32 داستان واقعی - بخش 01

Part Ten

How I Conquered Worry

32 True Stories

Six Major Troubles

Hit All At Once by C.I. Black Wood

Proprietor, Blackwood, Davis Business College Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

In the summer of 1943, it seemed to me that half the worries of the world had come to rest on my shoulders.

For more than forty years, I had lived a normal, carefree life with only the usual troubles which come to a husband, father, and business man. I could usually meet these troubles 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 night long, half dreading to see the day come, because I faced these six major worries.

My business college was trembling on the verge of financial disaster because all the boys were going to war; and most of the girls were making more money working in war plants without training than my graduates could make in business offices with training.

My older son was in service, and I had the heart, numbing worry common to all parents whose sons were away at war.

Oklahoma City had already started proceedings to appropriate a large tract of land for an airport, and my home, formerly my father’s home, was located in the centre of this tract. I knew that I would be paid only one tenth of its value, and, what was even worse, I would lose my home; and because of the housing shortage, I worried about whether I could possibly find another home to shelter my family of six. I feared we might have to live in a tent. I even worried about whether we would be able to buy a tent.

The water well on my property went dry because a drainage canal had been dug near my home. To dig a new well would be throwing five hundred dollars away because the land was probably being appropriated. I had to carry water to my livestock in buckets every morning for two months, and I feared I would have to continue it during the rest of the war.

I lived ten miles away from my business school and I had a class B petrol card: that meant I couldn’t buy any new tyres, so I worried about how I could ever get to work when the superannuated tyres on my old Ford gave up the ghost.

My oldest daughter had graduated from high school a year ahead of schedule. She had her heart set on going to college, and I just didn’t have the money to send her. I knew her heart would be broken.

One afternoon while sitting in my office, worrying about my worries, I decided to write them all down, for it seemed no one ever had more to worry about than I had. I didn’t mind wrestling with worries that gave me a fighting chance to solve them, but these worries all seemed to be utterly beyond my control. I could do nothing to solve them. So I filed away this typewritten list of my troubles, and, as the months passed, I forgot that I had ever written it. Eighteen months later, while transferring my files, I happened to come across this list of my six major problems that had once threatened to wreck my health. I read them with a great deal of interest and profit. I now saw that not one of them had come to pass.

Here is what had happened to them:

I saw that all my worries about having to close my business college had been useless because the government had started paying business schools for training veterans and my school was soon filled to capacity.

I saw that all my worries about my son in service had been useless: he was coming through the war without a scratch.

I saw that all my worries about my land being appropriated for use as an airport had been useless because oil had been struck within a mile of my farm and the cost for procuring the land for an airport had become prohibitive.

I saw that all my worries about having no well to water my stock had been useless because, as soon as I knew my land would not be appropriated, I spent the money necessary to dig a new well to a deeper level and found an unfailing supply of water.

I saw that all my worries about my tyres giving out had been useless, because by recapping and careful driving, the tyres had managed somehow to survive. I saw that all my worries about my daughter’s education had been useless, because just sixty days before the opening of college, I was offered, almost like a miracle, an auditing job which I could do outside of school hours, and this job made it possible for me to send her to college on schedule.

I had often heard people say that ninety-nine percent of the things we worry and stew and fret about never happen, but this old saying didn’t mean much to me until I ran across that list of worries I had typed out that dreary afternoon eighteen months previously.

I am thankful now that I had to wrestle in vain with those six terrible worries. That experience has taught me a lesson I’ll never forget. It has shown me the folly and tragedy of stewing about events that haven’t happened, events that are beyond our control and may never happen.

Remember, today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday. Ask yourself: How do I KNOW this thing I am worrying about will really come to pass? Part Ten

How I Conquered Worry

32 True Stories

I Can Turn Myself in to

a Shouting Optimist

Within an Hour

by Roger W. Babson

Famous Economist Babson Park, Wellesley Hills, Massachusetts.

When I find myself depressed over present conditions, I can, within one hour, banish worry and turn myself into a shouting optimist.

Here is how I do it. I enter my library, close my eyes, and walk to certain shelves containing only books on history. With my eyes still shut, I reach for a book, not knowing whether I am picking up Prescott’s Conquest of Mexico or Suetonius’ Lives of the Twelve Caesars. With my eyes still closed, I open the book at random. I then open my eyes and read for an hour; and the more I read, the more sharply I realize that the world has always been in the throes of agony, that civilization has always been tottering on the brink. 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 realize that bad as conditions are now, they are infinitely better than they used to be. This enables me to see and face my present troubles in their proper perspective as well as to realize 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 viewpoint of ten thousand years, and see how trivial your troubles are, in terms of eternity. Part Ten

How I Conquered Worry

32 True Stories

How I Got Rid of an

Inferiority Complex

by Elmer Thomas

United States Senator from Oklahoma.

