Sleep Story: How To Stop Worrying & Start Living: Ch 13 & 14

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. Chapter 13 discusses the high cost of getting even and chapter 14 speaks to ingratitude.

Transcript

Hello,

My name is Hilary LaFawn and I'm so grateful that you've joined me today to explore Chapter 13 and 14 of How to Stop Worrying and Start Living by Dale Carnegie.

This reading is the continuation of Part 4,

Seven Ways to Cultivate a Mental Attitude that will bring you peace and happiness.

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

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 13,

The High Cost of Getting Even,

Followed by Chapter 14.

If you do this,

You will never worry about ingratitude.

Chapter 13,

The High Cost of Getting Even.

One night,

Years ago,

As I was traveling through Yellowstone Park,

I sat with other tourists on bleachers facing a dense growth of pine and spruce.

Presently the animal which we had been waiting to see,

The terror of the forest,

The grizzly bear,

Strode out onto the glare of lights and began devouring the garbage that had been dumped there from the kitchen of one of the park hotels.

A forest ranger,

Major Martindale,

Sat on a horse and talked to the excited tourists about bears.

He told us that the grizzly bear can whip any other animal in the Western world,

With the possible exception of the buffalo and the Kodiak bear.

Yet I noticed that night that there was one animal,

And only one,

That the grizzly permitted to come out of the forest and eat with him under the glare of the lights.

A skunk.

The grizzly knew that he could liquidate a skunk with one swipe of his mighty paw.

Why didn't he do that?

Because he had found from experience that it didn't pay.

I found that out too.

As a farm boy,

I trapped four-legged skunks along the hedgerows in Missouri,

And as a man I encountered a few two-legged skunks on the sidewalks of New York.

I have found from sad experience that it doesn't pay to stir up either variety.

When we hate our neighbors,

We are giving them power over us,

Power over our sleep,

Our appetites,

Our blood pressure,

Our health,

And our happiness.

Our animates would dance with joy if only they knew how they're worry us,

Lacerating us,

And getting even with us.

Our hate is not worrying them at all,

But our hate is turning our own days and nights into a hellish turmoil.

Who do you suppose said this?

If selfish people try to take advantage of you,

Cross them off your list,

But don't try to get even.

When you try to get even,

You hurt yourself more than you ever hurt the other fellow.

Those words sound as if they might have been uttered by a starry-eyed idealist,

But they weren't.

Those words appeared in a bulletin issued by the police department of Milwaukee.

How will trying to get even hurt you?

In many ways,

According to Life Magazine,

It may even wreck your health.

The chief personality characteristic of persons with hypertension,

High blood pressure,

Is resentment,

Said Life.

When resentment is chronic,

Chronic hypertension and heart trouble follow.

So you see that when Jesus said,

Love your enemies,

He was not only preaching sound ethics,

He was also preaching 20th century medicine.

When he said,

Forgive 70 times 7,

Jesus was telling you and me how to keep from having high blood pressure,

Heart trouble,

Stomach ulcers,

And many other ailments.

A friend of mine recently had a serious heart attack.

Her physician put her to bed and ordered her to refuse to get angry about anything,

No matter what happened.

Persons know that if you have a weak heart,

A fit of anger can kill you.

Did I say can kill you?

A fit of anger did kill a restaurant owner in Spokane,

Washington a few years ago.

I have in front of me now a letter from Jerry Stordout,

Then chief of police department Spokane Washington saying,

A few years ago,

William Falkaber,

A man of 68 who owned a cafe here in Spokane,

Killed himself by flying into a rage because his cook insisted on drinking coffee out of a saucer.

The cafe owner was so indignant that he grabbed a revolver and started to chase the cook and felt dead from heart failure,

With his hands still gripping the gun.

The coroner's report declared that anger had caused the heart failure.

When Jesus said,

Love your enemies,

He was also telling us how to improve our looks.

I know people,

And so do you,

Whose faces have been wrinkled and hardened by hate and disfigured by resentment.

All the cosmetic surgery in Christendom won't improve their looks half so much as would a heart full of forgiveness,

Tenderness,

And love.

Hatred destroys our ability to enjoy even our food.

The Bible puts it this way,

Better as a dinner of herbs where love is than a stalled ox and hatred their win.

Wouldn't our enemies rub their hands with glee if they knew that our hate for them was exhausting us,

Making us tired and nervous,

Ruining our looks,

Giving us heart trouble,

And probably shortening our lives?

