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Dale Carnegie International Bestseller (How to Win Friends and Influence People / How to Stop Worrying & Start Living (Revised)

Dale Carnegie

Last accessed on Wednesday July 13, 2022

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“Our main business is not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand.”

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Whether in war or peace, the chief difference between good thinking and bad thinking is this: good thinking deals with causes and effects and leads to logical, constructive planning; bad thinking frequently leads to tension and nervous breakdowns.

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One of the most tragic things I know about human nature is that all of us tend to put off living. We are all dreaming of some magical rose garden over the horizon-instead of enjoying the roses that are blooming outside our windows today.

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1. Do I tend to put off living in the present in order to worry about the future, or to yearn for some “magical rose garden over the horizon”? 2. Do I sometimes embitter the present by regretting things that happened in the past- that are over and done with? 3. Do I get up in the morning determined to “Seize the day”-to get the utmost out of these twenty-four hours? 4. Can I get more out of life by “living in day-tight compartments”? 5. When shall I start to do this? Next week? .. Tomorrow? ... Today?

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instead of the firm losing twenty thousand, we made fifteen thousand. “I probably would never have been able to do this if I had kept on worrying, because one of the worst features about worrying is that it destroys our ability to concentrate. When we worry, our minds jump here and there and everywhere, and we lose all power of decision. However, when we force ourselves to face the worst and accept it mentally, we then eliminate all those vague imaginings and put ourselves in a position in which we are able to concentrate on our problem.

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Plato said that “the greatest mistake physicians make is that they attempt to cure the body without attempting to cure the mind; yet the mind and body are one and should not be treated separately!”

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“When the officer [bearing the message] reached me,” Grant wrote, “I was still suffering with the sick headache, but the instant I saw the contents of the note, I was cured.”

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Worry can even cause tooth decay. Dr. William I.L. McGonigle said in an address before the American Dental Association that “unpleasant emotions such as those caused by worry, fear, nagging ... may upset the body’s calcium balance and cause tooth decay”

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We have inner resources that we have probably never tapped. As Thoreau said in his immortal book, Walden: “I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavour. ... If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavours to live the life he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.”

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The fanatical followers of the prophet Mohammed often had verses from the Koran tattooed on their breasts. I would like to have the title of this Chapter—tattooed on the breast of every reader of this book: “Business men who do not know how to fight worry die young.”

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“If a man will devote his time to securing facts in an impartial, objective way, his worries will usually evaporate in the light of knowledge.”

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While trying to collect the facts about the problem that is worrying me, I sometimes pretend that I am a lawyer preparing to argue the other side of the issue. In other words, I try to get all the facts against myself-all the facts that are damaging to my wishes, all the facts I don’t like to face. Then I write down both my side of the case and the other side of the case-and I generally find that the truth lies somewhere in between these two extremities.

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For years, whenever I was worried I had always gone to my typewriter and written down two questions-and the answers to these questions: “1. What am I worrying about? “2. What can I do about it? “I used to try to answer those questions without writing them down. But I stopped that years ago. I found that writing down both the questions and the answers clarifies my thinking.

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banish about ninety per cent of my worries by taking these four steps: “1. Writing down precisely what I am worrying about. “2. Writing down what I can do about it. “3. Deciding what to do. “4. Starting immediately to carry out that decision.”

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Why don’t you employ Galen Litchfield’s technique to one of your worries right now? Here is question No. 1 -What am I worrying about? (Please pencil the answer to that question in the space below.) Question No. 2 -What can I do about it? (Please write your answer to that question in the space below.) Question No. 3 -Here is what I am going to do about it. Question No. 4 -When am I going to start doing it? ❑

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Alexis Carrel as saying: “Business men who do not know how to fight worry die young.”

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Second, I made a new rule-a rule that everyone who wishes to present a problem to me must first prepare and submit a memorandum answering these four questions: “Question 1: What is the problem? ("In the old days we used to spend an hour or two in a worried conference without anyone’s knowing specifically and concretely what the real problem was. We used to work ourselves into a lather discussing our troubles without ever troubling to write out specifically what our problem was.) “Question 2: What is the cause of the problem? ("As I look back over my career, I am appalled at the wasted hours I have spent in worried conferences without ever trying to find out clearly the conditions which lay at the root of the problem.) “Question 3: What are all possible solutions of the problem? ("In the old days, one man in the conference would suggest one solution. Someone else would argue with him. Tempers would flare. We would often get clear off the subject, and at the end of the conference no one would have written down all the various things we could do to attack the problem.) “Question 4: What solution do you suggest? ("I used to go into a conference with a man who had spent hours worrying about a situation and going around in circles without ever once thinking through all possible solutions and then writing down: ‘this is the solution I recommend.')

