"Much less time is now consumed in the house of Simon and Schuster in worrying andtalking about what is wrong; and a lot more action is obtained toward making thosethings right."My friend, Frank Bettger, one of the top insurance men in America, tells me he not onlyreduced his business worries, but nearly doubled his income, by a similar method."Years ago," says Frank Bettger, "when I first started to sell insurance, I was filled with aboundless enthusiasm and love for my work. Then something happened. I became sodiscouraged that I despised my work and thought of giving it up. I think I would havequit-if I hadn't got the idea, one Saturday morning, of sitting down and trying to get atthe root of my worries."1. I asked myself first: 'Just what is the problem?.' The problem was: that I was notgetting high enough returns for the staggering amount of calls I was making. I seemed todo pretty well at selling a prospect, until the moment came for closing a sale. Then thecustomer would say: 'Well, I'll think it over, Mr. Bettger. Come and see me again.' It wasthe time I wasted on these follow-up calls that was causing my depression."2. I asked myself: 'What are the possible solutions?' But to get the answer to that one, Ihad to study the facts. I got out my record book for the last twelve months and studiedthe figures."I made an astounding discovery! Right there in black and white, I discovered thatseventy per cent of my sales had been closed on the very first interview! Twenty-threeper cent of my sales had been closed on the second interview! And only seven per centof my sales had been closed on those third, fourth, fifth, etc., interviews, which wererunning me ragged and taking up my time. In other words, I was wasting fully one half ofmy working day on a part of my business which was responsible for only seven per centof my sales!"3. 'What is the answer?' The answer was obvious. I immediately cut out all visits beyondthe second interview, and spent the extra time building up new prospects. The resultswere unbelievable. In a very short time, I had almost doubled the cash value of everyvisit I made from a call!"As I said, Frank Bettger is now one of the best-known life-insurance salesmen inAmerica. He is with Fidelity Mutual of Philadelphia, and writes a million dollars' worth ofpolicies a year. But he was on the point of giving up. He was on the point of admittingfailure-until analysing the problem gave him a boost on the road to success.Can you apply these questions to your business problems? To repeat my challenge-theycan 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?~~~~~~~Part Two In A NutshellRULE 1: Get the facts. Remember that Dean Hawkes of Columbia University said that "half the worry in the world is caused by people trying to make decisions before theyhave sufficient knowledge on which to base a decision."RULE 2: After carefully weighing all the facts, come to a decision.RULE 3: Once a decision is carefully reached, act! Get busy carrying out your decisionanddismiss all anxiety about the outcome.RULE 4: When you, or any of your associates are tempted to worry about a problem,write out and answer the following questions:a. What is the problem?b. What is the cause of the problem?c. What are all possible solutions?d. What is the best solution?~~~~~~~~~~Nine Suggestions on How to Get the Most Out of This Book1. If you wish to get the most out of this book, there is one indispensable requirement,one essential infinitely more important than any rules or technique. Unless you have thisone fundamental requisite a thousand rules on how to study will avail little. And if youdo have this cardinal endowment, then you can achieve wonders without reading anysuggestions for getting the most out of a book.What is this magic requirement? Just this: a deep, driving desire to learn, a vigorousdetermination to stop worrying and start living.How can you develop such an urge? By constantly reminding yourself of how importantthese principles are to you. Picture to yourself how their mastery will aid you in living aricher, happier life. Say to yourself over and over: "My peace of mind, my happiness, myhealth, and perhaps even my income will, in the long run, depend largely on applyingthe old, obvious, and eternal truths taught in this book."2. Read each chapter rapidly at first to get a bird's-eye view of it. You will probably betempted then to rush on to the next one. But don't. Unless you are reading merely forentertainment. But if you are reading because you want to stop worrying and startliving, then go back and re-read each chapter thoroughly. In the long run, this will meansaving time and getting results.3. Stop frequently in your reading to think over what you are reading. Ask yourself justhow and when you can apply each suggestion. That kind of reading will aid you far morethan racing ahead like a whippet chasing a rabbit.4. Read with a red crayon, pencil, or fountain-pen in your hand; and when you comeacross a suggestion that you feel you can use, draw a line beside it. If it is a four-starsuggestion, then underscore every sentence, or mark it with "XXXX". Marking andunderscoring a book make it more interesting, and far easier to review rapidly.5. I know a man who has been office manager for a large insurance concern for fifteenyears. He reads every month all the insurance contracts his company issues. Yes, hereads the same contracts over month after month, year after year. Why? Becauseexperience has taught him that that is the only way he can keep their provisions clearlyin mind.I once spent almost two years writing a book on public speaking; and yet I find I have tokeep going back over it from time to time in order to remember what I wrote in my ownbook. The rapidity with which we forget