How To Analyse And Solve Worry Problems

I keep six honest serving-men
(They taught me all I knew):
Their names are What and Why and When
And How and Where and Who. 

                                                                              Rudyard Kipling

 

We must equip ourselves to deal with different kinds of worries by learning the three basic steps of problem analysis. The three steps are:
1. Get the facts.
2. Analyse the facts. 
3. Arrive at a decision-and then act on that decision. 

You and I must use it too if we are going to solve the problems that are harassing us and turning our days and nights into veritable hells.

Let's take the first rule: Get the facts. Why is it so important to get the facts? Because unless we have the facts we can't possibly even attempt to solve our problem intelligently. Without the facts, all we can do is stew around in confusion. My idea? No, that was the idea of the late Herbert E. Hawkes, Dean of Columbia College, Columbia University, for twenty-two years. He had helped two hundred thousand students solve their worry problems; and he said that "confusion is the chief cause of worry". He put it this way-he said: "Half the worry in the world is caused by the people trying to make decisions before they have sufficient knowledge on which to base a decision.

For example, he said, "if I have a problem which has to be faced at three o'clock next Tuesday, I refuse even to try to make a decision about it until next Tuesday arrives. In the meantime, I concentrate on getting all the facts that bear on the problem. I don't lose any sleep. I simply concentrate on getting the facts. And by the time Tuesday rolls around, if I've got all the facts, the problem usually solved itself!".

"If a man will devote his time to securing facts in an impartial, objective way,
his worries will usually evaporate in the light of knowledge."  

 

 

However, getting all the facts in the world won't do us any good until analyse them and interpret them. I have found from costly experience that it is much easier to analyse the facts after writing then Sown. In fact, merely writing the facts on a piece of paper and stating our problems clearly goes a long way toward helping us to reach a sensible decision. As Charles Kettering puts is: "A problem well stated is a problem half solved." 

 

My friend once said to me, "Experience has proved to me, time after time, the enormous value of arriving at a decision. It is the failure to arrive at a fixed purpose, the inability to stop going round and round in maddening circles, that drives men to nervous breakdowns and living hells. I find that 50% of his worries vanishes once I arrive at a clear, definite decision; and another 40% usually vanishes once I start to carry out that decision.

So I banish about 90% of my worries by taking these four steps:

1. Writing down precisely what I am worrying about.
2. Writing down what I can do about it.
3. Deciding what to do.
4. Starting immediately to carry out that decision.

                                                                                                      

What Worry May Do To You

  

"Business men who do not know how to fight worry die young."

 Dr. Alexis Carrel     

Dr. O.F. Gober one of the medical executives of the Santa Fe railway once was talking about the effects of worry, and he said: Seventy percent of all patients who come to physicians could cure themselves if they only got rid of their fears and worries. Don't think for a moment that I mean that their ills are imaginary, he said . Their ills are as real as throbbing and sometimes a hundred times more serious. I refers to such illnesses as nervous indigestion, some stomach ulcers, heart disturbances, insomnia, some headaches and some types of paralysis.

"These illnesses are real. I know what I am talking about," said Dr. Gober, for I myself suffered from a stomach ulcer for twelve years.

"Fear cause worry. Worry makes you tense and nervous and affects the nerves of your stomach and actually changes the gastric juices of your stomach from normal to abnormal and often leads to stomach ulcers." 

Dr. Harold C. Habein of the Mayo Clinic who read a paper at the annual meeting of the American Association of Industrial Physicians and Surgeons, saying that he had made a study of 176 business executives whose average age was 44.3 years. He reported that slightly more than a third of these executives suffered from one of the three ailments peculiar to high-tension living-heart disease, digestive-tract ulcers, and high blood pressure. Think of it - a third of business executives are wrecking their bodies with heart disease, ulcers, and high blood pressure before they even reach forty-five. What price success! And they aren't even buying success! Can any man possibly be success who is paying for business advancement with stomach ulcers and heart trouble? What shall it profit a man if he gains the whole world, he could sleep in only one bed at a time and eat only three meals a day. Even a ditch-digger can do that and probably sleep more soundly and enjoy his food more than a high-powered executive. Frankly, I would rather be a share-cropper down in Alabama with a banjo on my knee than wreck my health at forty-five by trying to run a railroad or a cigarette company.