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reduce your worries by fifty per cent. Here they are again: 1. What is the problem? 2. What is the CAUSE of the problem? 3. What are all possible solutions to the problem? 4. What solution do you suggest?

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it is difficult to worry while you are busy doing something that requires planning and thinking. In my case, building the boat had knocked worry out of the ring. So I resolved to keep busy.

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Winston Churchill said when he was working eighteen hours a day at the height of the war. When he was asked if he worried about his tremendous responsibilities, he said: “I'm too busy. I have no time for worry.”

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Why does such a simple thing as keeping busy help to drive out anxiety? Because of a law-one of the most fundamental laws ever revealed by psychology. And that law is: that it is utterly impossible for any human mind, no matter how brilliant, to think of more than one thing at any given time. You

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“I must lose myself in action, lest I wither in despair.”

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“Worry is most apt to ride you ragged not when you are in action, but when the day’s work is done. Your imagination can run riot then and bring up all sorts of ridiculous possibilities and magnify each little blunder. At such a time,” he continues, “your mind is like a motor operating without its load. It races and threatens to burn out its bearings or even to tear itself to bits. The remedy for worry is to get completely occupied doing something constructive.”

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George Bernard Shaw was right. He summed it all up when he said: “The secret of being miserable is to have the leisure to bother about whether you are happy or not.” So don’t bother to think about it! Spit on your hands and get busy. Your blood will start circulating; your mind will start ticking -and pretty soon this whole positive upsurge of life in your body will drive worry from your mind. Get busy. Keep busy. It’s the cheapest kind of medicine there is on this earth-and one of the best.

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“little things” in marriage drive people to the edge of insanity and cause “half the heartaches in the world.”

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Judge Joseph Sabath of Chicago, after acting as arbiter in more than forty thousand unhappy marriages, declared: “Trivialities are at the bottom of most marital unhappiness”; and Frank S. Hogan, District Attorney of New York County, says: “Fully half the cases in our criminal courts originate in little things. Bar-room bravado, domestic wrangling, an insulting remark, a disparaging word, a rude action-those are the little things that lead to assault and murder. Very few of us are cruelly and greatly wronged. It is the small blows to our self- esteem, the indignities, the little jolts to our vanity, which cause half the heartaches in the world.”

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“Life is too short to be little.”

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Here we are on this earth, with only a few more decades to live, and we lose many irreplaceable hours brooding over grievances that, in a year’s time, will be forgotten by us and by everybody. No, let us devote our life to worth-while actions and feelings, to great thoughts, real affections and enduring undertakings. For life is too short to be little.”

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On the slope of Long’s Peak in Colorado lies the ruin of 3 gigantic tree. Naturalists tell us that it stood for some four hundred years. It was a seedling when Columbus landed at San Salvador, and half grown when the Pilgrims settled at Plymouth. During the course of its long life it was struck by lightning fourteen times, and the innumerable avalanches and storms of four centuries thundered past it. It survived them all. In the end, however, an army of beetles attacked the tree and leveled it to the ground. The insects ate their way through the bark and gradually destroyed the inner strength of the tree by their tiny but incessant attacks. A forest giant which age had not withered, nor lightning blasted, nor storms subdued, fell at last before beetles so small that a man could crush them between his forefinger and his thumb. Aren’t we all like that battling giant of the forest? Don’t we manage somehow to survive the rare storms and avalanches and lightning blasts of We, only to let our hearts be eaten out by little beetles of worry-little beetles that could be crushed between a finger and a thumb?

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The most famous insurance company on earth-Lloyd’s of London-has made countless millions out of the tendency of everybody to worry about things that rarely happen. Lloyd’s of London bets people that the disasters they are worrying about will never occur. However, they don’t call it betting. They call it insurance. But it is really betting based on the law of averages. This great insurance firm has been going strong for two hundred years; and unless human nature changes, it will still be going strong fifty centuries from now by insuring shoes and ships and sealing-wax against disasters that, by the law of average, don’t happen nearly so often as people imagine.

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the facts are that, according to the law of averages, it is just as dangerous, just as fatal, to try to live from age fifty to age fifty-five in peace- time as it was

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As you and I march across the decades of time, we are going to meet a lot of unpleasant situations that are so. They cannot be otherwise. We have our choice. We can either accept them as inevitable and adjust ourselves to them, or we can ruin our lives with rebellion and maybe end up with a nervous breakdown.

