Sleep Story: How 2 Stop Worrying & Start Living: Ch 20,21,22

Enjoy this sleep story to help you drift off into a peaceful slumber while hearing motivational suggestions authored by Dale Carnegie. His book, "How To Stop Worrying and Start Living" is a classic written in 1948 and offers a plan to help us make the most of our lives, be productive, and thrive in the present moment. Part 6 includes Chapters 20, 21, and 22 and discusses how to keep from worrying about criticism from other folks.

Transcript

Hello,

My name is Hilary LaFawn and I am so grateful that you have joined me today to explore Chapter 20,

21,

And 22 of How to Stop Worrying and Start Living by Dale Carnegie.

This is Part 6,

How to Keep from Worrying about Criticism.

Enjoy this sleep story to help relax your mind and your body for a great night's rest.

Before we begin,

Settle yourself in your bed and find your most comfortable position.

Take a few deep,

Long breaths and feel the gentle,

Soothing support of your pillows,

Sheets and blankets.

Let them cradle your body as you relax and settle in.

Let's begin Chapter 20.

Remember that no one ever kicks a dead dog.

An event occurred in 1929 that created a national sensation in educational circles.

Learned men from all over America rushed to Chicago to witness the affair.

A few years earlier,

A man by the name of Robert Hutchins had worked his way through Yale acting as a waiter,

A lumberjack,

A tutor,

And a clothesline salesman.

Now only eight years later,

He was being inaugurated as president of the fourth richest university in America,

The University of Chicago.

His age?

Thirty.

Incredible.

The older educators shook their heads.

Criticism came roaring down upon this boy wonder like a rock slide.

He was this and he was that.

Too young,

Inexperienced.

His educational ideas were cockeyed.

Even the newspapers joined in the attack.

The day he was inaugurated,

A friend said to the father of Robert Maynard Hutchins,

I was shocked this morning to read the newspaper editorial denouncing your son.

Yes,

The elder Hutchins replied.

It was severe,

But remember that no one ever kicks a dead dog.

Yes,

And the more important a dog is,

The more satisfaction people get in kicking him.

The Prince of Wales,

Who later became Edward VIII,

Had that brought home to him in the seat of his pants.

He was attending Dartmouth College in Devonshire at the time,

A college that corresponds to the Naval Academy at Annapolis.

The prince was about fourteen.

One day,

One of the naval officers found him crying and asked him what was wrong.

He refused to tell at first,

But finally admitted the truth.

He was being kicked by the naval cadets.

The Commodore of the College summoned the boys and explained to them that the prince had not complained,

But he wanted to find out why the prince had been singled out for this rough treatment.

After much hemming and hawing and toe scrapping,

The cadets finally confessed that when they themselves became commanders and captains in the King's navy,

They wanted to be able to say they had kicked the King.

So when you are kicked and criticized,

Remember that it often does because it gives the kicker a feeling of importance.

It often means that you are accomplishing something and are worthy of attention.

Many people get a sense of savage satisfaction out of denouncing those who are better educated than they are or more successful.

For example,

While I was writing this chapter,

I received a letter from a woman denouncing General William Booth,

Founder of the Salvation Army.

I had given a laudatory broadcast about General Booth,

So this woman wrote me,

Saying that General Booth had stolen eight million dollars of the money he had collected to help poor people.

The charge,

Of course,

Was absurd,

But this woman wasn't looking for truth.

She was seeking the mean-spirited gratification that she got from tearing down someone far above her.

I threw her bitter letter into the wastebasket and thanked Almighty God that I wasn't married to her.

Her letter didn't tell me anything at all about General Booth,

But it did tell me a lot about her.

Schopenhauer had said it years ago,

Vulgar people take huge delight in the faults and follies of great men.

One hardly thinks of the President of Yale as a vulgar man,

Yet a former President of Yale,

Timothy Dwight,

Apparently took huge delight in denouncing a man who was running for President of the United States.

The President of Yale warned that if this man were elected President,

We may see our wives and daughters,

The victims of legal prostitution,

Soberly dishonored,

Polluted,

The outcasts of delicacy and virtue,

The loathing of God and man.

Sounds like a denunciation of Hitler,

Doesn't it?

But it wasn't.

It was a denunciation of Thomas Jefferson.

Which Thomas Jefferson?

Surely not the immortal Thomas Jefferson,

The author of the Declaration of Independence,

The patron saint of democracy.

Yes,

Verily,

That was the man.

What American do you suppose was denounced as a hypocrite,

An imposter,

And as little better than a murderer?

