EVERYTHING IS F*CKED PART 2 (MARK MANSON)

PART 2: EVERYTHING IS F*CKED
CHAPTER 6: THE FORMULA OF HUMANITY
1. Young children are always looking for new ways to accidentally kill themselves because the driving force behind their psychology is exploration. Early in life, we are driven to explore the world around us because our Feeling Brains are collecting information on what pleases and harms us, what feels good and bad, what is worth pursuing further and what is worth avoiding. We’re building up our value hierarchy, figuring out what our first and primary values are, so that we can begin to know what to hope for. Eventually, the exploratory phase exhausts itself. And not because we run out of world to explore. Actually, it’s the opposite: the exploratory phase wraps up because as we become older, we begin to recognize that there’s too much world to explore. You can’t touch and taste everything. You can’t meet all the people. You can’t see all the things. There’s too much potential experience, and the sheer magnitude of our own existence overwhelms and intimidates us.
2. An adolescent learns that strictly pursuing her own pleasure and avoiding pain often creates problems. Actions have consequences. You must negotiate your desires with the desires of those around you. You must play by the rules of society and authority, and then, more often than not, you’ll be rewarded. This is maturity in action: developing higher-level and more abstract values to enhance decision making in a wider range of contexts. This is how you adjust to the world, how you learn to handle the seemingly infinite permutations of experience. It is a major cognitive leap for children and fundamental to growing up in a healthy, happy way.
3. A young child’s identity is therefore very small and fragile. It is constituted by simply what gives pleasure and what avoids pain. The knowledge of pleasure and pain is still there in adolescence. It’s just that pleasure and pain no longer dictate most decision making. They are no longer the basis of our values. Older children weigh their personal feelings against their understanding of rules, trade-offs, and the social order around them to plan and make decisions. This gives them larger, sturdier identities. The adolescent does the same stumbling around the young child does in learning what is pleasurable and what is painful, except the adolescent stumbles around by trying on different social rules and roles. If I wear this, will it make me cool? If I talk like that, will it make people like me? If I pretend to enjoy this music, will I be popular?
4. The problem with adolescent values is that if you hold them, you never actually stand for something outside yourself. You are still at heart a child, albeit a cleverer and much more sophisticated child. Everything still revolves around maximizing pleasure and minimizing pain, it’s just that the adolescent is savvy enough to think a few moves ahead to get there. In the end, adolescent values are self-defeating. You can’t live your entire life this way, otherwise you’re never actually living your own life. You’re merely living out an aggregation of the desires of the people around you.
5. Adulthood is the realization that sometimes an abstract principle is right and good for its own sake, that even if it hurts you today, even if it hurts others, being honest is still the right thing to do. In the same way that the adolescent realizes there’s more to the world than the child’s pleasure or pain, the adult realizes that there’s more to the world than the adolescent’s constant bargaining for validation, approval, and satisfaction. Becoming an adult is therefore developing the ability to do what is right for the simple reason that it is right.

An adult will love freely without expecting anything in return because an adult understands that that is the only thing that can make love real. An adult will give without seeking anything in return, because to do so defeats the purpose of a gift in the first place.

The principled values of adulthood are unconditional—that is, they cannot be reached through any other means. They are ends in and of themselves.

6. Past a certain point, maturity has nothing to do with age. What matters are a person’s intentions. The difference between a child, an adolescent, and an adult is not how old they are or what they do, but why they do something. The child steals the ice cream because it feels good, and he is oblivious or indifferent to the consequences. The adolescent doesn’t steal because he knows it will create worse consequences in the future, but his decision is ultimately a bargain with his future self: I’ll forgo some pleasure now to prevent greater future pain. But it’s only the adult who doesn’t steal for the simple principle that stealing is wrong. And to steal, even if she gets away with it, would make her feel worse.
7. The Formula of Humanity states, “Act that you use humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, always at the same time as an end, never merely as a means.” That’s it. The Formula of Humanity is the single principle that pulls people out of adolescent bargaining and into adult virtue.
Will you act conditionally or unconditionally? Will you treat others as merely means or as ends? Will you pursue adult virtue or childish narcissism? Hope doesn’t even have to enter into the equation. Don’t hope for a better life. Simply be a better life.
8. Throughout the rich and developed world, we are not living through a crisis of wealth or material, but a crisis of character, a crisis of virtue, a crisis of means and ends. The fundamental political schism in the twenty-first century is no longer right versus left, but the impulsive childish values of the right and left versus the compromising adolescent/adult values of both the right and left. It’s no longer a debate of communism versus capitalism or freedom versus equality but, rather, of maturity versus immaturity, of means versus ends.

CHAPTER 7: PAIN IS THE UNIVERSAL CONSTANT

1. This is the Blue Dot Effect. The better things get, the more we perceive threats where there are none, and the more upset we become. And it is at the heart of the paradox of progress. In fact the opposite would happen. He suggested that the more comfortable and ethical a society became, the more that small indiscretions would become magnified in our minds. If everyone stopped killing each other, we wouldn’t necessarily feel good about it. We’d just get equally upset about the more minor stuff.

“A man should look for what is, and not what he thinks should be”.

2. Einstein proved that time and space are not universal constants. In fact, it turns out that our perceptions of time and space can change depending on the context of our observations. For example, what I experience as ten seconds, you could experience as five; and what I experience as a mile, you could theoretically experience as a few feet. The Einstein example is important because it shows how our assumption of what is constant and stable in the universe can be wrong, and those incorrect assumptions can have massive implications on how we experience the world. We assume that space and time are universal constants because that explains how we perceive the world. But it turns out that they are not universal constants; they are variables to some other, inscrutable, nonobvious constant. And that changes everything.

3. Nobody is fully happy all the time, but similarly, nobody is fully unhappy all the time, either. It seems that humans, regardless of our external circumstances, live in a constant state of mild-but-not-fully-satisfying happiness. Put another way, things are pretty much always fine, but they could also always be better. Life is apparently nothing but bobbing up and down and around our level-seven happiness. And this constant “seven” that we’re always coming back to plays a little trick on us, a trick that we fall for over and over again. The trick is that our brain tells us, “You know, if I could just have a little bit more, I’d finally get to ten and stay there.” Most of us live much of our lives this way, constantly chasing our imagined ten.

4. Pain is the universal constant of life. And human perception and expectations warp themselves to fit a predetermined amount of pain. In other words, no matter how sunny our skies get, our mind will always imagine just enough clouds to be slightly disappointed. This constancy of pain results in what is known as “the hedonic treadmill,” upon which you run and run and run, chasing your imagined ten. But, no matter what, you always end up with a seven. The pain is always there. What changes is your perception of it. And as soon as your life “improves,” your expectations shift, and you’re back to being mildly dissatisfied again.

The Blue Dot Effect is everywhere. It affects all perceptions and judgments. Everything adapts and shapes itself to our slight dissatisfaction.

5. Trying to eliminate pain only increases your sensitivity to suffering, rather than alleviating your suffering. It causes you to see dangerous ghosts in every nook, to see tyranny and oppression in every authority, to see hate and deceit behind every embrace. No matter how much progress is made, no matter how peaceful and comfortable and happy our lives become, the Blue Dot Effect will snap us back to a perception of a certain amount of pain and dissatisfaction. Most people who win millions in the lottery don’t end up happier in the long run. On average, they end up feeling the same. This is because pain is the experience of life itself. Positive emotions are the temporary removal of pain; negative emotions the temporary augmentation of it. To numb one’s pain is to numb all feeling, all emotion. It is to quietly remove oneself from living.

6. The point is, not only is there no escaping the experience of pain, but pain is the experience. This is why hope is ultimately self-defeating and self-perpetuating: no matter what we achieve, no matter what peace and prosperity we find, our mind will quickly adjust its expectations to maintain a steady sense of adversity, thus forcing the formulation of a new hope, a new religion, a new conflict to keep us going. We will see threatening faces where there are no threatening faces. And no matter how sunny our day is, we’ll always find that one cloud in the sky. Therefore, the pursuit of happiness is not only self-defeating but also impossible. And by pursuing happiness, you paradoxically make it less attainable.

The pursuit of happiness is a toxic value that has long defined our culture. It is self-defeating and misleading. Living well does.not mean avoiding suffering; it means suffering for the right reasons. Because if we’re going to be forced to suffer by simply existing, we might as well learn how to suffer well.

7. The Buddha said that suffering is like being shot by two arrows. The first arrow is the physical pain—it’s the metal piercing the skin, the force colliding into the body. The second arrow is the mental pain, the meaning and emotion we attach to the being struck, the narratives that we spin in our minds about whether we deserved or didn’t deserve what happened. In many cases, our mental pain is far worse than any physical pain. In most cases, it lasts far longer. Through the practice of meditation, the Buddha said that if we could train ourselves to be struck only by the first arrow, we could essentially render ourselves invincible to any mental or emotional pain. That, with enough practiced focus, with enough antifragility, the passing sensation of an insult or an object piercing our skin, or gallons of gasoline aflame over our body, would possess the same fleeting feeling as a fly buzzing across our face. That while pain is inevitable, suffering is always a choice.

That there is always a separation between what we experience and how we interpret that experience. That there’s always a gap between what our Feeling Brain feels and what our Thinking Brain thinks. And in that gap, you can find the power to bear anything.

8. Pain is the currency of our values. Without the pain of loss (or potential loss), it becomes impossible to determine the value of anything at all. Pain is at the heart of all emotion. Negative emotions are caused by experiencing pain. Positive emotions are caused by alleviating pain. When we avoid pain and make ourselves more fragile, the result is our emotional reactions will be wildly disproportional to the importance of the event. The more antifragile we become, the more graceful our emotional responses are, the more control we exercise over ourselves, and the more principled our values. Antifragility is therefore synonymous with growth and maturity. Life is one never-ending stream of pain, and to grow is not to find a way to avoid that stream but, rather, to dive into it and successfully navigate its depths.

