如何停止焦虑开始新生活-25

We may be worried because we can't keep up with the Joneses; but the Joneses areprobably worried because they can't keep up with the Ritzes; and the Ritzes are worriedbecause they can't keep up with the Vanderbilts.Some of the most famous men in American history have had their financial troubles.Both Lincoln and Washington had to borrow money to make the trip to be inaugurated asPresident.If we can't have all we want, let's not poison our days and sour our dispositions withworry and resentment. Let's be good to ourselves. Let's try to be philosophical about it."If you have what seems to you insufficient," said one of Rome's greatest philosophers,Seneca, "then you will be miserable even if you possess the world."And let's remember this: even if we owned the entire United States with a hog-tightfence around it, we could eat only three meals a day and sleep in only one bed at atime.To lessen financial worries, let's try to follow these eleven rules:1. Get the facts down on paper.2. Get a tailor-made budget that really fits your needs 13. Learn how to spend wisely.4. Don't increase your headaches with your income.5. Try to build credit, in the event you must borrow.6. Protect yourself against illness, fire, and emergency expenses.7. Do not have your life-insurance proceeds paid to your widow in cash.8. Teach your children a responsible attitude towards money.9. If necessary, make a little extra money off your kitchen stove.10. Don't gamble-ever.11. If we can't possibly improve our financial situation, let's be good to ourselves andstop resenting what can't be changed.Part Ten -"How I Conquered Worry"32 True Stories~~~~Six Major Troubles Hit Me All At OnceBY C.I. BLACK WOODProprietor, Blackwood-Davis Business College Oklahoma City, OklahomaIn the summer of 1943, it seemed to me that half the worries of the world had come torest on my shoulders.For more than forty years, I had lived a normal, carefree life with only the usualtroubles which come to a husband, father, and business man. I could usually meet thesetroubles easily, but suddenly-wham! wham!! wham!!! wham! !!! WHAM! !!!! WHAM!!!!!!Six major troubles hit me all at once. I pitched and tossed and turned in bed all nightlong, half dreading to see the day come, because I faced these six major worries.1. My business college was trembling on the verge of financial disaster because all theboys were going to war; and most of the girls were making more money working in warplants without training than my graduates could make in business offices with training.2. My older son was in service, and I had the heart-numbing worry common to allparents whose sons were away at war.3. Oklahoma City had already started proceedings to appropriate a large tract of landfor an airport, and my home-formerly my father's home-was located in the centre ofthis tract. I knew that I would be paid only one tenth of its value, and, what was evenworse, I would lose my home; and because of the housing shortage, I worried aboutwhether I could possibly find another home to shelter my family of six. I feared wemight have to live in a tent. I even worried about whether we would be able to buy atent.4. The water well on my property went dry because a drainage canal had been dug nearmy home. To dig a new well would be throwing five hundred dollars away because theland was probably being appropriated. I had to carry water to my livestock in bucketsevery morning for two months, and I feared I would have to continue it during the restof the war.5. I lived ten miles away from my business school and I had a class B petrol card: thatmeant I couldn't buy any new tyres, so I worried about how I could ever get to workwhen the superannuated tyres on my old Ford gave up the ghost.6. My oldest daughter had graduated from high school a year ahead of schedule. She hadher heart set on going to college, and I just didn't have the money to send her. I knewher heart would be broken.One afternoon while sitting in my office, worrying about my worries, I decided to writethem all down, for it seemed no one ever had more to worry about than I had. I didn'tmind wrestling with worries that gave me a fighting chance to solve them, but theseworries all seemed to be utterly beyond my control. I could do nothing to solve them. SoI filed away this typewritten list of my troubles, and, as the months passed, I forgot thatI had ever written it. Eighteen months later, while transferring my files, I happened tocome across this list of my six major problems that had once threatened to wreck myhealth. I read them with a great deal of interest-and profit. I now saw that not one ofthem had come to pass.Here is what had happened to them:1. I saw that all my worries about having to close