How to Stop Worrying and Start Living Part 9

"I soon discovered that my husband, Commander Robert Raleigh Yates, was safe. I tried to cheer up the wives who did not know whether their husbands had been killed; and I tried to give consolation to the widows whose husbands had been killed-and they were many. Two thousand, one hundred and seventeen officers and enlisted men in the Navy and Marine Corps were killed and 960 were reported missing.

"At first I answered these phone calls while lying in bed. Then I answered them sitting up in bed. Finally, I got so busy, so excited, that I forgot all about my weakness and got out of bed and sat by a table. By helping others who were much worse off than I was, I forgot all about myself; and I have never gone back to bed again except for my regular eight hours of sleep each night. I realise now that if the j.a.ps had not struck at Pearl Harbour, I would probably have remained a semi-invalid all my life. I was comfortable in bed. I was constantly waited on, and I now realise that I was unconsciously losing my will to rehabilitate myself.

"The attack on Pearl Harbour was one of the greatest tragedies in American history, but as far as I was concerned, it was one of the best things that ever happened to me. That terrible crisis gave me strength that I never dreamed I possessed. It took my attention off myself and focused it on others. It gave me something big and vital and important to live for. I no longer had time to think about myself or care about myself."

A third of the people who rush to psychiatrists for help could probably cure themselves if they would only do as Margaret Yates did: get interested in helping others. My idea? No, that is approximately what Carl Jung said. And he ought to know -if anybody does. He said: "About one-third of my patients are suffering from no clinically definable neurosis, but from the senselessness and emptiness of their lives." To put it another way, they are trying to thumb a ride through life-and the parade pa.s.ses them by. So they rush to a psychiatrist with their petty, senseless, useless lives. Having missed the boat, they stand on the wharf, blaming everyone except themselves and demanding that the world cater to their self-centred desires.

You may be saying to yourself now: "Well, I am not impressed by these stories. I myself could get interested in a couple of orphans I met on Christmas Eve; and if I had been at Pearl Harbour, I would gladly have done what Margaret Tayler Yates did. But with me things are different: I live an ordinary humdrum life. I work at a dull job eight hours a day. Nothing dramatic ever happens to me. How can I get interested in helping others? And why should I? What is there in it for me?"

A fair question. I'll try to answer it. However humdrum your existence may be, you surely meet some people every day of your life. What do you do about them? Do you merely stare through them, or do you try to find out what it is that makes them tick? How about the postman, for example-he walks hundreds of miles every year, delivering mail to your door; but have you ever taken the trouble to find out where he lives, or ask to see a snapshot of his wife and his kids? Did you ever ask him if his feet get tired, or if he ever gets bored?

What about the grocery boy, the newspaper vendor, the chap at the corner who polishes your shoes? These people are human -bursting with troubles, and dreams, and private ambitions. They are also bursting for the chance to share them with someone. But do you ever let them? Do you ever show an eager, honest interest in them or their lives? That's the sort of thing I mean. You don't have to become a Florence Nightingale or a social reformer to help improve the world-your own private world; you can start tomorrow morning with the people you meet!

What's in it for you? Much greater happiness! Greater satisfaction, and pride in yourself! Aristotle called this kind of att.i.tude "enlightened selfishness". Zoroaster said: "Doing good to others is not a duty. It is a joy, for it increases your own health and happiness." And Benjamin Franklin summed it up very simply-"When you are good to others," said Franklin, "you are best to yourself."

"No discovery of modern psychology," writes Henry C. Link, director of the Psychological Service Centre in New York, "no discovery of modern psychology is, in my opinion, so important as its scientific proof of the necessity of self-sacrifice or discipline to self-realisation and happiness."