A newspaper cartoon depicted him on a guillotine,

The big knife ready to cut off his head.

Crowds jeered at him and hissed at him as he rode through the streets.

Who was he?

George Washington.

But that occurred a long time ago.

Maybe human nature has improved since then.

Let's see.

Let's take the case of Admiral Perry,

The explorer who startled and thrilled the world by reaching the North Pole with a dog sled on April 6,

1909,

A goal that brave men for centuries had suffered and starved and died to attain.

Perry himself almost died from cold and starvation,

And eight of his toes were frozen so hard they had to be cut off.

He was so overwhelmed with disasters that he feared he would go insane.

His superior naval officers in Washington were burned up because Perry was getting so much publicity and acclaim.

So they accused him of collecting money for scientific expeditions and then lying around and loafing in the Arctic.

And they probably believed it,

Because it is almost impossible not to believe what you want to believe.

Their determination to humiliate and block Perry was so violent that only a direct order from President McKinney enabled Perry to continue his career in the Arctic.

Would Perry have been denounced if he had a desk job in the naval department in Washington?

No,

He wouldn't have been important enough then to have aroused jealousy.

General Grant had an even worse experience than Admiral Perry.

In 1862,

General Grant won the first great decisive victory that the North had enjoyed,

A victory that was achieved in one afternoon,

A victory that made Grant a national idol overnight,

A victory that had tremendous repercussions even in far-off Europe,

A victory that set church bells ringing and bonfires blazing from Maine to the banks of the Mississippi.

Yet within six weeks after achieving that great victory,

Grant,

Hero of the North,

Was arrested and his army was taken from him.

He wept with humiliation and despair.

Why was General U.

S.

Grant arrested at the flood tide of his victory?

Essentially because he had aroused the jealousy and envy of his arrogant superiors.

If we are tempted to be worried about unjust criticism,

Here is rule number one.

Remember that unjust criticism is often a disguised compliment.

Remember that no one ever kicks a dead dog.

Rule number 21,

Do this and criticism can't hurt you.

I once interviewed Major General Smedley Butler,

Old gimlet-eyed,

Old hell devil,

Butler.

Remember him?

One of the most colorful swashbuckling generals who ever commanded the United States Marines.

He told me that when he was young,

He was desperately eager to be popular,

Wanted to make a good impression on everyone.

In those days,

The slightest criticism smarted and stung,

But he confessed that thirty years in the Marines had toughened his hide.

I have been berated and insulted,

He said,

And denounced as a yellow dog,

A snake,

And a skunk.

I have been cursed by the experts.

I have been called every possible combination of unprintable cuss words in the English language.

Bother me?

Huh.

When I hear somebody cussing me now,

I never turn my head to see who is talking.

Maybe old gimlet-eyed Butler was too indifferent to criticism,

But one thing is sure,

Most of us take the little jibes and javelins that are hurled at us far too seriously.

I remember the time years ago when a reporter from the New York Sun attended a demonstration meeting of my adult education classes and lampooned me and my work.

Was I burned up?

I took it as a personal insult.

I telephoned Gil Hodges,

The chairman of the executive committee of the Sun,

And practically demanded that he print an article stating the facts instead of ridicule.

I was determined to make the punishment fit the crime.

I am ashamed now of the way I acted.

I realize now that half the people who bought the paper never even saw the article.

Half of those who read it regarded it as a source of innocent merriment.

Half of those who gloated over it forgot all about it in a few weeks.

I realize now that people are not thinking about you and me or caring about what is said about us.

They are thinking about themselves before breakfast,

After breakfast,

And right on until ten minutes past midnight.

They would be a thousand times more concerned about a slight headache of their own than they would about the news of your death or mine.

Even if you and I are lied about,

Ridiculed,

Double-crossed,

Knifed in the back,

And sold down the river by one out of every six of our most intimate friends,

Let's not indulge in an orgy of self-pity.

Instead,

Let's remind ourselves that that's precisely what happened to Jesus.

One of his twelve most intimate friends turned traitor for a bribe and would amount in our modern money to about nineteen dollars.

Another one of his twelve most intimate friends openly deserted Jesus the moment he got in trouble and declared three times that he didn't even know Jesus.

And he swore as he said it.

One out of six.

That is what happened to Jesus.

Why should you and I expect a better score?

I discovered years ago that although I couldn't keep people from criticizing me unjustly,

I could do something infinitely more important.

I could determine whether I would let the unjust condemnation disturb me.

