Five Methods I Have Used to Banish Worry

Professor William Lyon Phelps

I had the privilege of spending an afternoon with Professor Phelps shortly before his death. Here are the five methods he used to overcome worry.

—Dale Carnegie

I. When I was twenty-four years old, my eyes suddenly gave out. After reading three or four minutes, my eyes felt as if they were full of needles; and even when I was not reading, they were so sensitive that I could not face a window. I consulted the best doctors I could find. Nothing seemed to help me. After four o'clock in the afternoon, I simply sat in a chair in the darkest corner of the room, waiting for bedtime. I was terrified. I feared that I would have to give up my career as a teacher. Then a strange thing happened which shows the miraculous effects of the mind over physical illness. When my eyes were at their worst that unhappy winter, I accepted an invitation to address a group of undergraduates. The lights in the lecture hall pained my eyes so intensely that, while sitting on the platform, I was compelled to look at the floor. Yet during my thirty-minute speech, I felt absolutely no pain, and I could look directly at these lights without any blinking at all. Then when the lecture was over, my eyes pained me again.

I thought then that if I could keep my mind strongly concentrated on something, not for thirty minutes, but for a week, I might be cured. For clearly it was a case of mental excitement triumphing over a bodily illness.

This experience demonstrated to me the vital importance of one's mental attitude. It taught me the importance of enjoying life while you may. So I live every day now as if it were the first day I had ever seen and the last I were going to see. I am excited about the daily adventure of living, and nobody in a state of excitement will be unduly troubled by worries. I love my daily work as a teacher, which has always been more than an occupation to me. It is a passion. I love to teach as a painter loves to paint or a singer loves to sing. And I have always felt that one of the chief reasons for success in life is enthusiasm.

II. I have found that I can distract myself from worry by reading an absorbing book. When I was fifty-nine, I had a prolonged nervous breakdown. During that period, I began reading David Alec Wilson's monumental Life of Carlyle. It had a good deal to do with my recovery because I became so absorbed in reading it that I forgot my depression.

III. At another time in my life when I was terribly depressed, I forced myself to become physically active almost every hour of the day. I played five or six very energetic sets of tennis every morning, then took a bath, had lunch, and played eighteen holes of golf every afternoon. On Friday nights I danced until one o'clock in the morning. I'm a great believer in working up a tremendous sweat. I found that depression and worry oozed out of my system with the sweat.

IV. I learned long ago to avoid the folly of hurry, rush, and working under tension. I've always tried to apply the philosophy of Wilbur Cross. When he was governor of Connecticut, he said to me: Whenever I have too many things to do all at once, I sit down and relax and smoke my pipe for an hour and do nothing.

V. I have also learned that patience and time have a way of resolving our troubles. When I'm worried about something, I try to see my troubles in their proper perspective. I say to myself: "Two months from now I shall not be worrying about this bad break, so why worry about it now? Why not assume now the same attitude that I'll have two months from now?"