Thinking of others will not only keep you from worrying about yourself; it will also help you to make a lot of friends and have a lot of fun. How? Well, I once asked Professor William Lyon Phelps, of Yale, how he did it; and here is what he said: "I never go into a hotel or a barber-shop or a store without saying something agreeable to everyone I meet. I try to say something that treats them as an individual-not merely a cog in a machine. I sometimes compliment the girl who waits on me in the store by telling her how beautiful her eyes are-or her hair. I will ask a barber if he doesn't get tired standing on his feet all day. I'll ask him how he came to take up barbering- how long he has been at it and how many heads of hair he has cut. I'll help him figure it out. I find that taking an interest in people makes them beam with pleasure. I frequently shake hands with a redcap who has carried my grip. It gives him a new lift and freshens him up for the whole day. One extremely hot summer day, I went into the dining car of the New Haven Railway to have lunch. The crowded car was almost like a furnace and the service was slow.

When the steward finally got around to handing me the menu, I said: 'The boys back there cooking in that hot kitchen certainly must be suffering today.' The steward began to curse. His tones were bitter. At first, I thought he was angry. 'Good G.o.d Almighty,' he exclaimed, 'the people come in here and complain about the food. They kick about the slow service and growl about the heat and the prices. I have listened to their criticisms for nineteen years and you are the first person and the only person that has ever expressed any sympathy for the cooks back there in the boiling kitchen. I wish to G.o.d we had more pa.s.sengers like you.'

"The steward was astounded because I had thought of the coloured cooks as human beings, and not merely as cogs in the organisation of a great railway. What people want," continued Professor Phelps, "is a little attention as human beings. When I meet a man on the street with a beautiful dog, I always comment on the dog's beauty. As I walk on and glance back over my shoulder, I frequently see the man petting and admiring the dog. My appreciation has renewed his appreciation.

"One time in England, I met a shepherd, and expressed my sincere admiration for his big intelligent sheepdog. I asked him to tell me how he trained the dog. As I walked away, I glanced back over my shoulder and saw the dog standing with his paws on the shepherd's shoulders and the shepherd was petting him. By taking a little interest in the shepherd and his dog, I made the shepherd happy. I made the dog happy and I made myself happy."

Can you imagine a man who goes around shaking hands with porters and expressing sympathy for the cooks in the hot kitchen-and telling people how much he admires their dogs- can you imagine a man like that being sour and worried and needing the services of a psychiatrist? You can't, can you? No, of course not. A Chinese proverb puts it this way: "A bit of fragrance always clings to the hand that gives you roses."

You didn't have to tell that to Billy Phelps of Yale. He knew it. He lived it.

If you are a man, skip this paragraph. It won't interest you. It tells how a worried, unhappy girl got several men to propose to her. The girl who did that is a grandmother now. A few years ago, I spent the night in her and her husband's home. I had been giving a lecture in her town; and the next morning she drove me about fifty miles to catch a train on the main line to New York Central. We got to talking about winning friends, and she said: "Mr. Carnegie, I am going to tell you something that I have never confessed to anyone before- not even to my husband." (By the way, this story isn't going to be half so interesting as you probably imagine.) She told me that she had been reared in a social-register family in Philadelphia. "The tragedy of my girlhood and young womanhood," she said, "was our poverty. We could never entertain the way the other girls in my social set entertained.

My clothes were never of the best quality. I outgrew them and they didn't fit and they were often out of style. I was so humiliated, so ashamed, that I often cried myself to sleep. Finally, in sheer desperation, I hit upon the idea of always asking my partner at dinner-parties to tell me about his experiences, his ideas, and his plans for the future. I didn't ask these questions because I was especially interested in the answers. I did it solely to keep my partner from looking at my poor clothes. But a strange thing happened: as I listened to these young men talk and learned more about them, I really became interested in listening to what they had to say. I became so interested that I myself sometimes forgot about my clothes. But the astounding thing to me was this: since I was a good listener and encouraged the boys to talk about themselves, I gave them happiness and I gradually became the most popular girl in our social group and three of these men proposed marriage to me."

(There you are, girls: that is the way it is done.) Some people who read this chapter are going to say: "All this talk about getting interested in others is a lot of d.a.m.n nonsense! Sheer religious pap! None of that stuff for me! I am going to put money in my purse. I am going to grab all I can get-and grab it now-and to h.e.l.l with the other dumb clucks!"