9. The pursuit of happiness is, then, an avoidance of growth, an avoidance of maturity, an avoidance of virtue. It is treating ourselves and our minds as a means to some emotionally giddy end. It is sacrificing our consciousness for feeling good. It’s giving up our dignity for more comfort. The ancient philosophers knew this. Plato and Aristotle and the Stoics spoke of a life not of happiness, but of character, developing the ability to sustain pain and make the appropriate sacrifices-as that’s really what life was in their time: one long, drawn-out sacrifice. The ancient virtues of bravery, honesty, and humility are all different forms of practicing antifragility: they are principles that gain from chaos and adversity.

10. When we pursue pain, we are able to choose what pain we bring into our lives. And this choice makes the pain meaningful—and therefore, it is what makes life feel meaningful. Because pain is the universal constant of life, the opportunities to grow from that pain are constant in life. All that is required is that we don’t numb it, that we don’t look away. All that is required is that we engage it and find the value and meaning in it. Pain is the source of all value. To numb ourselves to our pain is to numb ourselves to anything that matters in the world. Pain opens up the moral gaps that eventually become our most deeply held values and beliefs. When we deny ourselves the ability to feel pain for a purpose, we deny ourselves the ability to feel any purpose in our life at all.

CHAPTER 8: THE FEELINGS ECONOMY

1. The world runs on one thing: feelings. This is because people spend money on things that make them feel good. And where the money flows, power flows. So, the more you’re able to influence the emotions of people in the world, the more money and power you’ll accumulate. Money is itself a form of exchange used to equalize moral gaps between people. Money is its own special, universal mini-religion that we all bought into because it makes our lives a little bit easier. It allows us to convert our values into something universal when we’re dealing with one another.

2. There are two ways to create value in the marketplace:

• Innovations (upgrade pain). The first way to create value is to replace one pain with a much more tolerable/desirable pain. The most drastic and obvious examples of this are medical and pharmaceutical innovations. Polio vaccines replaced a lifetime of debilitating pain and immobility with a few seconds of a needle prick. Heart surgeries replaced . . . well, death with having to recover from surgery for a week or two.

• Diversions (avoid pain). The second way to create value in a marketplace is to help people numb their pain. Whereas upgrading people’s pain gives them better pain, numbing pain just delays that pain, and often even makes it worse. Diversions are a weekend beach trip, a night out with friends, a movie with someone special. There’s nothing necessarily wrong with diversions; we all need them from time to time. The problem is when they begin to dominate our lives and wrest control away from our will. Many diversions trip certain circuits in our brain, making them addictive. The more you numb pain, the worse that pain becomes, thus impelling you to numb it further. At a certain point, the icky ball of pain grows to such great proportions that your avoidance of that pain becomes compulsive. You lose control of yourself—your Feeling Brain has locked your Thinking Brain in the trunk and isn’t letting it out until it gets its next hit of whatever. And the downward spiral ensues.

3. Once an economy switches over primarily to diversions, the culture begins to shift. As a poor country develops and gains access to medicine, phones, and other innovative technologies, measurements of well-being track upward at a steady clip, as everyone’s pain is being upgraded to better pain. But once the country hits First World level, that well-being flattens or, in some cases, drops off. Meanwhile, mental illness, depression, and anxiety can proliferate. This happens because opening up a society and giving it modern innovations makes the people more robust and antifragile. They can survive more hardship, work more efficiently, communicate and function better within their communities. But once those innovations are integrated and everyone has a cell phone and a McDonald’s Happy Meal, the great modern diversions enter the marketplace. And as soon as the diversions show up, a psychological fragility is introduced, and everything begins to seem fucked.

People don’t make decisions based on truth or facts. They don’t spend their money based on data. They don’t connect with each other because of some higher philosophical truth. The world runs on feelings.

4. Let’s be real: “Give the people what they want” is just #FakeFreedom because what most of us want are diversions. And when we get flooded by diversions, a few things happen.

a. The first is that we become increasingly fragile. Our world shrinks to conform to the size of our ever-diminishing values. We become obsessed with comfort and pleasure. And any possible loss of that pleasure feels world-quaking and cosmically unfair to us. I would argue that a narrowing of our conceptual world is not freedom; it is the opposite.

b. The second thing that happens is that we become prone to a series of low-level-addictive behaviors—compulsively checking our phone, our email, our Instagram; compulsively finishing Netflix series we don’t like; sharing outrage-inducing articles we haven’t read; accepting invitations to parties and events we don’t enjoy; traveling not because we want to but because we want to be able to say we went. Compulsive behavior aimed at experiencing more stuff is not freedom—again, it’s kind of the opposite.

c. Third thing: an inability to identify, tolerate, and seek out negative emotions is its own kind of confinement. If you feel okay only when life is happy and easy-breezy-beautiful-Cover-Girl, then guess what? You are not free. You are the prisoner of your own indulgences, enslaved by your own intolerance, crippled by your own emotional weakness. You will constantly feel a need for some external comfort or validation that may or may not ever come.

d. Fourth—because, I’m on a roll: the paradox of choice. The more options we’re given (i.e., the more “freedom” we have), the less satisfied we are with whatever option we go with.

This is not only real freedom, this is the only freedom. Diversions come and go. Pleasure never lasts. Variety loses its meaning. But you will always be able to choose what you are willing to sacrifice, what you are willing to give up.

5. This sort of self-denial is paradoxically the only thing that expands real freedom in life. The pain of regular physical exercise ultimately enhances your physical freedom—your strength, mobility, endurance, and stamina. The sacrifice of a strong work ethic gives you the freedom to pursue more job opportunities, to steer your own career trajectory, to earn more money and the benefits that come with it. The willingness to engage in conflict with others will free you to talk to anyone, to see if they share your values and beliefs, to discover what they can add to your life and what you can add to theirs. You can become freer right now simply by choosing the limitations you want to impose on yourself. You can choose to wake up earlier each morning, to block your email until midafternoon each day, to delete social media apps from your phone. These limitations will free you because they will liberate your time, attention, and power of choice. They treat your consciousness as an end in itself.

Ultimately, the most meaningful freedom in your life comes from your commitments, the things in life for which you have chosen to sacrifice. Greater commitment allows for greater depth. A lack of commitment requires superficiality.

CHAPTER 9: THE FINAL RELIGION

1. We need these algorithms because they make our lives easier. And so will the algorithm gods of the near future. And as we did with the gods of the ancient world, we will rejoice in and give thanks to them. Indeed, it will be impossible to imagine life without them. These algorithms make our lives better. They make our lives more efficient. They make us more efficient. That’s why, as soon as we cross over, there’s no going back.

2. Are there potential dangers with AI? Sure. But morally speaking, we’re throwing rocks inside a glass house here. What do we know about ethics and the humane treatment of animals, the environment, and one another? That’s right: pretty much nothing. When it comes to moral questions, humanity has historically flunked the test, over and over again. Superintelligent machines will likely come to understand life and death, creation and destruction, on a much higher level than we ever could on our own. And the idea that they will exterminate us for the simple fact that we aren’t as productive as we used to be, or that sometimes we can be a nuisance, I think, is just projecting the worst aspects of our own psychology onto something we don’t understand and never will.

3. Nietzsche envisioned a humanity that transcended religious hopes, that extended itself “beyond good and evil,” and rose above the petty quarrels of contradictory value systems. It is these value systems that fail us and hurt us and keep us down in the emotional holes of our own creation. The emotional algorithms that exalt life and make it soar in blistering joy are the same forces that unravel us and destroy us, from the inside out. I believe artificial intelligence is Nietzsche’s “something greater.” It is the Final Religion, the religion that lies beyond good and evil, the religion that will finally unite and bind us all, for better or worse. It is, then, simply our job not to blow ourselves up before we get there. And the only way to do that is to adapt our technology for our flawed psychology rather than to exploit it.

4. Instead of looking for hope, try this: Don’t hope. Don’t despair, either. In fact, don’t deign to believe you know anything. It’s that assumption of knowing with such blind, fervent, emotional certainty that gets us into these kinds of pickles in the first place. Don’t hope for better. Just be better. Be something better. Be more compassionate, more resilient, more humble, more disciplined. Many people would also throw in there “Be more human,” but no—be a better human. And maybe, if we’re lucky, one day we’ll get to be more than human.

5. I say to you today, my friends, that even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, in this final moment, I will allow myself to dare to hope . . .I dare to hope for a post-hope world, where people are never treated merely as means but always as ends, where no consciousness is sacrificed for some greater religious aim, where no identity is harmed out of malice or greed or negligence, where the ability to reason and act is held in the highest regard by all, and where this is reflected not only in our hearts but also in our social institutions and business models.

6. We need our lives to mean something, and while the startling advance of technology has made finding that meaning more difficult, the ultimate innovation will be the day we can manufacture significance without strife or conflict, find importance without the necessity of death. And then, maybe one day, we will become integrated with the machines themselves. Our individual consciousnesses will be subsumed. Our independent hopes will vanish. We will meet and merge in the cloud, and our digitized souls will swirl and eddy in the storms of data, a splay of bits and functions harmoniously brought into some grand, unseen alignment. We will have evolved into a great unknowable entity. We will transcend the limitations of our own value-laden minds. We will live beyond means and ends, for we will always be both, one and the same. We will have crossed the evolutionary bridge into “something greater” and ceased to be human any longer.

7. Perhaps then, we will not only realize but finally embrace the Uncomfortable Truth: that we imagined our own importance, we invented our purpose, and we were, and still are, nothing. All along, we were nothing. And maybe then, only then, will the eternal cycle of hope and destruction come to an end.

