How to Stop Worrying and Start Living: Book summary

Being one of the best self-help books of all time, How to Stop Worrying and Start Living has helped millions of people all over the world to overcome the habit of worrying. In this book, Dale Carnegie offers a set of practical ideas which we can adapt to deal with worries, which have now become a part and parcel of everyone’s lives.

Worry is a complete waste of time. It doesn’t change anything. All it does is steal your peace of mind and make it unstable. Of all the worries that occupy our minds, about 90 percent of the things never happen actually. But then also, we keep on overthinking and worrying about stupid things which doesn’t even matter much.

No problem has ever been solved by just worrying about it. Rather, we should think about its solutions logically.

If You Have A Lemon, Make A Lemonade; That is what a great educator does. But the fool does the exact opposite. If he finds that life has handed him a lemon, he gives up and says: “I’m beaten. It is fate. I haven’t got a chance.”Then he proceeds to rail against the world and indulge in an orgy of self-pity.

Dale Carnegie

Analyzing worries

Confusion is the chief cause of worry. Half the worry in the world is caused by people trying to make decisions before they have sufficient knowledge regarding a fact.

If a man will devote his time to securing facts in an impartial and objective way, his worries will automatically evaporate in the light of knowledge. We can banish about 90 percent of our worries by taking these four steps.

1. Write down precisely what you are worrying about.
2. Write down what you can do about it.
3. Decide what to do.
4. Start immediately to carry out that decision.

Fundamental Principles for Overcoming Worries

According to the author, we can get rid of even the biggest worries of our lives by following these techniques:

1. Analyze the situation logically and try to figure out what is the worst thing that could possibly happen to you.
2. The second step involves mentally accepting the worst possible outcome.
3. Finally, try to improve the worst which you have already accepted.

For example, when I started writing this blog, I was not sure whether to continue it or not. I was worried by different factors like what if people didn’t like reading my articles? What if I could not write quality content for my readers? Then I thought about the worst case that could happen to me, which was just a simple problem. It was just negative feedback from my readers, nothing more than that. It’s not that people would take my life or will start punching me after reading my blog. And this simple technique was enough for me to continue with my work without any worries, as now I was ready to face the worst i.e negative feedback of the readers.

Break the Worry Habit Before It Breaks You

One of the worst features of worrying is that it destroys our ability to focus. When we worry, our mind jumps here and there, and we lose all our power of logical thinking. If you want to avoid your worries, you must follow these steps:

Day tight compartments

In a giant ship, very watertight compartments are present. In case there is a leak in one compartment of the ship, all other parts of the ship are shut off from one another. This ensures that leakage in one area should not affect other areas. This is what we need to do in our life. We need to shut down the iron doors of the past and future and concentrate only on living in the present moment. As soon as we stop thinking about our past or future, our worries start disappearing. To care less about worries, we must start caring more about our present tasks and goals. The future lies today, there is no tomorrow.

Stay Busy

The remedy for worry is to get completely occupied doing something constructive. It means we should work on things that involve our focus, creativity, and planning. It is utterly impossible for any human mind, no matter how brilliant, to think of more than one thing at a given time. You can try this experiment right now. Just think of your favorite song along with your 10th board results. Or try to play the game of Chess along with having a chat with a friend on your phone.

And this is the key; do not allow your mind to have the space to think about worries. Immediately engage your mind with something more creative and productive.

Value what you have

If a man gives you 5 crores and asks for your both eyes, can you give your eyes to him? If he gives you another 5 crores for another body part, now what will be your decision? By now, most of you have understood that we already own things whose value is more than crores for us. These things are our bodies, health, and time. We are already so rich and blessed still we keep on worrying about other materialistic things. What shall it profit a man if he gains the whole world—and loses his health?

It’s not a bad thing to have expectations, but thinking and worrying about how to fulfill those expectations is dreadful, especially for your health.

To end your worries, make a habit of counting your blessings at least once every day. You can’t even realize how magical is this habit of expressing your gratitude. When you do this, only then do you realize, how much more blessed are you than you think.

We always allow ourselves to get upset about small things. But things are not as bad and big as they seem mostly. It’s only our thoughts and perspectives which amplify the problem even more and more. Remember, a man is not hurt so much by what happens, as by his opinion of what happens.

Two men looked out from prison bars,
One saw the mud, the other saw stars.

-Dale Carnegie

We concentrate more on worrying about the problems rather than finding solutions for them. So next time you are worried about something, ask yourself if after many years from now, would you still worry about this issue? If not, then stop worrying right now. Stop worrying and start living because life is too short to be nothing but a happy well-being. So always try to be happy irrespective of your worries and struggles.

Also read: What do I do daily to be happy and feel good about myself?

We need to understand that life isn’t what we are given; it’s what we create, what we overcome, and what we achieve that makes our life beautiful.