Chapter 14 keep yourself busy

I will never forget one night a few years ago when a member of my class, Marion Douglas, told us about a tragic tragedy that befell his family—not once, but twice.For the first time, he lost his 5-year-old daughter, who was very dear to him.Both he and his wife thought they couldn't bear the blow, but, as he said: "Ten months later, God gave us another little girl, but she died after only five days." The successive blows were 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 devastated mentally, and my confidence was gone." Finally, he went to see a doctor.One doctor advised him to take sleeping pills, while another advised him to travel.He tried both methods, but neither worked for him.He said: "My body is like being caught in a big iron clip, and this iron clip is getting tighter and tighter." That kind of sadness brought him too much pressure—if you have ever been Sad and numb, then you know what he's feeling.

"However, thank God, we also have a child - a four-year-old son, who taught us to find a solution to our problems. One afternoon, I sat there sadly, and he asked me: 'Dad, would you Won't 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 to do anything at all. But my son was such a pestering little fellow, I had to follow his mean to 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 became the first time I felt relaxed 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 disappeared, so I decided to keep myself busy. “The next night, I looked at each room and made a list of all the things to be done. There were many small things such as bookshelves, stairs, curtains, door knobs, locks, leaky faucets, etc. that needed repairing. Let Incredibly, I made a list of 242 things that needed to be done in two weeks.

“In the past two years, most of these things have been done. In addition, I have added inspiring activities to my life: taking adult education classes in New York City two nights a week and attending Now I’m chair of the school board, attend a lot of meetings, and help with fundraising for the Red Cross and other organizations. Right now I’m so busy that I hardly have time to worry.” There was no time to worry, which is what Churchill once said, when the war was tense and he had to work 18 hours a day.When he was asked whether he was apprehensive about such heavy responsibilities, he said, "A man is too busy to have time for apprehension."

Charles Kettering encountered a similar situation when he invented the automatic ignition for automobiles.Mr. Kettering has been the vice president of General Motors, in charge of the world-renowned General Motors Research Corporation, and he retired not long ago.However, back then he was so poor that he could only rent a barn piled with straw as a laboratory; the family's living expenses only depended on the $1,500 his wife earned from teaching piano.Later, he had to borrow $500 against his life insurance.I asked his wife, was she worried during that period? "Of course," she replied, "I was too worried to sleep, but my husband wasn't worried at all. He was so absorbed in his work that he didn't have time to worry."

The great scientist Pasteur also once spoke of "the peace found in libraries and laboratories".Why find peace there?Because people who work in libraries and laboratories are usually so engrossed in their work that they have no 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, it is impossible to think about more than one thing at the same time-this is one of the basic theorems discovered by psychology.Let's do an experiment: Sit back in your chair, close your eyes, and try to think at the same time about Statue of Liberty and what you're going to do tomorrow morning.

You'll find that you can only think about one of these things in turn, and it's impossible to 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 retreated from the blows they received in battle, they all suffered from a kind of "psychological debilitating disease."Army doctors have mostly taken a "keep them busy" approach to this.These mentally distressed people are engaged in activities all the time except when they sleep, such as fishing, hunting, basketball, golf, taking pictures, planting flowers, or dancing, etc., which do not allow them to have Time to think back on those horrible experiences.

"Occupational therapy" is a new term invented by modern psychologists, that is, using work as medicine to treat diseases.This is not a new method, because 500 years before the birth of Jesus, doctors in ancient Greece had already used this method to treat people. It was also used by the Quakers of Philadelphia in Franklin's day. In 1774, a man visited the sanitarium run by the Quakers. When he saw the mental patients busy spinning and weaving, he was shocked.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 it gave them stability.

Any psychotherapist will tell you that work—constantly busy—is the best cure 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 sealing, and the clothes caught fire.Longfellow heard her cry and rushed to rescue her, but she died of burns.For a long time Longfellow was so haunted by the dreadful event that he nearly went mad.Fortunately, his 3 young children require his care.Although he is sad, he still wants to be a father and mother.He took them for walks, told them stories, played games with them, and immortalized their father-son relationship in the poem "Children's Time".He also translated Dante's.All this work made him so busy that he completely forgot himself and regained his peace of mind.As Bennison once said on the death of his best friend Arthur Harlan: "I must immerse myself in my work, or else I shall be anxious and distressed in despair."

For most people, "immersing themselves in work" probably won't be much of a problem when their day job keeps them busy.But as soon as get off work is done—when we are free to enjoy our relaxation and pleasure—the demon of worry begins to attack us.That’s when we often wonder about things like what we’re accomplishing in life, are we doing a good job, is there “something special” about what our boss said today, or are we starting to go bald… … When we're not busy, our minds often become a vacuum.Every student of physics knows that "there is no vacuum in nature".For example, if you break an incandescent light bulb, air will immediately enter and fill the space that is theoretically a vacuum.

George Bernard Shaw was right. He 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. Spit on it and keep yourself busy so your blood starts circulating and your mind sharpens - keeping yourself busy is the cheapest and most effective cure for worry in the world. To break your worrying habit, remember this rule: "Keep yourself busy. Worrying people must keep themselves immersed in work, or they will only struggle in despair."