When I was fifteen I was constantly tormented by worries and fears and self, consciousness. I was extremely tall for my age and as thin as a fence rail. I stood six feet two inches and weighed only 118 pounds. In spite of my height, I was weak and could never compete with the other boys in baseball or running games. They poked fun at me and called me “hatch, face”. I was so worried and self, conscious that I dreaded to meet anyone, and I seldom did, for our farmhouse was off the public road and surrounded 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 seeing anyone 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. Every day and every hour of the day, I brooded over my tall, gaunt, weak body. I could hardly think of anything else. My embarrassment, my fear, was so intense that it is almost impossible to describe it. My mother knew how I felt. She had been a school, teacher, so she said to me: “Son, you ought to get an education, you ought to make your living with your 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 my own way; so I hunted and trapped opossum, skunk, mink, and raccoon one winter; sold my hides for four dollars in the spring, and then bought two little pigs with my four dollars. 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 Normal College, located at Danville, Indiana. I paid a dollar and forty cents a week for my board and 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 of clothes that had once belonged to my father. Dad’s clothes didn’t fit me and neither did his old congress gaiter shoes that I wore, shoes that had elastic bands in the sides that stretched 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 was embarrassed to associate with the other students, so I sat in my room alone and studied. The deepest desire of my life was to be able to buy some store clothes that fit me, clothes that I was not ashamed of.

Shortly after that, four events happened that helped me to overcome my worries and my feeling of inferiority. One of these events gave me courage and hope and confidence and 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 and was 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 that somebody had faith in me, the first evidence of faith that I ever had from anyone except my mother.

Second: A country school board at a place called Happy Hollow hired me to teach at a salary of two dollars per day, or forty dollars per month. Here was even more evidence of somebody’s faith in me.

Third: As soon as I got my first cheque I bought some store clothes, clothes that I wasn’t ashamed to wear. If someone gave me a million dollars now, it wouldn’t thrill me half as much 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 against embarrassment and inferiority occurred at the Putnam County Fair held annually in Bain, bridge, Indiana. My mother had urged me to enter a public, speaking contest that was to be held at the fair. To me, the very idea seemed fantastic. I didn’t have the courage to talk even to one person, let alone a crowd. But my mother’s faith in me was almost pathetic. She dreamed great dreams for my future. She was living her own life over in her son. Her faith inspired me to enter the contest. I chose for my subject about the last thing in the world that I was qualified to talk on: “The Fine and Liberal Arts of America”. Frankly, when I began to prepare a speech I didn’t know what the liberal arts were, but it didn’t matter much because my audience didn’t know, either.

I memorized my flowery talk and rehearsed it to the trees and cows a hundred times. I was so eager to make a good showing for my mother’s sake that I must have spoken with emotion. 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 poked fun at me and called me hatchet, faced now slapped me on the back and said: “I knew you could do it, Elmer.” My mother put her arms around me and sobbed. As I look back in retrospect, I can see that winning that speaking contest was the turning point of my life. The local newspapers ran an article about me on the front page and prophesied great things for my future. Winning that contest put me on the map locally and gave me prestige, and, what is far more important, it multiplied my confidence a hundredfold. I now realize that if I had not won that contest, I probably would never have become a member of the United States Senate, for it lifted my sights, widened my horizons, and made me realize that I had latent abilities that I never dreamed I possessed. Most important, however, was the fact that the first prize in the oratorical contest was a year’s scholarship in the Central Normal College.

I hungered now for more education. So, during the next few years, from 1896 to 1900, I divided my time between teaching and studying. In order to pay my expenses at De Pauw 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 public road, construction job.

In 1896, when I was only nineteen, I made twenty, eight speeches, urging people to vote for William Jennings Bryan for President. The excitement of speaking for Bryan aroused a desire in me to enter politics myself. So when I entered De Pauw University, I studied law and public speaking. In 1899 I represented the university in a debate with Butler College, held in Indianapolis, on the subject “Resolved that United States Senators should be elected by popular vote.” I won other speaking contests and became editor, in, chief of the class of 1900 College Annual, The Mirage, and the university paper, The Palladium.

After receiving my A.B. degree at De Pauw, I took Horace Greeley’s advice, only I didn’t go 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 and opened a law office in Lawton, Oklahoma. I served in the Oklahoma State Senate for thirteen years, in the lower House of Congress for four years, and at fifty years of age, I achieved my lifelong ambition: I was elected to the United States Senate from Oklahoma. I have served in that capacity since March 4, 1927. Since Oklahoma and Indian Territories became the state of Oklahoma on November 16, 1907, I have been continuously honored by the Democrats of my adopted state by nominations, first for State 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’t possibly interest anyone else. I have told it wholly with the hope that it may give renewed courage and confidence to some poor boy who is now suffering from the worries and shyness and feeling of inferiority that devastated my life when I was wearing my father’s cast, off clothes and gaiter shoes that almost dropped off my feet as I walked.

(Editor’s note: It is interesting to know that Elmer Thomas, who was so ashamed of his ill, fitting clothes as a youth, was later voted the best, dressed man in the United States Senate.) Part Ten

How I Conquered Worry

32 True Stories

I Lived in the

Garden of Allah

by R.V.C. Bodley

Descendant of Sir Thomas Bodley, founder of the Bodleian Library, Oxford Author of Wind in the Sahara, The Messenger, and fourteen other volumes.

