How to Stop Worrying and Start Living (5 page)

Doctors figure that one American in every twenty now alive will spend a part of his life in an institution for the mentally ill. One out of every six of our young men called up by the draft in the Second World War was rejected as mentally diseased or defective.

What causes insanity? No one knows all the answers. But it is highly probable that in many cases fear and worry are contributing factors. The anxious and harassed individual who is unable to cope with the harsh world of reality breaks off all contact with his environment and retreats into a private dream world of his own making, and this solves his worry problems.

As I write I have on my desk a book by Dr. Edward Podolsky entitled Stop Worrying and Get Well. Here are some of the chapter titles in that book:

What Worry Does To The Heart

High Blood Pressure Is Fed By Worry

Rheumatism Can Be Caused By Worry

Worry Less For Your Stomach's Sake

How Worry Can Cause A Cold

Worry And The Thyroid

The Worrying Diabetic

Another illuminating book about worry is lion Against Himself, by Dr. Karl Menninger, one of the "Mayo brothers of psychiatry." Dr. Menninger's book is a startling revelation of what you do to yourself when you permit destructive emotions to dominate your life. If you want to stop working against yourself, get this book. Read it. Give it to your friends. It costs four dollars-and is one of the best investments you can make in this life.

Worry can make even the most stolid person ill. General Grant discovered that during the closing days of the Civil War. The story goes like this: Grant had been besieging Richmond for nine months. General Lee's troops, ragged and hungry, were beaten. Entire regiments were deserting at a time. Others were holding prayer meetings in their tents-shouting, weeping, seeing visions. The end was close. Lee's men set fire to the cotton and tobacco warehouses in Richmond, burned the arsenal, and fled from the city at night while towering flames roared up into darkness. Grant was in hot pursuit, banging away at the Confederates from both sides and the rear, while Sheridan's cavalry was heading them off in front, tearing up railway lines and capturing supply trains.

Grant, half blind with a violent sick headache, fell behind his army and stopped at a farmhouse. "I spent the night," he records in his Memoirs, "in bathing my feet in hot water and mustard, and putting mustard plasters on my wrists and the back part of my neck, hoping to be cured by morning."

The next morning, he was cured instantaneously. And the tiling that cured him was not a mustard plaster, but a horseman galloping down the road with a letter from Lee, saying he wanted to surrender.

"When the officer [bearing the message] reached me," Grant wrote, "I was still suffering with the sick headache, but the instant I saw the contents of the note, I was cured."

Obviously it was Grant's worries, tensions, and emotions that made him ill. He was cured instantly the moment his emotions took on the hue of confidence, achievement, and victory.

Seventy years later, Henry Morgenthau, Jr., Secretary of the Treasury in Franklin D. Roosevelt's cabinet, discovered that worry could make him so ill that he was dizzy. He records in his diary that he was terribly worried when the President, in order to raise the price of wheat, bought 4,400,000 bushels in one day. He says in his diary: "I felt literally dizzy while the thing was going on. I went home and went to bed for two hours after lunch."

If I want to see what worry does to people, I don't have to go to a library or a physician. I can look out of the window of my home where I am writing this book; and I can see, within one block, one house where worry caused a nervous breakdown-and another house where a man worried himself into diabetes. When the stock market went down, the sugar in his blood and urine went up.

When Montaigne, the illustrious French philosopher, was elected Mayor of his home town-Bordeaux-he said to his fellow citizens: "I am willing to take your affairs into my hands but not into my liver and lungs."

This neighbour of mine took the affairs of the stock market into the blood stream-and almost killed himself.

Worry can put you into a wheel chair with rheumatism and arthritis. Dr. Russell L. Cecil, of the Cornell University Medical School, is a world-recognised authority on arthritis; and he has listed four of the commonest conditions that bring on arthritis:

1. Marital shipwreck.

2. Financial disaster and grief.

3. Loneliness and worry.

4. Long-cherished resentments.

Naturally, these four emotional situations are far from being the only causes of arthritis. There are many different kinds of arthritis-due to various causes. But, to repeat, the commonest conditions that bring on arthritis are the four listed by Dr. Russell L. Cecil. For example, a friend of mine was so hard bit during the depression that the gas company shut off the gas and the bank foreclosed the mortgage on the house. His wife suddenly had a painful attack of arthritis-and, in spite of medicine and diets, the arthritis continued until their financial situation improved.

