We may be worried because we can't keep up with the Joneses; but the Joneses are
probably worried because they can't keep up with the Ritzes; and the Ritzes are worried
because 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 as
President.
If we can't have all we want, let's not poison our days and sour our dispositions with
worry 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-tight
fence around it, we could eat only three meals a day and sleep in only one bed at a
time.
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 1
3. 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 and
stop resenting what can't be changed.
Part Ten -"How I Conquered Worry"
32 True Stories
~~~~
Six Major Troubles Hit Me 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.
1. 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.
2. My older son was in service, and I had the heart-numbing worry common to all
parents whose sons were away at war.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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.
6. 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:
1. 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.
2. I saw that all my worries about my son in service had been useless: he was coming
through the war without a scratch.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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.
6. 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 per cent 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?
~~~~
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 realise that the world has
always been in the throes of agony, that civilisation 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 realise
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
realise 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.
~~~~
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 selfconsciousness.
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 memorised 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 realise 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 realise 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-inchief
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 honoured 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.)
~~~~
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 civilisation. 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 colourful 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 labour 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 per cent 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 1 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 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 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 moulded 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.
~~~~
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