Let's be clear about this.

I'm not advocating ignoring all criticism.

Far from it.

I'm talking about ignoring only unjust criticism.

I once asked Eleanor Roosevelt how she handled unjust criticism.

And all I know,

She had a lot of it.

She probably had more ardent friends and more violent enemies than any other woman who ever lived in the White House.

She told me that as a young girl,

She was almost morbidly shy,

Afraid of what people might say.

She was so afraid of criticism that one day she asked her aunt,

Theodore Roosevelt's sister,

For advice.

She said,

Auntie,

Bye.

I want to do so and so,

But I'm afraid of being criticized.

Teddy Roosevelt's sister looked her in the eye and said,

Never be bothered by what other people say,

As long as you know in your heart you are right.

Eleanor Roosevelt told me that bit of advice proved to her to be the rock of Gibraltar years later when she was in the White House.

She told me that the only way we can avoid all criticism is to be like a Dresden China figure and stay on a shelf.

Do what you feel in your heart to be right,

For you'll be criticized anyways.

You'll be damned if you do,

And damned if you don't.

That is her advice.

When the late Matthew C.

Brush was president of the American International Corporation,

I asked him if he was ever sensitive to criticism,

And he replied,

Yes.

I was very sensitive to it in my early days.

I was eager then to have all the employees in the organization think I was perfect.

If they didn't,

It worried me.

I would try to please one person who had been sounding off against me,

But the very thing I did to patch it up with him would make someone else mad.

Then when I tried to fix it with this person,

I would stir up a couple other bumblebees.

I finally discovered that the more I tried to pacify and to smooth over injured feelings in order to escape personal criticism,

The more certain I was to increase my enemies.

So finally I said to myself,

If you get your head above the crowd,

You're going to be criticized,

So get used to the idea.

That helped me tremendously.

From that time on,

I made it a rule to do the very best I could,

And then put up my old umbrella and let the rain of criticism drain off me instead of running down my neck.

Demes Taylor went a bit further.

He let the rain of criticism run down his neck and had a good laugh over it in public when he was giving his comments during the intermission of the Sunday afternoon radio concert of the New York Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra.

A woman wrote him a letter calling him a liar,

A traitor,

A snake,

And a moron.

Mr.

Taylor says in his book of Men in Music,

I have a suspicion that she didn't care for that talk.

On the following week's broadcast,

Mr.

Taylor read this letter over the radio to millions of listeners and received another letter from the same lady a few days later.

Expressing her unaltered opinion says Mr.

Taylor that I was still a liar,

A traitor,

A snake,

And a moron.

We can't keep from admiring a man who takes criticism like that.

We admire his serenity,

His unshaken poise,

And his sense of humor.

When Charles Schwab was addressing the student body at Princeton,

He confessed that one of the most important lessons he had ever learned was taught to him by an old German who worked in Schwab's steel mill.

This old German got involved in a hot wartime argument with the other steelworkers and they tossed him into the river.

When he came into my office,

Mr.

Schwab said,

Covered with mud and water,

I asked him what he had said to the men who had thrown him in the river and he replied,

I just laughed.

Mr.

Schwab declared that he had adopted the old German's words as his motto,

Just laugh.

That motto is especially good when you are the victim of unjust criticism.

You can answer the man who answers you back,

But what can you say to the man who just laughs?

Lincoln might have broken under the strain of the Civil War if he hadn't learned the folly of trying to answer all the vitriolic condemnations hurled at him.

His description of how he handled his critics has become a literary gem,

A classic.

John MacArthur had a copy of it hanging above his headquarters desk during the war and Winston Churchill had a framed copy of it on the walls of his study at Chartwell.

It goes like this,

If I were to try to read,

Much less answer,

All the attacks made on me,

The shop might as well be closed for any other business.

I do the very best I know how,

The very best I can,

And I mean to keep on doing so until the end.

If the end brings me out all right,

Then what is said against me won't matter.

If the end brings me out all wrong,

Then ten angels swearing I was right would make no difference.

When you and I are unjustly criticized,

Let's remember rule number two.

Do the very best you can,

And then put up your old umbrella and keep the reign of criticism from running down the back of your neck.

Chapter 22.

Fool Things I Have Done.

I have a folder in my private filing cabinet marked FTD,

Short for Fool Things I Have Done.

I put in that folder written records of the fool things I have been guilty of.

I sometimes dictate those memos to my secretary,

But sometimes they're so personal,

So stupid,

That I am ashamed to dictate them,

So I write them down in the longhand.

