“How to stop worrying and start living” by Dale Carnegie, Chapter-2: A magic formula for solving worry situations!

What if I tell you by reading this blog, you can solve 90% of all your worries within 5 minutes?

In this chapter, the author explains how a person named Willis H. Carrier handled assignments of installing new aged gas cleaning devices which were facing unforeseen difficulties. He was so stressed out by the complaints that he was unable to sleep.

The author explains how he handled his worry and how the following method helped him invent Air conditioners and built A.C. giant Carrier Corporation.

It’s a simple 3 steps process:

1.  Analyze the situation fearlessly-

Try to figure out the insights of the situation and try to think of the worst outcome of the situation, it might be a bad project or some legal issue related to business. If possible try to write the worst outcome on a piece of paper and later tear it.

2.  Reconciling it with yourself-

As Warren Buffett once quoted in his letter to shareholders “A fool ceases to be a fool when he recognizes it”. When you are aware of your worst outcome, try to accept it.

3.  Improve the worst-

Now take time, and calmly think about how can you improve the worst outcome. It might lead to creating competitive advantages in the industry.

There might be more methods to stop worrying. This method was helpful for me when I was preparing for the Chartered Accountancy course. In CA. foundation, math was the only subject where most students failed and I knew about that statistics and quickly accepted the fact that I was bad at math.

I prepare for maths 3 months in a row, trying to make my worst outcome better. In that process, I learned about this method and pass the foundation level.

Moreover, I realize that beauty is in the process!