Even if we can't love our enemies,

Let's at least love ourselves.

Let's love ourselves so much that we won't permit our enemies to control our happiness,

Our health,

And our looks.

As Shakespeare put it,

Heat not a furnace for your foe so hot that it do sinned yourself.

When Jesus said that we should forgive our enemies seventy times seven,

He was also preaching sound business.

For example,

I have before me as a right,

I wrote this letter.

I received from George Rona of Uppsala,

Sweden.

For years,

George Rona was an attorney in Vienna,

But during the Second World War he fled to Sweden.

He had no money and needed work badly.

Since he could speak and write several languages,

He hoped to get a position as a correspondent for some firm engaged in importing or exporting.

Most of the firms replied that they had no need of such services because of the war,

But they would keep his name on file,

And so on.

One man,

However,

Wrote George Rona a letter saying,

What you imagine about my business is not true.

You are both wrong and foolish.

I do not need any correspondent.

Even if I did need one,

I wouldn't hire you because you can't even write good Swedish.

Your letter is full of mistakes.

When George Rona read that letter,

He was as mad as Donald Duck.

What did this sweet mean by telling him he couldn't write any language?

Why the letter that this sweet himself had written was full of mistakes.

So George Rona wrote a letter that was calculated to burn this man up.

Then he paused.

He said to himself,

Wait a minute now.

How do I know this man isn't right?

I have studied Swedish,

But it's not my native language.

So maybe I do have some mistakes.

If I do,

Then I certainly have to study harder if I ever hope to get a job.

This man has possibly done me a favor,

Even though he didn't mean to.

The mere fact that he expressed himself in disagreeable terms doesn't alter my debt to him.

Therefore,

I am going to write him and thank him for what he has done.

So George Rona tore up the scorching letter he had already written and wrote another one that said,

It was kind of you to go to the trouble of writing to me,

Especially when you do not need a correspondent.

I am sorry I was mistaken about your firm.

The reason that I wrote you was that I made inquiry and your name was given me as a leader in your field.

I did not know I had made grammatical errors in my letter.

I am sorry and ashamed of myself.

I will now apply myself more diligently to the study of the Swedish language and try to correct my mistakes.

I want to thank you for helping me get started on the road to self-improvement.

Within a few days,

George Rona got a letter from this man asking Rona to come see him.

Rona went and got a job.

George Rona discovered for himself that a soft answer turneth away wrath.

We may not be saintly enough to love our enemies,

But for the sake of our own health and happiness,

Let's at least forgive them and forget them.

That is the smart thing to do.

To be wronged or robbed,

Said Confucius,

Is nothing unless you continue to remember it.

I once asked General Eisenhower's son John if his father ever nourished resentments.

No,

He replied,

Dad never wastes a minute thinking about people he doesn't like.

There is an old saying that a man is a fool who can't be angry,

But a man is wise who won't be angry.

That was the policy of William J.

Gaynor,

A former mayor of New York.

Bitterly denounced by the press,

He was shot by a maniac and almost killed.

As he lay in the hospital fighting for his life,

He said,

Every night I forgive every thing and everybody.

Is that too idealistic?

Too much sweetness and light?

If so,

Let's turn for counsel to the great German philosopher Schopenhauer,

Author of Studies in Pessimism.

He regarded life as a futile and painful adventure.

Gloom dripped from him as he walked.

Yet out in the depths of his despair,

Schopenhauer cried.

If possible,

No animosity should be felt for anyone.

I once asked Bernard Baruch,

The man who was the trusted advisor to six presidents,

Wilson,

Harding,

Coolidge,

Hoover,

Roosevelt,

And Truman,

Whether he was ever disturbed by the attacks of his enemies.

No man can humiliate me or disturb me,

He replied.

I won't let them.

Sticks and stones may break my bones,

But words can never hurt me.

Throughout the ages,

Mankind has burned its candles before those Christ-like individuals who bore no malice against their enemies.

I have often stood in the Jasper National Park in Canada and gazed upon one of the most beautiful mountains in the Western world,

A mountain named in honor of Edith Cavill,

The British nurse who went to her death like a saint before a German firing squad on October 12,

1915.

Her crying?

She had hidden and fed and nursed wounded French and English soldiers in her Belgian home and had helped them escape into Holland.

As the English chaplain entered her cell in the military prison in Brussels that October morning to prepare her for death,

Edith Cavill uttered two sentences that have been preserved in bronze and granite.

