The following contains excepts from the book, How to Stop Worrying and Start Living (Dale Carnegie).
At our music school in Odessa, Texas, we hope to help students learn how to manage fear and overcome their anxieties, in pursuit of their artistic dreams.
True Stories
I Did Not Expect To Live To See The Dawn
ByJ.C. Penney
[On April 14, 1902, a young man with five hundred dollars in cash and a million dollars in determination opened a drygoods store in Kemmerer, Wyoming-a little mining town of a thousand people, situated on the old covered-wagon trail laid out by the Lewis and Clark Expedition. That young man and his wife lived in a half-storey attic above the store, using a large empty dry-goods box for a table and smaller boxes for chairs. The young wife wrapped her baby in a blanket and let it sleep under a counter while she stood beside it, helping her husband wait on customers. Today the largest chain of dry-goods stores in the world bears that man’s name: the J.C. Penney stores-over sixteen hundred of them covering every state in the Union. I recently had dinner with Mr. Penney, and he told me about the most dramatic moment of his life.]
Years ago, I passed through a most trying experience. I was worried and desperate. My worries were not connected in any way whatever with the J. C. Penney Company. That business was solid and thriving; but I personally had made some unwise commitments prior to the crash of 1929. Like many other men, I was blamed for conditions for which I was in no way responsible. I was so harassed with worries that I couldn’t sleep, and developed an extremely painful ailment known as shingles-a red rash and skin eruptions. I consulted a physician-a man with whom I had gone to high school as a boy in Hamilton, Missouri: Dr. Elmer Eggleston, a staff physician at the Kellogg Sanatorium in Battle Creek, Michigan. Dr. Eggleston put me to bed and warned me that I was a very ill man. A rigid treatment was prescribed. But nothing helped. I got weaker day by day. I was broken nervously and physically, filled with despair, unable to see even a ray of hope. I had nothing to live for. I felt I hadn’t a friend left in the world, that even my family had turned against me. One night, Dr, Eggleston gave me a sedative, but the effect soon wore off and I awoke with an overwhelming conviction that this was my last night of life. Getting out of bed, I wrote farewell letters to my wife and to my son, saying that I did not expect to live to see the dawn.
When I awoke the next morning, I was surprised to find that I was still alive. Going downstairs, I
heard singing in a little chapel where devotional exercises were held each morning. I can still
remember the hymn they were singing: “God will take care of you.” Going into the chapel, I listened with a weary heart to the singing, the reading of the Scripture lesson, and the prayer. Suddenly something happened. I can’t explain it. I can only call it a miracle. I felt as if I had been instantly lifted out of the darkness of a dungeon into warm, brilliant sunlight. I felt as if I had been transported from hell to paradise. I felt the power of God as I had never felt it before. I realized 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.”
J.C. Penney learned to overcome worry almost instantaneously, because he discovered the one perfect cure.
At our music school in Odessa, Texas we hope to share with students the importance of having an active devotional life, emphasizing its value in there are and life, in general.
I Have Always Tried to Keep My Line of Supplies Open”
By Gene Autry
(The world’s most famous and beloved singing cowboy)
I figure that most worries are about family troubles and money. I was fortunate in marrying a smalltown Oklahoma girl who had the same background I had and enjoyed the same things. We both try to follow the golden rule, so we have kept our family troubles to a minimum. I have kept my financial worries to a minimum also by doing two things.
First, I have always followed a rule of absolute one hundred per cent integrity in everything. When I borrowed money, I paid back every penny. Few things cause more worry than dishonesty.
Second, when I started a new venture, I always kept on ace in the hole. Military experts say that the first principle of fighting a battle is to keep your line of supplies open. I figure that that principle applies to personal battles almost as much as to military battles.
