How to Stop Worrying and Start Living

People often dwell on trivialities. Small issues can be blown out of perspective and transform into overwhelming worries. In 1945, Robert Moore’s submarine was attacked by a Japanese destroyer and plummeted to the bottom of the ocean. During the attack, Moore believed he would die; this moment changed his perspective, making him realize the inconsequential nature of his former worries. Surviving the experience, Moore kept his vow that he would never worry again.

Carnegie observes that people are often brave in a crisis, but at other times become fixated on minor concerns. For example, the South Pole explorer Admiral Byrd noted that his men tolerated extreme hardship, but complained excessively about one another’s personal habits. The author suggests that a positive mindset can keep trivialities in perspective. For example, his wife once panicked before a dinner party when she realized that the napkins did not match. However, after her initial anxiety, she decided not to ruin an enjoyable evening by worrying about it.

By contrast, 19th-century English novelist Rudyard Kipling and his brother-in-law Beatty Balestier allowed a minor squabble to dominate their lives. Initially good friends, the men fell out after Kipling bought some land from Balestier. Kipling agreed Balestier could cut hay from the land, but planted a wild flower meadow instead. Furious, Balestier knocked Kipling off his bicycle, and a trial followed that resolved nothing. Kipling and his wife ended up moving to another country.

Carnegie compares people who allow minor grievances to consume them to a giant tree in Colorado. For 400 years, the tree survived lightning, storms, and avalanches. However, it was finally destroyed by a colony of beetles that ate away at its trunk.

As a child, Carnegie was afraid of many things, including being struck by lightning and buried alive. None of his fears came to pass. The author suggests that many adult fears are equally irrational and, by the law of averages, are unlikely to happen. The insurance company, Lloyd’s of London, has made millions for over 200 years from people’s fear of unlikely events.

The author describes meeting Mr. and Mrs. Herbert H. Salinger. Mrs. Salinger had a calm manner, but her first marriage was ruined by her irrational anxieties. Whenever she left the house, she worried that something terrible would happen to the children or that the house would catch fire. Her second husband cured this tendency by encouraging her to consider the law of averages when worried about something. As a result, she found inner peace.

As most worries are illogical, Carnegie advises assessing the basis of fears before wasting energy on them. The chances are that the event will never occur. For example, in 1944, Frederick J. Mahlstedt was in a trench in Normandy. For five nights, Mahlstedt could not sleep as he was convinced he would die there. He then reasoned that every one of the men had survived in the trench so far, and the only injuries were caused by flak. Mahlstedt worked out that the chances of being directly hit were less than one in 10,000. After constructing a wooden roof as flak protection, he stopped worrying and slept soundly.

Carnegie argues that worry often arises from resisting life’s inevitable challenges. Trying to fight issues that are out of our control leads to increased stress and anxiety. Instead, he promotes a mindset of cooperation and acceptance.

The author provides examples of people who adapted to and accepted misfortune. As a boy, Carnegie lost a finger when he jumped from a window, catching his hand on a nail. Although the accident was distressing, he rarely thought about his missing finger afterward. A further example is American writer Booth Tarkington, who learned he was going blind—a condition he had always declared he could not cope with. Reacting stoically, Tarkington remained in good spirits. Famous actress Sarah Bernhardt was similarly accepting when doctors said her leg would have to be amputated. She cheerfully recited a play on the way into surgery and continued to tour after her recovery.

Carnegie compares those who resist the inevitable to the trees on his farm in Missouri. After a sleet storm, their branches snapped from the weight of ice. Meanwhile, Canadian evergreen trees demonstrate acceptance of the inevitable. Instead of breaking, their branches bend to withstand the weight of snow. The author also employs the analogy of car tires, which cooperate with the inevitable by absorbing shock rather than resisting it. Accepting what cannot be changed ultimately makes life’s journey easier.

The author introduces the concept of a "stop-loss" order—a financial term—as a technique to effectively manage and minimize worries. He explains this financial term through the story of Charles Roberts. When Roberts first arrived in New York, he was an inexperienced investor, but he lost $20,000 on the stock market. He then learned to put a “stop-loss” order on each investment, setting a pre-determined selling price for each stock, so that if stock’s value decreased, his potential losses were minimized. Roberts used this method successfully in his career as an investment counselor. He also employed it in his personal life. For example, he realized he wasted valuable time waiting for a friend who was always late. Roberts told his friend that he was putting a stop-loss of 10 minutes on the time he was prepared to wait for him.

Carnegie gives an example of a stop-loss in his own life. Dreaming of becoming a great novelist, he spent two years in Europe writing a novel. However, publishers rejected the book, and his agent said he had no talent for writing fiction. At this point, Carnegie put a stop-loss on his dream of becoming a novelist. From then on, he wrote biographies and nonfiction.

As a boy, Benjamin Franklin set his heart on a whistle in a toy shop and committed to buying it before asking the price. Franklin was delighted with the whistle until his siblings told him he had paid well above market value for it. Years later, he still remembered the incident. Carnegie compares Franklin’s experience of paying too much for a whistle to those who fail to put a stop-loss on their grievances. For example, Gilbert and Sullivan wrote many successful operettas together, but became estranged over a trivial disagreement over the price of a carpet. The argument led to a legal battle, and they never spoke to each other again. A similar dynamic existed in the unhappy marriage of author Leo Tolstoy. The couple’s marital disputes escalated, and both kept a written record of each other’s unreasonable behavior. Although they stayed together for 50 years, they failed to put a stop-loss on their mutual resentment.

Carnegie advises readers to put a mental stop-loss on their worries, setting a limit on the time they are prepared to devote to them. He suggests implementing the same strategy in the case of minor grievances.

Carnegie reveals that when he first established his adult education centers, he did not keep track of his expenses. After a year, he discovered that he had made no profit on the $300,000 invested. Instead of analyzing the embarrassing mistake and moving on, he was consumed by worry for months. The author now realizes the futility of worrying about the past. The best approach is to learn from mistakes and then forget about them.

To illustrate his point, Carnegie offers two anecdotes. Allen Saunders learned a valuable life lesson from his hygiene teacher. Deliberately smashing a bottle of milk in the sink, the teacher instructed his students to look at the milk going down the drain. The teacher emphasized that no amount of effort could save the milk, so the best course of action was to forget about it and move on. Similarly, Fred Fuller Shedd, former editor of the Philadelphia Bulletin, asked a group of students if they had “ever sawed sawdust” (120)—a task that is impossible since sawdust is by definition “already sawed” (120). Shedd compared worrying about past events to “trying to saw sawdust” (120).

Carnegie suggests that people have a surprising capacity to recover from tragedies and live happily if they do not dwell on the past. For example, he once visited Sing Sing Prison and saw the prisoners singing as they went about their duties. The warden confirmed most of the inmates made the best of the situation once they accepted their present circumstances.