In 1918, I turned my back on the world I had known and went to north, west Africa and lived with the Arabs in the Sahara, the Garden of Allah. I lived there seven years. I learned to speak the language of the nomads. I wore their clothes; I ate their food, and adopted their mode of life, which has changed very little during the last twenty centuries. I became an owner of sheep and slept on the ground in the Arabs’ tents. I also made 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 most peaceful 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 Military College at Sandhurst. Then I spent six years as a British army officer in India, where I played polo, and hunted, and explored in the Himalayas as well as doing some soldiering. I fought through the First World War and, at its close, I was sent to the Paris Conference as an assistant military attaché. I was shocked and disappointed at what I saw there. During the four years of slaughter on the Western Front, I had believed we were fighting to save civilization. But at the Paris Peace Conference, I saw selfish politicians laying the groundwork for the Second World War, each country grabbing all it could for itself, creating national antagonisms, and reviving the intrigues of secret diplomacy.

I was sick of war, sick of the army, sick of society. For the first time in my career, I spent sleepless nights, worrying about what I should do with my life. Lloyd George urged me to go in for politics. I was considering taking his advice when a strange thing happened, 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, a conversation with “Ted” Lawrence, “Lawrence of Arabia”, the most colorful and romantic figure produced by the First World War. He had lived in the desert with the Arabs 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. Civilian employers did not want to hire men like me, ex, officers of the regular army, especially when the labor market was jammed with millions of unemployed. So I did as Lawrence suggested: I went to live with the Arabs. I am glad I did so. They taught me how to conquer worry. Like all faithful Moslems, they are fatalists. They believe that every word Mohammed wrote in the Koran is the divine revelation of Allah. So when the Koran says: “God created you and all your actions,” they accept it literally. That is why they take life so calmly and never hurry or get into unnecessary tempers when things go wrong. They know that what is ordained is ordained; and no one but God can alter anything. However, that doesn’t mean that in the face of disaster, they sit down and do nothing. To illustrate, let me tell you of a fierce, burning windstorm of the sirocco which I experienced when I was living in the Sahara. It howled and screamed for three days and nights. It was so strong, so fierce, that it blew sand from the Sahara hundreds of miles across the Mediterranean and sprinkled it over the Rhone Valley in France. The wind was so hot I felt as if the hair was being scorched off my head. My throat was parched. My eyes burned. My teeth were full of grit. I felt as if I were standing in front of a furnace in a glass factory. I was driven as near crazy as a man can be and retain his sanity. 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 all the 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 flocks were driven southward to water. This was all done calmly, without worry or complaining or mourning over their losses. The tribal chief said: “It is not too bad. We might have lost everything. But praise God, we have forty percent of our sheep left to make a new start.”

I remember another occasion, when we were motoring across the desert and a tyre blew out. The chauffeur had forgotten to mend the spare tyre. So there we were with only three tyres. I fussed and fumed and got excited and asked the Arabs what we were going to do. They reminded me that getting excited wouldn’t help, that it only made one hotter. The blown, out tyre, they said, was the will of Allah and nothing could be done about it. So we started on, crawling along on the rim of a wheel. Presently the car spluttered and stopped. We were out of petrol. The chief merely remarked: “Mektoub!” and, there again, instead of shouting at the driver because he had not taken on enough petrol, 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, the drunks of America and Europe are the product of the hurried and harassed lives we live in our so, called civilization.

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 with tenseness and despair.

Many people scoff at fatalism. Maybe they are right. Who knows? But all of us must be able to see how our fates are often determined for us. For example, if I had not spoken to Lawrence of Arabia at three minutes past noon on a hot August day in 1919, all the years that have elapsed since then would have been completely different. Looking back over my life, I can see how it has been shaped and molded time and again by events far beyond my control. The Arabs call it mektoub, kismet, the will of Allah. Call it anything you wish. It does strange things to you. I only know that today, seventeen years after leaving the Sahara, I still maintain that happy resignation to the inevitable which I learned from the Arabs. That philosophy has done more to settle my nerves than a thousand 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 the inevitable. And then get busy and pick up the pieces. Part Ten

How I Conquered Worry

32 True Stories

Five Methods I Use

to Banish Worry

by Professor William Lyon Phelps

(I had the privilege of spending an afternoon with Billy Phelps, of Yale, shortly before his death. Here are the five methods he used to banish worry, based on the notes I took during that interview. —Dale Carnegie)

1. When I was twenty, four years old, my eyes suddenly gave out. After reading three or four minutes, my eyes felt as if they were full of needles; and even when I was not reading, they were so sensitive that I could not face a window. I consulted the best occultists in New Haven and New York. Nothing seemed to help me. After four o’clock in the afternoon, I simply sat in a chair in the darkest corner of the room, waiting for bedtime. I was terrified. I feared that I would have to give up my career as a teacher and go out West and get a job as a lumberjack. Then a strange thing happened which shows the miraculous effects of the mind over physical ailments. When my eyes were at their worst that unhappy winter, I accepted an invitation to address a group of undergraduates.

The hall was illuminated by huge rings of gas jets suspended from the ceiling. The lights pained my eyes so intensely that, while sitting on the platform, I was compelled to look at the floor. Yet during my thirty, minute speech, I felt absolutely no pain, and I could look directly at these lights without any blinking whatever. Then when the assembly was over, my eyes pained me again.