Well, if that is your opinion, you are ent.i.tled to it; but if you are right, then all the great philosophers and teachers since the beginning of recorded history-Jesus, Confucius, Buddha, Plato, Aristotle, Socrates, Saint Francis-were all wrong. But since you may sneer at the teachings of religious leaders, let's turn for advice to a couple of atheists. First, let's take the late A. E. Housman, professor at Cambridge University, and one of the most distinguished scholars of his generation. In 1936, he gave an address at Cambridge University on "The Name and Nature of Poetry". It that address, he declared that "the greatest truth ever uttered and the most profound moral discovery of all time were those words of Jesus: 'He that findeth his life shall lose it: and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it.' "

We have heard preachers say that all our lives. But Housman was an atheist, a pessimist, a man who contemplated suicide; and yet he felt that the man who thought only of himself wouldn't get much out of life. He would be miserable. But the man who forgot himself in service to others would find the joy of living.

If you are not impressed by what A.E. Housman said, let's turn for advice to the most distinguished American atheist of the twentieth century: Theodore Dreiser. Dreiser ridiculed all religions as fairy tales and regarded life as "a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." Yet Dreiser advocated the one great principle that Jesus taught- service to others. "If he [man] is to extract any joy out of his span," Dreiser said, "he must think and plan to make things better not only for himself but for others, since joy for himself depends upon his joy in others and theirs in him."

If we are going "to make things better for others"-as Dreiser advocated-let's be quick about it. Time is a-wastin'. "I shall pa.s.s this way but once. Therefore any good that I can do or any kindness that I can show-let me do it now. Let me not defer nor neglect it, for I shall not pa.s.s this way again."

So if you want to banish worry and cultivate peace and happiness, here is Rule 7: Forget yourself by becoming interested in others. Do every day a good deed that will put a smile of joy on someone's face.

Part Four In A Nutsh.e.l.l - Seven Ways To Cultivate A Mental Att.i.tude 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: A. Instead of worrying about ingrat.i.tude, 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 grat.i.tude than Jesus got?

B. Let's remember that the only way to find happiness is not to expect grat.i.tude-but to give for the joy of giving.

C. Let's remember that grat.i.tude 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."

Part Five - The Golden Rule For Conquering Worry

Chapter 19 - How My Mother And Father Conquered Worry.

As I have said, I was born and brought up on a Missouri farm. Like most farmers of that day, my parents had pretty hard scratching. My mother had been a country schoolteacher and my father had been a farm hand working for twelve dollars a month. Mother made not only my clothes, but also the soap with which we washed our clothes.

We rarely had any cash-except once a year when we sold our hogs. We traded our b.u.t.ter and eggs at the grocery store for flour, sugar, coffee. When I was twelve years old, I didn't have as much as fifty cents a year to spend on myself. I can still remember the day we went to a Fourth-of-July celebration and Father gave me ten cents to spend as I wished. I felt the wealth of the Indies was mine.

I walked a mile to attend a one-room country school. I walked when the snow was deep and the thermometer s.h.i.+vered around twenty-eight degrees below zero. Until I was fourteen, I never had any rubbers or overshoes. During the long, cold winters, my feet were always wet and cold. As a child I never dreamed that anyone had dry, warm feet during the winter.

My parents slaved sixteen hours a day, yet we constantly were oppressed by debts and hara.s.sed by hard luck. One of my earliest memories is watching the flood waters of the 102 River rolling over our corn- and hayfields, destroying everything. The floods destroyed our crops six years out of seven. Year after year, our hogs died of cholera and we burned them. I can close my eyes now and recall the pungent odour of burning hog flesh.

One year, the floods didn't come. We raised a b.u.mper corn crop, bought feed cattle, and fattened them with our corn. But the floods might just as well have drowned our corn that year, for the price of fat cattle fell on the Chicago market; and after feeding and fattening the cattle, we got only thirty dollars more for them than what we had paid for them. Thirty dollars for a whole year's work!