is astonishing.So, if you want to get a real, lasting benefit out of this book, don't imagine thatskimming through it once will suffice. After reading it thoroughly, you ought to spend afew hours reviewing it every month. Keep it on your desk in front of you every day.Glance through it often. Keep constantly impressing yourself with the rich possibilitiesfor improvement that still lie in the offing. Remember that the use of these principlescan be made habitual and unconscious only by a constant and vigorous campaign ofreview and application. There is no other way.6. Bernard Shaw once remarked: "If you teach a man anything, he will never learn."Shaw was right. Learning is an active process. We learn by doing. So, if you desire tomaster the principles you are studying in this book, do something about them. Applythese rules at every opportunity. If you don't you will forget them quickly. Onlyknowledge that is used sticks in your mind.You will probably find it difficult to apply these suggestions all the time. I know,because I wrote this book, and yet frequently I find it difficult to apply everything Ihave advocated here. So, as you read this book, remember that you are not merelytrying to acquire information. You are attempting to form new habits. Ah yes, you areattempting a new way of life. That will require time and persistence and dailyapplication.So refer to these pages often. Regard this as a working handbook on conquering worry;and when you are confronted with some trying problem-don't get all stirred up. Don't dothe natural thing, the impulsive thing. That is usually wrong.Instead, turn to these pages and review the paragraphs you have underscored. Then trythese new ways and watch, them achieve magic for you.7. Offer your wife a shilling every time she catches you violating one of the principlesadvocated in this book. She will break you!8. Please turn to pages 193-4 of this book and read how the Wall Street banker, H.P.Howell, and old Ben Franklin corrected their mistakes. Why don't you use the Howelland Franklin techniques to check up on your application of the principles discussed inthis book? If you do, two things will result.First, you will find yourself engaged in an educational process that is both intriguing andpriceless.Second, you will find that your ability to stop worrying and start living will grow andspread like a green bay tree.9. Keep a diary-a diary in which you ought to record your triumphs in the application ofthese principles. Be specific. Give names, dates, results. Keeping such a record willinspire you to greater efforts; and how fascinating these entries will be when youchance upon them some evening, years from now!~~~~~~~In A Nutshell1. Develop a deep, driving desire to master the principles of conquering worry.2. Read each chapter twice before going on to the next one.3. As you read, stop frequently to ask yourself how you can apply each suggestion.4. Underscore each important idea.5. Review this book each month.6. Apply these principles at every opportunity. Use this volume as a working handbookto help you solve your daily problems.7. Make a lively game put of your learning by offering some friend a shilling every timehe catches you violating one of these principles.8. Check up each week on the progress you are making. Ask yourself what mistakes youhave made, what improvement, what lessons you have learned for the future.9. Keep a diary in the back of this book showing how and when you have applied theseprinciples.Part Three -How To Break The Worry Habit Before It Breaks YouChapter 6 -How To Crowd Worry Out Of Tour MindI shall never forget the night, a few years ago, when Marion J. Douglas was a student inone of my classes. (I have not used his real name. He requested me, for personalreasons, not to reveal his identity.) But here is his real story as he told it before one ofour adult-education classes. He told us how tragedy had struck at his home, not once,but twice. The first time he had lost his five-year-old daughter, a child he adored. Heand his wife thought they couldn't endure that first loss; but, as he said: "Ten monthslater, God gave us another little girl-and she died in five days."This double bereavement was almost too much to bear. "I couldn't take it," this fathertold us. "I couldn't sleep, I couldn't eat, I couldn't rest or relax. My nerves were utterlyshaken and my confidence gone." At last he went to doctors; one recommended sleepingpills and another recommended a trip. He tried both, but neither remedy helped. Hesaid: "My body felt as if it were encased in a vice, and the jaws of the vice were beingdrawn tighter and tighter." The tension of grief-if you have ever been paralysed bysorrow, you know what he meant."But thank God, I had one child left-a four-year-old son. He gave me the solution to myproblem. One afternoon as I sat around feeling sorry for myself, he asked: 'Daddy, willyou build a boat for me?' I was in no mood to build a boat; in fact, I was in no mood todo anything. But my son is a persistent little fellow! I had to give in."Building that toy boat took about three hours. By the time it was finished, I realisedthat those three hours spent building that boat were the first hours of mental relaxationand peace that I had had in months!"That discovery jarred me out of my lethargy and caused me to do a bit of thinking-thefirst real thinking I had done in months. I realised that it is difficult to worry while youare busy doing something that requires planning and thinking. In my case, building theboat had knocked worry out of the ring. So I resolved to keep busy."The following night, I went from room to room in the house, compiling a list of jobsthat ought to be done. Scores of items needed to be repaired: bookcases, stair