EVERYTHING IS F*CKED PART 1 (MARK MANSON)

PART 1: HOPE

CHAPTER 1: THE UNCOMFORTABLE TRUTH
1. Being heroic is the ability to conjure hope where there is none. To strike a match to light up the void. To show us a possibility for a better world—not a better world we want to exist, but a better world we didn’t know could exist. To take a situation where everything seems to be absolutely fucked and still somehow make it good.

We are a culture in need not of peace or prosperity or new hood ornaments for our electric cars. We have all that. We are a culture in need of something far more precarious. We are a culture and a people in need of hope.

2. One day, you and everyone you love will die. And beyond a small group of people for an extremely brief period of time, little of what you say or do will ever matter. This is the Uncomfortable Truth of life. And everything you think or do is but an elaborate avoidance of it. We are inconsequential cosmic dust, bumping and milling about on a tiny blue speck. We m imagine our own importance. We invent our purpose—we are nothing.
3. You care, and you desperately convince yourself that because you care, it all must have some great cosmic meaning behind it. You care because, deep down, you need to feel that sense of importance in order to avoid the Uncomfortable Truth, to avoid the incomprehensibility of your existence, to avoid being crushed by the weight of your own material insignificance. And you—like me, like everyone—then project that imagined sense of importance onto the world around you because it gives you hope.

See, that’s your hope talking. That’s a story your mind spins to make it worth waking up in the morning: something needs to matter because without something mattering, then there’s no reason to go on living. And some form of simple altruism or a reduction in suffering is always our mind’s go-to for making it feel like it’s worth doing anything.

4. Here’s what a lot of people don’t get: the opposite of happiness is not anger or sadness. If you’re angry or sad, that means you still give a fuck about something. That means something still matters. That means you still have hope. The opposite of happiness is hopelessness, an endless gray horizon of resignation and indifference. It’s the belief that everything is fucked, so why do anything at all?

Hopelessness is the root of anxiety, mental illness, and depression. It is the source of all misery and the cause of all addiction. 

5. The avoidance of hopelessness—that is, the construction of hope—then becomes our mind’s primary project. All meaning, everything we understand about ourselves and the world, is constructed for the purpose of maintaining hope. Therefore, hope is the only thing any of us willingly dies for. Hope is what we believe to be greater than ourselves. Without it, we believe we are nothing.
6. Hope doesn’t care about the problems that have already been solved. Hope cares only about the problems that still need to be solved. Because the better the world gets, the more we have to lose. And the more we have to lose, the less we feel we have to hope for. 
7. To build and maintain hope, we need three things: a sense of control, a belief in the value of something, and a community. “Control” means we feel as though we’re in control of our own life, that we can affect our fate. “Values” means we find something important enough to work toward, something better, that’s worth striving for. And “community” means we are part of a group that values the same things we do and is working toward achieving those things.

CHAPTER 2: SELF-CONTROL IS AN ILLUSION
1. To generate hope in our lives, we must first feel as though we have control over our lives. We must feel as though we’re following through on what we know is good and right; that we’re chasing after “something better”. Yet many of us struggle with the inability to control ourselves.
2. Ultimately, we are moved to action only by emotion. That’s because action is emotion. Every problem of self-control is not a problem of information or discipline or reason but, rather, of emotion. This sucks. Because emotional problems are much harder to deal with than logical ones. There are equations to help you calculate the monthly payments on your car loan. There are no equations to help you end a bad relationship.

Emotional problems are irrational, meaning they cannot be reasoned with. And this brings us to even worse news: emotional problems can only have emotional solutions.
The only way to be a good person is through dominance of the Thinking Brain over the Feeling Brain, the championing of reason over emotion, duty over desire.

3. Our crises of hope often start with a basic sense that we do not have control over ourselves or our destiny. We feel victims to the world around us or, worse, to our own minds. We fight our Feeling Brain, trying to beat it into submission. Or we do the opposite and follow it mindlessly. We ridicule ourselves and hide from the world because of the Classic Assumption. And in many ways, the affluence and connectivity of the modern world only make the pain of the illusion of self-control that much worse. But this is your mission, Thinking Brain, should you choose to accept it: Engage the Feeling Brain on its own terms. Create an environment that can bring about the Feeling Brain’s best impulses and intuition, rather than its worst. Accept and work with, rather than against, whatever the Feeling Brain spews at you.
4. Thinking Brain produces a logical, factual form of knowledge, the Feeling Brain develops its own type of value-laden knowledge. The Thinking Brain makes associations among facts, data, and observations. Similarly, the Feeling Brain makes value judgments based on those same facts, data, and observations. The Feeling Brain decides what is good and what is bad; what is desirable and what is undesirable; and most important, what we deserve and what we don’t deserve. The Thinking Brain is objective and factual. The Feeling Brain is subjective and relative. And no matter what we do, we can never translate one form of knowledge into the other. This is the real problem of hope. 
5. This is the fundamental problem of self control. This is the fundamental problem of hope—not an uneducated Thinking Brain, but an uneducated Feeling Brain, a Feeling Brain that has adopted and accepted poor value judgments about itself and the world. And this is the real work of anything that even resembles psychological healing: getting our values straight with ourselves so that we can get our values straight with the world.

CHAPTER 3: NEWTON'S LAWS OF EMOTION

1. Newton’s Three Laws of Emotion:

• For every action, there is an equal and opposite emotional reaction

Pain causes moral gaps. When confronted with moral gaps, we develop overwhelming emotions toward equalization, or a return to moral equality. Equalizing like this restores hope.

• Our self-worth equals the sum of our emotions over time

When someone (or something) causes us pain, a moral gap opens up and our Feeling Brain summons up icky emotions to motivate us to equalize. When moral gaps persist for a long enough time, they normalize. They become our default expectation.

• Your identity will stay your identity until a new experience acts against it

Our values aren’t just collections of feelings. Our values are stories. When our Feeling Brain feels something, our Thinking Brain sets to work constructing a narrative to explain that something.

No such thing as change without pain, no growth without discomfort. It’s why it is impossible to become someone new without first grieving the loss of who you used to be.

2. Self-worth is an illusion. It’s a psychological construct that our Feeling Brain spins in order to predict what will help it and what will hurt it. Ultimately, we must feel something about ourselves in order to feel something about the world, and without those feelings, it’s impossible for us to find hope.

3. Psychologists don’t know much for certain, but one thing they definitely do know is that childhood trauma fucks us up. This “snowball effect” of early values is why our childhood experiences, both good and bad, have long-lasting effects on our identities and generate the fundamental values that go on to define much of our lives. Your early experiences become your core values, and if your core values are fucked up, they create a domino effect of suckage that extends through the years, infecting experiences large and small with their toxicity.

4. There are two ways to heal yourself—that is, to replace old, faulty values with better, healthier values. The first is to reexamine the experiences of your past and rewrite the narratives around them. The other way to change your values is to begin writing the narratives of your future self, to envision what life would be like if you had certain values or possessed a certain identity. By visualizing the future we want for ourselves, we allow our Feeling Brain to try on those values for size, to see what they feel like before we make the final purchase. Eventually, once we’ve done this enough, the Feeling Brain becomes accustomed to the new values and starts to believe them.

Fruitful visualization should be a little bit uncomfortable. It should challenge you and be difficult to fathom. If it’s not, then it means that nothing is changing.

5. The Feeling Brain doesn’t know the difference between past, present, and future; that’s the Thinking Brain’s domain. And one of the strategies our Thinking Brain uses to nudge the Feeling Brain into the correct lane of life is asking “what if” questions: What if you hated boats and instead spent your time helping disabled kids? What if you didn’t have to prove anything to the people in your life for them to like you? What if people’s unavailability has more to do with them than it does with you?

6. “Most people do not value themselves above their cultural and group values. Therefore, many people are willing to die for their highest values—for their family, their loved ones, their nation, their god. And because of this willingness to die for their values, these collisions of culture will inevitably result in war.

CHAPTER 4: HOW TO MAKE ALL OF YOUR DREAMS COME TRUE

1. Look, we all need communities to build hope. And we all need hope to not go utterly fucking insane and start snorting bath salts. Religions are the basis for that communal hope. And we’re going to learn how to build them from scratch. Religions are a beautiful thing. When you get enough people together with the same values, they behave in ways they never would when alone. Their hopeamplifies in a sort of network effect, and the social validation of being part of a group hijacks their Thinking Brains and lets their Feeling Brains run wild. Religions bring groups of people together to mutually validate one another and make one another feel important. It’s a big silent agreement that if we all come together under some shared purpose, we will feel important and worthy, and the Uncomfortable Truth will be just that much farther away.

2. How to start your own religion:

• Step One: Sell Hope to the Hopeless

Today, appealing to the hopeless is easier than ever before. All you need is a social media account: start posting extreme and crazy shit, and let the algorithm do the rest. The crazier and more extreme your posts, the more attention you’ll garner, and the more the hopeless will flock to you like flies to cow shit. It’s not hard at all. But you can’t just go online and say anything. No, you must have a (semi-)coherent message. You must have a vision. Because it’s easy to get people riled up and angry about nothing—the news media have created a whole business model out of it. But to have hope, people need to feel that they are a part of some greater movement, that they are about to join the winning side of history. And, for that, you must give them faith.

• Step Two: Choose Your Faith

Whatever our Feeling Brain adopts as its highest value, this tippy top of our value hierarchy becomes the lens through which we interpret all other values. Let’s call this highest value the “God Value.” Some people’s God Value is money. These people view all other things (family, love, prestige, politics) through the prism of money. Other people’s God Value is love. They view all other values through the prism of love—they’re against conflict in all its forms, they’re against anything that separates or divides others. Obviously, many people adopt Jesus Christ, or Muhammad, or the Buddha, as their God Value. They then interpret everything they experience through the prism of that spiritual leader’s teachings.

