Summary

The book is full of practical advice and strategies for overcoming anxiety, embracing a more positive mindset, and leading a fulfilling life. I love reading Dale Carnegie’s books!

As an anxious person, I find myself constantly dwelling on the future and uncertainties, so this book really resonates with me. I have exercised many of its strategies in my life.

The following is a collection of the author’s fundamental rules summarizing each book section.

The final section, X, is a collection of stories of how people conquered worry. I’m quite confident each of us can relate at some leave to one or another.

Section I: Fundamental Facts You Should Know About Worry

  • Rule 1: If you want to avoid worry, do what Sir William Osier did: Live in “day-tight compartments.” Don’t stew about the future. Just live each day until bedtime.
  • Rule 2: The next time Trouble — with a capital T — comes gunning for you and backs you up in a corner, try the magic formula Willis H. Carrier:
    1. Ask yourself, “What is the worst that can possibly happen if I can’t solve my problem?”
    2. Prepare yourself mentally to accept the worst — if necessary.
    3. Then calmly try to improve upon the worst — which you have already mentally agreed to accept.
  • Rule 3: Remind yourself of the exorbitant price you can pay for worry in terms of your health. “Business men who do not know how to fight worry die young.”

Section II: Basic Techniques in Analyzing Worry

  • Rule 1: Get the facts. Remember that Dean Hawkes of Columbia University said that “half the worry in the world is caused by people trying to make decisions before they have sufficient knowledge on which to base a decision.”
  • Rule 2: After carefully weighing all the facts, come to a decision.
  • Rule 3: Once a decision is carefully reached, act! Get busy carrying out your decision and dismiss all anxiety about the outcome.
  • Rule 4: When you, or any of your associates are tempted to worry about a problem, write out and answer the following questions:
    1. What is the problem?
    2. What is the cause of the problem?
    3. What are all possible solutions?
    4. What is the best solution.

Section III: How to Break the Worry Habit Before it Breaks You

  • Rule 1: Crowd wory out of your mind by keeping busy. Plenty of action is one of the best therapies ever devised for curing “wibber gibbers.”
  • Rule 2: Don’t fuss about trifles. Don’t permit little things — the mere termites of life — to ruin your happiness.
  • Rule 3: Use the law of averages to outlaw your worries. Ask yourself: “What are the odds against this thing’s happening at all?”
  • Rule 4: Cooperate 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 anymore.
  • Rule 6: Let the past bury its dead. Don’t saw sawdust.

Section IV: Seven Ways to Cultivate a Mental Attitude That Will Bring You Peace and Happiness

  • Rule 1: Let’s fill our minds with thoughts of peace, courage, health, and hope, for “our life is what our thoughts make it.”

  • Rule 2: Let’s never try to get even with our enemies, because if we do we will hurt ourselves far more than we hurt them. Let’s do as General Eisenhower does: let’s never waste a minute thinking about people we don’t like.
  • Rule 3:
    1. Instead of worrying about ingratitude, let’s expect it. Let’s remember that Jesus healed ten lepers in one day — and only one thanked Him. Why should we expect more gratitude than Jesus got?
    2. Let’s remember that the only way to find happiness is not to expect gratitude — but to give for the joy of giving.
    3. Let’s remember that gratitude is a “cultivated” trait; so if we want our children to be grateful, we must train them to be grateful.
  • Rule 4: Count your blessings — not your troubles!
  • Rule 5: Let’s not imitate others. Let’s find ourselves and be ourselves, for “envy is ignorance” and “imitation is suicide.”
  • Rule 6: When fate hands us a lemon, let’s try to make a lemonade.
  • Rule 7: Let’s forget our own unhappiness — by trying to create a little happiness for others. “When you are good to others, you are best to yourself.”

Section V: The Golden Rule for Conquering Worry

Section VI: How to Keep from Worrying About Criticism

  • Rule 1: Unjust criticism is often a disguised compliment. It often means that you have aroused jealousy and envy. Remember that no one ever kicks a dead dog.
  • Rule 2: Do the very best you can; and then put up your old umbrella and keep the rain of criticism from running down the back of your neck.
  • Rule 3: Let’s keep a record of the fool things we have done and criticize ourselves. Since we can’t hope to be perfect, let’s do what E.H. Little did: let’s ask for unbiased, helpful, constructive criticism.

Section VII: Six Ways to Prevent Fatigue and Worry and Keep Your Energy and Spirits High

  • Rule 1: Rest before you get tired.
  • Rule 2: Learn to relax at your work.
  • Rule 3: Learn to relax at home.
  • Rule 4: Apply these four good working habits:
    1. Clear your desk of all papers except those relating to the immediate problem at hand.
    2. Do things in the order of their importance.
    3. When you face a problem, solve it then and there if you have the facts necessary to make a decision.
    4. Learn to organize, deputize, and supervise.
  • Rule 5: To prevent worry and fatigue, put enthusiasm into your work.
  • Rule 6: Remember, no one was ever killed by lack of sleep. It is worrying about insomnia that does the damage — not the insomnia.

Section VIII: How to Find The Kind of Work in Which You May Be Happy and Successful

Section IX: How to Lessen Your Financial Worries

Section X: How I Conquered Worry

True Stories

  • Six major troubles hit me all at once
  • How I got rid of an inferiority complex
  • Five methods I have used
  • I was “the worrying wreck from Virginia tech.”
  • I used to be the world’s biggest jackasses
  • I heard a voice in India
  • The toughest opponent I ever fought was worry

Cover

How to Stop Worrying and Start Living book cover

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