steps,storm windows, window-shades, knobs, locks, leaky taps. Astonishing as it seems, in thecourse of two weeks I had made a list of 242 items that needed attention."During the last two years I have completed most of them. Besides, I have filled my lifewith stimulating activities. Two nights per week I attend adult-education classes in NewYork. I have gone in for civic activities in my home town and I am now chairman of theschool board. I attend scores of meetings. I help collect money for the Red Cross andNo time for worry! That is exactly what Winston Churchill said when he was workingeighteen hours a day at the height of the war. When he was asked if he worried abouthis tremendous responsibilities, he said: "I'm too busy. I have no time for worry."Charles Kettering was in that same fix when he started out to invent a self-starter forautomobiles. Mr. Kettering was, until his recent retirement, vice-president of GeneralMotors in charge of the world-famous General Motors Research Corporation. But in thosedays, he was so poor that he had to use the hayloft of a barn as a laboratory. To buygroceries, he had to use fifteen hundred dollars that his wife had made by giving pianolessons; later, had to borrow five hundred dollars on his life insurance. I asked his wifeif she wasn't worried at a time like that. "Yes," she replied, "I was so worried I couldn'tsleep; but Mr. Kettering wasn't. He was too absorbed in his work to worry."The great scientist, Pasteur, spoke of "the peace that is found in libraries andlaboratories." Why is peace found there? Because the men in libraries and laboratoriesare usually too absorbed in their tasks to worry about themselves. Research men rarelyhave nervous breakdowns. They haven't time for such luxuries.Why does such a simple thing as keeping busy help to drive out anxiety? Because of alaw-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 ofmore than one thing at any given time. You don't quite believe it? Very well, then, let'stry an experiment.Suppose you lean right back now, close your eyes, and try, at the same instant, to thinkof the Statue of Liberty and of what you plan to do tomorrow morning. (Go ahead, tryit.)You found out, didn't you, that you could focus on either thought in turn, but never onboth simultaneously? Well, the same thing is true in the field of emotions. We cannot bepepped up and enthusiastic about doing something exciting and feel dragged down byworry at the very same time. One kind of emotion drives out the other. And it was thatsimple discovery that enabled Army psychiatrists to perform such miracles during thewar.When men came out of battle so shaken by the experience that they were called"psychoneurotic", Army doctors prescribed "Keep 'em busy" as a cure.Every waking minute of these nerve-shocked men was filled with activity-usuallyoutdoor activity, such as fishing, hunting, playing ball, golf, taking pictures, makinggardens, and dancing. They were given no time for brooding over their terribleexperiences."Occupational therapy" is the term now used by psychiatry when work is prescribed asthough it were a medicine. It is not new. The old Greek physicians were advocating itfive hundred years before Christ was born!The Quakers were using it in Philadelphia in Ben Franklin's time. A man who visited aQuaker sanatorium in 1774 was shocked to see that the patients who were mentally illwere busy spinning flax. He thought these poor unfortunates were being exploited-untilthe Quakers explained that they found that their patients actually improved when theydid a little work. It was soothing to the nerves.Any psychiatrist will tell you that work-keeping busy-is one of the best anesthetics everknown for sick nerves. Henry W. Longfellow found that out for himself when he lost hisyoung wife. His wife had been melting some sealing-wax at a candle one day, when herclothes caught on fire. Longfellow heard her cries and tried to reach her in time; butshe died from the burns. For a while, Longfellow was so tortured by the memory of thatdreadful experience that he nearly went insane; but, fortunately for him, his threesmall children needed his attention. In spite of his own grief, Longfellow undertook tobe father and mother to his children. He took them for walks, told them stories, playedgames with them, and immortalised their companionship in his poem The Children'sHour. He also translated Dante; and all these duties combined kept him so busy that heforgot himself entirely, and regained his peace of mind. As Tennyson declared when helost his most intimate friend, Arthur Hallam: "I must lose myself in action, lest I witherin despair."Most of us have little trouble "losing ourselves in action" while we have our noses to thegrindstone and are doing our day's work. But the hours after work-they are thedangerous ones. Just when we're free to enjoy our own leisure, and ought to behappiest-that's when the blue devils of worry attack us. That's when we begin to wonderwhether we're getting anywhere in life; whether we're in a rut; whether the boss "meantanything" by that remark he made today; or whether we're getting bald.When we are not busy, our minds tend to become a near-vacuum. Every student ofphysics knows that "nature abhors a vacuum". The nearest thing to a vacuum that youand I will probably ever see is the inside of an incandescent electric-light bulb. Breakthat bulb-and nature forces air in to fill the theoretically empty space.Nature also rushes in to fill the vacant mind. With what? Usually with emotions. Why?Because emotions of worry, fear, hate, jealousy, and envy are driven by primeval vigourand the dynamic energy of the jungle. Such emotions are so violent that they tend todrive out of our minds all peaceful, nappy thoughts and emotions.James