my business college had been uselessbecause the government had started paying business schools for training veterans andmy school was soon filled to capacity.2. I saw that all my worries about my son in service had been useless: he was comingthrough the war without a scratch.3. I saw that all my worries about my land being appropriated for use as an airport hadbeen useless because oil had been struck within a mile of my farm and the cost forprocuring the land for an airport had become prohibitive.4. I saw that all my worries about having no well to water my stock had been uselessbecause, as soon as I knew my land would not be appropriated, I spent the moneynecessary to dig a new well to a deeper level and found an unfailing supply of water.5. I saw that all my worries about my tyres giving out had been useless, because byrecapping and careful driving, the tyres had managed somehow to survive.6. I saw that all my worries about my daughter's education had been useless, becausejust sixty days before the opening of college, I was offered-almost like a miracle-anauditing job which I could do outside of school hours, and this job made it possible forme to send her to college on schedule.I had often heard people say that ninety-nine per cent of the things we worry and stewand fret about never happen, but this old saying didn't mean much to me until I ranacross that list of worries I had typed out that dreary afternoon eighteen monthspreviously.I am thankful now that I had to wrestle in vain with those six terrible worries. Thatexperience has taught me a lesson I'll never forget. It has shown me the folly andtragedy of stewing about events that haven't happened-events that are beyond ourcontrol and may never happen.Remember, today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday. Ask yourself: How do IKNOW this thing I am worrying about will really come to pass?~~~~I Can Turn Myself in to a Shouting Optimist Within an HourByRoger W. BabsonFamous Economist Babson Park, Wellesley Hills, MassachusettsWhen I find myself depressed over present conditions, I can, within one hour, banishworry and turn myself into a shouting optimist.Here is how I do it. I enter my library, close my eyes, and walk to certain shelvescontaining only books on history. With my eyes still shut, I reach for a book, not knowingwhether I am picking up Prescott's Conquest of Mexico or Suetonius' Lives of the TwelveCaesars. With my eyes still closed, I open the book at random. I then open my eyes andread for an hour; and the more I read, the more sharply I realise that the world hasalways been in the throes of agony, that civilisation has always been tottering on thebrink. The pages of history fairly shriek with tragic tales of war, famine, poverty,pestilence, and man's inhumanity to man. After reading history for an hour, I realisethat bad as conditions are now, they are infinitely better than they used to be. Thisenables me to see and face my present troubles in their proper perspective as well as torealise that the world as a whole is constantly growing better.Here is a method that deserves a whole chapter. Read history! Try to get the viewpointof ten thousand years-and see how trivial your troubles are, in terms of eternity.~~~~How I Got Rid Of An Inferiority ComplexByElmer ThomasUnited States Senator from OklahomaWhen I was fifteen I was constantly tormented by worries and fears and selfconsciousness.I was extremely tall for my age and as thin as a fence rail. I stood sixfeet two inches and weighed only 118 pounds. In spite of my height, I was weak andcould never compete with the other boys in baseball or running games. They poked funat me and called me "hatch-face". I was so worried and self-conscious that I dreaded tomeet anyone, and I seldom did, for our farmhouse was off the public road andsurrounded by thick virgin timber that had never been cut since the beginning of time.We lived half a mile from the highway; and a week would often go by without my seeinganyone except my mother, father, and brothers and sisters.I would have been a failure in life if I had let those worries and fears whip me. Everyday and every hour of the day, I brooded over my tall, gaunt, weak body. I could hardlythink of anything else. My embarrassment, my fear, was so intense that it is almostimpossible to describe it. My mother knew how I felt. She had been a school-teacher, soshe said to me: "Son, you ought to get an education, you ought to make your living withyour mind because your body will always be a handicap."Since my parents were unable to send me to college, I knew I would have to make myown way; so I hunted and trapped opossum, skunk, mink, and raccoon one winter; soldmy hides for four dollars in the spring, and then bought two little pigs with my fourdollars. I fed the pigs slop and later corn and sold them for forty dollars the next fall.With the proceeds from the sale of the two hogs I went away to the Central NormalCollege-located at Danville, Indiana. I paid a dollar and forty cents a week for my boardand fifty cents a week for my room. I wore a brown shirt my mother had made me.