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circumstances alone do not make us happy or unhappy. It is the way we react to circumstances that determines our feelings. Jesus said that the kingdom of heaven is within you. That is where the kingdom of hell is, too.

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J.C. Penney, founder of the nation-wide chain of Penney stores, said to me: “I wouldn’t worry if I lost every cent I have because I don’t see what is to be gained by worrying. I do the best job I possibly can; and leave the results in the laps of the gods.” Henry Ford told me much the same thing. “When I can’t handle events,” he said, “I let them handle themselves.” When I asked K.T. Keller, president of the Chrysler Corporation, how he kept from worrying, he said: “When I am up against a tough situation, if I can do anything about it, I do it. If I can’t, I just forget it. I never worry about the future, because I know no man living can possibly figure out what is going to happen in the future. There are so many forces that will affect that future! Nobody can tell what prompts those forces-or understand them. So why worry about them?” K. T. Keller would be embarrassed if you told him he is a philosopher. He is just a good business man, yet he has stumbled on the same philosophy that Epictetus taught in Rome nineteen centuries ago. “There is only one way to happiness,” Epictetus taught the Romans, “and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power of our will.”

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“When we stop fighting the inevitable,” said Elsie Mac-Cormick in a Reader’s Digest article, “we release energy which enables us to create a richer life.”

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No one living has enough emotion and vigour to fight the inevitable and, at the same time, enough left over to create a new life. Choose one or the other. You can either bend with the inevitable sleet-storms of life-or you can resist them and break!

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God grant me the serenity To accept the things I cannot change; The courage to change the things I can; And the wisdom to know the difference.

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when a screech owl was screeching in the woods along the shore of Walden Pond, Henry Thoreau dipped his goose quill into his homemade ink and wrote in his diary: “The cost of a thing is the amount of what I call life, which is required to be exchanged for it immediately or in the long run.” To put it another way: we are fools when we overpay for a thing in terms of what it takes out of our very existence.

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When Benjamin Franklin was seven years old, he made a mistake that he remembered for seventy years. When he was a lad of seven, he fell in love with a whistle. He was so excited about it that he went into the toyshop, piled all his coppers on the counter, and demanded the whistle without even asking its price. “I then came home,” he wrote to a friend seventy years later, “and went whistling all over the house, much pleased with my whistle.” But when his older brothers and sisters found out that he had paid far more for his whistle than he should have paid, they gave him the horse laugh; and, as he said: “I cried with vexation.” Years later, when Franklin was a world-famous figure, and Ambassador to France, he still remembered that the fact that he had paid too much for his whistle had caused him “more chagrin than the whistle gave him pleasure.” But the lesson it taught Franklin was cheap in the end. “As I grew up,” he said, “and came into the world and observed the actions of men, I thought I met with many, very many, who gave too much for the whistle. In short, I conceive that a great part of the miseries of mankind are brought upon them by the false estimates they have made of the value of things, and by their giving too much for their whistles.

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Rule 5: Whenever we are tempted to throw good money after bad in terms of human living, let’s stop and ask ourselves these three Questions: 1. How much does this thing I am worrying about really matter to me? 2. At what point shall I set a “stop-loss” order on this worry -and forget it? 3. Exactly how much shall I pay for this whistle? Have I already paid more than it is worth? ❑

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should have had the sense to do what George Washington Carver, the Negro scientist, did when he lost forty thousand dollars in a bank crash-the savings of a lifetime. When someone asked him if he knew he was bankrupt, he replied: “Yes, I heard”-and went on with his teaching. He wiped the loss out of his mind so completely that he never mentioned it again. Here is the second thing I should have done: I should have analysed my mistakes and learned a lasting lesson.

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If you were to read everything that has ever been written about worry by the great scholars of all time, you would never read anything more basic or more profound than such hackneyed proverbs as “Don’t cross your bridges until you come to them” and “Don’t cry over spilt milk.”

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Part Three In A Nutshell - How To Break the Worry Habit Before It Breaks You RULE 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”. RULE 2: Don’t fuss about trifles. Don’t permit little things-the mere termites of life-to ruin your happiness. RULE 3: Use the law of averages to outlaw your worries. Ask yourself: “What are the odds against this thing’s happening at all?” RULE 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.” RULE 5: Put a “stop-loss” order on your worries. Decide just how much anxiety a thing may be worth-and refuse to give it any more. RULE 6: Let the past bury its dead. Don’t saw sawdust.

