Sleep Story: How To Stop Worrying & Start Living: Chapter 19

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. Tonight we explore Part 5: The Perfect Way to Conquer Worry. Chapter 19 discusses how important having a spiritual practice is in managing stress in our everyday lives.

Transcript

Hello,

My name is Hilary LaFawn and I'm so grateful that you've joined me today to explore Chapter 19 of How to Stop Worrying and Start Living by Dale Carnegie.

This is Part 5,

The Perfect Way to Conquer Worry.

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 19,

How My Mother and Father Conquered Worry.

As I have said,

I was born and brought up on a Missouri farm.

Like most farmers of that day,

My parents had pretty hard scratching.

My mother had been a country school teacher and my father had been a farmhand working for $12 a month.

Mother made not only my clothes,

But also the soap with which we washed our clothes.

We rarely had any cash,

Except once a year when we sold our hogs.

We traded our butter and eggs at the grocery store for flour,

Sugar,

Coffee.

When I was 12 years old,

I didn't have as much as 50 cents a year to spend on myself.

I can still remember the day we went to a 4th of July celebration and father gave me 10 cents to spend as I wish.

I felt the wealth of the Indies was mine.

I walked a mile to attend a one-room country school.

I walked when the snow was deep and the thermometer shivered around 28 degrees below zero.

Until I was 14,

I never had any rubbers or overshoes.

During the long cold winters,

My feet were always wet and cold.

As a child,

I never dreamed that anyone had dry,

Warm feet during the winter.

My parents were enslaved 16 hours a day.

Yet we were constantly were oppressed by debts and harassed by hard luck.

One of my earliest memories is watching the flood waters of the 102 River rolling over our corn and hay fields,

Destroying everything.

The floods destroyed crops six years at a seven.

Year after year,

Our hogs died of cholera and we burned them.

I can close my eyes now and recall the pungent odor of burning hog flesh.

One year the floods didn't come.

We raised a bumper corn crop,

Bought feed cattle,

And fattened them with our corn.

But the floods might just as well have drowned our corn that year,

For the price of fat cattle fell on the Chicago market.

And after feeding and fattening the cattle,

We got only $30 more for them than what we had paid for.

$30 for a whole year's work.

No matter what we did,

We'd lost money.

I can still remember the mule coats that my father bought.

We fed them for three years,

Hired men to break them,

Then shipped them to Memphis,

Tennessee,

And sold them for less than what we had paid for them three years previously.

After 10 years of hard,

Grueling work,

We were not only penniness,

But we were heavily in debt.

Our farm was mortgage.

Try as hard as we may think,

We couldn't even pay the interest on the mortgage.

The bank that held the mortgage abused and insulted my father and threatened to take his farm away from him.

Father was 47 years old.

After more than 30 years of hard work,

He had nothing but debts and humiliation.

It was more than he could take.

He worried.

His health broke.

He had no desire for food,

In spite of the hard physical work he was doing in the field all day.

He had to take medicine to give him an appetite.

He lost flesh.

The doctor told my mother that he would be dead within six months.

Father was so worried that he no longer wanted to live.

I've often heard my mother say that when father went to the barn to feed the horses and milk the cows and didn't come back as soon as she expected,

She would go out to the barn,

Fearing that she would find his body dangling from the end of a rope.

One day as he returned home from Maryville,

Where the banker had threatened to foreclose the mortgage,

He stopped his horses on a bridge crossing the 102 River,

Got off the wagon,

And stood for a long time looking down at the water,

Debating with himself whether he should jump and end it all.

Years later,

Father told me that the only reason he didn't jump was because of my mother's deep,

Abiding,

And joyous belief that if we loved God and kept his commandments,

Everything would come out all right.

Mother was right.

Everything did come out all right in the end.

Father lived 42 happy years longer and died in 1941 at the age of 89.

During all those years of struggle and heartache,

My mother never worried.

She took all her troubles to God in prayer.

Every night before we went to bed,

Mother would read a chapter from the Bible.

Frequently mother or father would read those comforting words of Jesus.

In my father's house are many mansions.

I go to prepare a place for you,

That where I am,

There ye may also.

Then we all knelt down before our chairs in that lonely Missouri farmhouse and prayed for God's love and protection.

When William James was professor of philosophy at Harvard,

He said,

Of course the sovereign cure for worry is religious faith.

You don't have to go to Harvard to discover that.

My mother found out that on a Missouri farm.

Neither floods nor deaths nor disaster could suppress her happy,

Radiant,

And victorious spirit.

I can still hear her singing as she worked.

Peace,

Peace,

Wonderful peace flowing down from the father above.