(Obviously, she used brown cloth because it wouldn't show the dirt.) I wore a suit ofclothes that had once belonged to my father. Dad's clothes didn't fit me and neither didhis old congress gaiter shoes that I wore-shoes that had elastic bands in the sides thatstretched when you put them on. But the stretch had long since gone out of the bands,and the tops were so loose that the shoes almost dropped off my feet as I walked. I wasembarrassed to associate with the other students, so I sat in my room alone andstudied. The deepest desire of my life was to be able to buy some store clothes that fitme, clothes that I was not ashamed of.Shortly after that, four events happened that helped me to overcome my worries andmy feeling of inferiority. One of these events gave me courage and hope and confidenceand completely changed all the rest of my life. I'll describe these events briefly:First: After attending this normal school for only eight weeks, I took an examination andwas given a third-grade certificate to teach in the country public schools. To be sure,this certificate was good for only six months, but it was fleeting evidence thatsomebody had faith in me-the first evidence of faith that I ever had from anyone exceptmy mother.Second: A country school board at a place called Happy Hollow hired me to teach at asalary of two dollars per day, or forty dollars per month. Here was even more evidenceof somebody's faith in me.Third: As soon as I got my first cheque I bought some store clothes-clothes that I wasn'tashamed to wear. If someone gave me a million dollars now, it wouldn't thrill me half asmuch as that first suit of store clothes for which I paid only a few dollars.Fourth: The real turning point in my life, the first great victory in my struggle againstembarrassment and inferiority occurred at the Putnam County Fair held annually inBain-bridge, Indiana. My mother had urged me to enter a public-speaking contest thatwas to be held at the fair. To me, the very idea seemed fantastic. I didn't have thecourage to talk even to one person-let alone a crowd. But my mother's faith in me wasalmost pathetic. She dreamed great dreams for my future. She was living her own lifeover in her son. Her faith inspired me to enter the contest. I chose for my subject aboutthe last thing in the world that I was qualified to talk on: "The Fine and Liberal Arts ofAmerica". Frankly, when I began to prepare a speech I didn't know what the liberal artswere, but it didn't matter much because my audience didn't know, either.I memorised my flowery talk and rehearsed it to the trees and cows a hundred times. Iwas so eager to make a good showing for my mother's sake that I must have spoken withemotion. At any rate, I was awarded the first prize. I was astounded at what happened.A cheer went up from the crowd. The very boys who had once ridiculed me and pokedfun at me and called me hatchet-faced now slapped me on the back and said: "I knewyou could do it, Elmer." My mother put her arms around me and sobbed. As I look backin retrospect, I can see that winning that speaking contest was the turning point of mylife. The local newspapers ran an article about me on the front page and prophesiedgreat things for my future. Winning that contest put me on the map locally and gave meprestige, and, what is far more important, it multiplied my confidence a hundredfold. Inow realise that if I had not won that contest, I probably would never have become amember of the United States Senate, for it lifted my sights, widened my horizons, andmade me realise that I had latent abilities that I never dreamed I possessed. Mostimportant, however, was the fact that the first prize in the oratorical contest was ayear's scholarship in the Central Normal College.I hungered now for more education. So, during the next few years-from 1896 to 1900-Idivided my time between teaching and studying. In order to pay my expenses at DePauw University, I waited on tables, looked after furnaces, mowed lawns, kept books,worked in the wheat and cornfields during the summer, and hauled gravel on a publicroad-construction job.In 1896, when I was only nineteen, I made twenty-eight speeches, urging people to votefor William Jennings Bryan for President. The excitement of speaking for Bryan arouseda desire in me to enter politics myself. So when I entered De Pauw University, I studiedlaw and