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.

                                                                                                      

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