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Marcus Aurelius, summed it up in eight words-eight words that can determine your destiny: “Our life is what our thoughts make it.”

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Norman Vincent Peale, “you are not what you think you are; but what you think, you are.”

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‘He who conquers his spirit is mightier than he who taketh a city.’

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Napoleon and Helen Keller are perfect illustrations of Milton’s statement: Napoleon had everything men usually crave-glory, power, riches-yet he said at St. Helena: “I have never known six happy days in my life”; while Helen Keller- blind, deaf, dumb-declared: “I have found life so beautiful.” If half a century of living has taught me anything at all, it has taught me that “Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.”

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William James tells us that we cannot instantly change our emotions just by “making up our minds to”-but that we can change our actions. And that when we change our actions, we will automatically change our feelings. “Thus,” he explains, “The sovereign voluntary path to cheerfulness, if your cheerfulness be lost, is to sit up cheerfully and to act and speak as if cheerfulness were already there.”

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Men do not attract that which they want, but that which they are. ... The divinity that shapes our ends is in ourselves. It is our very self. ... All that a man achieves is the direct result of his own thoughts. ... A man can only rise, conquer and achieve by lifting up his thoughts. He can only remain weak and abject and miserable by refusing to lift up his thoughts.”

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Just For Today 1. Just for today I will be happy. This assumes that what Abraham Lincoln said is true, that “most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.” Happiness is from within; it is not a matter of externals. 2. Just for today I will try to adjust myself to what is, and not try to adjust everything to my own desires. I will take my family, my business, and my luck as they come and fit myself to them. 3. Just for today I will take care of my body. I will exercise it, care for it, nourish it, not abuse it nor neglect it, so that it will be a perfect machine for my bidding. 4. Just for today I will try to strengthen my mind. I will learn something useful. I will not be a mental loafer. I will read something that requires effort, thought and concentration. 5. Just for today I will exercise my soul in three ways: I will do somebody a good turn and not get found out. I will do at least two things I don’t want to do, as William James suggests, just for exercise. 6. Just for today I will be agreeable. I will look as well as I can, dress as becomingly as possible, talk low, act courteously, be liberal with praise, criticise not at all, nor find fault with anything and not try to regulate nor improve anyone. 7. Just for today I will try to live through this day only, not to tackle my whole life problem at once. I can do things for twelve hours that would appall me if I had to keep them up for a lifetime. 8. Just for today I will have a programme. I will write down what I expect to do every hour. I may not follow it exactly, but I will have it. It will eliminate two pests, hurry and indecision. 9. Just for today I will have a quiet half-hour all by myself and relax. In this half-hour sometimes I will think of God, so as to get a little more perspective into my life. 10. Just for today I will be unafraid, especially I will not be afraid to be happy, to enjoy what is beautiful, to love, and to believe that those I love, love me.

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When we hate our enemies, we are giving them power over us: power over our sleep, our appetites, our blood pressure, our health, and our happiness. Our enemies would dance with joy if only they knew how they were worrying us, lacerating us and getting even with us! Our hate is not hurting them, but our hate is turning our own days and nights into a hellish turmoil.

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Shakespeare put it: Heat not a furnace for your foe so hot That it do singe yourself.

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George Rona discovered for himself that “a soft answer turneth away wrath”.

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When Laurence Jones was asked afterward if he didn’t hate the men who had dragged him up the road to hang him and burn him, he replied that he was too busy with his cause to hate-too absorbed in something bigger than himself. “I have no time to quarrel,” he said, “no time for regrets, and no man can force me to stoop low enough to hate him.”

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Perhaps Lincoln was right. If you and I had inherited the same physical, mental, and emotional characteristics that our enemies have inherited, and if life had done to us what it has done to them, we would act exactly as they do.

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Rule 2 is: 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.

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Marcus Aurelius, one of the wisest men who ever ruled the Roman Empire. He wrote in his diary one day: “I am going to meet people today who talk too much-people who are selfish, egotistical, ungrateful. But I won’t be surprised or disturbed, for I couldn’t imagine a world without such people.”

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There are thousands of women like her, women who are ill from “ingratitude”, loneliness, and neglect. They long to be loved; but the only way in this world that they can ever hope to be loved is to stop asking for it and to start pouring out love without hope of return.

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“The ideal man,” said Aristotle, “takes joy in doing favours for others; but he feels ashamed to have others do favours for him. For it is a mark of superiority to confer a kindness; but it is a mark of inferiority to receive it.”