I realize that patriotism is not enough.

I must have no hatred or bitterness towards anyone.

Four years later,

Her body was removed to England and memorial services were held in Westminster Abbey.

I once spent a year in London.

I have often stood before the statue of Edith Cavill opposite the National Portrait Gallery and read her immortal words carved in granite.

I realize that patriotism is not enough.

I must have no hatred or bitterness towards anyone.

One sure way to forgive and forget our enemies is to become absorbed in some cause infinitely bigger than ourselves.

Then the insults and the enmities we encounter won't matter because we will be oblivious of everything but our own cause.

As an example,

Let's take an intensely dramatic event that was about to take place in the Pinewoods of Mississippi back in 1918,

A lynching.

Lawrence Jones,

A black teacher and preacher,

Was about to be lynched.

Some years ago,

I visited the school that Lawrence Jones founded,

The Piney Woods Country School,

And I spoke before the student body.

That school is nationally known today,

But the incident I am going to relate occurred long before that.

It occurred back in the highly emotional days of the First World War.

A rumor had spread through central Mississippi that the Germans were arousing the blacks and inciting them to rebellion.

Lawrence Jones,

The man who was about to be lynched,

Was,

As I have already said,

A black himself and was accused of helping to arouse his race to insurrection.

A group of white men,

Pausing outside the church,

Had heard Lawrence Jones shouting to his congregation,

Life is a battle in which every black must gird on his armor and fight to survive and succeed.

Fight.

Armor.

Enough.

Galloping off into the night,

These young,

Excited men recruited a mob,

Returned to the church,

Put a rope around the preacher,

Dragged him for a mile up the road,

Stood him on a heap of kindling,

Lit matches,

And were ready to hang and burn him at the same time,

When someone shouted,

Let's make the blankety blank blank.

Talk before he burns.

Speech.

Speech.

Lawrence Jones,

Standing on the kindling,

Spoke with a rope around his neck,

Spoke for his life and his cause.

He had been graduated from the University of Iowa in 1907.

His sterling character,

His scholarship,

And his musical ability had made him popular with both the students and the faculty.

Upon graduation,

He had turned down the offer of a hotel man to set him up in business,

And he'd also turned down the offer of a wealthy man to finance his musical education.

Why?

Because he was on fire with the vision.

Reading the story of Booker T.

Washington's life,

He'd been inspired to devote his own life to educating the poverty-stricken,

Illiterate members of his race.

So he went to the most backward belt he could find in the South,

A spot 25 miles south of Jackson,

Mississippi,

Pawning his watch for $1.

65.

He started his school in the open woods with a stump for a desk.

Lawrence Jones told those angry men who were waiting to lynch him of the struggle he had had to educate these unschooled boys and girls and to train them to be good farmers,

Mechanics,

Cooks,

And housekeepers.

He had told them of the white men who had helped him in his struggle to establish Piney Woods Country School,

White men who had given him land,

Lumber,

Pigs,

Cows,

And money to help him carry on his educational work.

When Lawrence Jones was asked afterward if he didn't hate the men who dragged him up on that road to hang and burn him,

He replied that he was too busy with his cause to hate,

Too absorbed in something bigger than himself.

I have no time to quarrel,

He said,

No time for regrets,

And no man can force me to stoop low enough to hate him.

As Lawrence Jones talked with sincere and moving eloquence as he pleaded not for himself but his cause,

The mob began to soften.

Finally,

An old Confederate veteran in the crowd said,

I believe this boy is telling the truth.

I know the white men whose names he's mentioned.

He is doing a fine work.

We have made a mistake.

We ought to help him instead of hang him.

The Confederate veteran passed his hat through the crowd and raised a gift of $52.

40 from the very men who had gathered there to hang the founder of Piney Woods Country School,

The man who said,

I have no time to quarrel,

No time for regrets,

And no man can force me to stoop low enough to hate him.

Epictetus pointed out 19 centuries ago that we reap what we sow and that somehow fate almost always makes us pay for our malifications.

In the long run,

Said Epictetus,

Every man will pay the penalty for his own misdeeds.

The man who remembers this will be angry with no one,

Indignant with no one,

Revile no one,

Blame no one,

Offend no one,

Hate no one.

Probably no other man in American history was ever more denounced and hated and double crossed than Lincoln.

Yet Lincoln,

According to Herndon's classic biography,

Never judged men by his like or dislike for them.

