Chapter 8 Eliminate mental worries

People who do research in libraries and laboratories seldom break down because of worry, because they don't have time to enjoy this "luxury". I will never forget that night a few years ago.A student in my class, Marion Douglas, told us that his family had suffered tragic tragedy, twice.The first time he lost his 5 year old daughter, a very sweet child.Both he and his wife thought they had no way to accept this reality and could not bear this blow.However, misfortunes never come singly. "Ten months later, God gave us another daughter - and she died after only five days."

These blows one after another are almost unbearable. "I couldn't take it," the father told us. "I couldn't sleep, I couldn't eat, I couldn't rest or relax. I was mortally wounded, and my confidence was gone." Finally he went to see a doctor.One doctor advised him to take sleeping pills, another advised him to travel.He tried both methods, but none of them helped him.He said: "My body is like being clamped in a pair of big pincers, and the pincers are getting tighter and tighter." , you'll know what he's talking about. "However, thank God, we also have a child - a four-year-old son, who made us find a solution to our problems. One afternoon, I sat there sadly, and he asked me: 'Daddy, can you Build me a boat?' At the time, I wasn't in the mood to build him a boat. In fact, I wasn't in the mood for anything. But my son is such a sweet little guy, and I had to go along with it do it.

"It took me about 3 hours to build the toy boat. After the boat was built, I found that the 3 hours of building the boat gave me the first chance to relax my mind in this period of time. "This big discovery jolted me out of my trance and made me think a lot—the first time I've been thinking seriously in months. I've found that if you're busy doing something that requires planning and thinking, It was hard to have time to worry anymore. For me, all my worries while building that boat were gone, so I decided to keep myself busy. “The next night, I looked at each room and made a list of all the things that needed to be done. There were many small things such as bookshelves, stairs, curtains, door knobs, locks, leaky faucets, etc. that needed to be removed. Repairs. It's unbelievable that in two weeks I had a list of 242 things that needed to be done.

“In the past two years, most of that has been done. Plus, I’ve filled my life with inspirational activities: two nights a week, I’m going to New York City for an adult education class, And a few small town events. I'm currently chair of the school board, attend a lot of meetings, and help with fundraising for the Red Cross and other agencies. I'm so busy right now that I hardly have time to worry. " There's no time to worry, that's what British Prime Minister Winston Churchill said when the war was so tense that he was working 18 hours a day.When someone asked him if he worried about such a heavy responsibility, he said, "I'm so busy that I don't have time to worry."

Charles Kettering encountered a similar situation when he invented the automatic ignition for automobiles.Mr. Kettering has been a Vice President of General Motors, responsible for the world-renowned General Motors Research Corporation until recently retired.However, he was so poor that he used the straw piled in the barn as a laboratory.The expenses of the family depend on the $1,500 his wife earned from teaching piano.Later, he had to borrow $500 against his life insurance.I asked his wife if she was worried at that period, and she replied, "Yes, I was too worried to sleep, but Mr. Kettering was not worried at all. He was so absorbed in his work that he did not Time to worry."

The great scientist Buster also once mentioned "the peace found in the library and laboratory".Why is peace to be found there?Because people who work in libraries and laboratories are usually so engrossed in their work that they don't have time to worry about themselves.People who do research rarely have mental breakdowns, because they don't have time to enjoy this "luxury". How can something as simple as "keep yourself busy" be able to get worry out of your mind?Because there is such a theorem, this theorem is: No matter how smart a person is, he cannot think about more than one thing at the same time-this is one of the fundamental theorems discovered by psychology.Let's do an experiment: Suppose you are sitting in a chair, close your eyes, and try to think at the same time about the Statue of Liberty and what you are going to do tomorrow morning.

At this time, you will find that you can only think about one of them in turn, but you can't think about two things at the same time, right?The same goes for your emotions.For example, we cannot be passionate about doing something exciting and at the same time procrastinating because of worry.One feeling drives out the other—a discovery so simple that some psychotherapists in the military were able to perform medical miracles in wartime. When some men resigned because of the experience of being beaten in the field, they all suffered from a kind of "psychological debilitating disease".Doctors in the military mostly take a "keep them busy" approach to treatment.

Every moment except sleep time that keeps these mentally battered people alive, such as fishing, hunting, ball-playing, golfing, photographing, flower-planting, and dancing, does not allow them to have time at all. Time to think back on those horrible experiences. "Occupational therapy" is a new term used by modern psychologists, that is, treating work as medicine for curing diseases.This is not a new approach, as it was used by ancient Greek physicians 500 years before Jesus was born. In Franklin's day, the Philadelphia Quakers also used this method. In 1774, a man visited a Quaker sanitarium and was shocked to see mental patients busy spinning and weaving.He believes that those poor and unfortunate people are being exploited.Later the Quakers explained to him that they found that the patients really got better only when they worked, because work calmed their nerves.

