How to Stop Worrying and Start Living (14 page)

RULE 4: Co-operate with the inevitable. If you know a circumstance is beyond your power to change or revise, say to yourself "It is so; it cannot be otherwise."

RULE 5: Put a "stop-loss" order on your worries. Decide just how much anxiety a thing may be worth-and refuse to give it any more.

RULE 6: Let the past bury its dead. Don't saw sawdust.

----------------------------------

Part Four - Seven Ways To Cultivate A Mental Attitude That Will Bring You Peace And Happiness

Chapter 12 - Eight Words That Can Transform Your Life

A Few years ago, I was asked to answer this question on a radio programme: "What is the biggest lesson you have ever learned?"

That was easy: by far the most vital lesson I have ever learned is the importance of what we think. If I knew what you think, I would know what you are. Our thoughts make us what we are. Our mental attitude is the X factor that determines our fate. Emerson said: "A man is what he thinks about all day long." ... How could he possibly be anything else?

I now know with a conviction beyond all doubt that the biggest problem you and I have to deal with-in fact, almost the only problem we have to deal with-is choosing the right thoughts. If we can do that, we will be on the highroad to solving all our problems. The great philosopher who ruled the Roman Empire, Marcus Aurelius, summed it up in eight words-eight words that can determine your destiny: "Our life is what our thoughts make it."

Yes, if we think happy thoughts, we will be happy. If we think miserable thoughts, we will be miserable. If we think fear thoughts, we will be fearful. If we think sickly thoughts, we will probably be ill. If we think failure, we will certainly fail. If we wallow in self-pity, everyone will want to shun us and avoid us. "You are not," said Norman Vincent Peale, "you are not what you think you are; but what you think, you are."

Am I advocating an habitual Pollyanna attitude toward all our problems? No, unfortunately, life isn't so simple as all that. But I am advocating that we assume a positive attitude instead of a negative attitude. In other words, we need to be concerned about our problems, but not worried. What is the difference between concern and worry? Let me illustrate. Every time I cross the traffic-jammed streets of New York, I am concerned about what I am doing-but not worried. Concern means realising what the problems are and calmly taking steps to meet them. Worrying means going around in maddening, futile circles.

A man can be concerned about his serious problems and still walk with his chin up and a carnation in his buttonhole. I have seen Lowell Thomas do just that. I once had the privilege of being associated with Lowell Thomas in presenting his famous films on the Allenby-Lawrence campaigns in World War I. He and his assistants had photographed the war on half a dozen fronts; and, best of all, had brought back a pictorial record of T. E. Lawrence and his colourful Arabian army, and a film record of Allenby's conquest of the Holy Land. His illustrated talks entitled "With Allenby in Palestine and Lawrence in Arabia" were a sensation in London-and around the world. The London opera season was postponed for six weeks so that he could continue telling his tale of high adventure and showing his pictures at Covent Garden Royal Opera House. After his sensational success in London came a triumphant tour of many countries. Then he spent two years preparing a film record of life in India and Afghanistan. After a lot of incredibly bad luck, the impossible happened: he found himself broke in London. I was with him at the time.

I remember we had to eat cheap meals at cheap restaurants. We couldn't have eaten even there if we had not borrowed money from a Scotsman-James McBey, the renowned artist. Here is the point of the story: even when Lowell Thomas was facing huge debts and severe disappointments, he was concerned, but not worried. He knew that if he let his reverses get him down, he would be worthless to everyone, including his creditors. So each morning before he started out, he bought a flower, put it in his buttonhole, and went swinging down Oxford Street with his head high and his step spirited. He thought positive, courageous thoughts and refused to let defeat defeat him. To him, being licked was all part of the game-the useful training you had to expect if you wanted to get to the top.

Our mental attitude has an almost unbelievable effect even on our physical powers. The famous British psychiatrist, J. A. Hadfield, gives a striking illustration of that fact in his splendid book, The Psychology of Power. "I asked three men," he writes, "to submit themselves to test the effect of mental suggestion on their strength, which was measured by gripping a dynamometer." He told them to grip the dynamometer with all their might. He had them do this under three different sets of conditions.

