If you and I don't keep busy-if we sit around and brood-we will hatch out a whole flockof what Charles Darwin used to call the "wibber gibbers". And the "wibber gibbers" arenothing but old-fashioned gremlins that will run us hollow and destroy our power ofaction and our power of will.I know a business man in New York who fought the "wibber gibbers" by getting so busythat he had no time to fret and stew. His name is Tremper Longman, and his office is at40 Wall Street. He was a student in one of my adult-education classes; and his talk onconquering worry was so interesting, so impressive, that I asked him to have supper withme after class; and we sat in a restaurant until long past midnight, discussing hisexperiences. Here is the story he told me: "Eighteen years ago, I was so worried I hadinsomnia. I was tense, irritated, and jittery. I felt I was headed for a nervousbreakdown."I had reason to be worried. I was treasurer of the Crown Fruit and Extract Company,418 West Broadway, New York. We had half a million dollars invested in strawberriespacked in gallon tins. For twenty years, we had been selling these gallon tins ofstrawberries to manufactures of ice cream. Suddenly our sales stopped because the bigice-cream makers, such as National Dairy and Borden's, were rapidly increasing theirproduction and were saving money and time by buying strawberries packed in barrels."Not only were we left with half a million dollars in berries we couldn't sell, but we werealso under contract to buy a million dollars more of strawberries in the next twelvemonths! We had already borrowed $350,000 from the banks. We couldn't possibly payoff or renew these loans. No wonder I was worried!"I rushed out to Watsonville, California, where our factory was located, and tried topersuade our president that conditions had changed, that we were facing ruin. Herefused to believe it. He blamed our New York office for all the trouble-poorsalesmanship."After days of pleading, I finally persuaded him to stop packing more strawberries and tosell our new supply on the fresh berry market in San Francisco. That almost solved ourproblems. I should have been able to stop worrying then; but I couldn't. Worry is ahabit; and I had that habit."When I returned to New York, I began worrying about everything; the cherries we werebuying in Italy, the pineapples we were buying in Hawaii, and so on. I was tense, jittery,couldn't sleep; and, as I have already said, I was heading for a nervous breakdown."In despair, I adopted a way of life that cured my insomnia and stopped my worries. Igot busy. I got so busy with problems demanding all my faculties that I had no time toworry. I had been working seven hours a day. I now began working fifteen and sixteenhours a day. I got down to the office every morning at eight o'clock and stayed thereevery night until almost midnight. I took on new duties, new responsibilities. When I gothome at midnight, I was so exhausted when I fell in bed that I became unconscious in afew seconds."I kept up this programme for about three months. I had broken the habit of worry bythat time, so I returned to a normal working day of seven or eight hours. This eventoccurred eighteen years ago. I have never been troubled with insomnia or worry sincethen."George Bernard Shaw was right. He summed it all up when he said: "The secret of beingmiserable is to have the leisure to bother about whether you are happy or not." So don'tbother to think about it! Spit on your hands and get busy. Your blood will startcirculating; your mind will start ticking -and pretty soon this whole positive upsurge oflife in your body will drive worry from your mind. Get busy. Keep busy. It's the cheapestkind of medicine there is on this earth-and one of the best.To break the worry habit, here is Rule 1:Keep busy. The worried person must lose himself in action, lest be wither in despair.~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Chapter 7 -Don't Let the Beetles Get You DownHere is a dramatic story that I'll probably remember as long as I live. It was told to meby Robert Moore, of 14 Highland Avenue, Maplewood, New Jersey."I learned the biggest lesson of my life in March, 1945," he said, "I learned it under 276feet of water off the coast of Indo-China. I was one of eighty-eight men aboard thesubmarine Baya S.S. 318. We had discovered by radar that a small Japanese convoy wascoming our way. As daybreak approached, we submerged to attack. I saw through theperiscope a Jap destroyer escort, a tanker, and a minelayer. We fired three torpedoesat the destroyer escort, but missed. Something went haywire in the mechanics of eachtorpedo. The destroyer, not knowing that she had been attacked, continued on. Wewere getting ready to attack the last ship, the minelayer, when suddenly she turned andcame directly at us. (A Jap plane had spotted us