Any psychotherapist can tell you that work—constantly busy—is the best medicine for mental illness.The famous poet Sir Henry Longfellow discovered this truth after the death of his young wife. One day his wife lit a candle to melt some envelope wax, and the flame ignited the clothes.Longfellow tried to save her when he heard her cries, but she died of burns.For a long time Longfellow could not get over the dreadful experience, and nearly went mad.Fortunately, he has three young children in his care.Although he is very sad, he still has to be a father and mother.He took them for walks, told them stories, played games with them, and immortalized their father-son bond in the poem "Children's Hours," which he also translated by Dante.All these tasks together made him so busy that he completely forgot about himself and regained his peace of mind.As Mr. Dennison said: "I must immerse myself in my work, or I shall struggle in despair."

For the vast majority of people, "immersing themselves in work" is probably not a problem when they are overwhelmed by their daily work.But after get off work—when we are free to enjoy our leisure and pleasure—the devil of worry starts to attack us.At this time, we often can't help but think about what kind of achievements we have in our lives, whether we have done a good job, whether the sentence the boss said today has "something special meaning", or whether our heads are starting to go bald. up... When we are not busy, our minds often become a vacuum.Every student of physics knows that "there is no vacuum in nature".Break an incandescent light bulb, for example, and immediately air will enter, filling the theoretically empty space.

