Chapter 6 - How To Crowd Worry Out Of Your Mind

I shall never forget the night, a few years ago, when Marion J. Douglas was a student in
one of my classes. (I have not used his real name. He requested me, for personal
reasons, not to reveal his identity.) But here is his real story as he told it before one of
our adult-education classes. He told us how tragedy had struck at his home, not once,
but twice. The first time he had lost his five-year-old daughter, a child he adored. He
and his wife thought they couldn't endure that first loss; but, as he said: "Ten months
later, God gave us another little girl-and she died in five days."
This double bereavement was almost too much to bear. "I couldn't take it," this father
told us. "I couldn't sleep, I couldn't eat, I couldn't rest or relax. My nerves were utterly
shaken and my confidence gone." At last he went to doctors; one recommended sleeping
pills and another recommended a trip. He tried both, but neither remedy helped. He
said: "My body felt as if it were encased in a vice, and the jaws of the vice were being
drawn tighter and tighter." The tension of grief-if you have ever been paralysed by
sorrow, you know what he meant.
"But thank God, I had one child left-a four-year-old son. He gave me the solution to my
problem. One afternoon as I sat around feeling sorry for myself, he asked: 'Daddy, will
you build a boat for me?' I was in no mood to build a boat; in fact, I was in no mood to
do anything. But my son is a persistent little fellow! I had to give in.
"Building that toy boat took about three hours. By the time it was finished, I realised
that those three hours spent building that boat were the first hours of mental relaxation
and peace that I had had in months!
"That discovery jarred me out of my lethargy and caused me to do a bit of thinking-the
first real thinking I had done in months. I realised that it is difficult to worry while you
are busy doing something that requires planning and thinking. In my case, building the
boat had knocked worry out of the ring. So I resolved to keep busy.
"The following night, I went from room to room in the house, compiling a list of jobs
that ought to be done. Scores of items needed to be repaired: bookcases, stair steps,
storm windows, window-shades, knobs, locks, leaky taps. Astonishing as it seems, in the
course of two weeks I had made a list of 242 items that needed attention.
"During the last two years I have completed most of them. Besides, I have filled my life
with stimulating activities. Two nights per week I attend adult-education classes in New
York. I have gone in for civic activities in my home town and I am now chairman of the
school board. I attend scores of meetings. I help collect money for the Red Cross and

No time for worry! That is exactly what Winston Churchill said when he was working
eighteen hours a day at the height of the war. When he was asked if he worried about
his tremendous responsibilities, he said: "I'm too busy. I have no time for worry."
Charles Kettering was in that same fix when he started out to invent a self-starter for
automobiles. Mr. Kettering was, until his recent retirement, vice-president of General
Motors in charge of the world-famous General Motors Research Corporation. But in those
days, he was so poor that he had to use the hayloft of a barn as a laboratory. To buy
groceries, he had to use fifteen hundred dollars that his wife had made by giving piano
lessons; later, had to borrow five hundred dollars on his life insurance. I asked his wife
if she wasn't worried at a time like that. "Yes," she replied, "I was so worried I couldn't
sleep; but Mr. Kettering wasn't. He was too absorbed in his work to worry."
The great scientist, Pasteur, spoke of "the peace that is found in libraries and
laboratories." Why is peace found there? Because the men in libraries and laboratories
are usually too absorbed in their tasks to worry about themselves. Research men rarely
have nervous breakdowns. They haven't time for such luxuries.
Why does such a simple thing as keeping busy help to drive out anxiety? Because of a
law-one of the most fundamental laws ever revealed by psychology. And that law is:
that it is utterly impossible for any human mind, no matter how brilliant, to think of
more than one thing at any given time. You don't quite believe it? Very well, then, let's
try an experiment.
Suppose you lean right back now, close your eyes, and try, at the same instant, to think
of the Statue of Liberty and of what you plan to do tomorrow morning. (Go ahead, try
it.)
You found out, didn't you, that you could focus on either thought in turn, but never on
both simultaneously? Well, the same thing is true in the field of emotions. We cannot be
pepped up and enthusiastic about doing something exciting and feel dragged down by
worry at the very same time. One kind of emotion drives out the other. And it was that
simple discovery that enabled Army psychiatrists to perform such miracles during the
war.
When men came out of battle so shaken by the experience that they were called
"psychoneurotic", Army doctors prescribed "Keep 'em busy" as a cure.
Every waking minute of these nerve-shocked men was filled with activity-usually
outdoor activity, such as fishing, hunting, playing ball, golf, taking pictures, making
gardens, and dancing. They were given no time for brooding over their terrible
experiences.
"Occupational therapy" is the term now used by psychiatry when work is prescribed as
though it were a medicine. It is not new. The old Greek physicians were advocating it
five hundred years before Christ was born!
The Quakers were using it in Philadelphia in Ben Franklin's time. A man who visited a
Quaker sanatorium in 1774 was shocked to see that the patients who were mentally ill
were busy spinning flax. He thought these poor unfortunates were being exploited-until
the Quakers explained that they found that their patients actually improved when they
did a little work. It was soothing to the nerves.
