Chapter 15 Section 5 Let Worry "End Here"

We would be fools if we paid too much to worry at the cost of our lives. Charles Roberts, an investment consultant, told me: "When I first came to New York from Texas, I only had $20,000 on me, and my friend entrusted me to invest in the stock market. I know a lot, but I don't lose a penny. If it's my own money, I don't care, but I think it's a bad thing to lose all my friends' money." "I was very afraid to see them again. Unexpectedly, they were not only very open about this matter, but also unimaginably optimistic. "I began to study carefully the mistakes I had made. I made up my mind to learn the necessary knowledge before entering the stock market. So I made friends with one of the most successful forecasters, Burton Casers. He I have been very successful in the past. And I know that people who can have such a career cannot rely on chance and luck alone.

"He told me one of the most important principles in stock trading, 'The stocks I buy in the market all have a limit so far, a minimum standard that can no longer be lost. For example, what I bought was 50 yuan a share Stocks. I will immediately stipulate that the minimum standard that can no longer be compensated is 45 yuan. That is to say, if the stock price falls and falls to 5 yuan lower than the purchase price, it will be sold immediately, so that the loss can be limited to Within 5 yuan. "'If you bought smartly at the beginning, your profit may be 10 yuan, 25 yuan, or even 50 yuan on average. Therefore, after limiting your loss to five yuan, even if you make more than half of your judgments wrong, you still can't lose money. Can make you a lot of money'.

"I learned this method right away, and it saved tens of millions of dollars for my customers and me. "I later discovered that the 'stop here' principle works in other ways as well. I put a 'stop here' limit on everything that worries and annoys me, and the results are simply wonderful. "I used to have lunch with a friend who was very unpunctual. He always came in after the middle of the lunch time. I told him. The limit for waiting for you to 'stop here' is 10 minutes. If you arrive at 10 If we don't show up in minutes, our lunch date will be over--you won't find me if you come."

I wish I had learned many years ago to apply this limitation to my impatience, my temper, my desire to adapt, my regrets, and all mental and emotional stress, always saying to myself, "This The matter is only worth worrying about so little, nothing more." When I was in my early thirties, I decided to make fiction writing my life's career, and I wanted to be Hardy's second.Full of confidence, I lived in Europe for two years and wrote a masterpiece—I titled that book The Blizzard.It's a good title, because all publishers treat it like a blizzard whistling across the great plains of the Dectas.

My heart almost stopped when my agent told me the work was worthless and that I had no gift or talent for writing fiction.I found myself at a crossroads in my life and had to make a very big decision.It was several weeks before I woke up from this daze.At the time I didn't know about "putting so-so limits on your worries," but that's what I actually did. I regard the two years of painstaking efforts to write that novel as a valuable experience, and then, "stop here".I went back to my old ways of organizing and teaching adult education classes, sometimes writing biographies and non-fiction.

One night a hundred years ago, Thoreau dipped his quill pen into the ink he made himself and wrote in his diary: "The price of a thing, which I call the total value of life, needs to be exchanged on the spot, or Pay at the end." To put it another way, we'd be fools if we paid too much for a part of our lives.This is exactly the tragedy of Gilbert and Sullivan.They knew how to write cheerful lyrics and scores, but they had absolutely no idea how to find joy in life; they wrote many very enjoyable operettas, but they couldn't control their temper.Sullivan bought a new carpet for their theater.Gilber flew into a rage when he saw the bill.The matter even went to court.Since then, the two "have never been in touch with each other".When Sullivan wrote the music for the new opera, he sent it to Gilber, and Gilber wrote the lyrics and sent them back to Sullivan.Once, they had to go to the stage to call the curtain together, and they stood on both sides of the stage, bowing in different directions.That way you don't have to see each other.They didn't know how to set a minimum "stop here" in their mutual unhappiness, but Lincoln did it.

During the American Civil War, some of Lincoln's friends attacked some of his enemies, but Lincoln said: "You feel more about personal grievances than I do. Maybe I have too little of this feeling. However, I have always thought it was very inappropriate. Worth it. There's really no need for a man to spend half his life arguing. If those people don't attack me, I don't hold their grudges anymore." I wish Aunt Edith had Lincoln's forgiving spirit.She lived with Uncle Frank on a mortgaged farm.The soil was poor, the irrigation was poor, and the harvests were poor, so they lived very tight, saving every penny.Aunt Edith, however, liked to buy curtains and other little things to decorate the house, and she used to pay a small grocer for this purpose on credit.Uncle Frank paid much attention to credit and didn't want to go into debt, so he quietly told the grocer to stop letting his wife buy things on credit.Aunt Edith lost her temper when she heard about it.

It's been almost 50 years now, and she's still losing her temper.I have heard her talk about it more than once, and the last time I saw her, she was in her 70s and almost 80 years old.I said to her, "Aunt Edith, it's really wrong for Uncle Frank to humiliate you like this. But don't you think it's worse than what he's done, after you've been complaining about it for half a century?" Saying this is still tantamount to talking in vain.) Aunt Edith paid dearly for these unpleasant memories, half a century of her own peace of mind. When Franklin was a child, he made a mistake that he has not forgotten for 70 years.When he was 7 years old, he took a fancy to a whistle.He ran into the toy store excitedly, put all the change on the counter, and bought the whistle without asking the price. 70 years later, he wrote in a letter to a friend: "Later, I ran away from home, blowing this whistle, and turning around the room proudly." His brothers and sisters found out that he had paid more for the whistle, They all came to make fun of him, and he was so annoyed that he cried bitterly.

Franklin's lesson in this lesson is simple: "Growing up, I saw a lot of human behavior and realized that many people pay too much for whistles. In short, I am convinced that human suffering, A considerable part arises from their misestimating the value of things, that is, they overpay for the whistle." Tolstoy married a woman he loved very much, and they were very happy together.However, Tolstoy's wife was very jealous by nature and often spied on his whereabouts, and they often quarreled.She was even jealous of her own children, and once punched a hole in her daughter's photo with a gun.She was still rolling on the floor, threatening suicide with a bottle of opium, and her children screaming in the corner of the room.

If Tolstoy jumped up and smashed the furniture, I don't blame him, because he has reason to be so angry.But he does much worse than that, he keeps a private diary!This is his "whistle".There, he tries to get the next generation to forgive him, and blames his wife for everything.How does his wife deal with him?Of course she tore up his diary and burned it, and she kept a diary herself, blaming Tolstoy.She even wrote a novel titled "Whose Fault".In the novel, she portrays her husband as a family wrecker and herself as a victim. As a result, they turned their only home into what Tolstoy called "a madhouse."These two boring people paid a huge price for their "whistle" and lived in a terrible hell for 50 years, just because neither of them had the brains to say "stop arguing"; No one has enough value judgment to be able to say, "Let's get this over with, we're wasting our lives. Let's just say 'enough' right now."

Yes, I strongly believe that this is one of the secrets to inner peace - having the right values. So, get out of the habit of worrying before it destroys you. Whenever we want to take money to buy something or pay a price for life, we must first stop and ask ourselves the following three questions: (1) How does the problem I am worrying about have anything to do with myself? (2) Where should I set the minimum "stop here" on this thing that worries me, and forget about it altogether. (3) How much should I pay for this "whistle"?Am I paying more than it's worth?