No matter what we did, we lost money. I can still remember the mule colts that my father bought. We fed them for three years, hired men to break them, then s.h.i.+pped them to Memphis, Tennessee-and sold them for less than what we had paid for them three years previously.

After ten years of hard, grueling work, we were not only penniless; we were heavily in debt. Our farm was mortgaged. Try as hard as we might, we couldn't even pay the interest on the mortgage. The bank that held the mortgage abused and insulted my father and threatened to take his farm away from him. Father was forty-seven years old. After more than thirty years of hard work, he had nothing but debts and humiliation. It was more than he could take. He worried. His health broke. He had no desire for food; in spite of the hard physical work he was doing in the field all day, he had to take medicine to give him an appet.i.te. He lost flesh. The doctor told my mother that he would be dead within six months. Father was so worried that he no longer wanted to live. I have often heard my mother say that when Father went to the barn to feed the horses and milk the cows, and didn't come back as soon as she expected, she would go out to the barn, fearing that she would find his body dangling from the end of a rope. One day as he returned home from Maryville, where the banker had threatened to foreclose the mortgage, he stopped his horses on a bridge crossing the 102 River, got off the wagon, and stood for a long time looking down at the water, debating with himself whether he should jump in and end it all.

Years later, Father told me that the only reason he didn't jump was because of my mother's deep, abiding, and joyous belief that if we loved G.o.d and kept His commandments everything would come out all right. Mother was right. Everything did come out all right in the end. Father lived forty-two happy years longer, and died in 1941, at the age of eighty-nine.

During all those years of struggle and heartache, my mother never worried. She took all her troubles to G.o.d in prayer. Every night before we went to bed, Mother would read a chapter from the Bible; frequently Mother or Father would read these comforting words of Jesus: "In my Father's house are many mansions. ... I go to prepare a place for you ... that where I am, there ye may be also." Then we all knelt down before our chairs in that lonely Missouri farmhouse and prayed for G.o.d's love and protection.

When William James was professor of philosophy at Harvard, he said: "Of course, the sovereign cure for worry is religious faith."

You don't have to go to Harvard to discover that. My mother found that out on a Missouri farm. Neither floods nor debts nor disaster could suppress her happy, radiant, and victorious spirit. I can still hear her singing as she worked: Peace, peace, wonderful peace, Flowing down from the Father above, Sweep over my spirit for ever I pray In fathomless billows of love.

My mother wanted me to devote my life to religious work. I thought seriously of becoming a foreign missionary. Then I went away to college; and gradually, as the years pa.s.sed, a change came over me. I studied biology, science, philosophy, and comparative religions. I read books on how the Bible was written. I began to question many of its a.s.sertions. I began to doubt many of the narrow doctrines taught by the country preachers of that day. I was bewildered. Like Walt Whitman, I "felt curious, abrupt questionings stir within me". I didn't know what to believe. I saw no purpose in life. I stopped praying. I became an agnostic.

I believed that all life was planless and aimless. I believed that human beings had no more divine purpose than had the dinosaurs that roamed the earth two hundred million years ago. I felt that some day the human race would perish-just as the dinosaurs had. I knew that science taught that the sun was slowly cooling and that when its temperature fell even ten per cent, no form of life could exist on earth. I sneered at the idea of a beneficent G.o.d who had created man in His own likeness. I believed that the billions upon billions of suns whirling through black, cold, lifeless s.p.a.ce had been created by blind force. Maybe they had never been created at all. Maybe they existed for ever-just as time and s.p.a.ce have always existed.

Do I profess to know the answers to all these questions now? No. No man has ever been able to explain the mystery of the universe-the mystery of life. We are surrounded by mysteries. The operation of your body is a profound mystery. So is the electricity in your home. So is the flower in the crannied wall. So is the green gra.s.s outside your window. Charles F. Kettering, the guiding genius of General Motors Research Laboratories, has been giving Antioch College thirty thousand dollars a year out of his own pocket to try to discover why gra.s.s is green. He declares that if we knew how gra.s.s is able to transform sunlight, water, and carbon dioxide into food sugar, we could transform civilisation.