When he tested them under normal waking conditions, their average grip was 101 pounds.

When he tested them after he had hypnotised them and told them that they were very weak, they could grip only 29 pounds -less than a third of their normal strength. (One of these men was a prize fighter; and when he was told under hypnosis that he was weak, he remarked that his arm felt "tiny, just like a baby's".)

When Captain Hadfield then tested these men a third time, telling them under hypnosis that they were very strong, they were able to grip an average of 142 pounds. When their minds were filled with positive thoughts of strength, they increased their actual physical powers almost five hundred per cent.

Such is the incredible power of our mental attitude.

To illustrate the magic power of thought, let me tell you one of the most astounding stories in the annals of America. I could write a book about it; but let's be brief. On a frosty October night, shortly after the close of the Civil War, a homeless, destitute woman, who was little more than a wanderer on the face of the earth, knocked at the door of "Mother" Webster, the wife of a retired sea captain, living in Amesbury, Massachusetts.

Opening the door, "Mother" Webster saw a frail little creature, "scarcely more than a hundred pounds of frightened skin and bones". The stranger, a Mrs. Glover, explained she was seeking a home where she could think and work out a great problem that absorbed her day and night.

"Why not stay here?" Mrs. Webster replied. "I'm all alone in this big house."

Mrs. Glover might have remained indefinitely with "Mother" Webster, if the latter's son-in-law, Bill Ellis, hadn't come up from New York for a vacation. When he discovered Mrs. Glover's presence, he shouted: "I'll have no vagabonds in this house"; and he shoved this homeless woman out of the door. A driving rain was falling. She stood shivering in the rain for a few minutes, and then started down the road, looking for shelter.

Here is the astonishing part of the story. That "vagabond" whom Bill Ellis put out of the house was destined to have as much influence on the thinking of the world as any other woman who ever walked this earth. She is now known to millions of devoted followers as Mary Baker Eddy-the founder of Christian Science.

Yet, until this time, she had known little in life except sickness, sorrow, and tragedy. Her first husband had died shortly after their marriage. Her second husband had deserted her and eloped with a married woman. He later died in a poor-house. She had only one child, a son; and she was forced, because of poverty, illness, and jealousy, to give him up when he was four years old. She lost all track of him and never saw him again for thirty-one years.

Because of her own ill health, Mrs. Eddy had been interested for years in what she called "the science of mind healing". But the dramatic turning point in her life occurred in Lynn, Massachusetts. Walking downtown one cold day, she slipped and fell on the icy pavement-and was knocked unconscious. Her spine was so injured that she was convulsed with spasms. Even the doctor expected her to die. If by some miracle she lived, he declared that she would never walk again.

Lying on what was supposed to be her deathbed, Mary Baker Eddy opened her Bible, and was led, she declared, by divine guidance to read these words from Saint Matthew: "And, behold, they brought to him a man sick of the palsy, lying on a bed: and Jesus ... said unto the sick of the palsy: Son, be of good cheer; thy sins be forgiven thee. ... Arise, take up thy bed, and go unto thine house. And he arose, and departed to his house."

These words of Jesus, she declared, produced within her such a strength, such a faith, such a surge of healing power, that she "immediately got out of bed and walked".

"That experience," Mrs. Eddy declared, "was the falling apple that led me to the discovery of how to be well myself, and how to make others so. ... I gained the scientific certainty that all causation was Mind, and every effect a mental phenomenon."

Such was the way in which Mary Baker Eddy became the founder and high priestess of a new religion: Christian Science -the only great religious faith ever established by a woman- a religion that has encircled the globe.

You are probably saying to yourself by now: "This man Carnegie is proselytising for Christian Science." No. You are wrong. I am not a Christian Scientist. But the longer I live, the more deeply I am convinced of the tremendous power of thought. As a result of thirty-five years spent in teaching adults, I know men and women can banish worry, fear, and various kind of illness, and can transform their lives by changing their thoughts. I know! I know! ! I know! ! ! I have seen such incredible transformations performed hundreds of times. I have seen them so often that I no longer wonder at them.