• Step Three: Preemptively Invalidate All Criticism or Outside Questioning

Now that your fledgling religion has its core tenets of faith, you need to find a way to protect that faith from the inevitable criticism that will be flung its way. The trick is to adopt a belief that creates a self-reinforcing us-versus-them dichotomy—that is, create a perception of “us” versus “them” in such a way that anyone who criticizes or questions “us” immediately becomes a “them.”

• Step Four: Ritual Sacrifice for Dummies So Easy, Anyone Can Do It!

Remember, emotions are actions; the two are one and the same. Therefore, to modify (or reinforce) the Feeling Brain’s value hierarchy, you need some easily repeatable yet totally unique and identifiable action for people to perform. That’s where the rituals come in.

• Step Five: Promise Heaven, Deliver Hell

The beauty of a religion is that the more you promise your followers salvation, enlightenment, world peace, perfect happiness, or whatever, the more they will fail to live up to that promise. And the more they fail to live up to that promise, the more they’ll blame themselves and feel guilty. And the more they blame themselves and feel guilty, the more they’ll do whatever you tell them to do to make up for it.

• Step Six: Prophet for Profit!

So, this is it. You’ve come to the end. You have your religion, and it’s time to reap all its benefits. Now that you’ve got your little following giving you their money and cutting your grass, you can finally have everything you’ve ever wished for!

3. Evidence belongs to the Thinking Brain, whereas values are decided by the Feeling Brain. You cannot verify values. They are, by definition, subjective and arbitrary. Therefore, you can argue about facts until you’re blue in the face, but ultimately, it doesn’t matter—people interpret the significance of their experiences through their values.

4. If everything were perfect and great, there’d be no reason to follow anybody. No religion will ever make you feel blissful and peaceful all the time. No country will ever feel completely fair and safe. No political philosophy will solve everyone’s problems all the time. True equality can never be achieved; someone somewhere will always be screwed over. True freedom doesn’t really exist because we all must sacrifice some autonomy for stability. No one, no matter how much you love them or they love you, will ever absolve that internal guilt you feel simply for existing. It’s all fucked. Everything is fucked. It always has been and always will be. There are no solutions, only stopgap measures, only incremental improvements, only slightly better forms of fuckedness than others. And it’s time we stop running from that and, instead, embrace it. This is our fucked-up world. And we’re the fucked-up ones in it.

5. We all must have faith in something. We must find value somewhere. It’s how we psychologically survive and thrive. It’s how we find hope. And even if you have a vision for a better future, it’s too hard to go it alone. To realize any dream, we need support networks, for both emotional and logistical reasons. It takes an army. Literally.

6. But here’s the problem: Every time a religion succeeds, every time it spreads its message far and wide and comes to dominate a huge swath of human emotion and endeavor, its values change. The religion’s God Value no longer comprises the principles that inspired the religion in the first place. Its God Value slowly shifts and becomes the preservation of the religion itself: not to lose what it has gained. And this is where the corruption begins.

7. In this sense, success is in many ways far more precarious than failure. First, because the more you gain the more you have to lose, and second, because the more you have to lose, the harder it is to maintain hope. But more important, because by experiencing our hopes, we lose them. We see that our beautiful visions for a perfect future are not so perfect, that our dreams and aspirations are themselves riddled with unexpected flaws and unforeseen sacrifices. Because the only thing that can ever truly destroy a dream is to have it come true. 

CHAPTER 5: HOPE IS FUCKED

1. Science is arguably the most effective religion because it is the first religion that is able to evolve and improve upon itself. It is open to anybody and everybody. It is not moored to a single book or creed. It is not beholden to some ancient land or people. It is not tethered to a supernatural spirit whose existence cannot be proven or disproven. It is an ongoing, ever-changing body of evidence-based beliefs, one that is free to mutate, grow, and shift as the evidence dictates.

2. These were concepts that had never been voiced before. With the prospect of so much growth and change in this life, people no longer relied on spiritual beliefs about the next life to give them hope. Instead, they began to invent and rely upon the ideological religions of their time. This changed everything. Church doctrines softened. People stayed home on Sundays. Monarchs conceded power to their subjects. Philosophers began to openly question God—and somehow weren’t burned alive for doing so. It was a golden age for human thought and progress.

3. There are many interpretations of the Pandora’s box myth, the most common being that while the gods punished us with all the evils of the world, they also equipped us with the one antidote to those evils: hope. Think of it as the yin and the yang of mankind’s eternal struggle: everything is always fucked, but the more fucked things become, the more we must mobilize hope to sustain and overcome the world’s fuckedness. This is why heroes such as Witold Pilecki inspire us: their ability to muster enough hope to resist evil reminds us that all of us are capable of resisting evil. 

The sickness may spread, but so does the cure, because hope is contagious. Hope is what saves the world.

4. Like a surgeon’s scalpel, hope can save a life, and hope can take a life. It can uplift us, and it can destroy us. Just as there are healthy and damaging forms of confidence, and healthy and damaging forms of love, there are also healthy and damaging forms of hope. And the difference between the two is not always clear. So far, I’ve argued that hope is fundamental to our psychology, that we need to (a) have something to look forward to, (b) believe ourselves in control of our fate enough to achieve that something, and (c) find a community to achieve it with us. When we lack one or all of these for too long, we lose hope and spiral into the void of the Uncomfortable Truth.

5. Therefore, it is the conflict that maintains。the hope. So, we’ve got it backward: everything being fucked doesn’t require hope; hope requires everything being fucked. The sources of hope that give our lives a sense of meaning are the same sources of division and hate. The hope that brings the most joy to our lives is the same hope that brings the greatest danger. The hope that brings people closest together is often the same hope that tears them apart. Hope is, therefore, destructive. Hope depends on the rejection of what currently is. Because hope requires that something be broken. Hope requires that we renounce a part of ourselves and/or a part of the world. It requires us to be anti-something.

6. Nietzsche instead believed that we must look beyond hope. We must look beyond values. We must evolve into something “beyond good and evil.” For him, this morality of the future had to begin with something he called amor fati, or “love of one’s fate”: “My formula for greatness in a human being,” he wrote, “is amor fati: that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely bear what is necessary, still less conceal it—all idealism is mendacity in the face of what is necessary—but love it.”

Amor fati, for Nietzsche, meant the unconditional acceptance of all life and experience: the highs and the lows, the meaning and the meaninglessness.

7. Hope for this. Hope for the infinite opportunity and oppression present in every single moment. Hope for the suffering that comes with freedom. For the pain that comes from happiness. For the wisdom that comes from ignorance. For the power that comes from surrender. And then act despite it. This is our challenge, our calling: To act without hope. To not hope for better. To be better. In this moment and the next. And the next. And the next.

Everything is fucked. And hope is both the cause and the effect of that fuckedness.

LEBIH DARI SEKEDAR BEKERJA

Minggu lalu meet up ama salah 1 temen lama, trus saling update tentang kabar kita akhir2 ini. Dia cerita kalo kasus sengketa rumahnya udah hampir selesai, tinggal pengajuan sidang untuk mengesahkan bahwa rumah itu memang miliknya, trus ntar ke notaris dsb-nya. Nggak kerasa perjalananan panjang selama 1,5 taon udah sampai ke titik ini. Aku bersyukur buat apa yang Tuhan kerjakan di hidupnya. 

Dia cerita kalo sebelum2nya itu dia udah ketemu beberapa lawyer, dikenalin ke sana sini, bahkan udah datengin Lembaga Bantuan Hukum, tapi semuanya nihil. Waktu itu aku ngenalin ke lawyer kantor, ternyata si lawyer ini brengsek karena minta duid terus dengan berbagai alasan (yang ku-crosscheck ke temen yang pernah kuliah hukum, seharusnya nggak ada biaya2 itu). Tapi menurut temenku, walopun lawyer yang kukenalin ini bukan the best, hanya lawyer ini yang mau nolong dia. 

Saat temenku cerita kayak gitu, aku langsung bilang "Kalo waktu itu aku ga kerja di kantor bermasalah, ga akan kenal lawyer, ga akan isa nolong kamu". Disitu aku ngeh kenapa Tuhan ijinkan aku kerja di perusahaan bermasalah, sampai hampir kena kasus hukum, stress sampai kena anxiety disorder. Ternyata semua penderitaan itu ada maknanya, ada maksud yang besar, salah satunya untuk nolong temen yang ini.

Saat ini aku kerja di sebuah perusahaan yang ga pernah kubayangkan, di tengah toxic environment yang dipenuhi orang2 yang ga kenal kebenaran sehingga hidupnya serampangan en selingkuh kanan kiri. Jujur aja, kemaren2 aku mengeluh, aku ngerasa jijik ama mereka setelah tau kelakuan mereka. Ga kupungkiri kalo aku mulai memandang mereka dengan cara yang berbeda sejak tau kebobrokan mereka. 

Tapi setelah temenku cerita kayak gitu, aku bertobat. Malemnya ketika nyampe rumah, aku berdoa sama Tuhan, aku bilang kalo aku mau TAAT sama apapun kehendak Tuhan, sekalipun situasiku sama sekali ga nyaman. Aku ga ngerti kenapa ijinkan aku berada di lingkungan yang dipenuhi orang2 yang kelakuannya ga banget, tapi aku yakin Tuhan ga pernah salah menempatkanku. Aku mau berfungsi sebagaimana yang Dia inginkan, aku mau jadi alat-Nya yang bisa memberkati banyak orang supaya mereka mengenal terang dan kebenaran Tuhan. 