I thought then that if I could keep my mind strongly concentrated on something, not for thirty minutes, but for a week, I might be cured. For clearly it was a case of mental excitement triumphing over a bodily illness.

I had a similar experience later while crossing the ocean. I had an attack of lumbago so severe that I could not walk. I suffered extreme pain when I tried to stand up straight. While in that condition, I was invited to give a lecture on shipboard. As soon as I began to speak, every trace of pain and stiffness left my body; I stood up straight, moved about with perfect flexibility, and spoke for an hour. When the lecture was over, I walked away to my stateroom with ease. For a moment, I thought I was cured. But the cure was only temporary. The lumbago resumed its attack.

These experiences demonstrated to me the vital importance of one’s mental attitude. They taught me the importance of enjoying life while you may. So I live every day now as if it were the first day I had ever seen and the last I were going to see. I am excited about the daily adventure of living, and nobody in a state of excitement will be unduly troubled with worries. I love my daily work as a teacher. I wrote a book entitled The Excitement of Teaching. Teaching has always been more than an art or an occupation to me. It is a passion. I love to teach as a painter loves to paint or a singer loves to sing. Before I get out of bed in the morning, I think with ardent delight of my first group of students. I have always felt that one of the chief reasons for success in life is enthusiasm.

1. I have found that I can crowd worry out of mind by reading an absorbing book. When I was fifty, nine, I had a prolonged nervous breakdown. During that period I began reading David Alec Wilson’s monumental Life of Carlyle. It had a good deal to do with my convalescence because I became so absorbed in reading it that I forgot my despondency.

2. At another time when I was terribly depressed, I forced myself to become physically active almost every hour of the day. I played five or six sets of violent games of tennis every morning, then took a bath, had lunch, and played eighteen holes of golf every afternoon. On Friday night I danced until one o’clock in the morning. I am a great believer in working up a tremendous sweat. I found that depression and worry oozed out of my system with the sweat.

3. I learned long ago to avoid the folly of hurry, rush, and working under tension. I have always tried to apply the philosophy of Wilbur Cross. When he was Governor of Connecticut, he said to me: “Sometimes when I have too many things to do all at once, I sit down and relax and smoke my pipe for an hour and do nothing.”

4. I have also learned that patience and time have a way of resolving our troubles. When I am worried about something, I try to see my troubles in their proper perspective. I say to myself: “Two months from now I shall not be worrying about this bad break, so why worry about it now? Why not assume now the same attitude that I will have two months from now?”

To sum up, here are the five ways in which Professor Phelps banished worry:

1. Live with gusto and enthusiasm: “I live every day as if it were the first day I had ever seen and the last I were going to see.”

2. Read an interesting book: “When I had a prolonged nervous breakdown, I began reading ‘the Life of Carlyle’ and became so absorbed in reading it that I forgot my despondency.”

3. Play games: “When I was terribly depressed, I forced myself to become physically active almost every hour of the day.”

4. Relax while you work: “I long ago learned to avoid the folly of hurry, rush, and working under tension.”

5. “I try to see my troubles in their proper perspective. I say to myself: ‘Two months from now I shall not be worrying about this bad break, so why worry about it now? Why not assume now the same attitude that I will have two months from now?’ “ Part Ten

How I Conquered Worry

32 True Stories

I Stood Yesterday.

I Can Stand Today

by Dorothy Dix

I have been through the depths of poverty and sickness. When people ask me what has kept me going through the troubles that come to all of us, I always reply: “I stood yesterday. I can stand today. And I will not permit myself to think about what might happen tomorrow.”

I have known want and struggle and anxiety and despair. I have always had to work beyond the limit of my strength. As I look back upon my life, I see it as a battlefield strewn with the wrecks of dead dreams and broken hopes and shattered illusions, a battle in which I always fought with the odds tremendously against me, and which has left me scarred and bruised and maimed and old before my time.

Yet I have no pity for myself; no tears to shed over the past and gone sorrows; no envy for the women who have been spared all I have gone through. For I have lived. They only existed. I have drank the cup of life down to its very dregs. They have only sipped the bubbles on top of it. I know things they will never know. I see things to which they are blind. It is only the women whose eyes have been washed clear with tears who get the broad vision that makes them little sisters to all the world.

I have learned in the great University of Hard Knocks a philosophy that no woman who has had an easy life ever acquires. I have learned to live each day as it comes and not to borrow trouble by dreading the morrow. It is the dark menace of the future that makes cowards of us. I put that dread from me because experience has taught me that when the time comes that I so fear, the strength and wisdom to meet it will be given to me. Little annoyances no longer have the power to affect me. After you have seen your whole edifice of happiness topple and crash in ruins about you, it never matters to you again that a servant forgets to put the doilies under the finger bowls, or the cook spills the soup.

I have learned not to expect too much of people, and so I can still get happiness out of the friend who isn’t quite true to me or the acquaintance who gossips. Above all, I have acquired a sense of humor, because there were so many things over which I had either to cry or laugh. And when a woman can joke over her troubles instead of having hysterics, nothing can ever hurt her much again. I do not regret the hardships I have known, because through them I have touched life at every point I have lived. And it was worth the price I had to pay.

