How to Stop Worrying and Start Living

By Robert Ringer

More than fifty years ago, the legendary Dale Carnegie wrote one of the biggest-selling motivational books of all time, How to Stop Worrying and Start Living. The book is a bit dated now, both in writing style and content, but many of the points Carnegie made are still applicable.

Carnegie focused a great deal on the acceptance of the inevitable as a key to eliminating stress and worry. Though I agree with him on this point to some extent, it's a bit more complicated than he made it sound. The reason I say this is because what some people think of as inevitable, others see as a challenge that can be overcome.

For example, a person might believe that failure is inevitable for him and thus resign himself to an unsuccessful life. Unfortunately, this is precisely what millions of people do. Yet, the reality is that failure is not inevitable in anyone's life, so it's absurd to resign oneself to such a fate.

But what about things that really can't be changed, such as blindness or quadriplegia? Ray Charles may have accepted his blindness, but he was able to overcome it and lead a meaningful, fulfilling life. In fact, he liked to say that he could "see" better than 99 percent of the people who aren't blind.

Ditto Christopher Reeve, Mattie Stepanek, and the thousands of others who have endured major physical handicaps, yet found the mental and physical strength to accomplish great things. In cases such as these, I believe Carnegie was absolutely right. By accepting the reality of their physical handicaps, these people were able to move on with their lives.

But this is where it gets tricky. While Christopher Reeve accepted the reality of his handicap, he never accepted it as a long-term (i.e., permanent) condition. He repeatedly made it clear that he believed he would ultimately walk again. Like most people, I was rooting for him, but I didn't believe it would ever happen. Unfortunately, stem-cell research had, and still has, a long way to go.

The challenge, then, is for us to be able to determine what is and is not inevitable. When I use the word inevitable, I think of it in the future tense — as something that has not yet happened. Carnegie, however, seemed to be referring to the inevitable in the present tense. (It's already a fact of life, so learn to accept it.) Thus, I believe that his oversimplification of the subject was a result of semantics.

Technically speaking, the only thing that is 100 percent certain to occur in the future is death. Frank Sinatra expressed his view of this certainty with typical candor when said, "You better enjoy livin' baby, 'cause dying is a pain in the ass."

I wouldn't exactly compare Sinatra to Shakespeare from a linguistic standpoint, but in reality he summed up perfectly the solution to dealing with the inevitability of death: Become so focused on life that you don't have time to think about what's coming next.

When you direct your energy away from the inevitability of death, it paves the way for focusing on constructive living. The least expensive medication for worry and stress is activity.

While death stands alone as the one fact of life that is truly inevitable, many other things are, shall we say, virtually inevitable. These include such things as taxes, future terrorist attacks on U.S. soil, and the periodic collapse of the real estate and stock markets. Yet, none of these "inevitabilities" deserve your stress or worry.

Take taxes, for example. How to stop worrying about them? Just do everything you can to legally keep your taxes to a minimum, file your tax returns in a timely fashion, and focus your mental and physical energy on making as much money as possible. You may not like being partners with the government, but the fact remains that the more money you make, the more money you net in absolute terms. And worry and stress only detract from doing the things you need to do to help offset the inevitability of taxes.

Future terrorist attacks on U.S. soil? It's a nasty fact of life and a legitimate concern. By all means, be prepared and take reasonable precautions to protect your family. Unlike taxes, however, it's not just that worrying won't help — rather, the chief aim of mischief makers like Zawahiri and bin Laden is to make you worry and increase your stress.

A better idea is to go about living your life, just as the Israelis have learned to do in the face of the inevitability of homicide bombings. It also helps to keep terrorism in perspective. Remember, as horrific as 9/11 was, nearly fifteen times as many people die in automobile accidents every year than died in the four terrorist attacks on that fateful day.

As to real estate and stock-market crashes, the reality is that with or without government interference, they both occur periodically. They are necessary ingredients of capitalism, because they bring prices in line with reality. (With communism, of course, all markets are in a permanent state of collapse.)

I would offer two solutions here. First, if you're going to worry about your investments, don't invest. Put your savings into gold and silver or hide your money under the mattress (unless you have a housekeeper, in which case you might want to bury it in the backyard).

So, yes, Dale Carnegie was right when he preached resignation of the inevitable — but just make certain you can differentiate between what's inevitable and what is not. The reality is that most things can be overcome through a combination of (1) relentlessness, (2) an "expansive mental paradigm" that is open to new possibilities that people with a low level of awareness can't see, (3) the law of averages, and, above all, (4) being conscious of your connection to the Universal Power Source.

Number four is especially important, because, when you think about it, one cannot simultaneously be stressed and believe that he's connected to an infinite source of power. Christians use the word "God" to refer to this infinite source of power; Jews refer to it as "Elohim," "Yahweh," or "Jehovah"; and so on. What about an atheist? I agree with Viktor Frankl that there is not as much difference between an atheist and a religionist as we have been led to believe.

Most intellectual atheists I've known agree that there is an infinite source of power that envelopes the universe. Actually, they have no choice, because the Hubble telescope project has proven that there is an invisible source of power in the universe that is greater than the gravitational pull of all the matter in the universe combined. It's just that an atheist doesn't believe that this source of power is conscious (i.e., that it intervenes in earthly, or even universal, events).

So what it boils down to for an atheist is whether or not he believes he has the capacity to tap into this seemingly infinite power source and employ it to overcome obstacles and adversities in his life. If he believes he does, to worry over perceived problems is a contradiction. Stress is a clear indicator that a person is disconnected from the universe's infinite source of power.

Any way you slice it, and whatever your spiritual beliefs may be, what it all boils down to is focusing on constructive thoughts that will better your existence and the existence of your loved ones. It's okay to plan for the future, but stop worrying about it. Worrying about the future gets in the way of sound planning.

And, above all, exerting mental energy to worry about the inevitable is illogical. If something truly is inevitable, there's nothing you can do about it. And if there's nothing you can do about it, what's the point in worrying?

Just make certain that you don't cavalierly apply the term inevitable to a situation that doesn't warrant it. As I pointed out, very few things in life are inevitable, and only one — death — is 100 percent certain. And since, as Sinatra put it, death is "a pain in the ass," who wants to spend time thinking about it?

A better idea is to invest your mental and physical energy in thinking about how to be the best parent you can possibly be, the best son or daughter you can possibly be, the best sibling you can possibly be, the best friend you can possibly be, the best employee or employer you can possibly be, and the best overall person you can possibly be.

Which is a very tall order. However, as a bonus, to the extent you fill that order on a daily basis, that other little issue we worry so much about — financial success — somehow works itself out without your having to fret and stew about it.

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