For example, as a lad down in Texas and Oklahoma, I saw some real poverty when the country was devastated by droughts. We had mighty hard scratching at times to make a living. We were so poor that my father used to drive across the country in a covered wagon with a string of horses and swap horses to make a living. I wanted something more reliable than that. So I got a job working for a railway-station agent and learned telegraphy in my spare time. Later, I got a job working as relief operator for the Frisco Railway. I was sent here, there, and yonder to relieve other station agents who were ill or on vacation or had more work than they could do. That job paid $150 per month. Later, when I started out to better myself, I always figured that that railroad job meant economic safety. So I always kept the road open back to that job. It was my line of supplies, and I never cut myself off from it until I was firmly established in a new and better position.
For example, back in 1928, when I was working as a relief operator for the Frisco Railway in Chelsea, Oklahoma, a stranger drifted in one evening to send a telegram. He heard me playing the guitar and singing cowboy songs and told me I was good-told me that I ought to go to New York and get a job on the stage or radio. Naturally, I was flattered; and when I saw the name he signed to his telegram, I was almost breathless: Will Rogers.
Instead of rushing off to New York at once, I thought the matter over carefully for nine months. I finally came to the conclusion that I had nothing to lose and everything to gain by going to New York and giving the old town a whirl. I had a railroad pass: I could travel free. I could sleep sitting up in my seat, and I could carry some sandwiches and fruit for my meals.
So I went. When I reached New York, I slept in a furnished room for five dollars a week, ate at the Automat, and tramped the streets for ten weeks-and got nowhere. I would have been worried sick if I hadn’t had a job to go back to. I had already worked for the railway five years. That meant I had seniority rights; but in order to protect those rights, I couldn’t lay off longer than ninety days.
By this time, I had already been in New York seventy days, so I rushed back to Oklahoma on my pass and began working again to protect my line of supply. I worked for a few months, saved money, and returned to New York for another try. This time I got a break. One day, while waiting for an interview in a recording-studio office, I played my guitar and sang a song to the girl receptionist: “Jeannine, I Dream of Lilac Time”. While I was singing that song, the man who wrote it-Nat Schildkraut- drifted into the office. Naturally, he was pleased to hear anyone singing his song. So he gave me a note of introduction and sent me down to the Victor Recording Company. I made a record. I was no good-too stiff and self-conscious. So I took the advice of the Victor Recording man: I went back to Tulsa, worked for the railway by day, and at night I sang cowboy songs on a sustaining radio programme.
I liked that arrangement. It meant that I was keeping my line of supplies open- so I had no worries. I sang for nine months on radio station KVOO in Tulsa. During that time, Jimmy Long and I wrote a song entitled “That Silver-Haired Daddy of Mine”. It caught on. Arthur Sattherly, head of the American Recording Company, asked me to make a recording. It clicked. I made a number of other recordings for fifty dollars each, and finally got a job singing cowboy songs over radio station WLS in Chicago. Salary: forty dollars a week. After singing there four years, my salary was raised to ninety dollars a week, and I picked up another three hundred dollars doing personal appearances every night in theatres.
Then in 1934, I got a break that opened up enormous possibilities. The League of Decency was
formed to clean up the movies. So Hollywood producers decided to put on cowboy pictures; but they wanted a new kind of cowboy-one who could sing. The man who owned the American Recording Company was also part owner of Republic Pictures. “If you want a singing cowboy,” he said to his associates, “I have got one making records for us.”
That is how I broke into the movies. I started making singing-cowboy pictures for one hundred dollars a week. I had serious doubts about whether I would succeed in pictures, but I didn’t worry.
I knew I could always go back to my old job.
My success in pictures exceeded my wildest expectations. I now get a salary of one hundred thousand a year plus one half of all the profits on my pictures. However, I realize that this arrangement won’t go on forever. But 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 Oklahoma and get a job working for the Frisco Railway. I have protected my line of supplies.
We teach students in our music school in Odessa, Texas to endeavor to keep an open mind about the opportunities life presents to them. Many times, a calculated risk turns profitable in ways that are surprising. Being willing to take a chance, having courage to step into the unknown can open up many new and exciting possibilities.