Even the operation of the engine in your car is a profound mystery. General Motors Research Laboratories have spent years of time and millions of dollars trying to find out how and why a spark in the cylinder sets off an explosion that makes your car run; and they don't know the answer.

The fact that we don't understand the mysteries of our bodies or electricity or a gas engine doesn't keep us from using and enjoying them. The fact that I don't understand the mysteries of prayer and religion no longer keeps me from enjoying the richer, happier life that religion brings. At long last, I realise the wisdom of Santayana's words: "Man is not made to understand life, but to live it."

I have gone back-well, I was about to say that I had gone back to religion; but that would not be accurate. I have gone forward to a new concept of religion. I no longer have the faintest interest in the differences in creeds that divide the Churches. But I am tremendously interested in what religion does for me, just as I am interested in what electricity and good food and water do for me. They help me to lead a richer, fuller, happier life. But religion does far more than that. It brings me spiritual values. It gives me, as William James puts it, "a new zest for life ... more life, a larger, richer, more satisfying life." It gives me faith, hope, and courage. It banishes tensions, anxieties, fears, and worries. It gives purpose to my life-and direction. It vastly improves my happiness. It gives me abounding health. It helps me to create for myself "an oasis of peace amidst the whirling sands of life".

Francis Bacon was right when he said, three hundred and fifty years ago: "A little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism; but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion."

I can remember the days when people talked about the conflict between science and religion. But no more. The newest of all sciences-psychiatry-is teaching what Jesus taught. Why? Because psychiatrists realise that prayer and a strong religious faith will banish the worries, the anxieties, the strains and fears that cause more than half of all our ills. They know, as one of their leaders, Dr. A. A. Brill said: "Anyone who is truly religious does not develop a neurosis."

If religion isn't true, then life is meaningless. It is a tragic farce.

I interviewed Henry Ford a few years prior to his death. Before I met him, I had expected him to show the strains of the long years he had spent in building up and managing one of the world's greatest businesses. So I was surprised to how calm and well and peaceful he looked at seventy-eight. When I asked him if he ever worried, he replied: "No. I believe G.o.d is managing affairs and that He doesn't need any advice from me. With G.o.d in charge, I believe that every-thing will work out for the best in the end. So what is there to worry about?"

Today, even psychiatrists are becoming modern evangelists. They are not urging us to lead religious lives to avoid h.e.l.l-fires in the next world, but they are urging us to lead religious lives to avoid the h.e.l.l-fires of this world-the h.e.l.l-fires of stomach ulcer, angina pectoris, nervous breakdowns, and insanity. As an example of what our psychologists and psychiatrists are teaching, read The Return to Religion, by Dr. Henry C. Link. You will probably find a copy in your public library.

Yes, the Christian religion is an inspiring, health-giving activity. Jesus said: "I came that ye might have life and have it more abundantly." Jesus denounced and attacked the dry forms and dead rituals that pa.s.sed for religion in His day. He was a rebel. He preached a new kind of religion-a religion that threatened to upset the world. That is why He was crucified. He preached that religion should exist for man- not man for religion; that the Sabbath was made for man- not man for the Sabbath. He talked more about fear than He did about sin. The wrong kind of fear is a sin-a sin against your health, a sin against the richer, fuller, happier, courageous life that Jesus advocated. Emerson spoke of himself as a "Professor of the Science of Joy". Jesus, too, was a teacher of "the Science of Joy". He commanded His disciples to "rejoice and leap for joy".