public speaking. In 1899 I represented the university in a debate with ButlerCollege, held in Indianapolis, on the subject "Resolved that United States Senatorsshould be elected by popular vote." I won other speaking contests and became editor-inchiefof the class of 1900 College Annual, The Mirage, and the university paper, ThePalladium.After receiving my A.B. degree at De Pauw, I took Horace Greeley's advice-only I didn'tgo west, I went south-west. I went down to a new country: Oklahoma. When the Kiowa,Comanche, and Apache Indian reservation was opened, I home-steaded a claim andopened a law office in Lawton, Oklahoma. I served in the Oklahoma State Senate forthirteen years, in the lower House of Congress for four years, and at fifty years of age, Iachieved my lifelong ambition: I was elected to the United States Senate fromOklahoma. I have served in that capacity since March 4, 1927. Since Oklahoma andIndian Territories became the state of Oklahoma on November 16, 1907, I have beencontinuously honoured by the Democrats of my adopted state by nominations-first forState Senate, then for Congress, and later for the United States Senate.I have told this story, not to brag about my own fleeting accomplishments, which can'tpossibly interest anyone else. I have told it wholly with the hope that it may giverenewed courage and confidence to some poor boy who is now suffering from theworries and shyness and feeling of inferiority that devastated my life when I waswearing my father's cast-off clothes and gaiter shoes that almost dropped off my feet asI walked.(Editor's note: It is interesting to know that Elmer Thomas, who was so ashamed of hisill-fitting clothes as a youth, was later voted the best-dressed man in the United StatesSenate.)~~~~I Lived In The Garden Of AllahByR.V.C. BodleyDescendant of Sir Thomas Bodley, founder of the Bodleian Library, Oxford Author ofWind in the Sahara, The Messenger, and fourteen other volumesIN 1918, I turned my back on the world I had known and went to north-west Africa andlived with the Arabs in the Sahara, the Garden of Allah. I lived there seven years. Ilearned to speak the language of the nomads. I wore their clothes, I ate their food, andadopted their mode of life, which has changed very little during the last twentycenturies. I became an owner of sheep and slept on the ground in the Arabs' tents. I alsomade a detailed study of their religion. In fact, I later wrote a book about Mohammed,entitled The Messenger.Those seven years which I spent with these wandering shepherds were the mostpeaceful and contented years of my life.I had already had a rich and varied experience: I was born of English parents in Paris;and lived in France for nine years. Later I was educated at Eton and at the Royal MilitaryCollege at Sandhurst. Then I spent six years as a British army officer in India, where Iplayed polo, and hunted, and explored in the Himalayas as well as doing somesoldiering. I fought through the First World War and, at its close, I was sent to the ParisConference as an assistant military attaché. I was shocked and disappointed at what Isaw there. During the four years of slaughter on the Western Front, I had believed wewere fighting to save civilisation. But at the Paris Peace Conference, I saw selfishpoliticians laying the groundwork for the Second World War-each country grabbing all itcould for itself, creating national antagonisms, and reviving the intrigues of secretdiplomacy.I was sick of war, sick of the army, sick of society. For the first time in my career, Ispent sleepless nights, worrying about what I should do with my life. Lloyd George urgedme to go in for politics. I was considering taking his advice when a strange thinghappened, a strange thing that shaped and determined my life for the next seven years.It all came from a conversation that lasted less than two hundred seconds-aconversation with "Ted" Lawrence, "Lawrence of Arabia", the most colourful andromantic figure produced by the First World War. He had lived in the desert with theArabs and he advised me to do the same thing. At first, it sounded fantastic.However, I was determined to leave the army, and I had to do something. Civilianemployers did not want to hire men like me-ex-officers of the regular army-especiallywhen the labour market was jammed with millions of unemployed. So I did as Lawrencesuggested: I went to live with the Arabs. I am glad I did so. They taught me how toconquer worry. Like all faithful Moslems, they are fatalists. They believe that everyword Mohammed wrote in the Koran is the divine revelation of Allah. So when the Koransays: "God created you and all your actions," they accept it literally. That is why theytake life so calmly and never hurry or get