How John D. Rockefeller Lived on Borrowed Time for Forty-five Years
John D. Rockefeller, Sr., had accumulated his first million at the age of thirty-three. At the age of forty-three, he had built up the largest monopoly the world has ever seen-the great Standard Oil Company.
But where was he at fifty-three? Worry had got him at fifty-three. Worry and high-tension living had
already wrecked his health. At fifty-three he “looked like a mummy,” says John K. Winkler, one of his
biographers.
At fifty-three, Rockefeller was attacked by mystifying digestive maladies that swept away his hair, even the eyelashes and all but a faint wisp of eyebrow. “So serious was his condition,” says Winkler, “that at one time John D. was compelled to exist on human milk.” According to the doctors, he had alopecia, a form of baldness that often starts with sheer nerves. He looked so startling, with his stark bald dome, that he had to wear a skullcap. Later, he had wigs made-$500 apiece-and for the rest of his life he wore these silver wigs. Rockefeller had originally been blessed with an iron constitution. Reared on a farm, he had once had stalwart shoulders, an erect carriage, and a strong, brisk gait.
Yet at only fifty-three-when most men are at their prime- his shoulders drooped and he shambled when he walked. “When he looked in a glass,” says John T. Flynn, another of his biographers, “he saw an old man. The ceaseless work, the endless worry, the streams of abuse, the sleepless nights, and the lack of exercise and rest” had exacted their toll; they had brought him to his knees. He was now the richest man in the world; yet he had to live on a diet that a pauper would have scorned. His income at the time was a million dollars a week- but two dollars a week would probably have paid for all the food he could eat. Acidulated milk and a few biscuits were all the doctors would allow him. His skin had lost its colour-it looked like old parchment drawn tight across his bones. And nothing but medical care, the best money could buy, kept him from dying at the age of fifty-three.
How did it happen? Worry. Shock. High-pressure and high-tension living. He “drove” himself literally to the edge of the grave. Even at the age of twenty-three, Rockefeller was already pursuing his goal with such grim determination that, according to those who knew him, “nothing lightened his countenance save news of a good bargain.” When he made a big profit, he would do a little war dance, throw his hat on the floor and break into a jig. But if he lost money, he was ill! He once shipped $40,000 worth of grain by way of the Great Lakes. No insurance. It cost too much: $150. That night a vicious storm raged over Lake Erie. Rockefeller was so worried about losing his cargo that when his partner, George Gardner, reached the office in the morning, he found John D. Rockefeller there, pacing the floor.
“Hurry,” he quavered. “Let’s see if we can take out insurance now, if it isn’t too late!” Gardner rushed uptown and got the insurance; but when he returned to the office, he found John D. in an even worse state of nerves. A telegram had arrived in the meantime: the cargo had landed, safe from the storm. He was sicker than ever now because they had “wasted” the $150! In fact, he was so sick about it that he had to go home and take to his bed. Think of it! At that time, his firm was doing gross business of $500,000 a year-yet he made himself so ill over $150 that he had to go to bed.
He had no time for play, no time for recreation, no time for anything except making money and teaching Sunday school. When his partner, George Gardner, purchased a second-hand yacht, with three other men, for $2,000, John D. was aghast, refused to go out in it. Gardner found him working at the office one Saturday afternoon, and pleaded: “Come on, John, let’s go for a sail. It will do you good.
Forget about business. Have a little fun.” Rockefeller glared. “George Gardner,” he warned, “you are the most extravagant man I ever knew. You are injuring your credit at the banks-and my credit too. First thing you know, you’ll be wrecking our business. No, I won’t go on your yacht-I don’t ever want to see it!” And he stayed plugging in the office all Saturday afternoon.
The same lack of humour, the same lack of perspective, characterised John D. all through his business career. Years later he said: “I never placed my head upon the pillow at night without reminding myself that my success might be only temporary.”
