INTRODUCTION
Early on, Dale Carnegie (November 24, 1888 – November 1, 1955) made a living teaching adult classes at New York night schools. He realized that one of the biggest problems for these adults was worry. He wrote his book by reading what philosophers of all ages have said about worry. He also read hundreds of biographies, from Confucius to Churchill. According to him, we will not find anything new in his book, but we will find a lot that is not generally being applied in our daily life.
THE CONTENT
Carnegie wrote his book in eight parts. Let’s go through them all, and for the purpose of this article, I’ll share a story taken from each Part.
PART I: Basic facts you need to know about worry
For this story, the subtitle “Living in a watertight compartment a day” was given. Just live each day until bedtime.
It was about a housewife in Michigan who had lost her husband due to illness. She was very depressed and almost penniless. She then wrote to her former employer and got her job back selling World Books to rural and urban school boards. She thought that getting back on the road would help ease her depression; but driving alone and eating alone was almost more than she could bear. She discovered that the schools were bad and the roads were in poor condition. It seemed that success was impossible.
Then one day, she read an article that lifted her spirits and gave her the courage to go on living. There was an inspiring phrase that said: “Every day is a new life for a wise man.” She typed it up and taped it to the windshield of his car where she could see it every minute as he drove. Since then, she told herself: “Today is a new life.”
He had managed to overcome his fear of loneliness and his fear of loving. She was happy and quite successful then and she had a lot of enthusiasm and love for life. She then she knew that she could live one day at a time.
PART II: Basic Techniques for Analyzing Worry
It was an insurance man. When he started selling insurance, he was filled with boundless enthusiasm and love for his work. Then something happened. He got so discouraged that he despised his work and thought about quitting. Then one Saturday morning he sat down and tried to get to the root of his concerns. He began to ask himself the following questions:
What was the problem?
He wasn’t making a high enough profit for the staggering number of phone calls he made.
What was the cause of the problem?
He did pretty well selling a prospect, until it was time to close a sale. Then the customer would say, “Well, I’ll think about it, sir. Come see me again.” The time wasted on these follow-up calls that were causing her depression.
What were all the possible solutions?
He checked his log book for the last twelve months and studied the figures carefully. She made an amazing discovery! He discovered that 70% of his sales had been closed in the first interview! Another 23% of their sales had been closed in the second interview. And another 7% had closed in those third, fourth, fifth, etc. interviews. He concluded that he was wasting half his workday on a part of his business that was responsible for only seven percent of his sales!
What was the best solution?
He quickly made the decision to immediately cut off all calls beyond the second interview and spent the extra time developing new prospects.
PART III: How to break the worry habit before it breaks you
This part of the book asked us to use the Law of Averages to ban our worries.
One summer, a couple went camping in the Touquin Valley of the Canadian Rockies, some 7,000 feet above sea level. One night, a storm threatened to destroy his store. The outer tent shook and shook and screamed and shrieked in the wind. The wife was terrified and she looked forward every minute to seeing her tent ripped up and thrown through the sky.
But her husband kept saying, “Look dear, we’re traveling with the guides from Brewster. They know what they’re doing. They’ve been pitching tents in these mountains for sixty years. This tent has been here many seasons. collapsed and, by the law of averages, it won’t vanish tonight, and even if it does, we can take shelter in another tent. So relax…” The wife did; and she slept soundly the rest of the night.
We should ask ourselves, “What are the chances, according to the law of averages, that a particular event we care about will ever happen?”
PART IV: Ways to cultivate a mental attitude that will bring you peace and happiness
We need to understand this important Rule: Instead of worrying about ingratitude, expect it.
A Texas businessman was bitter that his thirty-four employees didn’t say “Thank You” to him after receiving a bonus of about $300 each for Christmas.
According to Carnegie, instead of wallowing in resentment and self-pity, that man might have wondered why he didn’t get any appreciation. He maybe he underpaid and exaggerated his employees. Perhaps they considered that the Christmas bonus was not a gift, but something that they had earned. Perhaps he was so critical and unapproachable that no one dared or wanted to thank him. Perhaps they felt he gave the bonus because most of the profits went to taxes anyway.
On the other hand, maybe the employees were selfish, mean, and rude. It can be this or it can be that. According to Carnegie, this man made the humane and distressing mistake of expecting gratitude. He just didn’t know human nature.