Worry can even cause tooth decay. Dr. William I.L. McGonigle said in an address before the American Dental Association that "unpleasant emotions such as those caused by worry, fear, nagging ... may upset the body's calcium balance and cause tooth decay". Dr. McGonigle told of a patient of his who had always had a perfect set of teeth until he began to worry over his wife's sudden illness. During the three weeks she was in the hospital, he developed nine cavities- cavities brought on by worry.

Have you ever seen a person with an acutely over-active thyroid? I have, and I can tell you they tremble; they shake; they look like someone half scared to death-and that's about what it amounts to. The thyroid gland, the gland that regulates the body, has been thrown out of kilter. It speeds up the heart -the whole body is roaring away at full blast like a furnace with all its draughts wide open. And if this isn't checked, by operation or treatment, the victim may die, may "burn himself out".

A short time ago I went to Philadelphia with a friend of mine who has this disease. We went to see a famous specialist, a doctor who has been treating this type of ailment for thirty-eight years. And what sort of advice do you suppose he had hanging on the wall of his waiting-room-painted on a large wooden sign so all his patients could see it? Here it is. I copied it down on the back of an envelope while I was waiting:

Relaxation and Recreation

The most relaxing recreating forces are a healthy

religion, sleep, music, and laughter.

Have faith in God-learn to sleep well-

Love good music-see the funny side of life-

And health and happiness will be yours.

The first question he asked this friend of mine was: "What emotional disturbance brought on this condition?" He warned my friend that, if he didn't stop worrying, he could get other complications: heart trouble, stomach ulcers, or diabetes. "All of these diseases," said that eminent doctor, "are cousins, first cousins." Sure, they're first cousins-they're all worry diseases!

When I interviewed Merle Oberon, she told me that she refused to worry because she knew that worry would destroy her chief asset on the motion-picture screen: her good looks.

"When I first tried to break into the movies," she told me, "I was worried and scared. I had just come from India, and I didn't know anyone in London, where I was trying to get a job. I saw a few producers, but none of them hired me; and the little money I had began to give out. For two weeks I lived on nothing but crackers and water. I was not only worried now. I was hungry. I said to myself: 'Maybe you're a fool. Maybe you will neuer break into the movies. After all, you have no experience, you've never acted at all-what have you to offer but a rather pretty face?'

"I went to the mirror. And when I looked in that mirror, I saw what worry was doing to my looks! I saw the lines it was forming. I saw the anxious expression. So I said to myself: 'You've got to stop this at once! You can't afford to worry. The only thing you have to offer at all is your looks, and worry will ruin them I'"

Few things can age and sour a woman and destroy her looks as quickly as worry. Worry curdles the expression. It makes us clench our jaws and lines our faces with wrinkles. It forms a permanent scowl. It may turn the hair grey, and in some cases, even make it fall out. It can ruin the complexion- it can bring on all kinds of skin rashes, eruptions, and pimples.

Heart disease, is the number-one killer in America today. During the Second World War, almost a third of a million men were killed in combat; but during that same period, heart disease killed two million civilians-and one million of those casualties were caused by the kind of heart disease that is brought on by worry and high-tension living. Yes, heart disease is one of the chief reasons why Dr. Alexis Carrel said: "Business men who do not know how to fight worry die young."

The Negroes down south and the Chinese rarely have the kind of heart disease brought on by worry, because they take things calmly. Twenty times as many doctors as farm workers die from heart failure. The doctors lead tense lives-and pay the penalty.

"The Lord may forgive us our sins," said William James, "but the nervous system never does."

Here is a startling and almost incredible fact: more Americans commit suicide each year than die from the five most common communicable diseases.