With millions at his command, he never put his head upon his pillow without worrying about losing his fortune. No wonder worry wrecked his health. He had no time for play or recreation, never went to the theatre, never played cards, never went to a party. As Mark Hanna said, the man was mad about money. “Sane in every other respect, but mad about money.” Rockefeller had once confessed to a neighbour in Cleveland, Ohio, that he “wanted to be loved”; yet he was so cold and suspicious that few people even liked him. Morgan once balked at having to do business with him at all. “I don’t like the man,” he snorted. “I don’t want to have any dealings with him.” Rockefeller’s own brother hated him so much that he removed his children’s bodies from the family plot. “No one of my blood,” he said, ” will ever rest in land controlled by John D.” Rockefeller’s employees and associates lived in holy fear of him, and here is the ironic part: he was afraid of them- afraid they would talk outside the office and “give secrets away”.
He had so little faith in human nature that once, when he signed a ten-year contract with an independent refiner, he made the man promise not to tell anyone, not even his wife! “Shut your mouth and ran your business”-that was his motto. Then at the very peak of his prosperity, with gold flowing into his coffers like hot yellow lava pouring down the sides of Vesuvius, his private world collapsed.
Books and articles denounced the robber-baron war of the Standard Oil Company!- secret rebates with railroads, the ruthless crashing of all rivals. In the oil fields of Pennsylvania, John D. Rockefeller was the most hated man on earth. He was hanged in effigy by the men he had crushed. Many of them longed to tie a rope around his withered neck and hang him to the limb of a sour-apple tree. Letters breathing fire and brimstone poured into his office -letters threatening his life.
He hired bodyguards to keep his enemies from killing him. He attempted to ignore this cyclone of hate. He had once said cynically: “You may kick me and abuse me provided you will let me have my own way.” But he discovered that he was human after all. He couldn’t take hate -and worry too. His health began to crack. He was puzzled and bewildered by this new enemy-illness-which attacked him from within. At first “he remained secretive about his occasional indispositions,” tried to put his illness out of his mind. But insomnia, indigestion, and the loss of his hair-all physical symptoms of worry and collapse-were not to be denied. Finally, his doctors told him the shocking truth. He could take his choice: his money and his worries-or his life. They warned him he must either retire or die. He retired.
But before he retired, worry, greed, fear had already wrecked his health.
When Ida Tarbell, America’s most celebrated female writer of biographies, saw him, she was shocked.
She wrote: “An awful age was in his face. He was the oldest man I have ever seen.” Old? Why, Rockefeller was then several years younger than General MacArthur was when he recaptured the
Philippines! But he was such a physical wreck that Ida Tarbell pitied him. She was working at that time on her powerful book which condemned the Standard Oil and all that it stood for; she certainly had no cause to love the man who had built up this “octopus”. Yet, she said that when she saw John D. Rockefeller teaching a Sunday-school class, eagerly watching the faces of all those around him-“I had a feeling which I had not expected, and which time intensified. I was sorry for him. I know no companion so terrible as fear.”
When the doctors undertook to save Rockefeller’s life, they gave him three rules-three rules which he observed, to the letter, for the rest of his life. Here they are:
● 1. Avoid worry. Never worry about anything, under any kind of circumstances.
● 2. Relax, and take plenty of mild exercise in the open air.
● 3. Watch your diet. Always stop eating while you’re still a little hungry. John D. Rockefeller obeyed those rules; and they probably saved his life. He retired. He learned to play golf. He went in for gardening. He chatted with his neighbours. He played games. He sang songs.
We teach students in our music school the value music can play in helping people lead wholesome lives. Some people call it music therapy, while others call it emotional release. Regardless, music can have a profound affect on those who listen and participate in its healing properties.
But he did something else too. “During days of torture and nights of insomnia,” says Winkler, “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.