L. Mursell, professor of education, Teachers' College, Columbia, puts it very wellwhen he says: "Worry is most apt to ride you ragged not when you are in action, butwhen the day's work is done. Your imagination can run riot then and bring up all sorts ofridiculous 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 outits bearings or even to tear itself to bits. The remedy for worry is to get completelyoccupied doing something constructive."But you don't have to be a college professor to realise this truth and put it into practice.During the war, I met a housewife from Chicago who told me how she discovered forherself that "the remedy for worry is to get completely occupied doing somethingconstructive." I met this woman and her husband in the dining-car while I was travellingfrom New York to my farm in Missouri. (Sorry I didn't get their names-I never like to giveexamples without using names and street addresses-details that give authenticity to astory.)This couple told me that their son had joined the armed forces the day after PearlHarbour. The woman told me that she had almost wrecked her health worrying over thatonly son. Where was he? Was he safe? Or in action? Would he be wounded? Killed?When I asked her how she overcame her worry, she replied: "I got busy." She told methat at first she had dismissed her maid and tried to keep busy by doing all herhousework herself. But that didn't help much. "The trouble was," she said, "that I coulddo my housework almost mechanically, without using my mind. So I kept on worrying.While making the beds and washing the dishes I realised I needed some new kind ofwork that would keep me busy both mentally and physically every hour of the day. So I"That did it," she said. "I immediately found myself in a whirlwind of activity: customersswarming around me, asking for prices, sizes, colours. Never a second to think ofanything except my immediate duty; and when night came, I could think of nothingexcept getting off my aching feet. As soon as I ate dinner, I fell into bed and instantlybecame unconscious. I had neither the time nor the energy to worry."She discovered for herself what John Cowper Powys meant when he said, in The Art ofForgetting the Unpleasant: "A certain comfortable security, a certain profound innerpeace, a kind of happy numbness, soothes the nerves of the human animal whenabsorbed in its allotted task."And what a blessing that it is so! Osa Johnson, the world's most famous woman explorer,recently told me how she found release from worry and grief. You may have read thestory of her life. It is called I Married Adventure. If any woman ever married adventure,she certainly did. Martin Johnson married her when she was sixteen and lifted her feetoff the sidewalks of Chanute, Kansas, and set them down on the wild jungle trails ofBorneo. For a quarter of a century, this Kansas couple travelled all over the world,making motion pictures of the vanishing wild life of Asia and Africa. Back in Americanine years ago, they were on a lecture tour, showing their famous films. They took aplane out of Denver, bound for the Coast. The plane plunged into a mountain. MartinJohnson was killed instantly. The doctors said Osa would never leave her bed again. Butthey didn't know Osa Johnson. Three months later, she was in a wheel chair, lecturingbefore large audiences. In fact, she addressed over a hundred audiences that season-allfrom a wheel chair. When I asked her why she did it, she replied: "I did it so that I wouldhave no time for sorrow and worry."Osa Johnson had discovered the same truth that Tennyson had sung about a centuryearlier: "I must lose myself in action, lest I wither in despair."Admiral Byrd discovered this same truth when he lived all alone for five months in ashack that was literally buried in the great glacial ice-cap that covers the South Pole-anice-cap that holds nature's oldest secrets-an ice-cap covering an unknown continentlarger than the United States and Europe combined. Admiral Byrd spent five monthsthere alone. No other living creature of any kind existed within a hundred miles. Thecold was so intense that he could hear his breath freeze and crystallise as the wind blewit past his ears. In his book Alone, Admiral Byrd tells all about those five months hespent in bewildering and soul-shattering darkness. The days were as black as the nights.He had to keep busy to preserve his sanity."At night," he says, "before blowing out the lantern, I formed the habit of blocking outthe morrow's work. It was a case of assigning myself an hour, say, to the Escape Tunnel,half an hour to leveling drift, an hour to straightening up the fuel drums, an hour tocutting bookshelves in the walls of the food tunnel, and two hours to renewing a brokenbridge in the man-hauling sledge. ..."It was wonderful," he says, "to be able to dole out time in this way. It brought me anextraordinary sense of command over myself. ..." And he adds: "Without that or anequivalent, the days would have been without purpose; and without purpose they wouldhave ended, as such days always end, in disintegration."Note that last again: "Without purpose, the days would have ended, as such days alwaysend, in disintegration."If you and I are worried, let's remember that we can use good old-fashioned work as amedicine. That was said by no less an authority than the late Dr. Richard C. Cabot,formerly professor of clinical medicine at Harvard. In his book What Men Live By, Dr.Cabot says: "As a physician, I have had the happiness of seeing work cure many personswho have suffered from trembling palsy of the soul which results from overmasteringdoubts, hesitations, vacillation and fear. ... Courage given us by our work is like theself-reliance which Emerson has made for ever glorious."