Why? The answer is largely: "Worry."

When the cruel Chinese war lords wanted to torture their prisoners, they would tie their prisoners hand and foot and put them under a bag of water that constantly dripped ... dripped ... dripped ... day and night. These drops of water constantly falling on the head finally became like the sound of hammer blows-and drove men insane. This same method of torture was used during the Spanish Inquisition and in German concentration camps under Hitler.

Worry is like the constant drip, drip, drip of water; and the constant drip, drip, drip of worry often drives men to insanity and suicide.

When I was a country lad in Missouri, I was half scared to death by listening to Billy Sunday describe the hell-fires of the next world. But he never ever mentioned the hell-fires of physical agony that worriers may have here and now. For example, if you are a chronic worrier, you may be stricken some day with one of the most excruciating pains ever endured by man: angina pectoris.

Boy, if that ever hits you, you will scream with agony. Your screams will make the sounds in Dante's Inferno sound like Babes in Toyland. You will say to yourself then: "Oh, God, oh, God, if I can ever get over this, I will never worry about anything-ever." (If you think I am exaggerating, ask your family physician.)

Do you love life? Do you want to live long and enjoy good health? Here is how you can do it. I am quoting Dr. Alexis Carrel again. He said: "Those who keep the peace of their inner selves in the midst of the tumult of the modern city are immune from nervous diseases."

Can you keep the peace of your inner self in the midst of the tumult of a modem city? If you are a normal person, the answer is "yes". "Emphatically yes." Most of us are stronger than we realise. We have inner resources that we have probably never tapped. As 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 endeavour. ... If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavours to live the life he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours."

Surely, many of the readers of this book have as much will power and as many inner resources as Olga K. Jarvey has. Her address is Box 892, Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. She discovered that under the most tragic circumstances she could banish worry. I firmly believe that you and I can also-if we apply the old, old truths discussed in this volume. Here is Olga K. Jarvey's story as she wrote it for me: "Eight and a half years ago, I was condemned to die-a slow, agonising death-of cancer. The best medical brains of the country, the Mayo brothers, confirmed the sentence. I was at a dead-end street, the ultimate gaped at me! I was young. I did not want to die! In my desperation, I phoned to my doctor at Kellogg and cried out to him the despair in my heart. Rather impatiently he upbraided me: 'What's the matter, Olga, haven't you any fight in you? Sure, you will die if you keep on crying. Yes, the worst has overtaken you. O.K.-face the facts! Quit worrying 1 And then do something about it!' Right then and there I took an oath, an oath so solemn that the nails sank deep into my flesh and cold chills ran down my spine: 'I am not going to worry! I am not going to cry! And if there is anything to mind over matter, I am going to win! I am going to LIVE!'

"The usual amount of X-ray in such advanced cases, where they cannot apply radium, is 10 1/2 minutes a day for 30 days. They gave me X-ray for 14 1/2 minutes a day for 49 days; and although my bones stuck out of my emaciated body like rocks on a barren hillside, and although my feet were like lead, I did not worry! Not once did I cry! I smiled! Yes, I actually forced myself to smile.

"I am not so foolish as to imagine that merely smiling can cure cancer. But I do believe that a cheerful mental attitude helps the body fight disease. At any rate, I experienced one of the miracle cures of cancer. I have never been healthier than in the last few years, thanks to those challenging, fighting words of Dr. McCaffery: 'Face the facts: Quite worrying; then do something about it!'"

I am going to close this chapter by repeating its title: the words of Dr. Alexis Carrel: "Business men who do not know how to fight worry die young."

The fanatical followers of the prophet Mohammed often had verses from the Koran tattooed on their breasts. I would like to have the title of this chapter tattooed on the breast of every reader of this book: "Business men who do not know how to fight worry die young."

Was Dr. Carrel speaking of you?

Could be.

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Part One In A Nutshell

RULE 1: If you want to avoid worry, do what Sir William Osier did: Live in "day-tight compartments". Don't stew about the future. Just live each day until bedtime.