In short. Rockefeller now began to give his millions away! Some of the time it wasn’t easy. When he offered money to a church, pulpits all over the country thundered back with cries of “tainted money!”
But he kept on giving. He learned of a starving little college on the shores of Lake Michigan that was being foreclosed because of its mortgage. He came to its rescue and poured millions of dollars into that college and built it into the now world-famous University of Chicago. He tried to help the Negroes. He gave money to Negro universities like Tuskegee College, where funds were needed to carry on the work of George Washington Carver. He helped to fight hookworm. When Dr. Charles W. Stiles, the hookworm authority, said: “Fifty cents’ worth of medicine will cure a man of this disease which ravages the South-but who will give the fifty cents?” Rockefeller gave it. He spent millions on hookworm, stamping out the greatest scourge that has ever handicapped the South. And then he went further. He established a great international foundation-the Rockefeller Foundation-which was to fight disease and ignorance all over the world.
I speak with feeling of this work, for there is a possibility that I may owe my life to the Rockefeller Foundation. How well I remember that when I was in China in 1932, cholera was raging all over the nation. The Chinese peasants were dying like flies; yet in the midst of all this horror, we were able to go to the Rockefeller Medical College in Peking and get a vaccination to protect us from the plague. Chinese and “foreigners” alike, we were able to do that. And that was when I got my first understanding of what Rockefeller’s millions were doing for the world.
Never before in history has there ever been anything even remotely like the Rockefeller Foundation. It is something unique. Rockefeller knew that all over the world there are many fine movements that men of vision start. Research is undertaken; colleges are founded; doctors struggle on to fight a disease-but only too often this high-minded work has to die for lack of funds. He decided to help these pioneers of humanity-not to “take them over”, but to give them some money and help them help themselves.
Today you and I can thank John D. Rockefeller for the miracles of penicillin, and for dozens of other discoveries which his money helped to finance. You can thank him for the fact that your children no longer die from spinal meningitis, a disease that used to kill four out of five. And you can thank him for part of the inroads we have made on malaria and tuberculosis, on influenza and diphtheria, and many other diseases that still plague the world.
And what about Rockefeller? When he gave his money away, did he gain peace of mind? Yes, he was contented at last. “If the public thought of him after 1900 as brooding over the attacks on the Standard Oil,” said Allan Kevins, “the public was much mistaken.”
Rockefeller was happy. He had changed so completely that he didn’t worry at all. In fact, he refused even to lose one night’s sleep when he was forced to accept the greatest defeat of his career!
At our music school in Odessa, Texas we encourage students to understand the great value in living a life of unselfishness, giving the best you have to offer to make someone else’s life better. Ultimately, this is the only path towards a fulfilled career and a carefree life.
That defeat came when the corporation he had built, the huge Standard Oil, was ordered to pay “the heaviest fine in history”. According to the United States Government, the Standard Oil was a monopoly, in direct violation of the antitrust laws. The battle raged for five years. The best legal brains in the land fought on interminably in what was, up to then, the longest court war in history. But Standard Oil lost.
When Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis handed down his decision, lawyers for the defense feared that old John D. would take it very hard. But they didn’t know how much he’d changed.
That night one of the lawyers got John D. on the phone. He discussed the decision as gently as he could, and then said with concern: “I hope you won’t let this decision upset you, Mr. Rockefeller. I hope you’ll get your night’s sleep!”
And old John D.? Why, he crackled right back across the wire: “Don’t worry, Mr. Johnson, I intend to get a night’s sleep. And don’t let it bother you either. Good night!”
That from the man who had once taken to his bed because he had lost $150! Yes, it took a long time
for John D. to conquer worry. He was “dying” at fifty-three-but he lived to ninety-eight!
At our music school in Odessa, Texas, we believe that the greatest career strategy is to life a life that is totally centered on serving others. Gaining mastery over one’s own motivations, mental attitude, life habits, and focus on giving is the recipe for a great future.