Dan diteguhkan banget ketika denger kotbah ko Joseph Moro yg di atas, bahwa ketika aku berada di tempat yang di luar rencanaku, Tuhan sedang mengerjakan sesuatu yang besar melalui hidupku. Aku tau bahwa hidupku bukan buat diriku en tujuan2ku aja, tapi terlebih lagi untuk menggenapi tujuan Tuhan, agar semua bangsa datang kepada-Nya. Use me oh Lord 🙋

HOW TO STOP WORRYING AND START LIVING PART 2 (DALE CARNEGIE)

CHAPTER 16: FIND YOURSELF AND BE YOURSELF: REMEMBER THERE IS NO ONE ELSE ON EARTH LIKE YOU

1. This problem of being willing to be yourself is "as old as history," says Dr. James Gordon Gilkey, "and as universal as human life." This problem of being unwilling to be yourself is the hidden spring behind many neuroses and psychoses and complexes. Angelo Patri has written thirteen books and thousands of syndicated newspaper articles on the  subject of child training, and he says: "Nobody is so miserable as he who longs to be somebody and something other than the person he is in body and mind."

"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." But it doesn't work, because nobody wants a phony. Nobody ever wants a counterfeit coin (Paul Boynton).

2. You and I have such abilities, so let's not waste a second worrying because we are not like other people. You are something new in this world. Never before, since the beginning of time, has there ever been anybody exactly like you; and never again throughout all the ages to come will there ever be anybody exactly like you again. The new science of genetics informs us that you are what you are largely as a result of twenty-four chromosomes contributed by your father and twenty-four chromosomes contributed by your mother. These forty-eight chromosomes comprise everything that determines what you inherit. In eachchromosome there may be, says Amran Sheinfeld, "anywhere from scores to hundreds of genes -with a single gene, in some cases, able to change the whole life of an individual." Truly, we are "fearfully and wonderfully" made.

3. 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.

To cultivate a mental attitude that will bring us peace and freedom from worry, here is 

Rule 5: 

Let's not imitate others. Let's find ourselves and be ourselves.

CHAPTER 17: IF YOU HAVE A LEMON, MAKE A LEMONADE

When the wise man is handed a lemon, he says: "What lesson can I learn from this misfortune? How can I improve my situation? How can I turn this lemon into a 

lemonade?" 

1. There's an old truth that the Greeks taught five hundred years before Christ was born: "The best things are the most difficult." Harry Emerson Fosdick repeated it again in the twentieth century: "Happiness is not mostly pleasure; it is mostly victory." Yes, the victory that comes from a sense of achievement, of triumph, of turning our lemons into lemonades.

2. The late William Bolitho, author of Twelve Against the Gods, put it like this: "The most important thing in life is not to capitalise 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."

"Our infirmities help us unexpectedly" (William James).

3. 'The north wind made the Vikings.' Wherever did we get the idea that secure and pleasant living, the absence of difficulty, and the comfort of ease, ever of themselves made people either good or happy? Upon the contrary, people who pity themselves go on pitying themselves even when they are laid softly on a cushion, but always in history character and happiness have come to people in all sorts of circumstances, good, bad, and indifferent, when they shouldered their personal responsibility. So, repeatedly the north wind has made the Vikings."

4. Suppose we are so discouraged that we feel there is no hope of our ever being able to turn our lemons into lemonade-then here are two reasons why we ought to try, anyway-two reasons why we have everything to gain and nothing to lose. Reason one: We may succeed. Reason two: Even if we don't succeed, the mere attempt to turn our minus into a plus will cause us to look forward instead of backward; it will replace negative thoughts with positive thoughts; it will release creative energy and spur us to get so busy that we won't have either the time or the inclination to mourn over what is past and for ever gone.

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. 

So, to cultivate a mental attitude that will bring us peace and happiness, let's do 

something about Rule 6: 

When fate hands us a lemon, let's try to make a lemonade.

CHAPTER 18: HOW TO CURE MELANCHOLY IN FOURTEEN DAYS

1. 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." Dr. Adler urges us to do a good deed every day. Why will doing a good deed every day produce such astounding efforts 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.

2. 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. And I was a new person-not only then, but in the years that followed.

"When you are good to others, "you are best to yourself" (Franklin). 

3. If we are going "to make things better for others"-as Dreiser advocated-let's be quick about it. Time is a-wastin'. "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." 

So if you want to banish worry and cultivate peace and happiness, here is Rule 7: 

Forget yourself by becoming interested in others. Do every day a good deed that will put a smile of joy on someone's face.

Part Four In A Nutshell - Seven Ways To Cultivate A Mental Attitude That Will Bring You Peace And Happiness 

RULE 1: Let's fill our minds with thoughts of peace, courage, health, and hope, for "our life is what our thoughts make it". 

RULE 2: 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. 

RULE 3: 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. 

RULE 4: Count your blessings-not your troubles! 

RULE 5: Let's not imitate others. Let's find ourselves and be ourselves, for "envy is 

ignorance" and "imitation is suicide". 

RULE 6: When fate hands us a lemon, let's try to make a lemonade. 

RULE 7: Let's forget our own unhappiness-by trying to create a little happiness for 

others. "When you are good to others, you are best to yourself."

PART 5: THE GOLDEN RULE FOR CONQUERING WORRY

CHAPTER 19: HOW MY MOTHER AND FATHER CONQUERED WORRY

1. During all those years of struggle and heartache, my mother never worried. She took all her troubles to God in prayer. Every night before we went to bed, Mother would read a chapter from the Bible; frequently Mother or Father would read these comforting words of Jesus: "In my Father's house are many mansions. ... I go to prepare a place for you ... that where I am, there ye may be also." Then we all knelt down before our chairs in that lonely Missouri farmhouse and prayed for God's love and protection. When William James was professor of philosophy at Harvard, he said: "Of course, the sovereign cure for worry is religious faith." 

2. On the average, someone commits suicide in the United States every thirty-five minutes. On the average, someone goes insane every hundred and twenty seconds. Most of these suicides-and probably many of the tragedies of insanity- could have been prevented if these people had only had the solace and peace that are found in religion and prayer.

"Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; not yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment? Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they? ... But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you".

A mere man alone can easily be defeated,  but a man alive with the power of God within him is invincible. 

"We and God have business with each other; and in opening ourselves to His influence, our deepest destiny is fulfilled" (William James).

3. If we are worried and anxious-why not try God? Why not, as Immanuel Kant said: "accept a belief in God because we need such a belief"? Why not link ourselves now "with the inexhaustible motive power that spins the universe"?

4. Even if you are not a religious person by nature or training- even if you are an out and-out sceptic-prayer can help you much more than you believe, for it is a practical thing. What do I mean, practical? I mean that prayer fulfills these three very basic psychological needs which all people share, whether they believe in God or not: 

• Prayer helps us to put into words exactly what is troubling us. We saw in Chapter 4 that it is almost impossible to deal with a problem while it remains vague and nebulous. Praying, in a way, is very much like writing our problem down on paper. If we ask help for a problem-even from God-we must put it into words. 

• Prayer gives us a sense of sharing our burdens, of not being alone. Few of us are so strong that we can bear our heaviest burdens, our most agonising troubles, all by ourselves. Sometimes our worries are of so intimate a nature that we cannot discuss them even with our closest relatives or friends. Then prayer is the answer. Any psychiatrist will tell us that when we are pent-up and tense, and in an agony of spirit, it is therapeutically good to tell someone our troubles. When we can't tell anyone else-we can always tell God. 

• Prayer puts into force an active principle of doing. It's a first step toward action. I  doubt if anyone can pray for some fulfillment, day after day, without benefiting from it-in other words, without taking some steps to bring it to pass. A world-famous scientist said: "Prayer is the most powerful form of energy one can generate." So why not make use of it?

5. If you have lost your religion, beseech Almighty God to renew your faith. Say: "O God, I can no longer fight my battles alone. I need Your help, Your love. Forgive me for all my mistakes. Cleanse my heart of all evil. Show me the way to peace and quiet and health, and fill me with love even for my enemies."

PART 6: HOW TO KEEP FROM WORRYING ABOUT CRITICISM

CHAPTER 20: REMEMBER THAT NO ONE EVER KICKS A DEAD DOG

1. When you are kicked and criticised, remember that it is often done because it gives the kicker a feeling of importance. It often means that you are accomplishing something and are worthy of attention. Many people get a sense of savage satisfaction out of denouncing those who are better educated than they are or more successful.

If we are tempted to be worried about unjust criticism here is Rule 1:

Remember that unjust criticism is often a disguised compliment. Remember that no one ever kicks a dead dog.

CHAPTER 21: DO THIS-AND CRITISM CAN'T HURT YOU

1. Even if you and I are lied about, ridiculed, double-crossed, knifed in the back, and sold down the river by one out of every six of our most intimate friends-let's not indulge in an orgy of self-pity. Instead, let's remind ourselves that that's precisely what happened to Jesus. One of His twelve most intimate friends turned traitor for a bribe that would amount, in our modern money, to about nineteen dollars. Another one of His twelve most intimate friends openly deserted Jesus the moment He got into trouble, and declared three times that he didn't even know Jesus-and he swore as he said it. One out of six! That is what happened to Jesus. Why should you and I expect a better score? 

2. I discovered years ago that although I couldn't keep people from criticising me unjustly, I could do something infinitely more important: I could determine whether I would let the unjust condemnation disturb me. Teddy Roosevelt's sister said: "Never be bothered by what people say, as long as you know in your heart you are right." The only way we can avoid all criticism is to be like a Dresden-china figure and stay on a shelf. "Do what you feel in your heart to be right-for you'll be criticised, anyway. You'll be damned if you do, and damned if you don't."

That motto is especially good when you are the victim of unjust criticism. You can answer the man who answers you back, but what can you say to the man who "just  laughs"?

