so confused and troubled that I could see no joy in living. My nerves were so strained that I could neither sleep at night nor relax by day. My three young children were widely separated, living with relatives. My husband, having recently returned from the armed service, was in another city trying to establish a law practice. I felt all the insecurities and uncertainties of the postwar readjustment period.

I was threatening my husband's career, my children's natural endowment of a happy, normal home life, and I was also threatening my own life. My husband could find no housing, and the only solution was to build. Everything depended on my getting well. The more I realised this and the harder I would try, the greater would be my fear of failure. Then I developed a fear of planning for any responsibility. I felt that I could no longer trust myself. I felt I was a complete failure.

When all was darkest and there seemed to be no help, my mother did something for me that I shall never forget or cease being grateful for. She shocked me into fighting back. She upbraided me for giving in and for losing control of my nerves and my mind. She challenged me to get up out of bed and fight for all I had. She said I was giving in to the situation, fearing it instead of facing it, running away from life instead of living it.

So I did start fighting from that day on. That very weekend I told my parents they could go home, because I was going to take over; and I did what seemed impossible at the time. I was left alone to care for my two younger children. I slept well, I began to eat better, and my spirits began to improve. A week later when they returned to visit me again, they found me singing at my ironing. I had a sense of well-being because I had begun to fight a battle and I was winning. I shall never forget this lesson. ... If a situation seems insurmountable, face it! Start fighting! Don't give in!

From that time on I forced myself to work, and lost myself in my work. Finally I gathered my children together and joined my husband in our new home. I resolved that I would become well enough to give my lovely family a strong, happy mother. I became engrossed with plans for our home, plans for my children, plans for my husband, plans for everything-except for me. I became too busy to think of myself. And it was then that the real miracle happened.

I grew stronger and stronger and could wake up with the joy of well-being, the joy of planning for the new day ahead, the joy of living. And although days of depression did creep in occasionally after that, especially when I was tired, I would tell myself not to think or try to reason with myself on those days-and gradually they became fewer and fewer and finally disappeared.

Now, a year later, I have a very happy, successful husband, a beautiful home that I can work in sixteen hours a day, and three healthy, happy children-and for myself, peace of mind!

Setbacks (*).

By Ferenc Molnar.

Noted Hungarian Playwright "Work is the best narcotic!"

Exactly fifty years ago my father gave me the words I have lived by ever since. He was a physician. I had just started to study law at the Budapest University. I failed one examination. I thought I could not survive the shame so I sought escape in the consolation of failure's closest friend, alcohol, always at hand: apricot brandy to be exact.

My father called on me unexpectedly. Like a good doctor, he discovered both the trouble and the bottle, in a second. I confessed why I had to escape reality.

The dear old man then and there improvised a prescription. He explained to me that there can be no real escape in alcohol or sleeping pills-or in any drug. For any sorrow there is only one medicine, better and more reliable than all the drugs in the world: work!

How right my father was! Getting used to work might be hard. Sooner or later you succeed. It has, of course, the quality of all the narcotics. It becomes habit-forming. And once the habit is formed, sooner or later, it becomes impossible to break one's self of it. I have never been able to break myself of the habit for fifty years.

[*] Reprinted with permission of the author, from Words to Live By-A Little Treasury of Inspiration and Wisdom, published by Simon and Schuster, Inc., copyright, 1947, by William Nichols.

I Was So Worried I Didn't Eat A Bite Of Solid Food For Eighteen Days.

By Kathryne Holcombe Farmer.

Sheriff's Office, Mobile, Alabama.

Three months ago, I was so worried that I didn't sleep for four days and nights; and I did not eat a bite of solid food for eighteen days. Even the smell of food made me violently sick. I cannot find words to describe the mental anguish I endured. I wonder whether h.e.l.l has any worse tortures than what I went through. I felt as if I would go insane or die. I knew that I couldn't possibly continue living as I was.

The turning point of my life was the day I was given an advance copy of this book. During the last three months, I have practically lived with this book, studying every page, desperately trying to find a new way of life. The change that has occurred in my mental outlook and emotional stability is almost unbelievable. I am now able to endure the battles of each pa.s.sing day. I now realise that in the past, I was being driven half mad not by today's problems but by the bitterness and anxiety over something that had happened yesterday or that I feared might happen tomorrow.

But now, when I find myself starting to worry about anything, I immediately stop and start to apply some of the principles I learned from studying this book. If I am tempted to tense up over something that must be done today, I get busy and do it immediately and get it off my mind.

When I am faced with the kind of problems that used to drive me half crazy, I now calmly set about trying to apply the three steps outlined in Chapter 2, Part One. First, I ask myself what is the worst that can possibly happen. Second, I try to accept it mentally. Third, I concentrate on the problem and see how I can improve the worst which I am already willing to accept- if I have to.

When I find myself worrying about a thing I cannot change -and do not want to accept-I stop myself short and repeat this little prayer: "G.o.d grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference."

Since reading this book, I am really experiencing a new and glorious way of life. I am no longer destroying my health and happiness by anxiety. I can sleep nine hours a night now. I enjoy my food. A veil has been lifted from me. A door has been opened. I can now see and enjoy the beauty of the world which surrounds me. I thank G.o.d for life now and for the privilege of living in such a wonderful world.

May I suggest that you also read this book over: keep it by your bed: underscore the parts that apply to your problems. Study it; use it. For this is not a "reading book" in the ordinary sense; it is written as a "guidebook"-to a new way of life!

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