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So let us remember that to raise grateful children, we have to be grateful.

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About ninety per cent of the things in our lives are right and about ten per cent are wrong. If we want to be happy, all we have to do is to concentrate on the ninety per cent that are right and ignore the ten per cent that are wrong.

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Logan Pearsall Smith packed a lot of wisdom into a few words when he said: “There are two things to aim at in life: first, to get what you want; and, after that, to enjoy it. Only the wisest of mankind achieve the second.”

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Rule 4 is: Count your blessings-not your troubles!

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For better or for worse, you must cultivate your own little garden. For better or for worse, you must play your own little instrument in the orchestra of life.

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As Emerson said in his essay on “Self-Reliance” : “There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given him to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried.”

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Rule 5: Let’s not imitate others. Let’s find ourselves and be ourselves.

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Nietzsche’s formula for the superior man was “not only to bear up under necessity but to love it”.

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As William James said: “Our infirmities help us unexpectedly.”

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“There is a Scandinavian saying which some of us might well take as a rallying cry for our lives: ‘the north wind made the Vikings.’

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Alfred Adler. He used to say to his melancholia patients: “You can be cured in fourteen days if you follow this prescription. Try to think every day how you can please someone.”

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I know that the real reason for his malady is his lack of co- operation and I want him to see it too. As soon as he can connect himself with his fellow men on an equal and co-operative footing, he is cured. ... The most important task imposed by religion has always been 'Love thy neighbour’. ... It is the individual who is not interested in his fellow man who has the greatest difficulties in life and provides the greatest injury to others. It is from among such individuals that all human failures spring.

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All that we demand of a human being, and the highest praise we can give him is that he should be a good fellow worker, a friend to all other men, and a true partner in love and marriage.”

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“A good deed,” said the prophet Mohammed, “is one that brings a smile of joy to the face of another.”

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Those two little orphans did far more for me than I did for them. That experience showed me again the necessity of making other people happy in order to be happy ourselves. I found that happiness is contagious. By giving, we receive.

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“The attack on Pearl Harbour was one of the greatest tragedies in American history, but as far as I was concerned, it was one of the best things that ever happened to me. That terrible crisis gave me strength that I never dreamed I possessed. It took my attention off myself and focused it on others. It gave me something big and vital and important to live for. I no longer had time to think about myself or care about myself.”

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Carl Jung said. And he ought to know -if anybody does. He said: “About one-third of my patients are suffering from no clinically definable neurosis, but from the senselessness and emptiness of their lives.” To put it another way, they are trying to thumb a ride through life-and the parade passes them by. So they rush to a psychiatrist with their petty, senseless, useless lives. Having missed the boat, they stand on the wharf, blaming everyone except themselves and demanding that the world cater to their self-centred desires.

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Benjamin Franklin summed it up very simply-"When you are good to others,” said Franklin, “you are best to yourself.”

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Henry C. Link, director of the Psychological Service Centre in New York, “no discovery of modern psychology is, in my opinion, so important as its scientific proof of the necessity of self-sacrifice or discipline to self- realisation and happiness.”

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A Chinese proverb puts it this way: “A bit of fragrance always clings to the hand that gives you roses.”

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“If he [man] is to extract any joy out of his span,” Dreiser said, “he must think and plan to make things better not only for himself but for others, since joy for himself depends upon his joy in others and theirs in him.”

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Rule 7: Forget yourself by becoming interested in others. Do every day a good deed that will put a smile of joy on someone’s face.

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Part Four in a Nutshell - Seven Ways to Cultivate a Mental Attitude That Will Bring You Peace and Happiness RULE 1: Let’s fill our minds with thoughts of peace, courage, health, and hope, for ' 'our life is what our thoughts make it”. RULE 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. RULE 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. RULE 4: Count your blessings-not your troubles! RULE 5: Let’s not imitate others. Let’s find ourselves and be ourselves, for “envy is ignorance” and “imitation is suicide”. RULE 6: When fate hands us a lemon, let’s try to make a lemonade. RULE 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.”

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The fact that we don’t understand the mysteries of our bodies or electricity or a gas engine doesn’t keep us from using and enjoying them. The fact that I don’t understand the mysteries of prayer and religion no longer keeps me from enjoying the richer, happier life that religion brings. At long last, I realise the wisdom of Santayana’s words: “Man is not made to understand life, but to live it.”