If any given act was to be performed,

He could understand that his enemy could do it just as well as anyone.

If a man had maligned him or been guilty of personal ill treatment and was the fittest man for the place,

Lincoln would give him that place just as soon as he would give it to a friend.

I don't think he ever removed a man because he was his enemy or because he disliked him.

Lincoln was denounced and insulted by some of the very men he had appointed to positions of high power,

Men like McClellan,

Seward,

Stanton,

And Chase.

Yet Lincoln believed,

According to Herndon,

His law partner,

That no man was to be eulogized for what he did or censored for what he did or did not.

Because all of us are children of conditions,

Of circumstances,

Of environment,

Of education,

Of acquired habits,

And of heredity-molded men as they are and will forever be.

Perhaps Lincoln was right.

If you and I had inherited the same mental,

Physical,

And emotional characteristics that our enemies have inherited,

And if life had done to us what it had done to them,

We would act exactly as they do.

We couldn't possibly do anything else.

Let's be charitable enough to repeat the prayer of the Sioux Indians.

Oh great spirit,

Keep me from ever judging and criticizing a man until I have walked in his moccasins for two weeks.

So instead of hating our enemies,

Let's pity them and thank God that life has not made us what they are.

Instead of heaping condemnation and revenge among our enemies,

Let's give them our understanding,

Our sympathy,

Our help,

Our forgiveness,

And our prayers.

I was brought up in a family which read the scriptures or repeated a verse from the Bible each night,

And then knelt down and said family prayers.

I can still hear my father in a lonely Missouri farmhouse repeating these words of Jesus,

Words that will continue to be repeated as long as men cherishes his ideals.

Love your enemies,

Bless them that curse you,

Do good to them that hate you,

And pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you.

My father tried to live those words of Jesus,

And they gave him an inner peace that the captains and the kings of earth have often sought for in vain.

To cultivate a mental attitude that will bring you peace and happiness,

Remember that rule too is let's never try to get even with our enemies because if we do we will hurt ourselves far more than we will hurt them.

Let's do as General Eisenhower does.

Let's never waste a minute thinking about people we don't like.

Chapter 14 If you do this,

You will never worry about ingratitude.

I recently met a businessman in Texas who was burned up with igno.

.

.

Nation.

I was warned that he would tell me about it within 15 minutes after I met him.

He did.

The incident he was angry about had occurred 11 months previously,

But he was still burned up about it.

He couldn't talk of anything else.

He had given his 34 employees $10,

000 in Christmas bonuses,

Approximately $300 each,

And no one had thanked him.

I am sorry,

He complained bitterly,

That I ever gave them a penny.

An angry man said Confucius is always full of poison.

This man was so full of poison that I honestly pitied him.

He was about 60 years old.

Now life insurance companies figure that,

On the average,

We will live slightly more than two-thirds of our difference between our present age and 80.

So this man,

If he was lucky,

Probably had about 14 or 15 years to live.

Yet he had already wasted almost one of his few remaining years by his bitterness and resentment over an event that was past and gone.

I pitied him.

Instead of wallowing in resentment and self-pity,

He might have asked himself why he didn't get any appreciation.

Maybe he had underpaid and overworked his employees.

Maybe they considered a Christmas bonus not a gift,

But something they had earned.

Maybe he was so critical and unapproachable that no one dared or cared to thank him.

Maybe they felt he gave the bonus because most of the profits were going for taxes anyway.

On the other hand,

Maybe the employees were selfish,

Mean,

And ill-mannered.

Maybe this,

Maybe that.

I don't know any more about it than you do,

But I do know that Dr.

Samuel Johnson said gratitude is a fruit of great cultivation.

You do not find it among gross people.

Here is the point I'm trying to make.

This man made the human and distressing mistake of expecting gratitude.

He just didn't know human nature.

If you saved a man's life,

Would you expect him to be grateful?

You might.

But Samuel Lebowitz,

Who was a famous criminal lawyer before he became a judge,

Saved 78 men from going to the electric chair.

How many of these men do you suppose stopped to thank him,

Or even took the trouble to send him a Christmas card?

How many?

Guess.

That's right,

None.

Christ helped 10 lepers in one afternoon,

But how many of those lepers ever stopped to thank him?

Only one.

Look it up in St.

Luke.

When Christ turned around to his disciples and said,

Where are the other nine?

They had all run away,

Disappeared without thanks.