PART V: The Perfect Way to Conquer Worry
Carnegie wrote in his book that one day, when his father returned from Maryville, where the banker had threatened to foreclose on the mortgage, he stopped his horses on a bridge that spanned a river, got out of the cart, and stood for a long time looking down. . the water, debating with himself if he should jump in and end it all.
Years later, Carnegie Sr. told him that the only reason he didn’t jump was because of his mother’s deep, abiding, and joyful belief that if we loved God and kept His commandments, all would be well. Mother was right. Everything worked out in the end. My father lived forty-two more happy years and died in 1941, at the age of eighty-nine.
PART VI: How not to worry about criticism
A national sensation was created in educational circles due to an event that occurred in 1929. Learned men and women from all over the Americas flocked to Chicago to witness the affair. A few years earlier, a young man named Robert Hutchins had worked his way up to Yale, acting as a waiter, lumberjack, tutor, and clothesline salesman. Now, just eight years later, he was taking over as president of America’s fourth-richest university, the University of Chicago. He was only thirty years old. Amazing! Criticism roared down on this “child prodigy” like a rockslide. Even the newspapers joined the attack.
On the day he took office, a friend told Robert Maynard Hutchins’ father, “I was shocked this morning to read that newspaper editorial denouncing your son.”
“Yes,” answered the elder Hutchins, “it was severe, but we must remember that no one kicks a dead dog.”
Yes, and the more important a dog is, the more satisfaction people get from kicking it.
Carnegie added that when you are kicked or criticized, remember that it is often done because it gives the kicker a feeling of importance. It often means that you are achieving something and deserve attention. Many people get a sense of wild satisfaction from denouncing those who are better educated or more successful than they are.
PART VII: 6 ways to prevent fatigue and worry and keep your energy and spirits high
Dale Carnegie listed the following six ways in his book:
Rest before you tire; Learn to relax in your work; Learn to relax at home; Apply good work habits (clear your desk of all paper except those related to the immediate problem at hand; do things in order of importance; when faced with a problem, deal with it right then and there if you have the facts you need to make a decision ). decision; and learn to organize, delegate and supervise); To avoid worries and fatigue, put enthusiasm in your work; and Remember that no one ever died from lack of sleep. It is the worry about insomnia that does the damage, not the insomnia itself. If you can’t sleep, get up and work or read until you feel sleepy.
PART VIII: “How I Overcame Worry”
In this last part of the book, Carnegie listed 31 true stories. In this review, she would choose a story, entitled “I lived in the garden of Allah”. He was an English gentleman from a wealthy family in Britain. After leaving the British Army in the early 20th century, he went to northwest Africa and lived with the Arabs in the Sahara, the Garden of Allah.
He lived there for seven years, learning to speak the language of the nomads, wearing their clothes, eating their food, and adopting their way of life, which has changed little over the centuries. He also made a detailed study of the religion, Islam, and in fact later wrote a book on the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, entitled “The Messenger”.
He observed that nomads take life so calmly and never rush or sulk when things go wrong. They know that what is ordered is ordered; and no one except Allah can alter anything. However, that does not mean that in the face of disaster, they sit back and do nothing. This is illustrated below.
One day there was a fierce and fiery sirocco wind storm in the Sahara. He howled and screamed for three days and three nights. It was so strong, so ferocious, that it carried sand from the Sahara hundreds of kilometers across the Mediterranean and sprayed it over the Rhone Valley in France. But the Arabs did not complain. They shrugged their shoulders and said, “Mektoub!” which means “It was written”.
But immediately after the storm was over, they sprang into action, slaughtering all the lambs because they knew they would die anyway. After the lambs were slaughtered, the flocks were driven south to drink. All this was done calmly, without worries or complaints or regrets for their losses. The chief of the tribe said, “It wasn’t that bad. We could have lost everything. But praise Allah, we have forty percent of our sheep left to start over.”
Several years after leaving the Sahara, he still maintains that happy resignation to the inevitable that he had learned from the Arabs. That philosophy has done more to calm his nerves than a thousand sedatives could have.
CONCLUSION
In our day to day life, in the fight against worry, I believe in the principle of “Care less about what others think, say and do”.