When you and I are unjustly criticised, let's remember Rule 2: 

Do the very best yon can: and then put up your old umbrella and keep the rain of criticism from running down the back of 

your neck.

CHAPTER 22: FOOL THINGS I HAVE DONE

1. I used to blame my troubles on other people; but as I have grown older-and wiser, I hope-I have realised 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."

"Every man is a damn fool for at least five minutes every day. Wisdom consists in not exceeding that limit" (Elbert Hubbard).

2. The small man flies into a rage over the slightest criticism, but the wise man is eager to learn from those who have censured him and reproved him and "disputed the passage with him". Walt Whitman put it this way: "Have you learned lessons only of those who admired you, and were tender with you, and stood aside for you? Have you not learned great lessons from those who rejected you, and braced themselves against you, or disputed the passage with you?"

Instead of waiting for our enemies to criticise 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.

"The opinions of our enemies," said La Rochefoucauld, "come nearer to the truth about us than do our own opinions." 

3. When your anger is rising because you feel you have been unjustly condemned, why not stop and say: "Just a minute. ... I am far from perfect. If Einstein admits he is wrong ninety-nine percent of the time, maybe I am wrong at least eighty percent of the time. Maybe I deserve this criticism. If I do, I ought to be thankful for it, and try to profit by it." 

To keep from worrying about criticism, here is Rule 3: 

Let's keep a record of the fool things we have done and criticise 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 Six In A Nutshell - How To Keep From Worrying About Criticism 

RULE 1: Unjust criticism is often a disguised compliment. It often means that you have 

aroused jealousy and envy. Remember that no one ever kicks a dead dog. 

RULE 2: 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. 

RULE 3: Let's keep a record of the fool things we have done and criticise 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 7: SIX WAYS TO PREVENT FATIGUE AND WORRY AND KEEP YOUR ENERGY AND SPIRITS HIGH

CHAPTER 23: HOW TO ADD ONE HOUR A DAY TO YOUR WAKING LIFE

1. Dr. Edmund Jacobson has spent years conducting investigations in using relaxation as a method in medical practice. He declares that any nervous or emotional state "fails to exist in the presence of complete relaxation". That is another way of saying: You cannot continue to worry if you relax. So, to prevent fatigue and worry, the first rule is: Rest often. Rest before you get tired.

2. The United States Army has discovered by repeated tests that even young men-men toughened by years of Army training-can march better, and hold up longer, if they throw down their packs and rest ten minutes out of every hour.

3. In his excellent book. Why Be Tired, Daniel W. Josselyn observes: "Rest is not a matter of doing absolutely nothing. Rest is repair." There is so much repair power in a short period of rest that even a five-minute nap will help to forestall fatigue!

4. If you can't take a nap at noon, you can at least try to lie down for an hour before the evening meal. It is cheaper than a highball; and, over a long stretch, it is 5,467 times more effective. If you can sleep for an hour around five, six, or seven o'clock, you can add one hour a day to your waking life. Why? How? Because an hour's nap before the evening meal plus six hours' sleep at night-a total of seven hours-will do you more good than eight hours of unbroken sleep.

Do what the Army does-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.

CHAPTER 24: WHAT MAKES YOU TIRED AND WHAT CAN YOU DO ABOUT IT

1. Psychiatrists declare that most of our fatigue derives from our mental and emotional attitudes. One of England's most distinguished psychiatrists, J.A. Hadfield, says in his book The Psychology of Power:  "the greater part of the fatigue from which we suffer is of mental origin; in fact exhaustion of purely physical origin is rare." 

"One hundred per cent of the fatigue of the sedentary worker in good health is due to psychological factors, by which we mean emotional factors" (Dr. A.A. Brill).

2. The Metropolitan Life Insurance Company pointed that out in a leaflet on fatigue: "Hard work by itself, seldom causes fatigue which cannot be cured by a good sleep or rest... Worry, tenseness, and emotional upsets are three of the biggest causes of fatigue. Often they are to blame when physical or mental work seems to be the cause. ... Remember that a tense muscle is a working muscle. Ease up! Save energy for important duties."

Tension is a habit. Relaxing is a habit. And bad habits can be broken, good habits formed. 

How do you relax? Do you start with your mind, or do you start with your nerves? You don't start with either. You always begin to relax with your muscles! 

3. Dr. Edmund Jacobson says that if you can completely relax the muscles of the eyes, you can forget all your troubles! The reason the eyes are so important in relieving nervous tension is that they burn up one-fourth of all the nervous energies consumed by the body. That is also why so many people with perfectly sound vision suffer from "eyestrain". They are tensing the eyes. 

4. You can relax in odd moments, almost anywhere you are. Only don't make an effort to relax. Relaxation is the absence of all tension and effort. Think ease and relaxation. Begin by thinking relaxation of the muscles of your eyes and your face, saying over and over: "Let go ... let go ... let go and relax." Feel the energy flowing out of your facial muscles to the centre of your body. Think of yourself as free from tension as a baby.

5. Here are five suggestions that will help you learn to relax: 

• Read one of the best books ever written on this subject: Release from Nervous Tension, by Dr. David Harold Fink. 

• Relax in odd moments. Let your body go limp like an old sock.

• Work, as much as possible, in a comfortable position. Remember that tensions in the body produce aching shoulders and nervous fatigue. 

• Check yourself four or five times a day, and say to yourself: "Am I making my work harder than it actually is? Am I using muscles that have nothing to do with the work I am doing?" This will help you form the habit of relaxing, and as Dr. David Harold Fink says: "Among those who know psychology best, it is habits two to one."

• Test yourself again at the end of the day, by asking yourself: "Just how tired am I? If I am tired, it is not because of the mental work I have done but because of the way I have done it."

"I measure my accomplishments, not by how tired I am at the end of the day, but how tired I am not. When I feel particularly tired at the end of the day, or when irritability proves that my nerves are tired, I know beyond question that it has been an inefficient day both as to quantity and quality" (Daniel W. Josselyn).

CHAPTER 25: HOW THE HOUSEWIFE CAN AVOID FATIGUE AND KEEP LOOKING YOUNG

1. Dr. Rose Hilferding said that she thought one of the best remedies for lightening worry is "talking your troubles over with someone you trust. We call it catharsis," she said. "When patients come here, they can talk their troubles over at length, until they get them off their minds. Brooding over worries alone, and keeping them to oneself, causes great nervous tension. We all have to share our troubles. We have to share worry. We have to feel there is someone in the world who is willing to listen and able to understand."

What caused the change was talking to someone, getting a little advice and a little human sympathy. What had really worked the change was the tremendous healing value that lies in-words!

2. So the next time we have an emotional problem, why don't we look around for someone to talk to? Let's decide on someone we can trust, and make an appointment. Maybe a relative, a doctor, a lawyer, a minister, or priest. Then say to that person: "I want your advice. I have a problem, and I wish you would listen while I put it in words. You may be able to advise me. You may see angles to this thing that I can't see myself. But even if you can't, you will help me tremendously if you will just sit and listen while I talk it out."

3. There's some other ideas we picked up at the class-things you, as a housewife, can do in your home:

• Keep a notebook or scrapbook 'for "inspirational" reading. Into this book you can paste all the poems, or short prayers, or quotations, which appeal to you personally and give you a lift. Then, when a rainy afternoon sends your spirits plunging down, perhaps you can find a recipe in this book for dispelling the gloom. 

• Don't dwell too long on the shortcomings of others! Sure, your husband has faults! If  he had been a saint, he never would have married you. Right? One woman at the class who found herself developing into a scolding, nagging, and haggard-faced wife, was brought up short with the question: "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 tight-fisted tyrant? Maybe you'll find, after reading his virtues, that he's a man you'd like to meet! 

• Get interested in your neighbours! Develop a friendly, healthy interest in the people  who share the life on your street.

• Make up a schedule for tomorrow's work before you go to bed tonight. The class found that many wives feel driven and harassed by the unending round of housework and things they must do. To cure this sense of hurry, and worry, the suggestion was made that they draw up a schedule each night for the following day.

• Finally-avoid tension and fatigue. Relax!Relax! Nothing will make you look old sooner than tension and fatigue. Nothing will work such havoc with your freshness and looks!

4. Here are some exercises you can do in your home. Try them for a week-and see what you do for your looks and disposition! 

a. Lie flat on the floor whenever you feel tired. Stretch as tall as you can. Roll around if you want to. Do it twice a day. 

b. Close your eyes. You might try saying, as Professor Johnson recommended,  something like this: "The sun is shining overhead. The sky is blue and sparkling. Nature is calm and in control of the world-and I, as nature's child, am in tune with the Universe." Or-better still-pray! 

c. If you cannot lie down, you can achieve almost the same effect sitting down in a chair. A hard, upright chair is the best for relaxing. Sit upright in the chair like a seated Egyptian statue, and let your hands rest, palms down, on the tops of your thighs. 

d. Now, slowly tense the toes-then let them relax. Tense the muscles in your legs-and let them relax. Do this slowly upward, with all the muscles of your body, until you get to the neck. Then let your head roll around heavily, as though it were a football. Keep 

saying to your muscles (as in the previous chapter): "Let go ... let go ..." 

e. Quiet your nerves with slow, steady breathing. Breathe from deep down. The yogis of India were right: rhythmical breathing is one of the best methods ever discovered for soothing the nerves. 

f. Think of the wrinkles and frowns in your face, and smooth them all out. Loosen up the worry-creases you feel between your brows, and at the sides of your mouth. Do this twice a day, and maybe you won't have to go to a beauty parlour to get a massage. 

Maybe the lines will disappear from the inside out!

CHAPTER 26: FOUR GOOD WORKING HABITS THAT WILL HELP PREVENT FATIGUE AND WORRY

1. Good Working Habit No. 1: Clear Your Desk of All Papers Except Those Relating to the Immediate Problem at Hand. Roland L. Williams says: "A person with his desk piled high with papers on various matters will find his work much easier and more accurate if he clears that desk of all but the immediate problem on hand. I call this good housekeeping, and it is the number-one step towards efficiency."

