How to Stop Worrying and Start Living Book Summary

Book Summary

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Brief Summary

Chronic stress is physically and mentally damaging. You have to manage your worry in order to focus on living a happier and more productive life. Worry can be alleviated by thinking realistically about your problems and what you can control, focusing on the present, maintaining positivity, and thinking beyond yourself and your issues. Keep worries at bay by relaxing even before you become tired.

About the Author

Dale Carnegie went from his humble roots in Missouri to becoming an influential public speaker and writer. After college, Carnegie worked in sales and saved up to move to New York City. He worked as an actor before teaching public speaking at the YMCA. His 1936 bestseller How to Win Friends and Influence People remains popular today.

Topics

Self Development Psychology

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Key Insights

Fear and worry are normal emotions, but they can be hurting you more than you realize. How you feel mentally can affect how you feel physically. It is critical to find ways to reduce your anxiety and mitigate the damage.

In How to Stop Worrying and Start Living, Carnegie brings together a variety of strategies and techniques for addressing anxiety. These lessons are taken from others’ experiences or theories as a collection of methods that may help you with worry less.

You don’t have to accept fear and worry. To help deal with anxiety, you can change your frame of mind, redirect your focus, and fix what you can control.

Stress is bad for you.

Your body responds to anxiety and worries with a stress response, commonly known as the “fight or flight” response. In this state, your heart races and your blood goes to your brain and away from other organs. During a stress response, you may experience symptoms like lightheadedness, nausea, and other digestive issues.

Chronic stress, which can be diagnosed as generalized anxiety disorder or panic disorder, can lead to other serious health issues over time. For example, stress can lead to mental health, respiratory, cardiovascular, and gastrointestinal issues.

The way people often cope with stress can also make health problems worse. With anxiety, there may be more smoking, drinking, and overeating. All of that is already bad for your health and becomes worse when combined with the effects of stress.

Understand why you’re worrying and what you can do about it.

If you’re concerned, you should analyze what is going on. A lack of clarity about the situation only makes the anxiety worse. According to Herbert E. Hawkes, Dean of Columbia College, people generally don’t bother with facts when they’re worried and this confusion can cause worry.

There are three steps for this analysis. First, figure out what you’re worried about. Second, identify what is causing you to worry about it. Third, brainstorm what you can do. Think about all of this from a realistic perspective. How likely is it that what you’re worried about could actually happen? Also, how much does it matter in the big picture?

If you know what is causing you to feel the way you do, you can think practically about how to solve it. Also, if you realize that whatever the worst-case scenario you’re worried about isn’t that dire, you can help yourself calm down.

Make a decision and don’t second guess yourself.

When you make a decision, commit to it. If you question whether or not you made the right decision, you will create unnecessary anxiety.

Once you analyze your problem and figure out your path forward, you do not need to go back to analyzing the problem. You already considered your options when evaluating the issue. Trust that you made a sound judgment call with the information you had. Returning to the analysis phase will only undermine your original decision.

If you act decisively, you will eliminate the worry and stress that comes from being uncertain about the choices you made.