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How to Stop Worrying and Start Living
The self-help classic that helps you stop worrying
How to Stop Worrying and Start Living (1948) is a self-help classic that outlines clearly why worrying is bad for you and what you can do about it. With tools and techniques to put to action, as well as a wealth of examples and anecdotes to back up its recommendations, How to Stop Worrying and Start Living can help you worry less today.
- Anyone who wants to worry less
- Anyone who wants to deal better with their worries when they occur
- Anyone who feels his or her kindness goes unthanked
Dale Carnegie is the quintessential self-help author. His 1936 bestseller How to Win Friends and Influence People is still a popular title and has sold 15 million copies. He wrote How to Stop Worrying and Start Living because he felt he was ”one of the unhappiest lads in New York” due to excessive worrying, and wanted to find out how to stop.
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How to Stop Worrying and Start Living
- Read in 19 minutes
- Audio & text available
- Contains 13 key ideas
Synopsis
How to Stop Worrying and Start Living (1948) is a self-help classic that outlines clearly why worrying is bad for you and what you can do about it. With tools and techniques to put to action, as well as a wealth of examples and anecdotes to back up its recommendations, How to Stop Worrying and Start Living can help you worry less today.
Key idea 1 of 13
Stressful jobs can be dangerous: excessive worrying is bad for your health.
Everyone worries. Few of us realize, though, how damaging it is to our health: worrying excessively can actually make you physically ill.
As Plato already knew, the mind and the body are intimately linked. In fact, the Mayo brothers, famous physicians, once declared that over half of our hospital beds are occupied by people suffering from frustration, anxiety, worry and despair.
Arthritis, for example, is one of many debilitating conditions which can be brought on by worry. In fact, the two leading causes of arthritis are worry-related: marital shipwrecks and financial woes. There are also medical cases that suggest that worrying can increase the likelihood of insanity and diabetes. Clearly, worrying is bad for your health!
Unfortunately for us, there are causes of worry everywhere, and they’re especially common in the work we do. High-pressure jobs tend to generate more worrying and, predictably, more illness than calmer, more tranquil jobs. The high stress levels we associate with high-pressure jobs can lead to heart disease. One study showed that more than a third of business executives suffer from heart-disease, stomach ulcers and high blood pressure. Another study found that twenty times as many doctors as farm workers die from heart failure.
This means that if you’re in a highly stressful job that causes you worry, you need to find a way to fight worrying or you may soon wind up with an ulcer, or worse.
Key ideas in this title
- Stressful jobs can be dangerous: excessive worrying is bad for your health.
- Confusion causes worry: get the facts about your worries and solve the problem.
- Once you’ve decided how to address your worries, take action and never look back.
- Live for today: keep the worries of yesterday and tomorrow out of your head.
- Whenever you’re facing trouble, embrace the worst-case scenario and then try to improve from there.
- Don’t sink energy into hopeless situations or grudges: set a limit for yourself after which you stop worrying about them.
- Be happier by focusing on the positives in life and acting happy.
- Don’t expect gratitude; give for the joy of giving.
- Don’t envy or imitate others; be yourself.
- People criticize those they envy; think of criticisms against you as disguised compliments.
- Learn to relax and rest before you get tired.
- Enjoy your work and negate stress by being organized.
- Final summary