Dorothy Dix conquered worry by living in day-tight compartments. Part Ten

How I Conquered Worry

32 True Stories

I Did Not Expect to

Live to See the Dawn

by J.C. Penney

On April 14, 1902, a young man with five hundred dollars in cash and a million dollars in determination opened a dry goods store in Kemmerer, Wyoming, a little mining town of a thousand people, situated on the old covered, wagon trail laid out by the Lewis and Clark Expedition. That young man and his wife lived in a half, storey attic above the store, using a large empty dry, goods box for a table and smaller boxes for chairs. The young wife wrapped her baby in a blanket and let it sleep under a counter while she stood beside it, helping her husband wait on customers. Today the largest chain of dry, goods stores in the world bears that man’s name: the J.C. Penney stores, over sixteen hundred of them covering every state in the Union. I recently had dinner with Mr. Penney, and he told me about the most dramatic moment of his life.

Years ago, I passed through a most trying experience. I was worried and desperate. My worries were not connected in any way whatever with the J. C. Penney Company. That business was solid and thriving; but I personally had made some unwise commitments prior to the crash of 1929. Like many other men, I was blamed for conditions for which I was in no way responsible. I was so harassed with worries that I couldn’t sleep, and developed an extremely painful ailment known as shingles, a red rash and skin eruptions. I consulted a physician, a man with whom I had gone to high school as a boy in Hamilton, Missouri: Dr. Elmer Eggleston, a staff physician at the Kellogg Sanatorium in Battle Creek, Michigan. Dr. Eggleston put me to bed and warned me that I was a very ill man. A rigid treatment was prescribed. But nothing helped. I got weaker day by day. I was broken nervously and physically, filled with despair, unable to see even a ray of hope. I had nothing to live for. I felt I hadn’t a friend left in the world that even my family had turned against me. One night, Dr, Eggleston gave me a sedative, but the effect soon wore off and I awoke with an overwhelming conviction that this was my last night of life. Getting out of bed, I wrote farewell letters to my wife and to my son, saying that I did not expect to live to see the dawn.

When I awoke the next morning, I was surprised to find that I was still alive. Going downstairs, I heard singing in a little chapel where devotional exercises were held each morning. I can still remember the hymn they were singing: “God will take care of you.” Going into the chapel, I listened with a weary heart to the singing, the reading of the Scripture lesson, and the prayer. Suddenly, something happened. I can’t explain it. I can only call it a miracle. I felt as if I had been instantly lifted out of the darkness of a dungeon into warm, brilliant sunlight. I felt as if I had been transported from hell to paradise. I felt the power of God as I had never felt it before. I realized then that I alone was responsible for all my troubles. I knew that God with His love was there to help me. From that day to this, my life has been free from worry. I am seventy, one years old, and the most dramatic and glorious twenty minutes of my life were those I spent in that chapel that morning: “God will take care of you.”

J.C. Penney learned to overcome worry almost instantaneously, because he discovered the one perfect cure. Part Ten

How I Conquered Worry

32 True Stories

I Go to the Gym to Punch the

Bag or Take a Hike Outdoors

by Colonel Eddie Eagan

New York Attorney, Rhodes Scholar Chairman, New York State Athletic Commission Former Olympic Light, Heavyweight Champion of the World.

When I find myself worrying and mentally going round in endless circles like a camel turning a water wheel in Egypt, a good physical work, out helps me to chase those “blues” away. It may be running or a long hike in the country, or it may be a half, hour of bag punching or squash tennis at the gymnasium. Whichever it is, physical exercise clears my mental outlook. On a week, end I do a lot of physical sport, such as a run around the golf course, a game of paddle tennis, or a ski week, end in the Adirondacks. By my becoming physically tired, my mind gets a rest from legal problems, so that when I return to them, my mind has a new zest and power.

Quite often in New York, where I work, there is a chance for me to spend an hour at the Yale Club gym. No man can worry while he is playing squash tennis or skiing. He is too busy to worry. The large mental mountains of trouble become minute molehills that new thoughts and acts quickly smooth down.

I find the best antidote for worry is exercise. Use your muscles more and your brain less when you are worried, and you will be surprised at the result. It works that way with me, worry goes when exercise begins. Part Ten

How I Conquered Worry

32 True Stories

I Was the Worrying Wreck

From Virginia Tech

by Jim Birdsall

Plant Superintendent C.F. Muller Company 180 Baldwin Avenue, Jersey City, New Jersey.

Seventeen years ago, when I was in military college at Blacks, burg, Virginia, I was known as “the worrying wreck from Virginia Tech”. I worried so violently that I often became ill. In fact, I was ill so often that I had a regular bed reserved for me at the college infirmary at all times. When the nurse saw me coming, she would run and give me a hypo. I worried about everything. Sometimes I even forgot what I was worrying about. I worried for fear I would be busted out of college because of my low grades. I had failed to pass my examinations in physics and other subjects, too. I knew I had to maintain an average grade of 75, 84. I worried about my health, about my excruciating attacks of acute indigestion, about my insomnia. I worried about financial matters. I felt badly because I couldn’t buy my girl candy or take her to dances as often as I wanted to. I worried for fear she would marry one of the other cadets. I was in a lather day and night over a dozen intangible problems.

