6.
Live for the day.
"One of
the most tragic things I know about human nature," Carnegie writes,
"is that all of us tend to put off living."
In other words,
we're so consumed with worrying about what we've already done wrong in the past
and what might go wrong in the future. Instead, Carnegie advocates living in
what he calls "day-tight compartments" that don't allow past or
future concerns to seep in.
Carnegie gives
an example of how this technique helped save one man's life. After opening his
own business, Edward Evans experienced a series of disasters: He lent money to
a friend and the friend went bankrupt. The bank where he held all his money
collapsed and he went $16,000 into debt.
Evans fell ill
and a doctor told him he had just two weeks to live. "No use now to
struggle or worry," Evans remembered thinking. Finally, he was able to
sleep, eat, and even go back to work.
Restored to
health, a few years later, he was president of the Evans Products Company,
which produced equipment for loading and shipping automobiles.
7.
Keep busy.
"It is
utterly impossible for any human mind, no matter how brilliant, to think of
more thanone thing at any given time," Carnegie writes. The
same logic applies in the domain of emotions, he said — you can't be ecstatic
and plagued by fear at the exact same moment.
Therefore, in
order to crowd out worry, occupy your mind and body with another activity.
Carnegie cites
the example of Tremper Longman, a businessman who cured his own insomnia by
keeping his schedule jam-packed.
Longman was
treasurer of the Crown Fruit and Extract Company, and sales dropped suddenly
when the big ice cream companies started buying their strawberries in barrels
instead of the gallon tins that Crown sold. Even when Longman came up with a
potential solution to the problem, he couldn’t stop worrying and said he was
headed for a nervous breakdown.
Desperate for a
solution, he decided to absorb himself fully in his business problems, working
16-hour days. By the time he got home at midnight, he was so exhausted that he
had neither the time nor energy to worry.
Long after
Longman went back to working seven-hour days, he said, he had beat the habit of
worry and the bouts of insomnia for good.
8.
Accept the inevitable.
If there's any
chance you can change a situation by acting differently, Carnegie tells readers
to go for it.
But if
circumstances are obviously unalterable, worrying will only change you for
the worse, he says. It's an idea he heard from multiple business executives he
interviewed.
Here's JC
Penney, founder of the retail chain by the same name: "I wouldn't worry if
I lost every dollar I have because I don't see what is to be gained by
worrying. I do the best job I possibly can; and leave the results in the laps
of the gods."
9. Act happy to feel happy.
Unfortunately,
we can't control much of what we feel. But we have near-complete control over
what we do. And changing our behavior often affects our emotions in
turn.
You can try it
right now: Smile and see if you still feel despondent.
"It
is physically impossible to remain blue or depressed while you
are acting out the symptoms of being radiantly happy!" Carnegie writes.
10.
Give up resentment.
There's little
point in stewing over old grievances and harboring grudges against people,
Carnegie says. Instead, it's healthier to just move on.
But how?
"One sure
way to forgive and forget our enemies is to become absorbed in some cause
infinitely bigger than ourselves," Carnegie wrote.
That's what
Abraham Lincoln reportedly did. According to William Herndon’s biography of the US president, "If a
man had maligned him or been guilty of personal ill-treatment, and was the
fittest man for the place, Lincoln would give him that place."
In other words,
Lincoln's primary cause was getting the political job done; he didn't have time
to let personal injuries get in the way.
11. Understand why people criticize.
"When you
are kicked and criticized," Carnegie writes, "remember that it is
often done because it gives the kicker a feeling of importance."
That idea is
evidenced by an anecdote Carnegie shares about the Prince of Wales. When the
prince was about 14 years old and attending a naval academy, one of the naval
officers found him crying. When he asked the prince why, the prince replied
that the naval cadets had been kicking him.
The commodore
of the academy asked the cadets to explain why they had kicked the prince.
Apparently, the cadets had wanted to be able to say they had kicked the king.
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