And speaking of cigarettes - the best known cigarette manufacturer in the world recently dropped dead from heart failure while trying to take a little recreation in the Canadian woods. He amassed millions and fell dead at sixty-one He probably traded years of his life for what is called "business success".

In my estimation, this cigarette executive with all his millions was not half successful as my father - a Missouri farmer- who died at eight-nine without a dollar.

What's the meaning of insanity?

It's doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.

A Magic Formula For Solving Worry Situations

Would you like a quick, sure-fire recipe for handling worry situations - a technique you can start using right away??

Then let me tell you about this method worked out by Wills H. Carrier, the brilliant engineer who launched the air-conditioning industry, and who is now head of the world-famous Carrier Corporation in Syracuse, New York.

"When I was a young man,"Mr. Carrier said, "I worked for the Buffalo Forge Company in Buffalo, New York. I was handed the assignment of installing a gas - cleaning device in a plant of the Pittsburgh Plate Glass at Crystal City, Missouri - a plant costing millions of dollars. The purpose of this installation was to remove the impurities from the gas so it could be burned without injuring the engines. This method of cleaning gas was new. It had been tried only once before - and under different conditions. In my work at Crystal City, Missouri, unforeseen difficulties arose. It worked after a fashion-but not well enough to meet the guarantee we had made.

"I was stunned by my failure. It was almost as if someone had struck me a blow on the head. My stomach, my insides, began to twist and turn. For a while I was so worried I couldn't sleep. "Finally, common sense reminded me that worry wasn't getting me anywhere; so I figured out a way to handle my problem without worrying. It worked superbly. I have been using this same anti-worry technique for more than thirty years.

It is simple. Anyone can use it. It consist of three steps:

Step 1.  I analysed the situation fearlessly and honestly and figured out what was the worst that could possibly happen as a result of this failure. No one was going to jail me or shoot me. That was certain. True, there was a chance that I would lose my position; and there was also a chance that my employees would have to remove the machinery and lose the twenty thousand dollars we had invested.

Step 2.  After figuring out what was the worst that could possibly happen, I reconciled myself to accepting it, if necessary. I said to myself: This failure will be a blow to my record, and it might possibly mean the loss of my job; but if it does, I can always get another position. Conditions could be much worse; and as far as my employers are concerned-well, they realise that we are experimenting with a new method of cleaning as, and if this experience costs them twenty thousand dollars, they can stand it. They can charge it up to research, for it is an experiment.

After discovering the worst that could possibly happen and reconciling myself to accepting it, if necessary, an extremely important thing happened: I immediately relaxed and felt a sense of peace that I hadn't experienced in days.

Step 3.  From that time on, I calmly devoted  my time and energy to trying to improve upon the worst which I had already accepted mentally. I now tried to figured out ways and means by which I might reduce the loss of twenty thousand dollars that we faced. I made several tests and finally figured out that if we spent another five thousand for additional equipment, our problem would be solved We did this, and instead of the firm losing losing twenty thousand, we made fifteen thousand.

I probably would never have been able to do this if I had kept on worrying, because one of the worst features about worrying is that it destroys our ability to concentrate. When we worry, our mind jumps here and there and everywhere, and we lose all power of decision. However, when we force ourselves to face the worst and accept it mentally, we then eliminate all those vague imaginings and put ourselves in a position in which we are able to concentrate on out problem.

Focus On Present Rather Than Focusing On Past And Future.

In the spring of 1871, a young man picked up a book and read twenty-one words that had a profound effect on his future.These twenty-one words helped him to become the most famous physician of his generation. He organised the world-famous John Hopkins School of Medicine. He became Regius Professor of Medicine at Oxford - the highest honour that can be bestowed upon any medical man in the British Empire. He was knighted by the King of England .

His name was Sir William Osier. Here are the twenty-one words that he read in the spring of 1871 - twenty-one words from Thomas Carlyle that helped him lead a life free from worry :

"Our main business is not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand."