In desperation, I poured out my troubles to Professor Duke Baird, professor of business administration at V.P.I. The fifteen minutes that I spent with Professor Baird did more for my health and happiness than all the rest of the four years I spent in college. “Jim,” he said, “you ought to sit down and face the facts. If you devoted half as much time and energy to solving your problems as you do to worrying about them, you wouldn’t have any worries. Worrying is just a vicious habit you have learned.”

He gave me three rules to break the worry habit:

Rule 1. Find out precisely what is the problem you are worrying about.

Rule 2. Find out the cause of the problem.

Rule 3. Do something constructive at once about solving the problem.

After that interview, I did a bit of constructive planning. Instead of worrying because I had failed to pass physics, I now asked myself why I had failed. I knew it wasn’t because I was dumb, for I was editor in chief of The Virginia Tech Engineer.

I figured that I had failed physics because I had no interest in the subject. I had not applied myself because I couldn’t see how it would help me in my work as an industrial engineer. But now I changed my attitude. I said to myself: “If the college authorities demand that I pass my physics examination before I obtain a degree, who am I to question their wisdom?”

So I enrolled for physics again. This time I passed because instead of wasting my time in resentment and worrying about how hard it was, I studied diligently.

I solved my financial worries by taking on some additional jobs, such as selling punch at the college dances, and by borrowing money from my father, which I paid back soon after graduation.

I solved my love worries by proposing to the girl that I feared might marry another cadet. She is now Mrs. Jim Birdsall.

As I look back at it now, I can see that my problem was one of confusion, a disinclination to find the causes of my worry and face them realistically.

Jim Birdsall learned to stop worrying because he ANALYSED his troubles. In fact, he used the very principles described in the chapter “How to Analyze and Solve Worry Problems.” Part Ten

How I Conquered Worry

32 True Stories

I Have Lived by

This Sentence

by Dr. Joseph R. Sizoo

President, New Brunswick Theological Seminary (The oldest theological seminary in the United States, founded in 1784)

Years ago, in a day of uncertainty and disillusionment, when my whole life seemed to be overwhelmed by forces beyond my control, one morning quite casually I opened my New Testament and my eyes fell upon this sentence: “He that sent me is with me, the Father hath not left me alone.” My life has never been the same since that hour. Everything for me has been for ever different after that. I suppose that not a day has passed that I have not repeated it to myself. Many have come to me for counseling during these years, and I have always sent them away with this sustaining sentence. Ever since that hour when my eyes fell upon it, I have lived by this sentence. I have walked with it and I have found in it my peace and strength. To me it is the very essence of religion. It lies at the rock bottom of everything that makes life worth living. It is the Golden Text of my life. Part Ten

How I Conquered Worry

32 True Stories

I Hit Bottom and Survived

by Ted Ericksen

16,237 South Cornuta Avenue, Bellflower, California Southern California Representative National Enameling and Stamping Company.

I used to be a terrible “worry wart”. But no more. In the summer of 1942, I had an experience that banished worry from my life, for all time; I hope. That experience made every other trouble seem small by comparison.

For years I had wanted to spend a summer on a commercial fishing craft in Alaska, so in 1942 I signed on a thirty, two, foot salmon seining vessel out of Kodiak, Alaska. On a craft of this size, there is a crew of only three: the skipper who does the supervising, a No. 2 man who assists the skipper, and a general work horse, who is usually a Scandinavian. I am a Scandinavian.

Since salmon seining has to be done with the tides, I often worked twenty hours out of twenty, four. I kept up that schedule for a week at a time. I did everything that nobody else wanted to do. I washed the craft. I put away the gear. I cooked on a little wood, burning stove in a small cabin where the heat and fumes of the motor almost made me ill. I washed the dishes. I repaired the boat. I pitched the salmon from our boat into a tender that took the fish to a cannery. My feet were always wet in rubber boots. My boots were often filled with water, but I had no time to empty them. But all that was play compared to my main job, which was pulling what is called the “cork line”. That operation simply means placing your feet on the stem of the craft and pulling in the corks and the webbing of the net. At least, that is what you are supposed to do. But, in reality, the net was so heavy that when I tried to pull it in, it wouldn’t budge. What really happened was that in trying to pull in the cork line, I actually pulled in the boat. I pulled it along on my own power, since the net stayed where it was. I did all this for weeks on end. It was almost the end of me, too. I ached horribly. I ached all over. I ached for months.

When I finally did have a chance to rest, I slept on a damp lumpy mattress piled on top of the provisions locker. I would put one of the lumps in the mattress under the part of my back that hurt most, and sleep as if I had been drugged. I was drugged by complete exhaustion.

I am glad now that I had to endure all that aching and exhaustion because it has helped me stop worrying. Whenever I am confronted by a problem now, instead of worrying about it, I say to myself: “Ericksen, could this possibly be as bad as pulling the cork line?” And Ericksen invariably answers: “No, nothing could be that bad!” So I cheer up and tackle it with courage. I believe it is a good thing to have to endure an agonizing experience occasionally. It is good to know that we have hit bottom and survived. That makes all our daily problems seem easy by comparison. Part Ten

How I Conquered Worry

32 True Stories

I Used to Be One of the

World’s Biggest Jackasses

by Percy H. Whiting

Managing Director, Dale Carnegie and Company 50 East 42nd Street, New York, New York.