Jesus declared that there were only two important things about religion: loving G.o.d with all our heart, and our neighbour as ourselves. Any man who does that is religious, regardless of whether he knows it. For example, my father-in-law, Henry Price, of Tulsa, Oklahoma. He tries to live by the golden rule; and he is incapable of doing anything mean, selfish, or dishonest. However, he doesn't attend church, and regards himself as an agnostic. Nonsense! What makes a man a Christian? I'll let John Baillie answer that. He was probably the most distinguished professor who ever taught theology at the University of Edinburgh. He said: "What makes a man a Christian is neither his intellectual acceptance of certain ideas, nor his conformity to a certain rule, but his possession of a certain Spirit, and his partic.i.p.ation in a certain Life."

If that makes a man a Christian, then Henry Price is a n.o.ble one.

William James-the father of modern psychology-wrote to his friend, Professor Thomas Davidson, saying that as the years went by, he found himself "less and less able to get along without G.o.d".

Earlier in this book I mentioned that when the judges tried to pick the best story on worry sent in by my students, they had so much difficulty in choosing between two outstanding stories that the prize money was split. Here is the second story that tied for first prize-the unforgettable experience of a woman who had to find out the hard way that "she couldn't get along without G.o.d".

I am calling this woman Mary Cushman, although that is not her actual name. She has children and grandchildren who might be embarra.s.sed to see her story in print, so I agreed to disguise her ident.i.ty. However, the woman herself is real- very real. A few months ago, she sat in the armchair beside my desk and told me her story. Here is how it goes: "During the depression," she said, "my husband's average salary was eighteen dollars a week. Many times we didn't have even that because he didn't get paid when he was ill-and that was often. He had a series of minor accidents; he also had mumps, scarlet fever, and repeated attacks of flu. We lost the little house that we had built with our own hands. We owed fifty dollars at the grocery store-and had five children to feed. I took in was.h.i.+ng and ironing from the neighbours, and bought second-hand clothes from the Salvation Army store and made them over for my children to wear. I made myself ill with worry. One day the grocer to whom we owed fifty dollars accused my eleven-year-old boy of stealing a couple of pencils.

My son wept as he told me about it. I knew he was honest and sensitive-and I knew that he had been disgraced and humiliated in front of other people. That was the straw that broke my back. I thought of all the misery we had endured; and I couldn't see any hope for the future. I must have become temporarily insane with worry, for I shut off my was.h.i.+ng machine, took my little five-year-old daughter into the bedroom, and plugged up the windows and cracks with paper and rags. My little girl said to me: 'Mommy, what are you doing?' and I answered: There's a little draught in here.' Then I turned on the gas heater we had in the bedroom-and didn't light it. As I lay down on the bed with my daughter beside me, she said: 'Mommy, this is funny-we just got up a little while ago!' But I said: 'Never mind, we'll take a little nap.'

Then I closed my eyes, listening to the gas escape from the heater. I shall never forget the smell of that gas. ...

"Suddenly I thought I heard music. I listened. I had forgotten to turn the radio off in the kitchen. It didn't matter now. But the music kept on, and presently I heard someone singing an old hymn: What a Friend we have in Jesus, All our sins and grief's to bear!

What a privilege to carry Everything to G.o.d in prayer.

Oh, what peace we often forfeit Oh, what needless pain we bear All because we do not carry Everything to G.o.d in prayer!

"As I listened to that hymn, I realised that I had made a tragic mistake. I had tried to fight all my terrible battles alone. I had not taken everything to G.o.d in prayer. ... I jumped up, turned off the gas, opened the door, and raised the windows.

"I wept and prayed all the rest of that day. Only I didn't pray for help-instead I poured out my soul in thanksgiving to G.o.d for the blessings He had given me: five splendid children- all of them healthy and fine, strong in body and mind. I promised G.o.d that never again would I prove so ungrateful. And I have kept that promise.