Let me ask you a question.

Why should you or I or this businessman in Texas expect any more thanks for our small favors than was given Jesus Christ?

And when it comes to money matters,

Well,

That's even more hopeless.

Charles Schwab told me that he had once saved a bank cashier who had been speculated in the stock market with funds belonging to the bank.

Schwab put up the money to save this man from going to jail.

Was the cashier grateful?

Oh yes,

For a little while.

While he turned against Schwab and reviled him and denounced him,

The very man who had kept him out of jail.

If you gave one of your relatives a million dollars,

Would you expect him to be grateful?

Andrew Carnegie did just that.

But if Andrew Carnegie had come back from the grave a little while later,

He would have been shocked to find this relative cursing him.

Why?

Because old Andy had left $365 million to public charities and had cut him off with only one measly million,

As he put it.

That's how it goes.

Human nature has always been human nature,

And it probably won't change in your lifetime.

So why not you accept it?

Why not be as realistic about it as old Marcus Aurelius,

One of the wisest men who ever ruled the Roman Empire?

He wrote in his diary one day,

I'm going to meet people today who talk too much,

People who are selfish,

Egotistical,

Ungrateful.

But I won't be surprised or disturbed,

For I couldn't imagine a world without such people.

That doesn't make sense.

If you and I go around grumbling about ingratitude,

Who is to blame?

Is it human nature?

Or is it our ignorance of human nature?

Let's not expect gratitude.

Then if we get some occasionally,

It will come as a delight and a surprise.

If we don't get it,

We won't be disturbed.

Here's the first point I'm trying to make in this chapter.

It is natural for people to forget to be grateful.

So if we go around expecting gratitude,

We are headed straight for a lot of heartaches.

I know a woman in New York who is always complaining because she is lonely.

But one of her relatives wants to go near her and no wonder.

If you visit her,

She will tell you for hours what she did for her nieces when they were children.

She nursed them through the measles and the mumps and the whooping cough.

She boarded them for years.

She helped to send one of them through business school.

And she made a home for the other until she got married.

Do the nieces come to see her?

Oh yes,

Now and again,

Out of spirit of duty.

But they dread these visits.

They know they'll have to sit and listen for hours to have failed reproaches.

They'll be treated to an endless litany of bitter complaints and self-pitying sighs.

And when this woman can no longer bludgeon,

Browbeat,

Or bully her nieces into coming to see her,

She's one of her spells.

She develops a heart attack.

Is this heart attack real?

Oh yes.

The doctor says she has a nervous heart,

Suffers from palpitations.

But the doctors also say they can do nothing for her.

Her trouble is emotional.

What this woman really wants is love and attention.

But she calls it gratitude.

And she will never get gratitude or love because she demands it.

She thinks it's her due.

There are thousands of people like her.

People who are ill from ingratitude,

Loneliness,

And neglect.

They long to be loved.

But the only way in this world that they can ever hope to be loved is to stop asking for it and to start pouring out love without hope of return.

Does that sound like sheer impractical visionary idealism?

It isn't.

It is just horse sense.

It's a good way for you and me to find the happiness we long for.

I know.

I've seen it happen right in my own family.

My own mother and father gave for the joy of helping others.

We were poor,

Always overwhelmed by debts.

Yet poor as we were,

My mother and father always managed to send money every year to an orphan's home.

The Christian home in Council Bluffs,

Iowa.

Mother and father never visited that home.

Probably no one thanked them for their gifts,

Except for a letter.

But they were richly repaid,

For they had the joy of helping little children without wishing for or expecting any gratitude in return.

After I left home,

I would always send father and mother a check at Christmas and urge them to indulge in a few luxuries for themselves.

But they rarely did.

When I came home a few days before Christmas,

Father would tell me of the coal and groceries they had bought for some woman in town who had a lot of children and no money to buy food and fuel.

What joy they got out of these gifts.

The joy of giving without expecting anything whatever in return.

I believe my father would almost have qualified for Aristotle's description of the ideal man.

The man most worthy of being happy.

The ideal man,

Said Aristotle,

Takes joy in doing favors for others.

Here is the second point I'm trying to make in this chapter.

If we want to find happiness,

Let's stop thinking about gratitude or ingratitude and give for the inner joy of giving.

Parents have been tearing their hair out about ingratitude of children for 10,

000 years.

Even Shakespeare's King Lear cried out,

How sharper than a servant's tooth is to have a thankless child.