 Four-two years later, on a soft spring night when the tulips were blooming on the campus, this man, Sir William Osier, addressed the students of Yale University. He told those Yale students that a man like himself who had been a professor in four universities and had written a popular book was supposed to have "brains of a special quality". He declared that, that was untrue. He said that his intimate friends knew that his brains were "of the most mediocre character".

What , then, was the secret of his success? He stated that it was owing to what he called living in "day-tight compartments." What did he mean by that ? A few months before he spoke at Yale, Sir William Osier had crossed the Atlantic on a great ocean liner where the captain standing on the bridge, could press a button and - presto! - there was a clanging of machinery and various parts of the ship were immediately shut off from one another - shut off into watertight compartments.

"Now each one of you," Dr. Osier said to those Yale students, "is a much more marvelous organisation that the great liner, and bound on a longer voyage. When I urge is that you so learn to control the machinery to live with "day-tight compartments" as the most certain way to ensure safety on the voyage. Get on the bridge, and see that at least the great bulkheads are in the working order. Touch a button and hear, at every level of your life, the iron doors shutting out the Past - the dead yesterdays. Touch another and shut off, with a mental curtain the Future - the unborn tomorrows. Then you are safe - safe for today!....Shut off the past. Let the dead past bury its dead......Shut out the yesterdays which have lighted fools the way to dusty death. ...The load of tomorrow, added to that of yesterday, carried today, makes the strongest falter. Shut off the future as tightly as past. .....The future is today. ....There is no tomorrow . The day of main's salvation is now. Waste of energy, mental distress, nervous worries dog the steps of a man who is anxious about the future. ......Shut close, then the great fore and aft bulkheads, and prepare to cultivate the habit of life of 'day-tight compartments'."

Did Dr. Osier mean to say that we should not make any effort to prepare for tomorrow? No. Not at all. but he did go on in that address to say that the best possible way to prepare for tomorrow is to concentrate with all your intelligence, all your enthusiasm, on doing today's work superbly todays. That is the only possible way you can prepare for the future.

Reasons And Their Complications

Studies have shown that people are selective when it comes to recording what really happens to and around them. No matter how strongly you feel you have the true picture, you are probably wrong. You can’t know the reason for anyone’s behavior.

To complicate matters further, sometimes we are actively dishonest about the reasons for our behavior. A classic example comes from a Japanese professor.
He claimed he wanted to spend more time with his family, but he was too busy at work. When I asked a few questions and elicited some details about his daily activity, it was clear that he wasted a lot of time at work. He chose to stay late at the university, socialize with his colleagues during the evenings, and then appear macho by having it known that he went home later than everyone else while receiving sympathy for not being able to spend more time with his family. Clearly he had made a choice, and being too busy at work was, of course, bullshit as a reason. This was immediately obvious to everyone in the workshop, yet it took me a full half hour to get a glimmer of recognition out of him.

Things happen; we do things, and others do things. If you like what happens, keep doing what you are doing and hope it keeps working well. If you do not like what happens, do it differently next time. Reasons get in the way of this simple pragmatic approach.

We are far better off without reasons. They provide people with excuses to keep behaving dysfunctionally. The world would be a much better place without reasons, right?

Okay, yes, not having reasons would lead to a strange existence. Without reasons, you would look like an unreasonable person to everyone else. So where does this leave us?

I have a twofold approach to the problem: one for the external persona, and one for the internal self. Externally you use reasons in everyday conversation when you need to, and thus appear to be perfectly normal and reasonable. Internally you look at the reasons your external self offers, and question each of them. The internal self also looks at the reasons given by the people you are interacting with. Simply by noticing how reasons are used, you can gain insight into your own behavior and your relationships with others.

This approach works well to change your own actions.

 It can’t be used to change others, however! It is not your job to tell anyone else her reasons are bullshit unless she is actively seeking your advice (like taking your class or, say, reading your book); doing this would make you a pretty unlikable person pretty quickly. The best way to fix the world is to fix yourself.

Make a pact with yourself to not use reasons unless you have to. This is actually an incredibly empowering position to come from. Be confident enough in your actions not to need to explain yourself. Trust yourself and act.

"Actions speak louder than reasons.

Don't give reasons unless you have to!"