The past few weeks has been honestly quite a challenge for me. I just went through a gruelling job application process where I was met with a stream of rejections, all whilst dealing with online final exams, consuming the news on rising unemployment rates and coming to terms with the grim probability that the career I had planned was slipping away as the uncertainty of the future looms – like a dark, all engrossing cloud before the storm.
It is at this time, that I decided to revisit a book I had read early in the year – ‘How to Stop Worrying and Start Living’, a guide by Dale Carnegie, the famous author of ‘How to win friends and influence people’. The value of this book, I believe, really comes to fruition in times of anxiety like this.
Below are several of the insights I took from it that helped me calm down, separated into 3 different scenarios.
Overcoming worry in stressful situations:
Step 1. Analyse the situation fearlessly and honestly and figured out what was the worst that could possibly happen as a result of this failure.
Step 2. After figuring out what’s the worst that could possibly happen, reconcile yourself to accepting it, if necessary.
Step 3. From that time on, calmly devote your time and energy to trying to improve upon the worst which you had already accepted mentally.
Managing worries on a daily basis:
Step 1. Write down precisely what you are worrying about.
Step 2. Write down what you can do about it.
Step 3. Decide what to do.
Step 4. Starting immediately to carry out that decision.
Breaking the habit of worrying all the time:
Rule 1: Keep busy. The worried person must lose himself in action, and remember that when you have nothing to do but lie on the flat of my back and worry about the future, you are making no improvement whatsoever.
Rule 2: Do not allow yourself to be upset by small things you should despise and forget. Life is too short to be little. The way to happiness is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power of your will.
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: 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: Don’t saw sawdust. Or in other words, don’t worry and dwell on things that have already passed.
Final words
A recurring message Dale sprinkled throughout his guide was the idea of taking things one step at a time, of not giving in to the irrational, but all too common fear that whatever setback or hardship you face will endanger the future you’ve been working towards or lead to the loss of everything you have now.
He reminds us to think to ourselves that ‘everyday is a new life to a wise man,” to remember “Happy the man, and happy he alone, He, who can call today his own: He who, secure within, can say: “Tomorrow, do thy worst, for I have lived today.” You must continue to move forward.
“God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.”
extracted from part three, page 180
IN TRANSIT; 