So why should children be thankful unless we train them to be?

And gratitude is natural,

Like weeds.

Gratitude is like a rose.

It has to be fed and watered and cultivated and loved and protected.

If our children are ungrateful,

Who is to blame?

Maybe we are.

If we've never taught them to express gratitude to others,

How can we expect them to be grateful to us?

I knew a man in Chicago who had caused a complaint of the ingratitude of his step-sons.

He slaved in a box factory,

Seldom earning more than $40 a week.

He married a widow and she persuaded him to borrow money and send her two grown sons to college.

Out of his salary of $40 a week,

He had to pay for food,

Rent,

Fuel,

Clothes,

And also for the payments on his notes.

He did this for four years,

Working like a coolie and never complaining.

Did he get any thanks?

No,

His wife took it all for granted and so did her sons.

They never imagined that they owed their step-father anything,

Not even thanks.

Who was to blame?

The boys?

Yes,

But the mother was even more to blame.

She thought it was a shame to burden their children with a sense of obligation.

She didn't want her sons to start out under debt,

So she never dreamed of saying,

What a prince your step-father is to help you through college.

Instead,

She took the attitude,

Oh,

That's the least he can do.

She thought she was sparing her sons,

But in reality she was sending them out into life with the dangerous idea that the world owed them a living.

And it was a dangerous idea for one of those sons tried to borrow from an employer and ended up in jail.

We must remember that our children are very much what we make them.

For example,

My mother's sister,

Viola Alexander of Minneapolis,

Is a shining example of a woman who has never had cause to complain about ingratitude of children.

When I was a boy,

Aunt Viola took her own mother into her home to love and take care of,

And she did the same thing for her husband's mother.

I can still close my eyes and see those two old ladies sitting before the fire in Aunt Viola's farmhouse.

Were they any trouble to Aunt Viola?

Oh,

Often,

I suppose,

But you would never have guessed it from her attitude.

She loved those old ladies,

So she pampered them and spoiled them and made them feel at home.

In addition,

Aunt Viola had six children of her own,

But it never occurred to her that she was doing anything especially noble or deserved any halos for taking these old ladies into her home.

To her,

It was the most natural thing,

The right thing,

The thing she wanted to do.

Where is Aunt Viola today?

Well,

She's now been a widow for 20 odd years,

And she has five grown-up children,

Five separate households all clamoring to share her and to have her come and live in their homes.

Her children adore her,

They never get enough of her.

Out of gratitude?

Nonsense.

It is love,

Sheer love.

Those children breathed in warmth and radiant human kindness all during their childhood.

Is it any wonder that now that the situation is reversed,

They give love back?

So let us remember that to raise grateful children,

We have to be grateful.

Let us remember little pictures have big ears,

And watch what we say.

To illustrate,

The next time we're tempted to belittle someone's kindness in the presence of our children,

Let's stop.

Let's never say,

Look at these dishcloths Cousin Sue sent for Christmas.

She knit them herself.

They didn't cost her a cent.

The remark may seem trivial to us,

But the children are listening.

So instead we had better say,

Look at the hours Cousin Sue spent making these for Christmas.

Isn't she nice?

Let's write her a thank you note right now.

And our children may unconsciously absorb the habit of praise and appreciation.

To avoid resentment and worry over ingratitude,

Here is rule number three.

A.

Instead of worrying about ingratitude,

Let's expect it.

Let's remember that Jesus healed 10 lepers in one day,

And only one thanked him.

Why should we expect more gratitude than Jesus got?

B.

Let's remember the only way to find happiness is not to expect gratitude,

But to give for the joy of giving.

And C.

Let's remember that gratitude is a cultivated trait.

So if we want our children to be grateful,

We must train them to be grateful.

And that is the end of today's sleep story.

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

Until next time.

Reviews

This was my favorite so far! The book is great but these two chapters are extraordinary.
Thank you!

This is the very best so far!!! Not feeling hatred for those that have treated you badly, saves you in the long run by protecting your mental and physical health. A huge lesson was also found here for me, which advises not to expect gratefulness. I often find myself wondering why people are not more grateful. The example of Christ curing ten leopards, and having only one return to give thanks really helped with this. If men didn’t even think it necessary to thank Christ, why should I be surprised when people do not so me gratefulness! I’ve listened twice, and plan to listen many more times, while taking notes. Thank you…. Hope you hear the gratefulness come through. 🙏