"The sense of must or obligation; the unending stretch of things ahead that simply have to be done."

"Men do not die from overwork. They die from dissipation and worry" (Charles Evans Hughes).

2. Good Working Habit No. 2: Do Things in the Order of Their Importance. Henry L. Dougherty, founder of the nation-wide Cities Service Company, said that regardless of how much salary he paid, there were two abilities he found it almost  impossible to find. Those two priceless abilities are: first, the ability to think. Second, the ability to do things in the order of their importance. 

3. 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.

4. Good Working Habit No. 4: Learn to Organise, Deputise, and Supervise. The man who builds up a big business, and doesn't learn to organise, deputise, and supervise, usually pops off with heart trouble in his fifties or early sixties-heart trouble caused by tension and worries.

CHAPTER 27: HOW TO BANISH THE BOREDOM THAT PRODUCES FATIGUE, WORRY, AND RESENTMENT

1. One of the chief causes of fatigue is boredom. 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. 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! 

We rarely get tired when we are doing something interesting and exciting. Our fatigue is often caused not by work, but by worry, frustration, and resentment. Where your interests are, there is your energy also. 

2. William James counseled us to act "as if" we were brave, and we would be brave; and to act "as if" we were happy, and we would be happy, and so on. Act "as if" you were interested in your job, and that bit of acting will tend to make your interest real. It will also tend to decrease your fatigue, your tensions, and your worries.

3. We need, even more, some spiritual and mental exercises every morning to stir us into action. Give yourself a pep talk every day." Is giving yourself a pep talk every day silly, superficial, childish? No, on the contrary, it is the very essence of sound psychology. "Our life is what our thoughts make it"  (Marcus Aurelius). 

4. By talking to yourself every hour of the day, you can direct yourself to think thoughts of courage and happiness, thoughts of power and peace. By talking to yourself about the things you have to be grateful for, you can fill your mind with thoughts that soar and sing. By thinking the right thoughts, you can make any job less distasteful.

Keep reminding yourself that getting interested in your job will take your mind off your worries, and, in the long run, will probably bring promotion and increased pay. Even if it doesn't do that, it will reduce fatigue to a minimum and help you enjoy your hours of leisure.

CHAPTER 28: HOW TO KEEP FROM WORRYING ABOUT INSOMNIA

1. We spend a third of our lives sleeping-yet nobody knows what sleep really is. We know it is a habit and a state of rest in which nature knits up the ravelled sleeve of care, but we don't know how many hours of sleep each individual requires. We don't even know if we have to sleep at all!

2. Dr. Nathaniel Kleitman, professor at the University of Chicago, is the world's expert on sleep. He declares that he has never known anyone to die from insomnia. To be sure, a man might worry about insomnia until he lowered his vitality and was swept away by germs. But it was the worry that did the damage, not the insomnia itself. Dr. Kleitman also says that the people who worry about insomnia usually sleep far more than they realise. 

3. The first requisite for a good night's sleep is a feeling of security. We need to feel that some power greater than ourselves will take care of us until morning. Dr. Thomas Hyslop said: "One of the best sleep-producing agents which my years of practice have revealed to me-is prayer. The exercise of prayer, in those who habitually exert it, must be regarded as the most adequate and normal of all the pacifiers of the mind and calmers of the nerves." 

"Let God-and let go." 

Jeanette MacDonald told me that when she was depressed and worried and had difficulty in going to sleep, she could always get "a feeling of security" by repeating Psalms 23: "The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures. He leadeth me beside the still waters..."

4. But if you are not religious, and have to do things the hard way, then learn to relax by physical measures. Dr. David Harold Fink, who wrote Release from Nervous Tension, says that the best way to do this is to talk to your body. Words are the key to all kinds of hypnosis; and when you consistently can't sleep, it is because you have talked yourself into a case of insomnia. The way to undo this is to dehypnotise yourself-and you can do it by saying to the muscles of your body: "Let go, let go-loosen up and relax." We already know that the mind and nerves can't relax while the muscles are tense-so if we want to go to sleep, we start with the muscles. Dr. Fink recommends-and it works out in practice-that we put a pillow under the knees to ease the tension on the legs, and that we tuck small pillows under the arms for the very same reason. Then, by telling the jaw to relax, the eyes, the arms, and the legs, we finally drop off to sleep before we know what has hit us.

5. One of the best cures for insomnia is making yourself physically tired by gardening, swimming, tennis, golf, skiing, or by just plain physically exhausting work. If we get tired enough, nature will force us to sleep even while we are walking.

No man ever committed suicide by refusing to sleep and no one ever will. Nature would force a man to sleep in spite of all his will power. Nature will let us go without food or water far longer than she will let us go without sleep. 

So, to keep from worrying about insomnia, here are five rules: 

1. If yon can't sleep, get up and work or read until you do feel sleepy. 

2. Remember that no one was ever killed by lack of sleep. Worrying about insomnia usually causes far more damage than sleeplessness. 

3. Try prayer-or repeat Psalm 23.

4. Relax your body. Read the book "Release from Nervous Tension." 

5. Exercise. Get yourself so physically tired you can't stay awake.

Part Seven In A Nutshell - Six Ways To Prevent Fatigue And Worry And Keep Your  Energy And Spirits High 

RULE 1: Rest before you get tired

RULE 2: Learn to relax at your work

RULE 3: If you are a housewife, protect your health and appearance by relaxing at home

RULE 4: Apply these four good working habits

a. Clear your desk of all papers except those relating to the immediate problem at hand

b. Do things in the order of their importance

c. When you face a problem, solve it then and there if you have the facts necessary to make a decision

d. Learn to organise, deputise, and supervise

RULE 5: To prevent worry and fatigue, put enthusiasm into your work

RULE 6: Remember, no one was ever killed by lack of sleep. It is worrying about insomnia that does the damage-not the insomnia

PART 8: HOW TO FIND THE KIND OF WORK IN WHICH YOU MAY BE HAPPY SUCCESSFUL

CHAPTER 29: THE MAJOR DECISION OF YOUR LIFE

"Every boy is a gambler when he chooses a vocation. He must stake his life on it" (Harry Emerson Fosdick).

1. How can you reduce the gamble in selecting a vocation? First, try, if possible, to find work that you enjoy. I once asked David M. Goodrich, Chairman of the Board, B. F. Goodrich Company: "Having a good time at your work. If you enjoy what you are doing," he said, "you may work long hours, but it won't seem like work at all. It will seem like play."

"Blessed is the man who has found his work. Let him ask no other blessedness" (Thomas Carlyle).

2. Dr. William Menninger, one of our greatest living psychiatrists, was in charge of the Army's neuro-psychiatric division during the war, and he says: "We learned much in the Army as to the importance of selection and of placement, of putting the right man in the right job. A conviction of the importance of the job at hand was extremely important. Where a man had no interest, where he felt he was misplaced, where he thought he was not appreciated, where he believed his talents were being misused, invariably we found a potential if not an actual psychiatric casualty." Yes-and for the same reasons, a man may "crack up" in industry. If he despises his business, he can crack it up, too.

3. Even at the risk of starting family rows, I would like to say to young people: Don't feel compelled to enter a business or trade just because your family wants you to do it! Don't enter a career unless you want to do it! However, consider carefully the advice of your parents. They have probably lived twice as long as you have. They have gained the kind of wisdom that comes only from much experience and the passing of many years. But in the last analysis, you are the one who has to make the final decision. You are the one who is going to be either happy or miserable at your work.

4.  Let me give you the following suggestions about choosing your work: 

a. Read and study the following five suggestions about selecting a vocational-guidance counselor. These suggestions are right from the horse's mouth. They were made by one of America's leading vocational-guidance experts, Professor Harry Dexter Kitson:

• "Don't go to anyone who tells you that he has a magic system that will indicate your 'vocational aptitude'. In this group are phrenologists, astrologers, 'character analysts', handwriting experts. Their 'systems' do not work." 

• "Don't go to anyone who tells you that he can give you a test that will indicate what occupation you should choose. Such a person violates the principle that a vocational counselor must take into account the physical, social, and economic conditions surrounding the counselee; and he should render his service in the light of the occupational opportunities open to the counselee." 

• "Seek a vocational counselor who has an adequate library of information about occupations and uses it in the counseling process." 

• "A thorough vocational-guidance service generally requires more than one interview." 

• "Never accept vocational guidance by mail." 

b. Keep out of business and professions that are already jam-packed and overflowing! There are many thousands of different ways of making a living. But do young people know this? 

c. Stay out of activities where the chances are only one out of ten of your being able to make a living. As an example, take selling life insurance.

d. Spend weeks-even months, if necessary-finding out all you can about an occupation  before deciding to devote your life to it!How? By interviewing men and women who  have already spent ten, twenty, or forty years in that occupation.

e. Get over the mistaken belief that you are fitted for only a single occupation! Every normal person can succeed at a number of occupations, and every normal person would probably fail in many occupations.

PART 9: HOW TO LESSEN YOUR FINANCIAL WORRIES

CHAPTER 30: SEVENTY PERCENTS OF ALL OUR WORRIES...

1. Seventy per cent of all our worries, according to a survey made by the Ladies' Home Journal, are about money. George Gallup, of the Gallup Poll, says that his research indicates that most people believe that they would have no more financial worries if they could increase their income by only ten per cent. That is true in many cases, but in a surprisingly large number of cases it is not true. Mrs. Elsie Stapleton told me: "More money is not the answer to most people's financial worries. In fact, I have often seen it happen that an increase in income accomplished nothing but an increase in spending-and an increase in headaches. What causes most people to worry, is not that they haven't enough money, but that they don't know how to spend the money they have!"