Any psychiatrist will tell you that work-keeping busy- is one of the best anesthetics ever
known for sick nerves. Henry W. Longfellow found that out for himself when he lost his
young wife. His wife had been melting some sealing-wax at a candle one day, when her
clothes caught on fire. Longfellow heard her cries and tried to reach her in time; but
she died from the burns. For a while, Longfellow was so tortured by the memory of that
dreadful experience that he nearly went insane; but, fortunately for him, his three
small children needed his attention. In spite of his own grief, Longfellow undertook to
be father and mother to his children. He took them for walks, told them stories, played
games with them, and immortalised their companionship in his poem The Children's
Hour. He also translated Dante; and all these duties combined kept him so busy that he
forgot himself entirely, and regained his peace of mind. As Tennyson declared when he
lost his most intimate friend, Arthur Hallam: "I must lose myself in action, lest I wither
in despair."
Most of us have little trouble "losing ourselves in action" while we have our noses to the
grindstone and are doing our day's work. But the hours after work-they are the
dangerous ones. Just when we're free to enjoy our own leisure, and ought to be
happiest-that's when the blue devils of worry attack us. That's when we begin to wonder
whether we're getting anywhere in life; whether we're in a rut; whether the boss "meant
anything" by that remark he made today; or whether we're getting bald.
When we are not busy, our minds tend to become a near-vacuum. Every student of
physics knows that "nature abhors a vacuum". The nearest thing to a vacuum that you
and I will probably ever see is the inside of an incandescent electric-light bulb. Break
that bulb-and nature forces air in to fill the theoretically empty space.
Nature also rushes in to fill the vacant mind. With what? Usually with emotions. Why?
Because emotions of worry, fear, hate, jealousy, and envy are driven by primeval vigour
and the dynamic energy of the jungle. Such emotions are so violent that they tend to
drive out of our minds all peaceful, nappy thoughts and emotions.
James L. Mursell, professor of education, Teachers' College, Columbia, puts it very well
when he says: "Worry is most apt to ride you ragged not when you are in action, but
when the day's work is done. Your imagination can run riot then and bring up all sorts of
ridiculous possibilities and magnify each little blunder. At such a time," he continues,
"your mind is like a motor operating without its load. It races and threatens to burn out
its bearings or even to tear itself to bits. The remedy for worry is to get completely
occupied doing something constructive."
But you don't have to be a college professor to realise this truth and put it into practice.
During the war, I met a housewife from Chicago who told me how she discovered for
herself that "the remedy for worry is to get completely occupied doing something
constructive." I met this woman and her husband in the dining-car while I was travelling
from New York to my farm in Missouri. (Sorry I didn't get their names-I never like to give
examples without using names and street addresses- details that give authenticity to a
story.)
This couple told me that their son had joined the armed forces the day after Pearl
Harbour. The woman told me that she had almost wrecked her health worrying over that
only son. Where was he? Was he safe? Or in action? Would he be wounded? Killed?
When I asked her how she overcame her worry, she replied: "I got busy." She told me
that at first she had dismissed her maid and tried to keep busy by doing all her
housework herself. But that didn't help much. "The trouble was," she said, "that I could
do my housework almost mechanically, without using my mind. So I kept on worrying.
While making the beds and washing the dishes I realised I needed some new kind of
work that would keep me busy both mentally and physically every hour of the day. So I

"That did it," she said. "I immediately found myself in a whirlwind of activity: customers
swarming around me, asking for prices, sizes, colours. Never a second to think of
anything except my immediate duty; and when night came, I could think of nothing
except getting off my aching feet. As soon as I ate dinner, I fell into bed and instantly
became unconscious. I had neither the time nor the energy to worry."
She discovered for herself what John Cowper Powys meant when he said, in The Art of
Forgetting the Unpleasant: "A certain comfortable security, a certain profound inner
peace, a kind of happy numbness, soothes the nerves of the human animal when
absorbed in its allotted task."
And what a blessing that it is so! Osa Johnson, the world's most famous woman explorer,
recently told me how she found release from worry and grief. You may have read the
story of her life. It is called I Married Adventure. If any woman ever married adventure,
she certainly did. Martin Johnson married her when she was sixteen and lifted her feet
off the sidewalks of Chanute, Kansas, and set them down on the wild jungle trails of
Borneo. For a quarter of a century, this Kansas couple travelled all over the world,
making motion pictures of the vanishing wild life of Asia and Africa. Back in America
nine years ago, they were on a lecture tour, showing their famous films. They took a
plane out of Denver, bound for the Coast. The plane plunged into a mountain. Martin
Johnson was killed instantly. The doctors said Osa would never leave her bed again. But
they didn't know Osa Johnson. Three months later, she was in a wheel chair, lecturing
before large audiences. In fact, she addressed over a hundred audiences that season-all
from a wheel chair. When I asked her why she did it, she replied: "I did it so that I would
have no time for sorrow and worry."
Osa Johnson had discovered the same truth that Tennyson had sung about a century
earlier: "I must lose myself in action, lest I wither in despair."