under sixty feet of water and hadradioed our position to the Jap minelayer.) We went down to 150 feet, to avoiddetection, and rigged for a depth charge. We put extra bolts on the hatches; and, inorder to make our sub absolutely silent, we turned off the fans, the cooling system, andall electrical gear."Three minutes later, all hell broke loose. Six depth charges exploded all around us andpushed us down to the ocean floor -a depth of 276 feet. We were terrified. To beattacked in less than a thousand feet of water is dangerous-less than five hundred feetis almost always fatal. And we were being attacked in a trifle more than half of fivehundred feet of water -just about knee-deep, as far as safety was concerned. Forfifteen hours, that Jap minelayer kept dropping depth charges.If a depth charge explodes within seventeen feet of a sub, the concussion will blow ahole in it. Scores of these depth charges exploded within fifty feet of us. We wereordered 'to secure'-to lie quietly in our bunks and remain calm. I was so terrified I couldhardly breathe. 'This is death,' I kept saying to myself over and over. 'This is death! ...This is death!' With the fans and cooling system turned off, the air inside the sub wasover a hundred degrees; but I was so chilled with fear that I put on a sweater and a furlinedjacket; and still I trembled with cold. My teeth chattered. I broke out in a cold,clammy sweat. The attack continued for fifteen hours. Then ceased suddenly.Apparently the Jap minelayer had exhausted its supply of depth charges, and steamedaway. Those fifteen hours of attack seemed like fifteen million years. All my life passedbefore me in review.I remembered all the bad things I had done, all the little absurd things I had worriedabout. I had been a bank clerk before I joined the Navy. I had worried about the longhours, the poor pay, the poor prospects of advancement. I had worried because Icouldn't own my own home, couldn't buy a new car, couldn't buy my wife nice clothes.How I had hated my old boss, who was always nagging and scolding! I remembered how Iwould come home at night sore and grouchy and quarrel with my wife over trifles. I hadworried about a scar on my forehead-a nasty cut from an auto accident."How big all these worries seemed years ago! But how absurd they seemed when depthcharges were threatening to blow me to kingdom come. I promised myself then andthere that if I ever saw the sun and the stars again, I would never, never worry again.Never! Never! I Never!!! I learned more about the art of living in those fifteen terriblehours in that submarine than I had learned by studying books for four years in SyracuseUniversity."We often face the major disasters of life bravely-and then let the trifles, the "pains inthe neck", get us down. For example, Samuel Pepys tells in his Diary about seeing SirHarry Vane's head chopped off in London. As Sir Harry mounted the platform, he was notpleading for his life, but was pleading with the executioner not to hit the painful boil onhis neck!That was another thing that Admiral Byrd discovered down in the terrible cold anddarkness of the polar nights-that his men fussed more about the ' 'pains in the neck"than about the big things. They bore, without complaining, the dangers, the hardships,and the cold that was often eighty degrees below zero. "But," says Admiral Byrd, "I knowof bunkmates who quit speaking because each suspected the other of inching his gearinto the other's allotted space; and I knew of one who could not eat unless he could finda place in the mess hall out of sight of the Fletcherist who solemnly chewed his foodtwenty-eight times before swallowing."In a polar camp," says Admiral Byrd, "little things like that have the power to drive evendisciplined men to the edge of insanity."And you might have added, Admiral Byrd, that "little things" in marriage drive people tothe edge of insanity and cause "half the heartaches in the world."At least, that is what the authorities say. For example, 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, DistrictAttorney of New York County, says: "Fully half the cases in our criminal courts originatein little things. Bar-room bravado, domestic wrangling, an insulting remark, adisparaging word, a rude action-those are the little things that lead to assault andmurder. Very few of us are cruelly and greatly wronged. It is the small blows to our selfesteem,the indignities, the little jolts to our vanity, which cause half the heartaches inthe world."When Eleanor Roosevelt was first married, she "worried for days" because her new cookhad served a poor meal. "But if that happened now," Mrs. Roosevelt says, "I would shrugmy shoulders and forget it." Good. That is acting like an adult emotionally. EvenCatherine the Great, an absolute autocrat, used to laugh the thing off when the cookspoiled a meal.Mrs. Carnegie