How to stop worrying and start living – Dale Carnegie

Introduction

Thirty-Five years ago, I was one of the unhappiest lads in New York. I was
selling motor- trucks for a living. I didn’t know what made a motor-truck
run. That wasn’t all: I didn’t want to know. I despised my job. I despised
living in a cheap furnished room on West Fifty-sixth Street-a room infested
with cockroaches. I still remember that I had a bunch of neckties hanging
on the walls; and when I reached out of a morning to get a fresh necktie, the
cockroaches scattered in all directions. I despised having to eat in cheap,
dirty restaurants that were also probably infested with cockroaches.

I came home to my lonely room each night with a sick headache-a
headache bred and fed by disappointment, worry, bitterness, and rebellion. I
was rebelling because the dreams I had nourished back in my college days
had turned into nightmares. Was this life? Was this the vital adventure to
which I had looked forward so eagerly? Was this all life would ever mean to
me-working at a job I despised, living with cockroaches, eating vile food
and with no hope for the future? … I longed for leisure to read, and to write
the books I had dreamed of writing back in my college days.

I knew I had everything to gain and nothing to lose by giving up the job I
despised. I wasn’t interested in making a lot of money, but I was interested
in making a lot of living. In short, I had come to the Rubicon-to that
moment of decision which faces most young people when they start out in
life. So I made my decision-and that decision completely altered my future.
It has made the last thirty-five years happy and rewarding beyond my most
Utopian aspirations.

My decision was this: I would give up the work I loathed; and, since I
had spent four years studying in the State Teachers’ College at Warrensburg,