I can still recall some of the criticisms of Dale Carnegie that I put in my FTD folders fifteen years ago.

If I had been utterly honest with myself,

I would now have a filing cabinet bursting with the scenes with the FTD memos.

I can truthfully repeat what King Saul said thirty centuries ago.

I have played the fool and have erred exceedingly.

When I get out of my FTD folders and reread the criticisms I have written of myself,

They help me deal with the toughest problem I shall ever face.

The management of Dale Carnegie.

I used to blame my troubles on other people,

But as I have grown older and wiser,

I hope,

I realize that I myself in the last analysis am to blame for almost all of my misfortunes.

Lots of people have discovered that as they grow older.

No one but myself,

Said Napoleon at St.

Helena,

No one but myself can be blamed for my fall.

I have been my own greatest enemy,

The cause of my own disastrous fate.

Let me tell you all about a man I knew who was an artist when it came to self-appraisal and self-management.

His name was H.

P.

Howell.

When the news of his sudden death in the drugstore of the Hotel Ambassador in New York was flashed across the nation on July 31,

1944,

Wall Street was shocked,

For he was a leader in American finance,

Chairman of the board of Commercial National Bank and Trust Company,

And a director of several large corporations.

He grew up with little formal education,

Started out in life clerking in a country store,

And later became credit manager for U.

S.

Steel,

And was on his way to position and power.

For years I have kept an engagement book showing all the appointments I have during the day.

Mr.

Howell told me when I asked him to explain the reasons for his success.

My family never makes any plans for me on Saturday night,

For the family knows that I devote a part of each Saturday evening to self-examination and a review and appraisal of my work during the week.

After dinner I go off by myself,

Open my engagement book,

And think over all the interviews,

Discussions,

And meetings that have taken place since Monday morning.

I ask myself,

What mistakes did I make that time?

What did I do when that was right?

And in what way could I have improved my performance?

What lessons can I learn from that experience?

I sometimes find that this weekly review makes me very unhappy.

Sometimes I am astonished by my own blunders.

Of course,

As the years have gone by,

These blunders have become less frequent.

This system of self-analysis continued year after year,

Has done more for me than any other thing I have ever attempted.

Maybe H.

P.

Howell borrowed his idea from Ben Franklin.

Only Franklin didn't wait until Saturday night.

He gave himself a severe going over every night.

He discovered that he had thirteen serious faults.

Here are three of them.

Wasting time,

Stewing around over trifles,

Arguing and contradicting people.

Wise old Ben Franklin realized that unless he eliminated these handicaps,

He wasn't going to get very far.

So he battled with one of his shortcomings every day for a week,

And kept a record of who had won each day's sluggy match.

The next week he would pick up another bad habit,

Put on the gloves,

And when the bell rang he would come out of his corner fighting.

Franklin kept up this battle with his faults every week for more than two years.

No wonder he became one of the best loved and most influential men this nation ever produced.

Albert Hubbard said,

Every man is a damn fool for at least five minutes a day.

Wisdom consists in not exceeding that limit.

The small man flies into a rage over the slightest criticism,

But the wise man is eager to learn from those who have censored him and reproved him and disputed the passage with him.

Walt Whitman put it this way,

Have you learned lessons only of those who admire you and were tender with you and stood aside for you?

Have you not learned great lessons from those who rejected you,

Embraced themselves against you or disputed the passage with you?

Instead of waiting for our enemies to criticize us or our work,

Let's beat them to it.

Let's be our own most severe critic.

Let's find and remedy all our weaknesses before our enemies get a chance to say a word.

That is what Charles Darwin did.

In fact,

He spent 15 years criticizing.

Well,

The story goes like this.

When Darwin completed the manuscript of his immortal book,

The Origin of Species,

He realized that the publication of his revolutionary concept of creation would rock the intellectual and religious worlds.

So he became his own critic and spent another 15 years checking his data,

Challenging his reasoning,

Criticizing his conclusions.

Suppose someone denounced you as a damn fool.

What would you do?

Get angry?

Indignant?

Here is what Lincoln did.

Edward M.

Stanton,

Lincoln's secretary of war,

Once called Lincoln a damned fool.

Stanton was indignant because Lincoln had been meddling in Stanton's affairs.

In order to please a selfish politician,

Lincoln had signed an order transferring certain regiments.

Stanton not only refused to carry out Lincoln's orders,

But swore that Lincoln was a damned fool for ever signing such orders.

What happened?