and I had dinner at a friend's house in Chicago. While carving the meat, hedid something wrong. I didn't notice it; and I wouldn't have cared even if I had noticed itBut his wife saw it and jumped down his throat right in front of us. "John," she cried,"watch what you are doing! Can't you ever learn to serve properly!"Then she said to us: "He is always making mistakes. He just doesn't try." Maybe he didn'ttry to carve; but I certainly give him credit for trying to live with her for twenty years.Frankly, I would rather have eaten a couple of hot dogs with mustard-in an atmosphereof peace-than to have dined on Peking duck and shark fins while listening to herscolding.Shortly after that experience, Mrs. Carnegie and I had some friends at our home fordinner. Just before they arrived, Mrs. Carnegie found that three of the napkins didn't"I rushed to the cook," she told me later, "and found that the other three napkins hadgone to the laundry. The guests were at the door. There was no time to change. I feltlike bursting into tears! All I could think was: 'Why did this stupid mistake have to spoilmy whole evening?' Then I thought-well-why let it? I went in to dinner, determined tohave a good time. And I did. I would much rather our friends think I was a sloppyhousekeeper," she told me, "than a nervous, bad-tempered one. And anyhow, as far as Icould make out, no one noticed the napkins!"A well-known legal maxim says: De minimis non curat lex-"the law does not concernitself with trifles." And neither should the worrier-if he wants peace of mind.Much of the time, all we need to overcome the annoyance of trifles is to affect ashifting of emphasis-set up a new, and pleasurable, point of view in the mind. My friendHomer Croy, who wrote They Had to See Paris and a dozen other books, gives awonderful example of how this can be done. He used to be driven half crazy, whileworking on a book, by the rattling of the radiators in his New York apartment. Thesteam would bang and sizzle-and he would sizzle with irritation as he sat at his desk."Then," says Homer Croy, "I went with some friends on a camping expedition. Whilelistening to the limbs crackling in the roaring fire, I thought how much they sounded likethe crackling of the radiators. Why should I like one and hate the other? When I wenthome I said to myself: 'The crackling of the limbs in the fire was a pleasant sound; thesound of the radiators is about the same-I'll go to sleep and not worry about the noise.'And I did. For a few days I was conscious of the radiators; but soon I forgot all aboutthem."And so it is with many petty worries. We dislike them and get into a stew, all becausewe exaggerate their importance. ..."Disraeli said: "Life is too short to be little." "Those words," said Andre Maurois in ThisWeek magazine, "have helped me through many a painful experience: often we allowourselves to be upset by small things we should despise and forget. ... Here we are onthis earth, with only a few more decades to live, and we lose many irreplaceable hoursbrooding over grievances that, in a year's time, will be forgotten by us and byeverybody. No, let us devote our life to worth-while actions and feelings, to greatthoughts, real affections and enduring undertakings. For life is too short to be little."Even so illustrious a figure as Rudyard Kipling forgot at times that "Life is too short to belittle". The result? He and his brother-in-law fought the most famous court battle in thehistory of Vermont-a battle so celebrated that a book has been written about it:Rudyard Kipling's Vermont Feud.The story goes like this: Kipling married a Vermont girl, Caroline Balestier, built a lovelyhome in Brattleboro, Vermont; settled down and expected to spend the rest of his lifethere. His brother-in-law, Beatty Balestier, became Kipling's best friend. The two ofthem worked and played together.Then Kipling bought some land from Balestier, with the understanding that Balestierwould be allowed to cut hay off it each season. One day, Balestier found Kipling layingout a flower garden on this hayfield. His blood boiled. He hit the ceiling. Kipling firedright back. The air over the Green Mountains of Vermont turned blue!A few days later, when Kipling was out riding his bicycle, his brother-in-law drove awagon and a team of horses across the road suddenly and forced Kipling to take a spill.And Kipling the man who wrote: "If you can keep your head when all about you arelosing theirs and blaming it on you"-he lost his own head, and swore out a warrant forBalestier's arrest I A sensational trial followed. Reporters from the big cities poured intothe town. The news flashed around the world. Nothing was settled. This quarrel causedKipling and his wife to abandon their American home for the rest of their lives. All thatworry and bitterness over a mere trifle! A load