"Even after we lost our home, and had to move into a little country schoolhouse that we rented for five dollars a month, I thanked G.o.d for that schoolhouse; I thanked Him for the fact that I at least had a roof to keep us warm and dry. I thanked G.o.d honestly that things were not worse-and I believe that He heard me. For in time things improved-oh, not overnight; but as the depression lightened, we made a little more money. I got a job as a hat-check girl in a large country club, and sold stockings as a side line. To help put himself through college, one of my sons got a job on a farm, milked thirteen cows morning and night. Today my children are grown up and married; I have three fine grandchildren. And, as I look back on that terrible day when I turned on the gas, I thank G.o.d over and over that I 'woke up' in time. What joys I would have missed if I had carried out that act! How many wonderful years I would have forfeited for ever! Whenever I hear now of someone who wants to end his life, I feel like crying out: 'Don't do it! Don't!' The blackest moments we live through can only last a little time-and then comes the future. ..."

On the average, someone commits suicide in the United States every thirty-five minutes. On the average, someone goes insane every hundred and twenty seconds. Most of these suicides-and probably many of the tragedies of insanity- could have been prevented if these people had only had the solace and peace that are found in religion and prayer.

One of the most distinguished psychiatrists living, Dr. Carl Jung, says in his book Modern Man in Search of a Soul (*): "During the past thirty years, people from all the civilised countries of the earth have consulted me. I have treated many hundreds of patients. Among all my patients in the second half of life-that is to say, over thirty-five-there has not been one whose problem in the last resort was not that of finding a religious outlook on life. It is safe to say that every one of them fell ill because he had lost that which the living religions of every age have given to their followers, and none of them has been really healed who did not regain his religious outlook."

That statement is so significant I want to repeat it in bold type.

Dr. Carl Jung said: "During the past thirty years, people from all the civilised countries of the earth have consulted me. I have treated many hundreds of patients. Among all my patients in the second half of hie-that is to say, over thirty-five-there has not been one whose problem in the last resort was not that of finding a religious outlook on life. It is safe to say that every one of them fell ill because he had lost that which the living religions of every age have given to their followers, and none of them has been really healed who did not regain his religious outlook."

[*] Kegar Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co. Ltd.

William James said approximately the same thing: "Faith is one of the forces by which men live," he declared, "and the total absence of it means collapse."

The late Mahatma Gandhi, the greatest Indian leader since Buddha, would have collapsed if he had not been inspired by the sustaining power of prayer. How do I know? Because Gandhi himself said so. "Without prayer," he wrote, "I should have been a lunatic long ago."

Thousands of people could give similar testimony. My own father-well, as I have already said, my own father would have drowned himself had it not been for my mother's prayers and faith. Probably thousands of the tortured souls who are now screaming in our insane asylums could have been saved if they had only turned to a higher power for help instead of trying to fight life's battles alone.

When we are hara.s.sed and reach the limit of our own strength, many of us then turn in desperation to G.o.d-"There are no atheists in foxholes." But why wait till we are desperate? Why not renew our strength every day? Why wait even until Sunday? For years I have had the habit of dropping into empty churches on weekday afternoons. When I feel that I am too rushed and hurried to spare a few minutes to think about spiritual things, I say to myself: "Wait a minute, Dale Carnegie, wait a minute. Why all the feverish hurry and rush, little man? You need to pause and acquire a little perspective." At such times, I frequently drop into the first church that I find open. Although I am a Protestant, I frequently, on weekday afternoons, drop into St. Patrick's Cathedral on Fifth Avenue, and remind myself that I'll be dead in another thirty years, but that the great spiritual truths that all churches teach are eternal. I close my eyes and pray. I find that doing this calms my nerves, rests my body, clarifies my perspective, and helps me revalue my values. May I recommend this practice to you?

During the past six years that I have been writing this book I have collected hundreds of examples and concrete cases of how men and women conquered fear and worry by prayer. I have in my filing cabinet folders bulging with case histories. Let's take as a typical example the story of a discouraged and disheartened book salesman, John R. Anthony. Mr. Anthony is now an attorney in Houston, Texas, with offices in the Humble Building. Here is his story as he told it to me.

"Twenty-two years ago I closed my private law office to become state representative of an American law-book company. My specialty was selling a set of law-books to lawyers-a set of books that were almost indispensable.

