Dale Carnegie

I found this book as a pdf download on the internet the other day...

How To Stop Worrying and Start Living by Dale Carnegie

I'm only up to Chapter 8, but I am totally hooked.  It's fascinating.

Sixteen Ways in Which This Book Will Help You 

1. Gives you a number of practical, tested formulas for solving worry situations. 

2. Shows you how to eliminate fifty per cent of your business worries immediately. 

3. Brings you seven ways to cultivate a mental attitude that will bring you peace and happiness. 

4. Shows you how to lessen financial worries. 

5. Explains a law that will outlaw many of your worries. 

6. Tells you how to turn criticism to your advantage. 

7. Shows how the housewife can avoid fatigue-and keep looking young. (!!!!)*

8. Gives four working habits that will help prevent fatigue and worry. 

9. Tells you how to add one hour a day to your working life. 

10. Shows you how to avoid emotional upsets. 

11. Gives you the stories of scores of everyday men and women, who tell you in their own words how 

they stopped worrying and started living. 

12. Gives you Alfred Adler's prescription for curing melancholia in fourteen days. 

13. Gives you the 21 words that enabled the world-famous physician, Sir William Osier, to banish 

worry. 

14. Explains the three magic steps that Willis H. Carrier, founder of the air-conditioning industry, uses 

to conquer worry. 

15. Shows you how to use what William James called "the sovereign cure for worry". 

16. Gives you details of how many famous men conquered worry-men like Arthur Hays Sulzberger, 

publisher of the New York Times; Herbert E. Hawkes, former Dean of Columbia University; Ordway 

Tead, Chairman of the Board of Higher Education, New York City; Jack Dempsey; Connie Mack; 

Roger W. Babson; Admiral Byrd; Henry Ford; Gene Autry; J.C. Penney; and John D. Rockefeller. 

How to Stop Worrying and Start Living is a self-help book by Dale Carnegie. It was first printed in Great Britain in 1948. 
Carnegie says in the preface that he wrote it because he "was one of the unhappiest lads in New York". He said that he made himself sick with worry because he hated his position in life. The book's goal is to lead the reader to a more enjoyable and fulfilling lifestyle, helping them to become more aware of others. Carnegie tries to address the everyday nuances of living, in order to get the reader to focus on the more important aspects of life.

One of the core ideas in his books is that it is possible to change other people's behavior by changing one's reaction to them.

Dale Carnegie was born in 1888 in Maryville, Missouri and died in New York, November 1, 1955. He was a poor farmer's boy. His family moved to Belton, Missouri when he was a small child. In his teens, though still having to get up at 4 a.m. every day to milk his parents' cows, he managed to obtain an education at the State Teacher's College in Warrensburg. His first job after college was selling correspondence courses to ranchers; then he moved on to selling bacon, soap and lard for Armour & Company. He was successful to the point of making his sales territory of South Omaha, Nebraska, the national leader for the firm.

After saving $500, Dale Carnegie quit sales in 1911 in order to pursue a lifelong dream of becoming a Chautauqua lecturer. After a stint as an actor, he returned to New York, unemployed, nearly broke, and living at the YMCA on 125th Street. It was there that he got the idea to teach public speaking, and he persuaded the "Y" manager to allow him to instruct a class in return for 80% of the net proceeds. 

In his first session, he had run out of material so, improvising, he suggested that students speak about "something that made them angry", and discovered that the technique made speakers unafraid to address a public audience. From this 1912 debut, the Dale Carnegie Course evolved. Carnegie had tapped into the average American's desire to have more self-confidence and by 1914 he was earning $500 – the equivalent of nearly $10,000 now – every week.

Perhaps one of Carnegie’s most successful marketing moves was to change the spelling of his last name from “Carnagey” to Carnegie, at a time when Andrew Carnegie (unrelated) was a widely revered and recognized name. By 1916, Dale was able to rent Carnegie Hall itself for a lecture to a packed house. 

His crowning achievement, however, was when Simon & Schuster published How to Win Friends and Influence People. The book was a bestseller from its debut in 1936.  By the time of Carnegie's death, the book had sold five million copies in 31 languages, and there had been 450,000 graduates of his Dale Carnegie Institute. 

*Now because the book was written sometime in the early 1940s it is full in politically-incorrectness such as the chapter entitled "How the Housewife Can Avoid Fatigue-and Keep Looking Young", and for some bizarre reason, weird typos!  Never-the-less, the thinking is sound and even better, unlike a lot of more supposedly sophisticated new-agey self-help books, he actually has a method to help people stop worrying.  I have always been frustrated by books that talk ad naseum about a topic but never actually tell you what to do about it.

So, if you find yourself with some spare time, perhaps on a cold, rainy/snowy winter day, and you are an habitual worrier, like me;  have a look at what Mr. Carnegie has to say on the subject - it just might make your life a little easier.

"The ideas I stand for are not mine. I borrowed them from Socrates. I swiped them from Chesterfield. I stole them from Jesus. And I put them in a book. If you don't like their rules whose would you use?" Dale Carnegie