For example, one of these transformations happened to one of my students, Frank J. Whaley, of 1469 West Idaho Street, Saint Paul, Minnesota. He had a nervous breakdown. What brought it on? Worry. Frank Whaley tells me: "I worried about everything: I worried because I was too thin; because I thought I was losing my hair; because I feared I would never make enough money to get married; because I felt I would never make a good father; because I feared I was losing the girl I wanted to marry; because I felt I was not living a good life. I worried about the impression I was making on other people. I worried because I thought I had stomach ulcers. I could no longer work; I gave up my job. I built up tension inside me until I was like a boiler without a safety valve. The pressure got so unbearable that something had to give-and it did. If you have never had a nervous breakdown, pray God that you never do, for no pain of the body can exceed the excruciating pain of an agonised mind.

"My breakdown was so severe that I couldn't talk even to my own family. I had no control over my thoughts. I was filled with fear. I would jump at the slightest noise. I avoided everybody. I would break out crying for no apparent reason at all.

"Every day was one of agony. I felt that I was deserted by everybody-even God. I was tempted to jump into the river and end it all.

"I decided instead to take a trip to Florida, hoping that a change of scene would help me. As I stepped on the train, my father handed me a letter and told me not to open it until I reached Florida. I landed in Florida during the height of the tourist season. Since I couldn't get in a hotel, I rented a sleeping room in a garage. I tried to get a job on a tramp freighter out of Miami, but had no luck. So I spent my time at the beach. I was more wretched in Florida than I had been at home; so I opened the envelope to see what Dad had written. His note said: 'Son, you are 1,500 miles from home, and you don't feel any different, do you? I knew you wouldn't, because you took with you the one thing that is the cause of all your trouble, that is, yourself. There is nothing wrong with either your body or your mind. It is not the situations you have met that have thrown you; it is what you think of these situations. "As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he." When you realise that, son, come home, for you will be cured.'

"Dad's letter made me angry. I was looking for sympathy, not instruction. I was so mad that I decided then and there that I would never go home. That night as I was walking down one of the side streets of Miami, I came to a church where services were going on. Having no place to go, I drifted in and listened to a sermon on the text: 'He who conquers his spirit is mightier than he who taketh a city.' Sitting in the sanctity of the house of God and hearing the same thoughts that my Dad had written in his letter-all this swept the accumulated litter out of my brain. I was able to think clearly and sensibly for the first time in my life. I realised what a fool I had been. I was shocked to see myself in my true light: here I was, wanting to change the whole world and everyone in it- when the only thing that needed changing was the focus of the lens of the camera which was my mind.

"The next morning I packed and started home. A week later I was back on the job. Four months later I married the girl I had been afraid of losing. We now have a happy family of five children. God has been good to me both materially and mentally. At the time of the breakdown I was a night foreman of a small department handling eighteen people. I am now superintendent of carton manufacture in charge of over four hundred and fifty people. Life is much fuller and friendlier. I believe I appreciate the true values of life now. When moments of uneasiness try to creep in (as they will in everyone's life) I tell myself to get that camera back in focus, and everything is O.K.

"I can honestly say that I am glad I had the breakdown, because I found out the hard way what power our thoughts can have over our mind and our body. Now I can make my thoughts work for me instead of against me. I can see now that Dad was right when he said it wasn't outward situations that had caused all my suffering, but what I thought of those situations. And as soon as I realised that, I was cured-and stayed cured." Such was the experience of Frank J. Whaley.

I am deeply convinced that our peace of mind and the joy we get out of living depends not on where we are, or what we have, or who we are, but solely upon our mental attitude. Outward conditions have very little to do with it. For example, let's take the case of old John Brown, who was hanged for seizing the United States arsenal at Harpers Ferry and trying to incite the slaves to rebellion. He rode away to the gallows, sitting on his coffin. The jailer who rode beside him was nervous and worried. But old John Brown was calm and cool. Looking up at the Blue Ridge mountains of Virginia, he exclaimed: "What a beautiful country! I never had an opportunity to really see it before."