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have gone forward to a new concept of religion. I no longer have the faintest interest in the differences in creeds that divide the Churches. But I am tremendously interested in what religion does for me, just as I am interested in what electricity and good food and water do for me. They help me to lead a richer, fuller, happier life.

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Francis Bacon was right when he said, three hundred and fifty years ago: “A little philosophy inclineth man’s mind to atheism; but depth in philosophy bringeth men’s minds about to religion.”

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Jesus declared that there were only two important things about religion: loving God with all our heart, and our neighbour as ourselves.

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Man in Search of a Soul (): “During the past thirty years, people from all the civilised countries of the earth have consulted me. I have treated many hundreds of patients. Among all my patients in the second half of life-that is to say, over thirty-five-there has not been one whose problem in the last resort was not that of finding a religious outlook on life. It is safe to say that every one of them fell ill because he had lost that which the living religions of every age have given to their followers, and none of them has been really healed who did not regain his religious outlook.”

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Why does religious faith bring us such peace and calm and fortitude? I’ll let William James answer that. He says: “The turbulent billows of the fretful surface leave the deep parts of the ocean undisturbed; and to him who has a hold on vaster and more permanent realities, the hourly vicissitudes of his personal destiny seem relatively insignificant things. The really religious person is accordingly unshakable and full of equanimity, and calmly ready for any duty that the day may bring forth.”

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Why not, as Immanuel Kant said: “accept a belief in God because we need such a belief”? Why not link ourselves now “with the inexhaustible motive power that spins the universe”?

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Even if you are not a religious person by nature or training- even if you are an out-and- out sceptic-prayer can help you much more than you believe, for it is a practical thing. What do I mean, practical? I mean that prayer fulfills these three very basic psychological needs which all people share, whether they believe in God or not: 1. Prayer helps us to put into words exactly what is troubling us. We saw in Chapter—4 that it is almost impossible to deal with a problem while it remains vague and nebulous. Praying, in a way, is very much like writing our problem down on paper. If we ask help for a problem-even from God-we must put it into words. 2. Prayer gives us a sense of sharing our burdens, of not being alone. Few of us are so strong that we can bear our heaviest burdens, our most agonising troubles, all by ourselves. Sometimes our worries are of so intimate a nature that we cannot discuss them even with our closest relatives or friends. Then prayer is the answer. Any psychiatrist will tell us that when we are pent-up and tense, and in an agony of spirit, it is therapeutically good to tell someone our troubles. When we can’t tell anyone else-we can always tell God. 3. Prayer puts into force an active principle of doing. It’s a first step toward action. I doubt if anyone can pray for some fulfillment, day after day, without benefiting from it- in other words, without taking some steps to bring it to pass. A world-famous scientist said: “Prayer is the most powerful form of energy one can generate.” So why not make use of it? Call it God or Allah or Spirit-why quarrel with definitions as long as the mysterious powers of nature take us in hand?

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“I was shocked this morning to read that newspaper editorial denouncing your son.” “Yes,” the elder Hutchins replied, “it was severe, but remember that no one ever kicks a dead dog.”

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when you are kicked and criticised, remember that it is often done because it gives the kicker a feeling of importance. It often means that you are accomplishing something and are worthy of attention. Many people get a sense of savage satisfaction out of denouncing those who are better educated than they are or more successful.

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“Vulgar people take huge delight in the faults and follies of great men.”

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Remember that unjust criticism is often a disguised compliment. Remember that no one ever kicks a dead dog.

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I asked him what he had said to the men who had thrown him into the river, and he replied: ‘I just laughed.’ ” Mr. Schwab declared that he had adopted that old German’s words as his motto: “Just laugh.” That motto is especially good when you are the victim of unjust criticism. You can answer the man who answers you back, but what can you say to the man who “just laughs”?

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After dinner I go off by myself, open my engagement book, and think over all the interviews, discussions and meetings that have taken place since Monday morning. I ask myself: ‘What mistakes did I make that time?’ 'What did I do that was right-and in what way could I have improved my performance?’ 'What lessons can I learn from that experience?’ I sometimes find that this weekly review makes me very unhappy. Sometimes I am astonished by my own blunders. Of course, as the years have gone by, these blunders have become less frequent. This system of self-analysis, continued year after year, has done more for me than any other one thing I have ever attempted.”

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Dale Carnegie International Bestseller (How to Win Friends and Influence People / How to Stop Worrying &amp; Start Living (Revised)

Dale Carnegie International Bestseller (How to Win Friends and Influence People / How to Stop Worrying & Start Living (Revised)