I have died more times from more different diseases than any other man, living, dead, or half dead.

I was no ordinary hypochondriac. My father owned a drug store, and I was practically brought up in it. I talked to doctors and nurses every day, so I knew the names and symptoms of more and worse diseases than the average layman. I was no ordinary hypo, I had symptoms! I could worry for an hour or two over a disease and then have practically all the symptoms of a man who was suffering from it. I recall once that, in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, the town in which I lived, we had a rather severe diphtheria epidemic. In my father’s drug, store, I had been selling medicines day after day to people who came from infected homes. Then the evil that I feared came upon me: I had diphtheria myself. I was positive I had it. I went to bed and worried myself into the standard symptoms. I sent for a doctor. He looked me over and said: “Yes, Percy, you’ve got it.” That relieved my mind. I was never afraid of any disease when I had it, so I turned over and went to sleep. The next morning I was in perfect health.

For years I distinguished myself and got a lot of attention and sympathy by specializing in unusual and fantastic disease, I died several times of both lockjaw and hydrophobia. Later on, I settled down to having the run, of, mill ailments, specializing on cancer and tuberculosis.

I can laugh about it now, but it was tragic then. I honestly and literally feared for years that I was walking on the edge of the grave. When it came time to buy a suit of clothes in the spring, I would ask myself: “Should I waste this money when I know I can’t possibly live to wear this suit out?”

However, I am happy to report progress: in the past ten years, I haven’t died even once.

How did I stop dying? By kidding myself out of my ridiculous imaginings. Every time I felt the dreadful symptoms coming on, I laughed at myself and said: “See here, Whiting, you have been dying from one fatal disease after another now for twenty years, yet you are in first, class health today. An insurance company recently accepted you for more insurance. Isn’t it about time, Whiting, that you stood aside and had a good laugh at the worrying jackass you are?”

I soon found that I couldn’t worry about myself and laugh at myself at one and the same time. So I’ve been laughing at myself ever since.

The point of this is: Don’t take yourself too seriously. Try “just laughing” at some of your sillier worries, and see if you can’t laugh them out of existence. Part Ten

How I Conquered Worry

32 True Stories

I Have Always Tried

to Keep My Line

of Supplies Open

by Gene Autry

The world’s most famous and beloved singing cowboy.

I figure that most worries are about family troubles and money. I was fortunate in marrying a small, town Oklahoma girl who had the same background I had and enjoyed the same things. We both try to follow the golden rule, so we have kept our family troubles to a minimum.

I have kept my financial worries to a minimum also by doing two things. First, I have always followed a rule of absolute one hundred percent integrity in everything. When I borrowed money, I paid back every penny. Few things cause more worry than dishonesty.

Second, when I started a new venture, I always kept on ace in the hole. Military experts say that the first principle of fighting a battle is to keep your line of supplies open. I figure that that principle applies to personal battles almost as much as to military battles. For example, as a lad down in Texas and Oklahoma, I saw some real poverty when the country was devastated by droughts. We had mighty hard scratching at times to make a living. We were so poor that my father used to drive across the country in a covered wagon with a string of horses and swap horses to make a living. I wanted something more reliable than that. So I got a job working for a railway, station agent and learned telegraphy in my spare time. Later, I got a job working as relief operator for the Frisco Railway. I was sent here, there, and yonder to relieve other station agents who were ill or on vacation or had more work than they could do. That job paid $150 per month. Later, when I started out to better myself, I always figured that that railroad job meant economic safety. So I always kept the road open back to that job. It was my line of supplies, and I never cut myself off from it until I was firmly established in a new and better position.

For example, back in 1928, when I was working as a relief operator for the Frisco Railway in Chelsea, .Oklahoma, a stranger drifted in one evening to send a telegram. He heard me playing the guitar and singing cowboy songs and told me I was good, told me that I ought to go to New York and get a job on the stage or radio. Naturally, I was flattered; and when I saw the name he signed to his telegram, I was almost breathless: Will Rogers.

Instead of rushing off to New York at once, I thought the matter over carefully for nine months. I finally came to the conclusion that I had nothing to lose and everything to gain by going to New York and giving the old town a whirl. I had a railroad pass: I could travel free. I could sleep sitting up in my seat, and I could carry some sandwiches and fruit for my meals.

So I went. When I reached New York, I slept in a furnished room for five dollars a week, ate at the Automat, and tramped the streets for ten weeks, and got nowhere. I would have been worried sick if I hadn’t had a job to go back to. I had already worked for the railway five years. That meant I had seniority rights; but in order to protect those rights, I couldn’t lay off longer than ninety days. By this time, I had already been in New York seventy days, so I rushed back to Oklahoma on my pass and began working again to protect my line of supply. I worked for a few months, saved money, and returned to New York for another try. This time I got a break. One day, while waiting for an interview in a recording, studio office, I played my guitar and sang a song to the girl receptionist: “Jeannine, I Dream of Lilac Time”. While I was singing that song, the man who wrote it, Nat Schildkraut, drifted into the office. Naturally, he was pleased to hear anyone singing his song. So he gave me a note of introduction and sent me down to the Victor Recording Company. I made a record. I was no good, too stiff and self, conscious. So I took the advice of the Victor Recording man: I went back to Tulsa, worked for the railway by day, and at night I sang cowboy songs on a sustaining radio programme. I liked that arrangement. It meant that I was keeping my line of supplies open, so I had no worries.