into unnecessary tempers when things gowrong. They know that what is ordained is ordained; and no one but God can alteranything. However, that doesn't mean that in the face of disaster, they sit down and donothing. To illustrate, let me tell you of a fierce, burning windstorm of the siroccowhich I experienced when I was living in the Sahara. It howled and screamed for threedays and nights. It was so strong, so fierce, that it blew sand from the Sahara hundredsof miles across the Mediterranean and sprinkled it over the Rhone Valley in France. Thewind was so hot I felt as if the hair was being scorched off my head. My throat wasparched. My eyes burned. My teeth were full of grit. I felt as if I were standing in frontof a furnace in a glass factory. I was driven as near crazy as a man can be and retain hissanity. But the Arabs didn't complain. They shrugged their shoulders and said:"Mektoub!" ... "It is written."But immediately after the storm was over, they sprang into action: they slaughtered allthe lambs because they knew they would die anyway; and by slaughtering them at once,they hoped to save the mother sheep. After the lambs were slaughtered, the flockswere driven southward to water. This was all done calmly, without worry or complainingor mourning over their losses. The tribal chief said: "It is not too bad. We might havelost everything. But praise God, we have forty per cent of our sheep left to make a newstart."I remember another occasion, when we were motoring across the desert and a tyre blewout. The chauffeur had forgotten to mend the spare tyre. So there we were with onlythree tyres. I fussed and fumed and got excited and asked the Arabs what we weregoing to do. They reminded me that getting excited wouldn't help, that it only madeone hotter. The blown-out tyre, they said, was the will of Allah and nothing could bedone about it. So we started on, crawling along on the rim of a wheel. Presently the carspluttered and stopped. We were out of petrol 1 The chief merely remarked: "Mektoub!"and, there again, instead of shouting at the driver because he had not taken on enoughpetrol, everyone remained calm and we walked to our destination, singing as we went.The seven years I spent with the Arabs convinced me that the neurotics, the insane, thedrunks of America and Europe are the product of the hurried and harassed lives we livein our so-called civilisation.As long as I lived in the Sahara, I had no worries. I found there, in the Garden of Allah,the serene contentment and physical well-being that so many of us are seeking withtenseness and despair.Many people scoff at fatalism. Maybe they are right. Who knows? But all of us must beable to see how our fates are often determined for us. For example, if I had not spokento Lawrence of Arabia at three minutes past noon on a hot August day in 1919, all theyears that have elapsed since then would have been completely different. Looking backover my life, I can see how it has been shaped and moulded time and again by eventsfar beyond my control. The Arabs call it mektoub, kismet-the will of Allah. Call itanything you wish. It does strange things to you. I only know that today-seventeen yearsafter leaving the Sahara-I still maintain that happy resignation to the inevitable which Ilearned from the Arabs. That philosophy has done more to settle my nerves than athousand sedatives could have achieved.You and I are not Mohammedans: we don't want to be fatalists. But when the fierce,burning winds blow over our lives-and we cannot prevent them-let us, too, accept theinevitable. And then get busy and pick up the pieces.~~~~Five Methods I Use To Banish WorryByProfessor William Lyon Phelps[I had the privilege of spending an afternoon with Billy Phelps, of Yale, shortly beforehis death. Here are the five methods he used to banish worry-based on the notes I tookduring that interview. -DALE CARNEGIE]1. When I was twenty-four years old, my eyes suddenly gave out. After reading three orfour minutes, my eyes felt as if they were full of needles; and even when I was notreading, they were so sensitive that I could not face a window. I consulted the bestoccultists in New Haven and New York. Nothing seemed to help me. After four o'clock inthe afternoon, I simply sat in a chair in the darkest corner of the room, waiting forbedtime. I was terrified. I feared that I would have to give up my career as a teacherand go out West and get a job as a lumberjack. Then a strange thing happened whichshows the miraculous effects of the mind over physical ailments. When my eyes were attheir worst that unhappy winter, I accepted an invitation to address a group ofundergraduates.The hall was illuminated by huge rings of gas jets suspended from the ceiling. The lights