"I was ably and thoroughly trained for the job. I knew all the direct sales talks, and the convincing answers to all possible objections. Before calling on a prospect, I familiarised myself with his rating as an attorney, the nature of his practice, his politics and hobbies. During my interview, I used that information with ample skill. Yet, something was wrong. I just couldn't get orders!

"I grew discouraged. As the days and weeks pa.s.sed, I doubled and redoubled ray efforts, but was still unable to close enough sales to pay my expenses. A sense of fear and dread grew within me. I became afraid to call on people. Before I could enter a prospect's office, that feeling of dread flared up so strong that I would pace up and down the hallway outside the door-or go out of the building and circle the block. Then, after losing much valuable time and feigning enough courage by sheer will power to crash the office door, I feebly turned the doork.n.o.b with trembling hand-half hoping my prospect would not be in!

"My sales manager threatened to stop my advances if I didn't send in more orders. My wife at home pleaded with me for money to pay the grocery bill for herself and our three children. Worry seized me. Day by day I grew more desperate. I didn't know what to do. As I have already said, I had closed my private law office at home and given up my clients. Now I was broke. I didn't have the money to pay even my hotel bill. Neither did I have the money to buy a ticket back home; nor did I have the courage to return home a beaten man, even if I had had the ticket. Finally, at the miserable end of another bad day, I trudged back to my hotel room-for the last time, I thought. So far as I was concerned, I was thoroughly beaten.

Heartbroken, depressed, I didn't know which way to turn. I hardly cared whether I lived or died. I was sorry I had ever been born. I had nothing but a gla.s.s of hot milk that night for dinner. Even that was more than I could afford. I understood that night why desperate men raise a hotel window and jump. I might have done it myself if I had had the courage. I began wondering what was the purpose of life. I didn't know. I couldn't figure it out.

"Since there was no one else to turn to, I turned to G.o.d. I began to pray. I implored the Almighty to give me light and understanding and guidance through the dark, dense wilderness of despair that had closed in about me. I asked G.o.d to help me get orders for my books and to give me money to feed my wife and children. After that prayer, I opened my eyes and saw a Gideon Bible that lay on the dresser in that lonely hotel room. I opened it and read those beautiful, immortal promises of Jesus that must have inspired countless generations of lonely, worried, and beaten men throughout the ages-a talk that Jesus gave to His disciples about how to keep from worrying: Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; not yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment? Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they? ... But seek ye first the kingdom of G.o.d, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.

"As I prayed and as I read those words, a miracle happened: my nervous tension fell away. My anxieties, fears, and worries were transformed into heart-warming courage and hope and triumphant faith.

"I was happy, even though I didn't have enough money to pay my hotel bill. I went to bed and slept soundly-free from care-as I had not done for many years.

"Next morning, I could hardly hold myself back until the offices of my prospects were open. I approached the office door of my first prospect that beautiful, cold, rainy day with a bold and positive stride. I turned the doork.n.o.b with a firm and steady grip. As I entered, I made a beeline for my man, energetically, chin up, and with appropriate dignity, all smiles, and saying: 'Good morning, Mr. Smith! I'm John R. Anthony of the All-American Lawbook Company!'

" 'Oh, yes, yes,' he replied, smiling, too, as he rose from his chair with outstretched hand. 'I'm glad to see you. Have a seat!'

"I made more sales that day than I had made in weeks. That evening I proudly returned to my hotel like a conquering hero! I felt like a new man. And I was a new man, because I had a new and victorious mental att.i.tude. No dinner of hot milk that night. No, sir! I had a steak with all the fixin's. From that day on, my sales zoomed.

"I was born anew that desperate night twenty-one years ago in a little hotel in Amarillo, Texas. My outward situation the next day was the same as it had been through my weeks of failure, but a tremendous thing had happened inside me. I had suddenly become aware of my relations.h.i.+p with G.o.d. A mere man alone can easily be defeated, but a man alive with the power of G.o.d within him is invincible. I know. I saw it work in my own life.