of hay.Pericles said, twenty-four centuries ago: "Come, gentlemen, we sit too long on trifles."We do, indeed!Here is one of the most interesting stories that Dr. Harry Emerson Fosdick ever told-astory about the battles won and lost by a giant of the forest:On the slope of Long's Peak in Colorado lies the ruin of 3 gigantic tree. Naturalists tell usthat it stood for some four hundred years. It was a seedling when Columbus landed atSan Salvador, and half grown when the Pilgrims settled at Plymouth. During the courseof its long life it was struck by lightning fourteen times, and the innumerable avalanchesand 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 insectsate their way through the bark and gradually destroyed the inner strength of the tree bytheir tiny but incessant attacks. A forest giant which age had not withered, nor lightningblasted, nor storms subdued, fell at last before beetles so small that a man could crushthem between his forefinger and his thumb.Aren't we all like that battling giant of the forest? Don't we manage somehow to survivethe rare storms and avalanches and lightning blasts of We, only to let our hearts beeaten out by little beetles of worry-little beetles that could be crushed between afinger and a thumb?A few years ago, I travelled through the Teton National Park, in Wyoming, with CharlesSeifred, highway superintendent for the state of Wyoming, and some of his friends. Wewere all going to visit the John D. Rockefeller estate in the park. But the car in which Iwas riding took the wrong turn, got lost, and drove up to the entrance of the estate anhour after the other cars had gone in. Mr. Seifred had the key that unlocked the privategate, so he waited in the hot, mosquito-infested woods for an hour until we arrived. Themosquitoes were enough to drive a saint insane. But they couldn't triumph over CharlesSeifred. While waiting for us, he cut a limb off an aspen tree-and made a whistle of it.When we arrived, was he cussing the mosquitoes? No, he was playing his whistle. I havekept that whistle as a memento of a man who knew how to put trifles in their place.To break the worry habit before it breaks you, here is Rule 2:Let's not allow ourselves to be upset by small things we should despise and forget.Remember "Life is too short to be little."~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Chapter 8 -A Law That Will Outlaw Many of Tour WorriesAs a child, I grew up on a Missouri farm; and one day, while helping my mother pitcherries, I began to cry. My mother said: "Dale, what in the world are you crying about?"I blubbered: "I'm afraid I am going to be buried alive!"I was full of worries in those days. When thunderstorms came, I worried for fear I wouldbe killed by lightning. When hard times came, I worried for fear we wouldn't haveenough to eat. I worried for fear I would go to hell when I died. I was terrified for fearan older boy, Sam White, would cut off my big ears-as he threatened to do. I worriedfor fear girls would laugh at me if I tipped my hat to them. I worried for fear no girlwould ever be willing to marry me. I worried about what I would say to my wifeimmediately after we were married. I imagined that we would be married in somecountry church, and then get in a surrey with fringe on the top and ride back to thefarm ... but how would I be able to keep the conversation going on that ride back to thefarm? How? How? I pondered over that earth-shaking problem for many an hour as Iwalked behind the plough.As the years went by, I gradually discovered that ninety-nine per cent of the things Iworried about never happened.For example, as I have already said, I was once terrified of lightning; but I now knowthat the chances of my being killed by lightning in any one year are, according to theNational Safety Council, only one in three hundred and fifty thousand.My fear of being buried alive was even more absurd: I don't imagine that one person inten million is buried alive; yet I once cried for fear of it.One person out of every eight dies of cancer. If I had wanted something to worry about,I should have worried about cancer -instead of being killed by lightning or being buriedalive.To be sure, I have been talking about the worries of youth and adolescence. But many ofour adult worries are almost as absurd. You and I could probably eliminate nine-tenthsof our worries right now if we would cease our fretting long enough to discover whether,by the law of averages, there was any real justification for our worries.The most famous insurance company on earth-Lloyd's of London-has made countlessmillions 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 neveroccur. However, they don't call it betting. They call it insurance. But it is really bettingbased on the law of averages. This great insurance firm has been going strong for twohundred years; and