When your mind empties, it is filled with something, usually your feelings.why?Because emotions such as worry, fear, hatred, jealousy, and envy are controlled by our minds, and these emotions are very violent and tend to drive out all peaceful and happy thoughts and emotions in our minds. James Marshall is a professor in the Department of Education at Columbia Teachers College.He makes this clear: "You are most vulnerable to worry, not when you are busy at work, but after you have finished your day's work. That's when your imagination will Confused, it makes you think of all kinds of ridiculous things, and exaggerates every little mistake. At this time, your mind is like an unladen car, going on a rampage, destroying everything, even yourself. Also smashed into pieces. The best way to eliminate worry is to keep yourself busy and do something useful." It is not that university professors understand this truth in order to put it into practice.In fact, this truth is not profound, and it is not difficult to understand it and put it into practice.During the war, I met a housewife living in Chicago who told me she had found that "a good way to relieve worry is to keep yourself busy and do something useful."I was on my way back from New York to my Missouri farm when I met this lady and her husband in the dining car. The couple told me that their son joined the Army the day after Pearl Harbor.The woman was so worried about her only son that it almost seriously damaged her health.She often wondered: where is he?Is he safe?Still at war?Will he be injured or killed? I asked her how she overcame her anxiety."I kept myself busy," she replied. She told me that she had started firing maids in the hope that housework would keep her busy, but it didn't do much. "The problem," she says, "is that I always do my chores mechanically and without thinking, so when I'm making my bed and doing the dishes, I'm always worrying. I've found that I need some new work to keep me going. Every hour of every day, both physically and mentally, I went to work as a salesman in a large department store." "Now," she said, "I immediately found myself in a vortex that seemed to be in constant motion: customers crowded around me, asking me questions about prices, sizes, colors, and so on. I didn't For a second, I think about things other than the work at hand. At night, I can only think about how to rest my feet. When I finished dinner, I lay on the bed and fell asleep quickly. I have neither time nor energy Worry no more." What she discovered was, as John Cobbler Poss put it in his book The Art of Forgetting Unhappiness: "A comfortable sense of security, an inner peace, And the feeling of unresponsiveness can make people calm when they are concentrating on work." And what a blessing to be able to do that.Osha Johnson, the most famous female adventurer in the world, recently told me how she was freed from depression.Maybe you've read her autobiography, A Bound to Adventure.If there is any woman who can be associated with adventure, it is only her.When she was sixteen years old, Mr. Martin Johnson picked her up from the streets of Chanatee, Kansas, and put her down in the woods of another state, and he married her. For 25 years, the Kansas couple have traveled nearly the world, documenting the disappearing wildlife of Asia and Africa. Nine years ago, they returned to the United States, gave speeches everywhere, and showed their films.While flying to the West Coast in Denver, their plane crashed into a mountain, Martin Johnson died instantly, and the doctors said Osa would never get out of bed again.But they didn't know Osa Johnson, and three months later she was speaking in front of a crowd in a wheelchair.During that time, she gave more than 100 speeches, all in a wheelchair.When I asked her why she did it, she replied, "I do it so I don't have time to be sad and worry." Osa Johnson discovered the same truth that Mr. Dennison - who predated her by a century - said in verse: "I must immerse myself in the work, or I shall writhe in despair." Admiral Bader also discovered this, because he lived alone for five months in a small Antarctic hut covered with ice and snow.In that world of ice and snow, there is an unknown continent that is larger than the United States and Europe combined.Admiral Bader spent five months alone there, without any living beings around him.It was unnaturally cold, and as the wind blew past his ears, he could hear his breath almost freezing, like crystal.In his book "Solitude" he narrates the five months of his life which he passed in a darkness as sad as it was terrible.He must be constantly busy to keep himself from going mad. "At night," he said, "before I blow out the lights, I make it a habit to allocate the next day's work. That is, to arrange for myself what to do next. Take an hour, for example, to check For the escape tunnel, it takes half an hour to dig a horizontal pit, one hour to look at the fuel containers, one hour to dig out a place for books on the wall of the tunnel where the flying objects are hidden, and two more I went to repair the packer's sleigh..." "Being able to divide my time," he said, "is a very beneficial thing. It gives me a sense of being in charge of myself..." He added, "If I don't do this, my life has no purpose. .without purpose, these days will be business as usual and fall apart in the end." If we're worried about something, let's remember that we can use work as a good old remedy.The late Dr. Richard Copperpot, formerly a professor at Harvard Medical School, said: "I am glad to see that work can cure many patients. They are infected by excessive doubts, hesitation, hesitation and fear. The disease brought about by waiting. The courage brought to us by work is like Emerson's self-confidence that never fades." If we're not busy all the time—if we're sitting around worrying—we're going to generate a whole lot of what Darwin called "crazy thoughts."And these "crazy thoughts" are like the legendary goblins, they will hollow out our minds and destroy our willpower and ability to act. I know a businessman in New York who uses his busyness to drive away those "wandering thoughts" so that he has no time to worry and worry.His name was Cubble Longman, and he was also a student in my adult education class.His experience of conquering worry was very interesting and special, so I asked him to go to snack with me after class.We sat in a restaurant until midnight, talking about his experiences. Here's the story he told me: "Eighteen years ago, I suffered from insomnia because of excessive worry. I was short-tempered and very nervous, and I almost had a nervous breakdown. "I was worried for a reason. I was the financial manager of Crown Fruit Products on West Broadway in New York City. We invested half a million dollars and put strawberries in one-gallon jars. For 20 years, we have been making this Gallon canned strawberries were sold to ice cream makers. Then our sales suddenly dropped because the big ice cream makers, like National Dairy, etc., were ramping up production dramatically, and to save money and time, they Both buy strawberries in 36-gallon buckets. "Not only can we not sell strawberries worth 500,000 US dollars, but according to the contract, we have to buy another 1 million US dollars worth of strawberries within the next year. We have already borrowed 350,000 US dollars from the bank. If the money is not paid, and the loan cannot be renewed, of course I am worried. "I rushed to our factory in Watsonville, California, and tried to convince the general manager that things had changed and that we could be doomed. But he wouldn't believe it, and blamed the problems on New York companies and those who Poor clerk. "After several days of requests, I finally convinced him to stop using the packaging and put the new ones on the fresh strawberry market in San Francisco. This pretty much solved most of our problems, so I should no longer Worried, but I'm still a little bit worried. Some say worrying is a habit, and I've gotten into it. "When I got back to New York, I started worrying about everything, the cherries I bought in Italy, the pineapples I bought in Hawaii, etc. I was so nervous, I couldn't sleep, and like I said, I almost had a nervous breakdown. up. "In desperation, I adopted a new lifestyle that cured my insomnia and stopped worrying. I kept myself busy, so busy that I had to give all my energy and time to keep my No time to worry. I used to work 7 hours a day, now I work 15-16 hours a day. I get to the office at 8 o'clock in the morning and work until midnight. I take on new jobs and take on new ones. Responsibility, whenever I come home in the middle of the night, I always fall on the bed exhausted and fall asleep soundly within a few minutes. "After about 3 months of this, I got rid of my worrying habits and returned to normal working 7-8 hours a day again. This happened 18 years ago and I haven't had insomnia since then and worry." George Bernard Shaw summed it up and said: "The reason why people worry is that they have free time to think about whether they are happy or not." Therefore, if you want to eliminate worry, you don't have to think about it, gear up and keep yourself busy. , so that your blood will quicken and your mind will sharpen - keeping yourself busy is the cheapest and most effective cure for worry in the world. To kick your worry habit, here's the first rule: "Keep yourself busy. Worrying people must keep themselves immersed in work, or they will only struggle in despair."