Dale Carnegie was an American writer and author of several bestselling self-help books. One of his books “ How to Stop Worrying and Start Living “ was first published in 1948, and today, almost 72 years later, the content is still relevant.
The book is a collection of several techniques to conquer your personal worries and includes real life examples of people practicing these techniques successfully to stop worrying, despite facing severe problems.
I highly recommend you read the entire book to have a comprehensive understanding of the author’s experience. In this post, I explain a few intriguing rules mentioned in the book to give you a glimpse of his work.
P.S : Most of these rules are just common sense, and are probably known to everyone. However, It’s surprisingly easy to lose your logic when facing adverse situations and we could always use a basic refresher every now and then.
Live in Day – Tight Compartments
Anyone can carry his burden, however hard, until nightfall. Anyone can do his work, however hard, for one day. Anyone can live sweetly, patiently, lovingly, purely, till the sun goes down. And this is all that life really means.
Robert Louis Stevenson
When you think about it, we spend most of our time worrying about either the past or the future. We can’t change the past and the future is unpredictable, the only time we can influence is today i.e till bedtime. So, take it one day at a time and focus all your efforts on what you can control, the present.
It is not our goal to see what lies dimly in the distance but to do what clearly lies at hand.
Thomas Carlisle
Taking it a step further, you can break your days into hourly compartments. Take one task at a time, one hour at a time. Concentrating your efforts on the task at hand doesn’t give you the leisure to ponder upon the past or the future. More importantly, it will be a positive step towards solving your problems, instead of just worrying about them.
Ask the Relevant Questions
The next time you face any problem that keeps you up at night, ask yourself the following questions
- What is the cause of the problem?
- What are the possible solutions?
- What can I start doing immediately to solve it?
- What is the worst that can possibly happen?
- What are the chances that this worst possible outcome will occur?
These questions unconsciously force you to approach the problem in an objective manner.
The last question is particularly important. Once you determine the worst possible outcome, and if the chances of it happening are significant, prepare yourself to accept it. From there, work towards improving upon the worst and you have nothing to worry about anymore.
Keep Busy
The secret of being miserable is to have the leisure to bother about whether you are happy or not.
George Bernard Shaw
This rule is pretty straightforward. Keep yourself so busy that you neither have the time nor the energy to worry. Human mind is incapable of thinking about more than one thing at a time.
When your mind is vacant, nature rushes to fill it with all kinds of emotions and overstretched imaginations. Losing yourself in action doing constructive things is the only way out of it.
Put a Stop – Loss Order
Stop Loss order is a popular loss – limiting strategy among stock traders. Here’s an example.
Suppose you buy a stock for Rs 100 and put in a stop loss order of 5% below your purchase price. As soon as the stock price declines to Rs 95 , it will be sold automatically.
There is much debate on the efficiency of this strategy in the investing world. But, you can definitely use this technique to manage your personal worries.
Put a stop loss on anything that annoys you or makes you impatient and lose your temper.
Let’s say you value punctuality but have a colleague or vendor, who is always late for appointments. Inform him beforehand that you have a stop-loss of 15 minutes. So whenever you plan to meet him, you wait for a maximum of 15 minutes and then you leave, as simple as that.
Then, you don’t need to get anxious about his whereabouts.
Understand Criticism
Remember that unjust criticism is often a disguised compliment. Remember that no one ever kicks a dead dog.
Dale Carnegie
Criticism is a cause of worry for most of us. No matter how open minded we convince ourselves to be, criticism hurts, maybe just a little, but always.
Understanding criticism is therefore very important to keep our peace of mind. Basically there are two types of critics.
The good ones are always unbiased, constructive and helpful. Any criticism from such people should be welcomed and acted upon, after applying your own filters, of course.
The bad ones most often criticize because they derive a sense of importance from the act itself. Unless they have a constructive solution to offer, you don’t need to think about them at all. Such criticism is rooted in jealousy and envy, and there’s nothing we can do about it.
Summary
If you’ve directly scrolled down to this section, here’s a simple one line summary on each of the discussed rules.
- Do what you’re supposed to do today. The past doesn’t matter and the future will take care of itself.
- Ask yourself the relevant questions and preferably, write down the answers. Be prepared to accept the worst possible outcome.
- Crowd out worry from your mind by keeping busy.
- Have a stop loss on your worries.
- Actively pursue constructive criticism and ignore the rest.
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Know any other such awesome books? Do let me know!!!