When Lincoln was told what Stanton had said,

Lincoln calmly replied,

If Stanton said I am a damned fool,

Then I must be,

For he is nearly almost always right.

I'll just step over and see for myself.

Lincoln did go to see Stanton.

Stanton convinced him that the order was wrong,

And Lincoln withdrew it.

Lincoln welcomed criticism when he knew it was sincere,

Founded on knowledge,

And given in the spirit of helpfulness.

You and I ought to welcome that kind of criticism,

For we can't even hope to be right more than three times out of four.

At least,

That was all Theodore Roosevelt said he could hope for when he was in the White House.

Einstein,

The most profound thinker of our day,

Confessed that his conclusions were wrong ninety-nine percent of the time.

The opinions of our enemies come nearer to the truth about us than to our own opinions.

I know that statement may be true many times,

Yet when anyone starts to criticize me,

If I do not watch myself,

I instantly and automatically leap to the defensive.

Even before I have the slightest idea what my critic is going to say,

I am disgusted with myself every time I do it.

We all tend to resent criticism and lap up praise regardless of whether either the criticism or the praise is justified.

We are not creatures of logic.

We are creatures of emotions.

Our logic is like a birch bark canoe tossed out on a deep,

Dark,

Stormy sea of emotion.

If we hear that someone has spoken ill of us,

Let's try not to defend ourselves.

Every fool does that.

Let's be original and humble and brilliant.

Let's confound our critic and win applause for ourselves by saying,

If my critic had known all about my other faults,

He would have criticized me much more severely than he did.

In previous chapters,

I've talked about what to do when you are unjustly criticized,

But here is another idea.

When your anger is rising because you feel you've been unjustly condemned,

Why not stop and say,

Just a minute.

I am far from perfect.

If Einstein admits he is wrong 99% of the time,

Maybe I am wrong at least 80% of the time.

Maybe I deserve this criticism.

If I do,

I ought to be thankful for it and try to profit by it.

Charles Luckman,

A former president of the Pepsodent Company,

Spent a million dollars a year putting Bob Hope on the air.

He didn't look at the letters praising the program,

But he insisted on looking at the critical letters.

He knew he might learn something from them.

The Ford Company was so eager to find out what was wrong with its management and operations that it polled its employees and invited them to criticize the company.

I know a former soap salesman who used even to ask for criticism.

When he first started out selling soap for Colgate,

Orders came slowly.

He worried about losing his job.

Since he knew there was nothing wrong with the soap or the price,

He figured the trouble must be with himself.

Did he lack enthusiasm?

Had he been too vague?

Sometimes he would go back to the merchant and say,

I haven't come back here to try to sell you soap.

I've come back to get your advice and your criticism.

Won't you please tell me what I did that was wrong when I tried to sell you soap a few minutes ago?

You are far more experienced and successful than I.

Please give me your criticism.

Be frank.

Don't pull your punches.

This attitude won him a lot of friends and priceless advice.

What do you suppose ever happened to him?

He rose to be the president of the Colgate Palmolive Pete Soap Company,

One of the world's largest makers of soap.

His name is E.

H.

Little.

It takes a big man to do what P.

H.

Howell,

Ben Franklin,

And E.

H.

Little do.

And now,

While nobody is looking,

Why not peep into the mirror and ask yourself whether you belong in that kind of company?

To keep from worrying about criticism,

Here is rule number three.

Let's keep a record of the full things we have done and criticize ourselves.

Since we can't hope to be perfect,

Let's do what E.

H.

Little did.

Let's ask for unbiased,

Helpful,

Constructive criticism.

Part Six in a Nutshell.

How to keep from worrying about criticism.

Rule number one.

Unjust criticism is often a disguised compliment.

It often means that you have aroused jealousy and envy.

Remember that no one ever kicks a dead dog.

Rule number two.

Do the very best you can and then put up your old umbrella and keep the rain of criticism from running down the back of your neck.

And rule number three.

Let's keep a record of the full things we have done and criticize ourselves.

Since we can't hope to be perfect,

Let's do what E.

H.

Little did.

Let's ask for unbiased,

Helpful,

And constructive criticism.

That is the end of our story tonight.

Thank you so much for allowing me the precious gift of your time.

Until next time.

Reviews

All of the chapters are a source of validation and support with justifying stories of successful people who have suffered similar issues in this life we try to live. This one resonates with me, for I have often been criticized by peers unjustly. Each of these chapters brings new insight and has helped more than I can say. I do think they shoujd be moved to a different “genre” bc they go well beyond a sleep story and can offer help to many!!