2. What are the principles of managing our money? How do we begin to make a budget and a plan? Here are eleven rules:

• Rule No. 1: Get the facts down on paper

• Rule No. 2: Get a tailor-made budget that really fits your needs

The idea of a budget is not to wring all the joy out of life. The idea is to give us a sense of material security-which in many case means emotional security and freedom from worry. "People who live on budgets," Mrs. Stapleton told me, "are happier people. But how do you go about it? First, as I said, you must list all expenses. Then get advice.

• Rule No. 3: Learn how to spend wisely

By this I mean: learn how to get the best value for your money. All large corporations have professional buyers and purchasing agents who do nothing but get the very best buys for their firms. As steward and manager of your personal estate, why shouldn't you do likewise? 

• Rule No. 4: Don't increase your headaches with your income

We all want to get more out of life. But in the long run, which is going to bring us more happiness-forcing ourselves to live within a tight budget, or having dunning letters in the mail and creditors pounding on the front door?

• Rule No. 5: Try to build credit, in the event you must borrow

If you are faced with an emergency and find you must borrow, life-insurance policies, Defence Bonds and Savings Certificates are literally money in your pocket. However, be sure your insurance policies have a savings aspect, if you want to borrow on them, for this means a cash value. 

• Rule No. 6: Protect yourself against illness, fire, and emergency expenses

Insurance is available, for relatively small sums, on all kinds of accidents, misfortunes, and conceivable emergencies

• Rule No. 7: Do not have your life-insurance proceeds paid to your widow in cash

If you are carrying life insurance to provide for your family after you're gone, do not, I 

beg of you, have your insurance paid in one lump sum. 

• Rule No. 8: Teach your children a responsible attitude toward money

Stella Weston Turtle, described how she was teaching her little girl a sense of responsibility about money. She got an extra cheque-book from the bank and gave it to her nine-year-old daughter. When the daughter was given her weekly allowance, she "deposited" the money with her mother, who served as a bank for the child's funds. Then, throughout the week, whenever she wanted a cent or two, she "drew a cheque" for that amount and kept track of her balance. The little girl not only found that fun, but began to learn real responsibility in handling her money. 

• Rule No. 9: If necessary, make a little extra money off your kitchen stove

Look around you. You will find many needs that are not filled. For example, if you train  yourself to be a good cook, you can probably make money by starting cooking classes for young girls right in your own kitchen. 

• Rule No. 10: Don't gamble-ever

• Rule No. 11: If we can't possibly improve our financial situation, let's be good to ourselves and stop resenting what can't be changed

If we can't possibly improve our financial situation, maybe we can improve our mental attitude towards it. Let's remember that other people have their financial worries, too.

3. If we can't have all we want, let's not poison our days and sour our dispositions with worry and resentment. Let's be good to ourselves. Let's try to be philosophical about it. "If you have what seems to you insufficient, then you will be miserable even if you possess the world" (Seneca).

Let's remember this: even if we owned the entire United States with a hog-tight fence around it, we could eat only three meals a day and sleep in only one bed at a time. 

PART 10: HOW I CONQUERED WORRY (32 STORIES)

1. Remember, today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday. Ask yourself: How do I KNOW this thing I am worrying about will really come to pass?

2. Here is a method that deserves a whole chapter. Read history! Try to get the viewpoint of ten thousand years-and see how trivial your troubles are, in terms of eternity.

3. Looking back over my life, I can see how it has been shaped and moulded time and again by events far beyond my control. The Arabs call it mektoub, kismet-the will of Allah. Call it anything you wish. It does strange things to you. But when the fierce,  burning winds blow over our lives-and we cannot prevent them-let us, too, accept the inevitable. And then get busy and pick up the pieces.

4. These experiences demonstrated to me the vital importance of one's mental attitude. They 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 with worries.

5. 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 will have two months from now?

6. I stood yesterday. I can stand today. And I will not permit myself to think about what might happen tomorrow.

7. Yet I have no pity for myself; no tears to shed over the past and gone sorrows; no envy for the women who have been spared all I have gone through. For I have lived. They only existed. I have drank 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. It is only the women whose eyes have been washed clear with tears who get the broad vision that makes them little sisters to all the world.

8. 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 future 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. Little annoyances no longer have the power to affect me. 

9. I felt the power of God as I had never felt it before. I realised then that I alone was responsible for all my troubles. I knew that God with His love was there to help me. From that day to this, my life has been free from worry. I am seventy-one years old, and the most dramatic and glorious twenty minutes of my life were those I spent in that chapel that morning: "God will take care of you."

10. I find the best antidote for worry is exercise. Use your muscles more and your brain less when you are worried, and you will be surprised at the result. It works that way with me-worry goes when exercise begins. 

11. You ought to sit down and face the facts. If you devoted half as much time and energy to solving your problems as you do to worrying about them, you wouldn't have any worries. Worrying is just a vicious habit you have learned.

12. I opened my New Testament and my eyes fell upon this sentence: "He that sent me is with me-the Father hath not left me alone." My life has never been the same since that hour.

13. I believe it is a good thing to have to endure an agonising experience occasionally. It is good to know that we have hit bottom and survived. That makes all our daily problems seem easy by comparison.

14. I soon found that I couldn't worry about myself and laugh at myself at one and the same time. So I've been laughing at myself ever since. The point of this is: Don't take yourself too seriously. Try "just laughing" at some of your sillier worries, and see if you can't laugh them out of existence.

15. I am not worried. I know that no matter what happens-even if I lose every dollar I have-I can always go back to hometown and get a job working for the Frisco Railway. I have protected my line of supplies. 

16. While in prayer-and I was not particularly thinking about myself at the time-a voice seemed to say: "Are you yourself ready for this work to which I have called you?" I replied: "No, Lord, I am done for. I have reached the end of my resources." The Voice replied "If you will turn that over to Me and not worry about it, I will take care of it." I quickly answered: "Lord, I close the bargain right here."

17. I began to think of the fine things that the mortgage had not taken from me. I still had my health and my friends. I would start again. I would not grieve about the past. I would repeat to myself every day the words I had often heard my mother's saying: "Don't cry over spilt milk."

18. I am almost thankful now that I had to go through all that misery; it gave me strength, fortitude, and confidence. I know now what it means to hit bottom. I know it doesn't kill you. I know we can stand more than we think we can. When little worries and anxieties and uncertainties try to disturb me now, I banish them by reminding myself of the time I sat on the packing case and said: "I've hit bottom and I've stood it. There is no place to go now but up."

19. I would say: "What a fool you are to be worrying about something than hasn't happened and may never happen. Life is short. I have only a few years to live, so I must enjoy life." I kept saying to myself: "Nothing is important but my health. Nothing is important but my health." I kept reminding myself that losing sleep and worrying would destroy my health. I found that by saying these things to myself over and over, night after night, year after year, they finally got under my skin, and I could brush off my worries like so much water.

20. The best thing I did was pray! I have never gone to bed in my life without saying a prayer; and I have never eaten a meal in  my life without first thanking God for it ... Have my prayers been answered? Thousands of times!

21. I was determined to do everything in my power to cultivate an unconscious and continuous attitude of gratefulness for my many blessings. Every morning when I awoke, I would thank God that conditions were no worse than they were; and I resolved that in spite of my troubles I would be the happiest person in Warrenton, Missouri. Maybe I didn't succeed in achieving that goal, but I did succeed in making myself the most grateful young woman in my town-and probably few of my associates worried less than I did.

22. My physician taught me to laugh at myself. But I think the really skilful thing he did was to refrain from laughing at me, and to refrain from telling me I had nothing to worry about. He took me seriously. He saved my face. He gave me an out in a small box. But he knew then, as well as I know now, that the cure wasn't in those silly little pills-the cure was in a change in my mental attitude. 

23. Why don't you do the same thing with your worries that you are doing with these notes? Why don't you crumple up your worries about yesterday's problems and toss them into the wastebasket?" That one idea gave me immediate inspiration-gave me the feeling of a weight being lifted from my shoulders. From that day to this, I have made it a rule to throw into the wastebasket all the problems that I can no longer do anything about.

24. "The reason my wife doesn't mind washing the dishes is because she washes only one day's dishes at a time." I saw what my trouble was. I was trying to wash today's dishes, yesterday's dishes and dishes that weren't even dirty yet.

25. When I had nothing to do but lie on the flat of my back and worry about my future, I made no improvement whatever. I was poisoning my body with worry. Even the broken ribs couldn't heal. But as soon as I got my mind off myself by playing contract bridge, painting oil pictures, and carving wood, the doctors declared I made "an amazing improvement".

26. Times solves a lot of things. Time may also solve what you are worrying about today. 

27. I had never been a saint, but I had learned one thing-not to argue with God. So I closed my eyes and said: "Thy will be done. ... If it has to come now, Thy will be done."

28. "More than to anything else, I owe whatever success I have had to the power of settling down to the day's work and trying to do it well to the best of my ability and letting the future take care of itself" (Sir William Osier). 

29. Father taught me to handle my troubles that way: "One at a time, gentlemen, one at a time." I have found that taking my troubles one at a time has helped me to maintain calm and composure amidst pressing duties and unending engagements. 

30. I asked myself why I didn't have a good signal system for my life. My answer was-I did have one. God had given it to me. He controls it, so it has to be foolproof. I started looking for a green light. Where could I find it? Well, if God created the green lights, why not ask Him? I did just that.

31. John D. had time for reflection. He began to think of other people. He stopped thinking, for once, of how much money he could get; and he began to wonder how much that money could buy in terms of human happiness.

32. For any sorrow there is only one medicine, better and more reliable than all the drugs in the world: work!