I sang for nine months on radio station KVOO in Tulsa. During that time, Jimmy Long and I wrote a song entitled “That Silver, Haired Daddy of Mine”. It caught on. Arthur Sattherly, head of the American Recording Company, asked me to make a recording. It clicked. I made a number of other recordings for fifty dollars each, and finally got a job singing cowboy songs over radio station WLS in Chicago. Salary: forty dollars a week. After singing there four years, my salary was raised to ninety dollars a week, and I picked up another three hundred dollars doing personal appearances every night in theatres.

Then in 1934, I got a break that opened up enormous possibilities. The League of Decency was formed to clean up the movies. So Hollywood producers decided to put on cowboy pictures; but they wanted a new kind of cowboy, one who could sing. The man who owned the American Recording Company was also part owner of Republic Pictures. “If you want a singing cowboy,” he said to his associates, “I have got one making records for us.” That is how I broke into the movies. I started making singing, cowboy pictures for one hundred dollars a week. I had serious doubts about whether I would succeed in pictures, but I didn’t worry. I knew I could always go back to my old job.

My success in pictures exceeded my wildest expectations. I now get a salary of one hundred thousand a year plus one half of all the profits on my pictures. However, I realize that this arrangement won’t go on for ever. But I am not worried. I know that no matter what happens, even if I lose every dollar I have, I can always go back to Oklahoma and get a job working for the Frisco Railway. I have protected my line of supplies. Part Ten

How I Conquered Worry

32 True Stories

I Heard a

Voice in India

by E. Stanley Jones

One of America’s most dynamic speakers and the most famous missionary of his generation.

I have devoted forty years of my life to missionary work in India. At first, I found it difficult to endure the terrible heat plus the nervous strain of the great task that stretched before me. At the end of eight years, I was suffering so severely from brain fatigue and nervous exhaustion that I collapsed, not once but several times. I was ordered to take a year’s furlough in America. On the boat returning to America, I collapsed again while speaking at a Sunday, morning service on the ship, and the ship’s doctor put me to bed for the remainder of the trip.

After a year’s rest in America, I started back to India, but stopped on the way to hold evangelistic meetings among the university students in Manila. In the midst of the strain of these meetings, I collapsed several times. Physicians warned me that if I returned to India, I would die. In spite of their warnings, I continued on to India, but I went with a deepening cloud upon me. When I arrived in Bombay, I was so broken that I went straight to the hills and rested for several months. Then I returned to the plains to continue my work. It was no use. I collapsed and was forced to return to the hills for another long rest. Again I descended to the plains, and again I was shocked and crushed to discover that I couldn’t take it. I was exhausted mentally, nervously, and physically. I was completely at the end of my resources. I feared that I would be a physical wreck for the balance of my life.

If I didn’t get help from somewhere, I realized that I would have to give up my missionary career, go back to America, and work on a farm to try to regain my health. It was one of my darkest hours. At that time I was holding a series of meetings in luck now. While praying one night, an event happened that completely transformed my life. While in prayer, and I was not particularly thinking about myself at the time, a voice seemed to say: “Are you yourself ready for this work to which I have called you?”

I replied: “No, Lord, I am done for. I have reached the end of my resources.”

The Voice replied “If you will turn that over to me and not worry about it, I will take care of it.”

I quickly answered: “Lord, I close the bargain right here.”

A great peace settled into my heart and pervaded my whole being. I knew it was done! Life, abundant life, had taken possession of me. I was so lifted up that I scarcely touched the road as I quietly walked home that night. Every inch was holy ground. For days after that I hardly knew I had a body. I went through the days, working all day and far into the night, and came down to bedtime wondering why in the world I should ever go to bed at all, for there was not the slightest trace of tiredness of any kind. I seemed possessed by life and peace and rest, by Christ Himself.

The question came as to whether I should tell this. I shrank from it, but I felt I should, and did. After that it was sink or swim before everybody. More than a score of the most strenuous years of my life have gone by since then, but the old trouble has never returned. I have never had such health. But it was more than a physical touch. I seemed to have tapped new life for body, mind, and spirit. After that experience, life for me functioned on a permanently higher level. And I had done nothing but take it!

During the many years that have gone by since then, I have travelled all over the world, frequently lecturing three times a day, and have found time and strength to write The Christ of the Indian Road and eleven other books. Yet in the midst of all this, I have never missed, or even been late to, an appointment. The worries that once beset me have long since vanished, and now, in my sixty, third year, I am overflowing with abounding vitality and the joy of serving and living for others.

I suppose that the physical and mental transformation that I have experienced could be picked to pieces psychologically and explained. It does not matter. Life is bigger than processes and overflows and dwarfs them.

This one thing I know: my life was completely transformed and uplifted that night in Luck. Now, thirty-one years ago, when at the depth of my weakness and depression, a voice said to me: “If you will turn that over to me and not worry about it, I will take care of it,” and I replied: “Lord, I close the bargain right here.”