unless human nature changes, it will still be going strong fiftycenturies 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.If we examine the law of averages, we will often be astounded at the facts we uncover.For example, if I knew that during the next five years I would have to fight in a battle asbloody as the Battle of Gettysburg, I would be terrified. I would take out all the lifeinsurance I could get. I would draw up my will and set all my earthly affairs in order. Iwould say: "I'll probably never live through that battle, so I had better make the most ofthe few years I have left." Yet the facts are that, according to the law of averages, it isjust as dangerous, just as fatal, to try to live from age fifty to age fifty-five in peacetimeas it was to fight in the Battle of Gettysburg. What I am trying to say is this: intimes of peace, just as many people die per thousand between the ages of fifty andfifty-five as were killed per thousand among the 163,000 soldiers who fought atGettysburg.I wrote several chapters of this book at James Simpson's Num-Ti-Gah Lodge, on theshore of Bow Lake in the Canadian Rockies. While stopping there one summer, I met Mr.and Mrs. Herbert H. Salinger, of 2298 Pacific Avenue, San Francisco. Mrs. Salinger, apoised, serene woman, gave me the impression that she had never worried. One eveningin front of the roaring fireplace, I asked her if she had ever been troubled by worry."Troubled by it?" she said. "My life was almost ruined by it. Before I learned to conquerworry, I lived through eleven years of self-made hell. I was irritable and hot-tempered. Ilived under terrific tension. I would take the bus every week from my home in SanMateo to shop in San Francisco. But even while shopping, I worried myself into a dither:maybe I had left the electric iron connected on the ironing board. Maybe the house hadcaught fire. Maybe the maid had run off and left the children. Maybe they had been outon their bicycles and been killed by a car. In the midst of my shopping, I would oftenworry myself into a cold perspiration and rush out and take the bus home to see ifeverything was all right. No wonder my first marriage ended in disaster."My second husband is a lawyer-a quiet, analytical man who never worries aboutanything. When I became tense and anxious, he would say to me: 'Relax. Let's think thisout. ... What are you really worrying about? Let's examine the law of averages and seewhether or not it is likely to happen.'"For example, I remember the time we were driving from Albuquerque, New Mexico, tothe Carlsbad Caverns-driving on a dirt road-when we were caught in a terriblerainstorm."The car was slithering and sliding. We couldn't control it. I was positive we would slideoff into one of the ditches that flanked the road; but my husband kept repeating to me:'I am driving very slowly. Nothing serious is likely to happen. Even if the car does slideinto the ditch, by the law of averages, we won't be hurt.' His calmness and confidencequieted me."One summer we were on a camping trip in the Touquin Valley of the Canadian Rockies.One night we were camping seven thousand feet above sea level, when a stormthreatened to tear our tents to shreds. The tents were tied with guy ropes to a woodenplatform. The outer tent shook and trembled and screamed and shrieked in the wind. Iexpected every minute to see our tent torn loose and hurled through the sky. I wasterrified! But my husband kept saying: 'Look, my dear, we are travelling with Brewster'sguides. Brewster's know what they are doing. They have been pitching tents in thesemountains for sixty years. This tent has been here for many seasons. It hasn't blowndown yet and, by the law of averages, it won't blow away tonight; and even if it does,we can take shelter in another tent. So relax. ... I did; and I slept soundly the balanceof the night."A few years ago an infantile-paralysis epidemic swept over our part of California. In theold days, I would have been hysterical. But my husband persuaded me to act calmly. Wetook all the precautions we could; we kept our children away from crowds, away fromschool and the movies. By consulting the Board of Health, we found out that even duringthe worst infantile-paralysis epidemic that California had ever known up to that time,only 1,835 children had been stricken in the entire state of California. And that theusual number was around two hundred or three hundred. Tragic as those figures are, wenevertheless felt that, according to the law of averages, the chances of any one childbeing stricken were remote." 'By the law of averages, it won't happen.' That phrase has destroyed ninety per cent ofmy worries; and it has made the past twenty years of my life beautiful and peacefulbeyond my highest expectations."General George Crook-probably the greatest Indian fighter in American history-says in