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Quick and dirty summary

Worrying excessively when there's nothing you can do is not just unproductive but unhealthy. Notable techniques to stop worrying: "life is too short to be little", living in day-tight compartments, mistakes = good info sources but dont dwell

Notebook for How to Stop Worrying and Start Living Carnegie, Dale Citation (APA): Carnegie, D. (2010). How to Stop Worrying and Start Living [Kindle Android version]. Retrieved from Amazon.com Preface: How This Book Was Written—and Why Highlight (yellow) - Location 141 leadership usually gravitates to the man who can get up and say what he thinks. Highlight (yellow) - Location 142 I applied for a position teaching public speaking in the night extension courses both at Columbia University and New York University, but these universities decided they could struggle along somehow without my help. I was disappointed then— but now I thank God that they did turn me down, because I started teaching in YMCA night schools, where I had to show concrete results and show them quickly. Note - Location 145 Interesting. I'm beginning to see a pattern that great people make even better situations out of seemingly bad situations. Could there be an argument that Dale wouldn't attain his success if he was mired in academia, where he would most likely be the playing catch up to his Ivy League educated peers? Would he be relegated to lower/assistant roles with no freedom to run his social laboratories? We'll never know for sure but I'd like to think and to take away that it is the terrible sea that made the great sailor. Highlight (yellow) - Location 150 I felt at the time that I was teaching under a handicap, but I realize now that I was getting priceless training. Note - Location 151 He has an amazing growth mindset. Highlight (yellow) - Location 184 I have tried to write a fast- moving, concise, documented report on how worry has been conquered by thousands of adults. One thing is certain: this book is practical. You can set your teeth in it. Note - Location 185 I really love how Dale writes books, constantly revisiting them and evolving them from his and his students' experiences. Highlight (yellow) - Location 189 The purpose of this book is to restate, illustrate, streamline, air- condition, and glorify a lot of ancient and basic truths— and kick you in the shins and make you do something about applying them. Nine Suggestions on How to Get the Most Out of This Book Highlight (yellow) - Location 225 Don’t do the natural thing, the impulsive thing. Note - Location 225 More or less, in Dale's books he is teaching us to overcome Kahneman's system 1 and to use our system 2 more naturally in life and social situations. Part One: Fundamental Facts you Should Know About Worry Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 1: Live in “Day-tight Compartments” > Page 3 “Our main business is not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand.” Note - Chapter 1: Live in “Day-tight Compartments” > Page 3 - Thomas Carlyle. This was in Poor Charlie's Almanack too though this book came first! Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 1: Live in “Day-tight Compartments” > Page 4 the best possible way to prepare for tomorrow is to concentrate with all your intelligence, all your enthusiasm, on doing today’s work superbly today. That is the only possible way you can prepare for the future. Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 1: Live in “Day-tight Compartments” > Page 5 Modern versions of the Bible quote Jesus more accurately as saying: “Have no anxiety for the tomorrow.” By all means take thought for the tomorrow, yes, careful thought and planning and preparation. But have no anxiety. Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 1: Live in “Day-tight Compartments” > Page 6 good thinking deals with causes and effects and leads to logical, constructive planning; bad thinking frequently leads to tension and nervous breakdowns. Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 1: Live in “Day-tight Compartments” > Page 6 Mr. Sulzberger told me that he was never able to banish his worries and find peace until he had adopted as his motto five words from a church hymn: One step enough for me. Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 1: Live in “Day-tight Compartments” > Page 7 ‘I want you to think of your life as an hourglass. You know there are thousands of grains of sand in the top of the hourglass; and they all pass slowly and evenly through the narrow neck in the middle. Nothing you or I could do would make more than one grain of sand pass through this narrow neck without impairing the hourglass. You and I and everyone else are like this hourglass. When we start in the morning, there are hundreds of tasks which we feel that we must accomplish that day, but if we do not take them one at a time and let them pass through the day slowly and evenly, as do the grains of sand passing through the narrow neck of the hourglass, then we are bound to break our own physical or mental structure.’ Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 1: Live in “Day-tight Compartments” > Page 9 ‘Every day is a new life to a wise man.’ Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 1: Live in “Day-tight Compartments” > Page 10 We are all dreaming of some magical rose garden over the horizon— instead of enjoying the roses that are blooming outside our windows today. Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 1: Live in “Day-tight Compartments” > Page 10 Life, we learn too late, is in the living, in the tissue of every day and hour.” Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 1: Live in “Day-tight Compartments” > Page 12 Shut the iron doors on the past and the future. Live in Day- tight Compartments. Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 1: Live in “Day-tight Compartments” > Page 13 Do I tend to put off living in the present in order to worry about the future, or to yearn for some “magical rose garden over the horizon”? Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 2: A Magic Formula for Solving Worry Situations > Page 15 “Step I. I analyzed the situation fearlessly and honestly and figured out what was the worst that could possibly happen as a result of this failure. Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 2: A Magic Formula for Solving Worry Situations > Page 15 “Step II. After figuring out what was the worst that could possibly happen, I reconciled myself to accepting it, if necessary. Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 2: A Magic Formula for Solving Worry Situations > Page 15 “Step III. From that time on, I calmly devoted my time and energy to trying to improve upon the worst which I had already accepted mentally. Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 2: A Magic Formula for Solving Worry Situations > Page 15 one of the worst features about worrying is that it destroys our ability to concentrate. When we worry, our minds jump here and there and everywhere, and we lose all power of decision. Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 2: A Magic Formula for Solving Worry Situations > Page 16 Professor William James, the father of applied psychology, Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 3: What Worry May Do to You > Page 21 Those who do not know how to fight worry die young. —DR. ALEXIS CARREL Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 3: What Worry May Do to You > Page 29 Thoreau said in his immortal book, Walden: “I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavor…. If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.” Part Two: Basic Techniques in Analyzing Worry Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 4: How to Analyze and Solve Worry Problems > Page 36 “If a man will devote his time to securing facts in an impartial, objective way, his worries will usually evaporate in the light of knowledge.” Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 4: How to Analyze and Solve Worry Problems > Page 37 As Charles Kettering puts it: “A problem well stated is a problem half solved.” Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 4: How to Analyze and Solve Worry Problems > Page 38 For years, whenever I was worried I had always gone to my typewriter and written down two questions—and the answers to these questions: “1. What am I worrying about? “2. What can I do about it? Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 4: How to Analyze and Solve Worry Problems > Page 40 “Experience has proved to me, time after time, the enormous value of arriving at a decision. It is the failure to arrive at a fixed purpose, the inability to stop going round and round in maddening circles, that drives men to nervous breakdowns and living hells. I find that fifty per cent of my worries vanishes once I arrive at a clear, definite decision; and another forty per cent usually vanishes once I start to carry out that decision. Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 4: How to Analyze and Solve Worry Problems > Page 40 “So I banish about ninety per cent of my worries by taking these four steps: “1. Writing down precisely what I am worrying about. “2. Writing down what I can do about it. “3. Deciding what to do. “4. Starting immediately to carry out that decision.” Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 4: How to Analyze and Solve Worry Problems > Page 40 Do something about it. Unless we carry out our action, all our fact-finding and analysis is whistling upwind—it’s a sheer waste of energy. Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 4: How to Analyze and Solve Worry Problems > Page 40 William James said this: “When once a decision is reached and execution is the order of the day, dismiss absolutely all responsibility and care about the outcome.” (In this case, William James undoubtedly used the word “care” as a synonym for “anxiety.”) He meant—once you have made a careful decision based on facts, go into action. Don’t stop to reconsider. Don’t begin to hesitate, worry and retrace your steps. Don’t lose yourself in self-doubting which begets other doubts. Don’t keep looking back over your shoulder. Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 5: How to Eliminate Fifty Per Cent of Your Business Worries > Page 47 1. What is the problem? 2. What is the CAUSE of the problem? 3. What are all possible solutions to the problem? 4. What solution do you suggest? Part Three: How to Break The Worry Habit Before it Breaks You Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 6: How to Crowd Worry Out of Your Mind > Page 53 “Occupational therapy” is the term now used by psychiatry when work is prescribed as though it were a medicine. Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 6: How to Crowd Worry Out of Your Mind > Page 54 “I must lose myself in action, lest I wither in despair.” Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 6: How to Crowd Worry Out of Your Mind > Page 57 “Without purpose, the days would have ended, as such days always end, in disintegration.”* Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 7: Don’t Let the Beetles Get You Down > Page 62 Very few of us are cruelly and greatly wronged. It is the small blows to our self-esteem, the indignities, the little jolts to our vanity, which cause half the heartaches in the world.” Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 7: Don’t Let the Beetles Get You Down > Page 63 I would much rather our friends think I’m a sloppy housekeeper,” she told me, “than a nervous, bad-tempered one. And anyhow, as far as I could make out, no one noticed the napkins!” Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 7: Don’t Let the Beetles Get You Down > Page 63 De minimis non curat lex—“the law does not concern itself with trifles.” And neither should the worrier—if he wants peace of mind. Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 7: Don’t Let the Beetles Get You Down > Page 63 Much of the time, all we need to overcome the annoyance of trifles is to affect a shifting of emphasis—set up a new, and pleasurable, point of view in the mind. Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 7: Don’t Let the Beetles Get You Down > Page 63 “I went with some friends on a camping expedition. While listening to the limbs crackling in the roaring fire, I thought how much they sounded like the crackling of the radiators. Why should I like one and hate the other? When I went home I said to myself, ‘The crackling of the limbs in the fire was a pleasant sound; the sound of the radiators is about the same—I’ll go to sleep and not worry about the noise.’ Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 7: Don’t Let the Beetles Get You Down > Page 64 Disraeli said: “Life is too short to be little.” Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 7: Don’t Let the Beetles Get You Down > Page 64 Here we are on this earth, with only a few more decades to live, and we lose many irreplaceable hours brooding over grievances that, in a year’s time, will be forgotten by us and by everybody. No, let us devote our life to worth-while actions and feelings, to great thoughts, real affections and enduring undertakings. For life is too short to be little.” Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 7: Don’t Let the Beetles Get You Down > Page 66 Let’s not allow ourselves to be upset by small things we should despise and forget. Remember “Life is too short to be little.” Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 8: A Law That Will Outlaw Many of Your Worries > Page 70 By the law of averages, it won’t happen.’ That phrase has destroyed ninety per cent of my worries; Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 8: A Law That Will Outlaw Many of Your Worries > Page 72 “Let’s examine the record.” Let’s ask ourselves: “What are the chances, according to the law of averages, that this event I am worrying about will ever occur?” Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 9: Co-operate with the Inevitable > Page 76 John Milton discovered, that “It is not miserable to be blind, it is only miserable not to be able to endure blindness.” Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 9: Co-operate with the Inevitable > Page 77 For every ailment under the sun, There is a remedy, or there is none; If there be one, try to find it; If there be none, never mind it. Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 9: Co-operate with the Inevitable > Page 78 “There is only one way to happiness,” Epictetus taught the Romans, “and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power of our will.” Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 9: Co-operate with the Inevitable > Page 79 No one living has enough emotion and vigor to fight the inevitable and, at the same time, enough left over to create a new life. Choose one or the other. You can either bend with the inevitable sleetstorms of life—or you can resist them and break! Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 9: Co-operate with the Inevitable > Page 81 God grant me the serenity To accept the things I cannot change, The courage to change the things I can; And the wisdom to know the difference. Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 9: Co-operate with the Inevitable > Page 81 Co-operate with the inevitable. Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 10: Put a “Stop-Loss” Order on Your Worries > Page 84 Henry Thoreau dipped his goose quill into his homemade ink and wrote in his diary: “The cost of a thing is the amount of what I call life, which is required to be exchanged for it immediately or in the long run.” To put it another way: we are fools when we overpay for a thing in terms of what it takes out of our very existence. Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 10: Put a “Stop-Loss” Order on Your Worries > Page 86 “As I grew up,” he said, “and came into the world and observed the actions of men, I thought I met with many, very many, who gave too much for the whistle. In short, I conceive that a great part of the miseries of mankind are brought upon them by the false estimates they have made of the value of things, and by their giving too much for their whistles.” Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 10: Put a “Stop-Loss” Order on Your Worries > Page 88 1. How much does this thing I am worrying about really matter to me? 2. At what point shall I set a “stop-loss” order on this worry—and forget it? 3. Exactly how much shall I pay for this whistle? Have I already paid more than it is worth? Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 11: Don’t Try to Saw Sawdust > Page 89 we may do something to modify the effects of what happened 180 seconds ago; but we can’t possibly change the event that occurred then. Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 11: Don’t Try to Saw Sawdust > Page 89 There is only one way on God’s green footstool that the past can be constructive; and that is by calmly analyzing our past mistakes and profiting by them—and forgetting them. Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 11: Don’t Try to Saw Sawdust > Page 91 It taught me to keep from spilling milk if I could; but to forget it completely, once it was spilled and had gone down the drain.” Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 11: Don’t Try to Saw Sawdust > Page 91 knowledge isn’t power until it is applied; Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 11: Don’t Try to Saw Sawdust > Page 93 Shakespeare’s advice: “Wise men ne’er sit and wail their loss, but cheerily seek how to redress their harms.” Part Four: Seven Ways to Cultivate A Mental Attitude that Will Bring You Peace and Happiness Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 12: Eight Words That Can Transform Your Life > Page 99 by far the most vital lesson I have ever learned is the importance of what we think. If I knew what you think, I would know what you are. Our thoughts make us what we are. Our mental attitude is the X factor that determines our fate. Emerson said: “A man is what he thinks about all day long.”… How could he possibly be anything else? Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 12: Eight Words That Can Transform Your Life > Page 99 Marcus Aurelius, summed it up in eight words—eight words that can determine your destiny: “Our life is what our thoughts make it.” Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 12: Eight Words That Can Transform Your Life > Page 99 “You are not,” said Norman Vincent Peale, “you are not what you think you are; but what you think, you are.” Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 12: Eight Words That Can Transform Your Life > Page 103 the longer I live, the more deeply I am convinced of the tremendous power of thought. As a result of many years spent in teaching adults, I know men and women can banish worry, fear, and various kinds of illnesses, and can transform their lives by changing their thoughts. I know! I know!! I know!!! Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 12: Eight Words That Can Transform Your Life > Page 106 Milton in his blindness discovered that same truth three hundred years ago: The mind is its own place, and in itself Can make a heaven of Hell, a hell of Heaven. Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 12: Eight Words That Can Transform Your Life > Page 107 “Action seems to follow feeling, but really action and feeling go together; and by regulating the action, which is under the more direct control of the will, we can indirectly regulate the feeling, which is not.” Note - Chapter 12: Eight Words That Can Transform Your Life > Page 107 William James Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 12: Eight Words That Can Transform Your Life > Page 107 “Thus,” he explains, “the sovereign voluntary path to cheerfulness, if your cheerfulness be lost, is to sit up cheerfully and to act and speak as if cheerfulness were already there.” Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 12: Eight Words That Can Transform Your Life > Page 109 As a Man Thinketh, by James Allen, Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 12: Eight Words That Can Transform Your Life > Page 109 “A man will find that as he alters his thoughts toward things and other people, things and other people will alter towards him…. Let a man radically alter his thoughts, and he will be astonished at the rapid transformation it will effect in the material conditions of his life. Men do not attract that which they want, but that which they are…. The divinity that shapes our ends is in ourselves. It is our very self…. All that a man achieves is the direct result of his own thoughts…. A man can only rise, conquer and achieve by lifting up his thoughts. He can only remain weak and abject and miserable by refusing to lift up his thoughts.” Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 12: Eight Words That Can Transform Your Life > Page 109 All I desire is dominion over myself—dominion over my thoughts; dominion over my fears; dominion over my mind and over my spirit. And the wonderful thing is that I know that I can attain this dominion to an astonishing degree, any time I want to, by merely controlling my actions—which in turn control my reactions. Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 12: Eight Words That Can Transform Your Life > Page 109 William James: “Much of what we call Evil … can often be convened into a bracing and tonic good by a simple change of the sufferer’s inner attitude from one of fear to one of fight.” Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 12: Eight Words That Can Transform Your Life > Page 109 Just For Today 1. Just for today I will be happy. This assumes that what Abraham Lincoln said is true, that “most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.” Happiness is from within; it is not a matter of externals. 2. Just for today I will try to adjust myself to what is, and not try to adjust everything to my own desires. I will take my family, my business, and my luck as they come and fit myself to them. 3. Just for today I will take care of my body. I will exercise it, care for it, nourish it, not abuse it nor neglect it, so that it will be a perfect machine for my bidding. 4. Just for today I will try to strengthen my mind. I will learn something useful. I will not be a mental loafer. I will read something that requires effort, thought and concentration. 5. Just for today I will exercise my soul in three ways; I will do somebody a good turn and not get found out. I will do at least two things I don’t want to do, as William James suggests, just for exercise. 6. Just for today I will be agreeable. I will look as well as I can, dress as becomingly as possible, talk low, act courteously, be liberal with praise, criticize not at all, nor find fault with anything and not try to regulate nor improve anyone. 7. Just for today I will try to live through this day only, not to tackle my whole life problem at once. I can do things for twelve hours that would appall me if I had to keep them up for a lifetime. 8. Just for today I will have a program. I will write down what I expect to do every hour. I may not follow it exactly, but I will have it. It will eliminate two pests, hurrying and indecision. 9. Just for today I will have a quiet half-hour all by myself and relax. In this half-hour sometimes I will think of God, so as to get a little more perspective into my life. 10. Just for today I will be unafraid, especially I will not be afraid to be happy, to enjoy what is beautiful, to love, and to believe that those I love, love me. Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 13: The High Cost of Getting Even > Page 111 When we hate our enemies, we are giving them power over us: power over our sleep, our appetites, our blood pressure, our health, and our happiness. Our enemies would dance with joy if only they knew how they were worrying us, lacerating us, and getting even with us! Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 13: The High Cost of Getting Even > Page 112 “If selfish people try to take advantage of you, cross them off your list, but don’t try to get even. When you try to get even, you hurt yourself more than you hurt the other fellow”? Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 13: The High Cost of Getting Even > Page 114 “a soft answer turneth away wrath.” Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 13: The High Cost of Getting Even > Page 114 “To be wronged or robbed,” said Confucius, “is nothing unless you continue to remember it.” Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 13: The High Cost of Getting Even > Page 117 “In the long run,” said Epictetus, “every man will pay the penalty for his own misdeeds. The man who remembers this will be angry with no one, indignant with no one, revile no one, blame no one, offend no one, hate no one.” Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 13: The High Cost of Getting Even > Page 118 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. Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 14: If You Do This, You Will Never Worry About Ingratitude > Page 119 “An angry man,” said Confucius, “is always full of poison.” Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 14: If You Do This, You Will Never Worry About Ingratitude > Page 121 It is natural for people to forget to be grateful; so, if we go around expecting gratitude, we are headed straight for a lot of heartaches. Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 14: If You Do This, You Will Never Worry About Ingratitude > Page 121 she will never get gratitude or love, because she demands it. She thinks it’s her due. Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 14: If You Do This, You Will Never Worry About Ingratitude > Page 122 the only way in this world that they can ever hope to be loved is to stop asking for it and to start pouring out love without hope of return. Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 14: If You Do This, You Will Never Worry About Ingratitude > Page 122 If we want to find happiness, let’s stop thinking about gratitude or ingratitude and give for the inner joy of giving. Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 14: If You Do This, You Will Never Worry About Ingratitude > Page 122 Shakespeare’s King Lear cried out, “How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child!” Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 14: If You Do This, You Will Never Worry About Ingratitude > Page 124 Those children breathed in warmth and radiant human-kindness all during their childhoods. Is it any wonder that, now that the situation is reversed, they give back love? Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 14: If You Do This, You Will Never Worry About Ingratitude > Page 124 to raise grateful children, we have to be grateful. Let us remember “little pitchers have big ears”—and watch what we say. Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 14: If You Do This, You Will Never Worry About Ingratitude > Page 124 Let’s never say: “Look at these dishcloths Cousin Sue sent for Christmas. She knit them herself. They didn’t cost her a cent!” The remark may seem trivial to us—but the children are listening. So, instead, we had better say: “Look at the hours Cousin Sue spent making these for Christmas! Isn’t she nice? Let’s write her a thank-you note right now.” And our children may unconsciously absorb the habit of praise and appreciation. Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 14: If You Do This, You Will Never Worry About Ingratitude > Page 124 A. Instead of worrying about ingratitude, 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 gratitude than Jesus got? B. Let’s remember that the only way to find happiness is not to expect gratitude, but to give for the joy of giving. C. Let’s remember that gratitude is a “cultivated” trait; so if we want our children to be grateful, we must train them to be grateful. Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 15: Would You Take a Million Dollars for What You Have? > Page 126 I had the blues because I had no shoes, Until upon the street, I met a man who had no feet.” Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 15: Would You Take a Million Dollars for What You Have? > Page 129 “The habit of looking on the best side of every event,” said Dr. Johnson, “is worth more than a thousand pounds a year.” Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 15: Would You Take a Million Dollars for What You Have? > Page 129 “There are two things to aim at in life: first, to get what you want; and, after that, to enjoy it. Only the wisest of mankind achieve the second.” Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 15: Would You Take a Million Dollars for What You Have? > Page 130 Count your blessings—not your troubles! Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 16: Find Yourself and Be Yourself: Remember There Is No One Else on Earth Like You > Page 132 No matter what happens, always be yourself!” Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 16: Find Yourself and Be Yourself: Remember There Is No One Else on Earth Like You > Page 132 “Nobody is so miserable as he who longs to be somebody and something other than the person he is in body and mind.” Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 16: Find Yourself and Be Yourself: Remember There Is No One Else on Earth Like You > Page 133 “Experience has taught me,” says Sam Wood, “that it is safest to drop, as quickly as possible, people who pretend to be what they aren’t.” Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 16: Find Yourself and Be Yourself: Remember There Is No One Else on Earth Like You > Page 133 “The biggest mistake people make in applying for jobs is in not being themselves. Instead of taking their hair down and being completely frank, they often try to give you the answers they think you want.” Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 16: Find Yourself and Be Yourself: Remember There Is No One Else on Earth Like You > Page 133 Don’t try to hide them! Open your mouth, and the audience will love you when they see you’re not ashamed. Besides,” he said shrewdly, “those teeth you’re trying to hide may make your fortune!” Note - Chapter 16: Find Yourself and Be Yourself: Remember There Is No One Else on Earth Like You > Page 133 Cass Daley Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 16: Find Yourself and Be Yourself: Remember There Is No One Else on Earth Like You > Page 136 You are something new in this world. Be glad of it. Make the most of what nature gave you. In the last analysis, all art is autobiographical. You can sing only what you are. You can paint only what you are. You must be what your experiences, your environment, and your heredity have made you. For better or for worse, you must cultivate your own little garden. For better or for worse, you must play your own little instrument in the orchestra of life. Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 16: Find Yourself and Be Yourself: Remember There Is No One Else on Earth Like You > Page 137 Let’s not imitate others. Let’s find ourselves and be ourselves. Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 17: If You Have a Lemon, Make a Lemonade > Page 138 the great psychologist, Alfred Adler, declared that one of the wonder-filled characteristics of human beings is “their power to turn a minus into a plus.” Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 17: If You Have a Lemon, Make a Lemonade > Page 139 Two men looked out from prison bars, One saw the mud, the other saw the stars. Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 17: If You Have a Lemon, Make a Lemonade > Page 139 I had looked out of my self-created prison and found the stars.” Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 17: If You Have a Lemon, Make a Lemonade > Page 139 “The best things are the most difficult.” Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 17: If You Have a Lemon, Make a Lemonade > Page 140 William Bolitho, author of Twelve Against the Gods, put it like this: “The most important thing in life is not to capitalize on your gains. Any fool can do that. The really important thing is to profit from your losses. That requires intelligence; and it makes the difference between a man of sense and a fool.” Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 17: If You Have a Lemon, Make a Lemonade > Page 143 Nietzsche’s formula for the superior man was “not only to bear up under necessity but to love it.” Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 17: If You Have a Lemon, Make a Lemonade > Page 143 As William James said: “Our very infirmities help us unexpectedly.” Note - Chapter 17: If You Have a Lemon, Make a Lemonade > Page 143 Stoic. The obstacle is the way. Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 17: If You Have a Lemon, Make a Lemonade > Page 143 “If I had not been so great an invalid,” wrote the man who changed the scientific concept of life on earth—“I should not have done so much work as I have accomplished.” That was Charles Darwin’s confession that his infirmities had helped him unexpectedly. Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 17: If You Have a Lemon, Make a Lemonade > Page 143 “There is a Scandinavian saying which some of us might well take as a rallying cry for our lives: ‘The north wind made the Vikings.’ Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 17: If You Have a Lemon, Make a Lemonade > Page 144 When fate hands us a lemon, let’s try to make a lemonade. Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 18: How to Cure Depression in Fourteen Days > Page 149 The most important task imposed by religion has always been “Love thy neighbor.”… It is the individual who is not interested in his fellow man who has the greatest difficulties in life and provides the greatest injury to others. It is from among such individuals that all human failures spring…. All that we demand of a human being, and the highest praise we can give him, is that he should be a good fellow worker, a friend to all other men, and a true partner in love and marriage. Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 18: How to Cure Depression in Fourteen Days > Page 150 Why will doing a good deed every day produce such astounding effects on the doer? Because trying to please others will cause us to stop thinking of ourselves: the very thing that produces worry and fear and melancholia. Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 18: How to Cure Depression in Fourteen Days > Page 151 the necessity of making other people happy in order to be happy ourselves. I found that happiness is contagious. By giving, we receive. By helping someone and giving out love, I had conquered worry and sorrow and self-pity, and felt like a new person. Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 18: How to Cure Depression in Fourteen Days > Page 153 A third of the people who rush to psychiatrists for help could probably cure themselves if they could only do as Margaret Yates did: get interested in helping others. Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 18: How to Cure Depression in Fourteen Days > Page 154 “No discovery of modern psychology,” wrote Henry C. Link, director of the Psychological Service Center in New York, “is, in my opinion, so important as its scientific proof of the necessity of self-sacrifice or discipline to self-realization and happiness.” Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 18: How to Cure Depression in Fourteen Days > Page 155 A Chinese proverb puts it this way: “A bit of fragrance always clings to the hand that gives you roses.” Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 18: How to Cure Depression in Fourteen Days > Page 157 “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.” Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 18: How to Cure Depression in Fourteen Days > Page 157 “I shall pass 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 pass this way again.” Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 18: How to Cure Depression in Fourteen Days > Page 157 Forget yourself by becoming interested in others. Every day do a good deed that will put a smile of joy on someone’s face. Part Five: The Perfect Way to Conquer Worry Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 19: How My Mother and Father Conquered Worry > Page 169 —“There are no atheists in foxholes.” Part Six: How to Keep From Worrying About Criticism Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 20: Remember That No One Ever Kicks a Dead Dog > Page 182 Schopenhauer had said it years ago: “Vulgar people take huge delight in the faults and follies of great men.” Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 20: Remember That No One Ever Kicks a Dead Dog > Page 184 Remember that unjust criticism is often a disguised compliment. Remember that no one ever kicks a dead dog. Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 21: Do This—and Criticism Can’t Hurt You > Page 187 the more I tried to pacify and to smooth over injured feelings in order to escape personal criticism, the more certain I was to increase my enemies. Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 21: Do This—and Criticism Can’t Hurt You > Page 187 ‘If you get your head above the crowd, you’re going to be criticized. So get used to the idea.’ Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 21: Do This—and Criticism Can’t Hurt You > Page 188 Do the very best you can; and then put up your old umbrella and keep the rain of criticism from running down the back of your neck. Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 22: Fool Things I Have Done > Page 189 I used to blame my troubles on other people; but as I have grown older—and wiser, I hope—I have realized that I myself, in the last analysis, am to blame for almost all my misfortunes. Lots of people have discovered that, as they grow older. “No one but myself,” said Napoleon at St. Helena, “no one but myself can be blamed for my fall. I have been my own greatest enemy—the cause of my own disastrous fate.” Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 22: Fool Things I Have Done > Page 190 “My family never makes any plans for me on Saturday night, for the family knows that I devote a part of each Saturday evening to self-examination and a review and appraisal of my work during the week. After dinner I go off by myself, open my engagement book, and think over all the interviews, discussions, and meetings that have taken place since Monday morning. I ask myself: ‘What mistakes did I make that time?’‘What did I do that was right—and in what way could I have improved my performance?’‘What lessons can I learn from that experience?’ I sometimes find that this weekly review makes me very unhappy. Sometimes I am astonished by my own blunders. Of course, as the years have gone by, these blunders have become less frequent. This system of self-analysis, continued year after year, has done more for me than any other thing I have ever attempted.” Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 22: Fool Things I Have Done > Page 190 he battled with one of his shortcomings every day for a week, and kept a record of who had won each day’s slugging match. The next week, he would pick out another bad habit, put on the gloves, and when the bell rang he would come out of his corner fighting. Franklin kept up this battle with his faults every week for more than two years. Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 22: Fool Things I Have Done > Page 191 Instead of waiting for our enemies to criticize us or our work, let’s beat them to it. Let’s be our own most severe critic. Let’s find and remedy all our weaknesses before our enemies get a chance to say a word. Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 22: Fool Things I Have Done > Page 192 “The opinions of our enemies,” said La Rochefoucauld, “come nearer to the truth about us than do our own opinions.” Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 22: Fool Things I Have Done > Page 193 Let’s keep a record of the fool things we have done and criticize ourselves. Since we can’t hope to be perfect, let’s do what E. H. Little did: let’s ask for unbiased, helpful, constructive criticism. Part Seven : Six Ways to Prevent Six Ways to Prevent Fatigue and Worry And Keep Your Energy and Spirits High Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 23: How to Add One Hour a Day to Your Waking Life > Page 197 fatigue often produces worry, or, at least, it makes you susceptible to worry. Any medical student will tell you that fatigue lowers physical resistance to the common cold, and hundreds of other diseases; and any psychiatrist will tell you that fatigue also lowers your resistance to the emotions of fear and worry. So preventing fatigue tends to prevent worry. Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 23: How to Add One Hour a Day to Your Waking Life > Page 197 to prevent fatigue and worry, the first rule is: Rest often. Rest before you get tired. Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 23: How to Add One Hour a Day to Your Waking Life > Page 201 take frequent rests. Do what your heart does—rest before you get tired, and you will add one hour a day to your waking life. Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 25: How to Avoid Fatigue—and Keep Looking Young! > Page 208 one of the best remedies for lightening worry is “talking your troubles over with someone you trust. We call it catharsis,” Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 25: How to Avoid Fatigue—and Keep Looking Young! > Page 209 Psychoanalysis is based, to some extent, on this healing power of words. Ever since the days of Freud, analysts have known that a patient could find relief from his inner anxieties if he could talk, just talk. Why is this so? Maybe because by talking, we gain a little better insight into our troubles, get a better perspective. No one knows the whole answer. But all of us know that “spitting it out” or “getting it off our chests” brings almost instant relief. Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 25: How to Avoid Fatigue—and Keep Looking Young! > Page 209 Don’t dwell too long on the shortcomings of others! Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 25: How to Avoid Fatigue—and Keep Looking Young! > Page 209 “What would you do if your husband died?” She was so shocked by the idea that she immediately sat down and drew up a list of all her husband’s good points. She made quite a list. Why don’t you try the same thing the next time you feel you married a tyrant? Maybe you’ll find, after reading your spouse’s virtues, that he or she is a person you’d like to meet! Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 25: How to Avoid Fatigue—and Keep Looking Young! > Page 210 Make up a schedule for tomorrow’s work before you go to bed tonight. Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 25: How to Avoid Fatigue—and Keep Looking Young! > Page 211 THE YOGIS OF INDIA WERE RIGHT: RHYTHMICAL BREATHING IS ONE OF THE BEST METHODS EVER DISCOVERED FOR SOOTHING THE NERVES. Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 26: Four Good Working Habits That Will Help Prevent Fatigue and Worry > Page 212 Good Working Habit No. 1: Clear Your Desk of All Papers Except Those Relating to the Immediate Problem at Hand. Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 26: Four Good Working Habits That Will Help Prevent Fatigue and Worry > Page 213 “Functional Neuroses as Complications of Organic Disease.” In that paper, Dr. Stokes listed eleven conditions under the title: “What to Look for in the Patient’s State of Mind.” Here is the first item on that list: The sense of must or obligation; the unending stretch of things ahead that simply have to be done. Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 26: Four Good Working Habits That Will Help Prevent Fatigue and Worry > Page 214 Good Working Habit No. 2: Do Things in the Order of Their Importance. Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 26: Four Good Working Habits That Will Help Prevent Fatigue and Worry > Page 215 I know from long experience that one is not always able to do things in the order of their importance, but I also know that some kind of plan to do first things first is infinitely better than extemporizing as you go along. Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 26: Four Good Working Habits That Will Help Prevent Fatigue and Worry > Page 215 Good Working Habit No. 3: When You Face a Problem, Solve It Then and There if You Have the Facts Necessary to Make a Decision. Don’t Keep Putting off Decisions. Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 26: Four Good Working Habits That Will Help Prevent Fatigue and Worry > Page 216 Good Working Habit No. 4: Learn to Organize, Deputize, and Supervise. Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 26: Four Good Working Habits That Will Help Prevent Fatigue and Worry > Page 216 Many business persons are driving themselves to premature graves because they have never learned to delegate responsibility to others, insisting on doing everything themselves. Result: details and confusion overwhelm them. Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 27: How to Banish the Boredom That Produces Fatigue, Worry, and Resentment > Page 217 It is a well-known fact that your emotional attitude usually has far more to do with producing fatigue than has physical exertion. A few years ago, Joseph E. Barmack, Ph.D., published in the Archives of Psychology a report of some of his experiments showing how boredom produces fatigue. Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 27: How to Banish the Boredom That Produces Fatigue, Worry, and Resentment > Page 218 These tests showed that the blood pressure of the body and the consumption of oxygen actually decrease when a person is bored, and that the whole metabolism picks up immediately as soon as he begins to feel interest and pleasure in his work! Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 27: How to Banish the Boredom That Produces Fatigue, Worry, and Resentment > Page 219 When Dr. Edward Thorndike of Columbia was conducting experiments in fatigue, he kept young men awake for almost a week by keeping them constantly interested. After much investigation, Dr. Thorndike is reported to have said: “Boredom is the only real cause of diminution of work.” Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 27: How to Banish the Boredom That Produces Fatigue, Worry, and Resentment > Page 219 The lesson to be learned? Just this: our fatigue is often caused not by work, but by worry, frustration, and resentment. Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 27: How to Banish the Boredom That Produces Fatigue, Worry, and Resentment > Page 219 “The lucky folks are the ones that get to do things they enjoy doing.” Such folk are lucky because they have more energy, more happiness, less worry, and less fatigue. Where your interests are, there is your energy also. Walking ten blocks with a nagging wife or husband can be more fatiguing than walking ten miles with an adoring sweetheart. Highlight (yellow) - Chapter 27: How to Banish the Boredom That Produces Fatigue, Worry, and Resentment > Page 223 Marcus Aurelius first wrote them in his book on Meditations: “Our life is what our thoughts make it.” Part Eight: “How I Conquered Worry” Highlight (yellow) - Five Methods I Have Used to Banish Worry > Page 246 Teaching has always been more than an art or an occupation to me. It is a passion. I love to teach as a painter loves to paint or a singer loves to sing. Before I get out of bed in the morning, I think with ardent delight of my first group of students. I have always felt that one of the chief reasons for success in life is enthusiasm. Highlight (yellow) - I Stood Yesterday. I Can Stand Today > Page 247 When people ask me what has kept me going through the troubles that come to all of us, I always reply: “I stood yesterday. I can stand today. Highlight (yellow) - I Stood Yesterday. I Can Stand Today > Page 247 I have known want and struggle and anxiety and despair. I have always had to work beyond the limit of my strength. Highlight (yellow) - I Stood Yesterday. I Can Stand Today > Page 248 I have lived. They only existed. I have drunk the cup of life down to its very dregs. They have only sipped the bubbles on top of it. I know things they will never know. I see things to which they are blind. Highlight (yellow) - I Stood Yesterday. I Can Stand Today > Page 248 I have learned to live each day as it comes and not to borrow trouble by dreading the morrow. It is the dark menace of the picture that makes cowards of us. I put that dread from me because experience has taught me that when the time comes that I so fear, the strength and wisdom to meet it will be given me. Highlight (yellow) - I Stood Yesterday. I Can Stand Today > Page 248 I have learned not to expect too much of people, and so I can still get happiness out of the friend who isn’t quite true to me or the acquaintance who gossips. Highlight (yellow) - I Hit Bottom and Survived > Page 254 I believe it is a good thing to have to endure an agonizing experience occasionally. It is good to know that we have hit bottom and survived. That makes all our daily problems seem easy by comparison.

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