In this video I summarise the key chapters of Dale Carnegie’s best selling book: How to stop worrying and start living; originally published in 1948.
Carnegie is best known for his classic best seller “How to win friends and influence people” first written in the 1930’s, finding its way on the recommended reading list of virtually every personal development teacher and guru, but not many people today know about his other books that are equally instructive and in many ways today, perhaps more pressingly needed.
He discusses 8 strategies you can use to manage virtually all stressful situations:
- Getting your facts straight: Write down everything you’re worrying about. For each worry, then list all your possible options in dealing with it. Choose the most empowering (or least dis-empowering) option. Commit to that option and see it through. Don’t back track or change your mind
- Reconciling with the inevitable: Accepting the worst case scenario, then taking action to settle the affairs that surround it. This in itself will give you a course to follow, while taking action will neutralise a great deal of the stress to the point that it may well disappear, even in extreme situations.
- Live for today: focus on doing the best you can today, and deal with tomorrow when it comes. Set goals and plan, sure, but don’t preoccupy yourself with what the outcome might be. Focus on today’s tasks only
- Set a stop loss on investing energy into a particular problem. Give it its due attention, then let it go and focus on something else.
- Focus on the positives as much as you can. Fake it till you make it; make lemonade from lemons, put on a happy face, walk the talk and all those other cliches that essentially point to focussing on what we can make of a situation, rather than wallowing in self pity.
- Don’t expect gratitude. People are generally selfish. That’s just the way it is. Don’t let the bastards get you down!
- Criticism is a compliment. It means you are pushing beyond your comfort zone, which also challenges those around you to notice their own comfort zones too. Many wont like to be confronted with your effort showing up a lack of their own. So they’ll try to drag you back down. In the words of Winston Churchill: “So you have enemies? Good! It means you’ve stood for something, sometime”
- Learn to relax and rest before you actually get tired. The idea is to avoid burnout. Recharge your batteries before they get too flat. It will increase your productivity overall