Admiral Byrd discovered this same truth when he lived all alone for five months in a
shack that was literally buried in the great glacial ice-cap that covers the South Pole-an
ice-cap that holds nature's oldest secrets-an ice-cap covering an unknown continent
larger than the United States and Europe combined. Admiral Byrd spent five months
there alone. No other living creature of any kind existed within a hundred miles. The
cold was so intense that he could hear his breath freeze and crystallise as the wind blew
it past his ears. In his book Alone, Admiral Byrd tells all about those five months he
spent in bewildering and soul-shattering darkness. The days were as black as the nights.
He had to keep busy to preserve his sanity.
"At night," he says, "before blowing out the lantern, I formed the habit of blocking out
the morrow's work. It was a case of assigning myself an hour, say, to the Escape Tunnel,
half an hour to leveling drift, an hour to straightening up the fuel drums, an hour to
cutting bookshelves in the walls of the food tunnel, and two hours to renewing a broken
bridge in the man-hauling sledge. ...
"It was wonderful," he says, "to be able to dole out time in this way. It brought me an
extraordinary sense of command over myself. ..." And he adds: "Without that or an
equivalent, the days would have been without purpose; and without purpose they would
have ended, as such days always end, in disintegration."
Note that last again: "Without purpose, the days would have ended, as such days always
end, in disintegration."
If you and I are worried, let's remember that we can use good old-fashioned work as a
medicine. That was said by no less an authority than the late Dr. Richard C. Cabot,
formerly professor of clinical medicine at Harvard. In his book What Men Live By, Dr.
Cabot says: "As a physician, I have had the happiness of seeing work cure many persons
who have suffered from trembling palsy of the soul which results from overmastering
doubts, hesitations, vacillation and fear. ... Courage given us by our work is like the
self-reliance which Emerson has made for ever glorious."
If you and I don't keep busy-if we sit around and brood- we will hatch out a whole flock
of what Charles Darwin used to call the "wibber gibbers". And the "wibber gibbers" are
nothing but old-fashioned gremlins that will run us hollow and destroy our power of
action and our power of will.
I know a business man in New York who fought the "wibber gibbers" by getting so busy
that he had no time to fret and stew. His name is Tremper Longman, and his office is at
40 Wall Street. He was a student in one of my adult-education classes; and his talk on
conquering worry was so interesting, so impressive, that I asked him to have supper with
me after class; and we sat in a restaurant until long past midnight, discussing his
experiences. Here is the story he told me: "Eighteen years ago, I was so worried I had
insomnia. I was tense, irritated, and jittery. I felt I was headed for a nervous
breakdown.
"I had reason to be worried. I was treasurer of the Crown Fruit and Extract Company,
418 West Broadway, New York. We had half a million dollars invested in strawberries
packed in gallon tins. For twenty years, we had been selling these gallon tins of
strawberries to manufactures of ice cream. Suddenly our sales stopped because the big
ice-cream makers, such as National Dairy and Borden's, were rapidly increasing their
production and were saving money and time by buying strawberries packed in barrels.
"Not only were we left with half a million dollars in berries we couldn't sell, but we were
also under contract to buy a million dollars more of strawberries in the next twelve
months! We had already borrowed $350,000 from the banks. We couldn't possibly pay
off or renew these loans. No wonder I was worried!
"I rushed out to Watsonville, California, where our factory was located, and tried to
persuade our president that conditions had changed, that we were facing ruin. He
refused to believe it. He blamed our New York office for all the trouble-poor
salesmanship.
"After days of pleading, I finally persuaded him to stop packing more strawberries and to
sell our new supply on the fresh berry market in San Francisco. That almost solved our
problems. I should have been able to stop worrying then; but I couldn't. Worry is a
habit; and I had that habit.
"When I returned to New York, I began worrying about everything; the cherries we were
buying in Italy, the pineapples we were buying in Hawaii, and so on. I was tense, jittery,
couldn't sleep; and, as I have already said, I was heading for a nervous breakdown.
"In despair, I adopted a way of life that cured my insomnia and stopped my worries. I
got busy. I got so busy with problems demanding all my faculties that I had no time to
worry. I had been working seven hours a day. I now began working fifteen and sixteen
hours a day. I got down to the office every morning at eight o'clock and stayed there
every night until almost midnight. I took on new duties, new responsibilities. When I got
home at midnight, I was so exhausted when I fell in bed that I became unconscious in a
few seconds.
"I kept up this programme for about three months. I had broken the habit of worry by
that time, so I returned to a normal working day of seven or eight hours. This event
occurred eighteen years ago. I have never been troubled with insomnia or worry since
then."
George Bernard Shaw was right. He summed it all up when he said: "The secret of being
miserable is to have the leisure to bother about whether you are happy or not." So don't
bother to think about it! Spit on your hands and get busy. Your blood will start
circulating; your mind will start ticking -and pretty soon this whole positive upsurge of
life in your body will drive worry from your mind. Get busy. Keep busy. It's the cheapest
kind of medicine there is on this earth-and one of the best.
To break the worry habit, here is Rule 1:
Keep busy. The worried person must lose himself in action, lest be wither in despair.