Sweep over my spirit forever I pray and fathomless billows of love.

My mother wanted me to devote my life to religious work.

I thought seriously of becoming a foreign missionary.

Then I went away to college and gradually as the years passed,

A change came over me.

I studied biology,

Science,

Philosophy,

And comparative religions.

I read books on how the Bible was written.

I began to question many of its assertions.

I began to doubt many of the narrow doctrines taught by the country preachers of that day.

I was bewildered.

Like Walt Whitman,

I felt the curious,

Abrupt questions stirring within me.

I didn't know what to believe.

I saw no purpose in life.

I stopped praying.

I became an agnostic.

I believed that all life was planless and aimless.

I believed that human beings had no more divine purpose than had the dinosaurs that roamed the earth 200 million years ago.

I felt that someday the human race would perish just as the dinosaurs had.

I knew that science taught that the sun was slowly cooling and that when its temperature fell even 10 percent,

No form of life could exist on earth.

I sneered at the idea of a benevolent God who had created man in his own likeness.

I believed that the billions upon billions of suns whirling through black,

Cold,

Lifeless space had been created by blind force.

Maybe they had never been created at all.

Maybe they had existed forever,

Just as time and space have always existed.

Do I profess to know the answers to all those questions now?

No.

No man has ever been able to explain the mystery of the universe,

The mystery of life.

We are surrounded by mysteries.

The operation of your body is a profound mystery.

So is the electricity in your home.

So is the flower in the crated wall.

So is the green grass outside your window.

Charles K.

Kettering,

The guiding genius of General Motors Research Laboratories,

Gave Antioch College $30,

000 a year out of his own pocket to try to discover why grass is green.

He declared that if we knew how grass is able to transform sunlight,

Water,

And carbon dioxide into food sugar,

We could transform civilization.

Even the operation of the engine in your car is a profound mystery.

General Motors Research Laboratories have spent years of time and millions of dollars trying to find out how and why a spark in the cylinder sets off an explosion that makes your car run.

The fact that we don't understand totally the mysteries of our bodies or electricity or a gas engine doesn't keep us from using and enjoying them.

The fact that I don't understand the mysteries of prayer and religion no longer keeps me from enjoying the richer,

Happier life that religion brings.

At long last,

I realize the wisdom of Santayana's words,

Man is not made to understand life,

But to live it.

I have gone back.

Well,

I was about to say that I have gone back to religion,

But that would not be accurate.

I have gone forward to a new concept of religion.

I no longer have the faintest interest in the differences and creeds that divide the churches,

But I am tremendously interested in what religion does for me.

Just as I am interested in what electricity and good food and water do for me.

They help me lead a richer,

Fuller,

Happier life.

But religion does far more than that.

It brings me spiritual values.

It gives me,

As William James put it,

A new zest for life,

More life,

A larger,

Richer,

More satisfying life.

It gives me faith,

Hope and courage.

It banishes tensions,

Anxieties,

Fears and worries.

It gives purpose to my life and direction.

It vastly improves my happiness.

It gives me abounding health.

It helps me to create for myself an oasis of peace amidst the whirling sands of life.

Francis Bacon was right when he said over 300 years ago,

A little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism,

But depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion.

I can remember the days when people talked about the conflict between science and religion,

But no more.

The most of all sciences,

Psychiatry,

Is teaching what Jesus taught.

Why?

Because psychiatrists realize that prayer and a strong religious faith will banish the worries,

The anxieties,

The strains and fears that cause more than half of all of our ills.

They know as one of their leaders,

Dr.

A.

A.

Braille said,

Anyone who is truly religious does not develop a neurosis.

If religion isn't true,

Then life is meaningless.

It is a tragic farce.

I interviewed Henry Ford a few years prior to his death.

Before I met him,

I had expected him to show the strains of the long years he had spent in building up and managing one of the world's greatest businesses.

So I was surprised to see how calm and well and peaceful he looked at 78.

When I asked him if he ever worried,

He replied,

No,

I believe God is managing affairs and that he doesn't need any advice from me.

With God in charge,

I believe that everything will work out for the best in the end.

So what is there to worry about?

Today,

Even many psychiatrists are becoming modern evangelists for not urging us to lead religious lives to avoid hell fires in the next world,

But they're urging us to lead religious lives to avoid the hell fires of stomach ulcer,

Angina pectoris,

Nervous breakdowns,

And insanity.

As an example of what our psychologists and psychiatrists are teaching,

Read The Return to Religion by Dr.

Henry C.

Link.

Yes,

The Christian religion is an inspiring,

Health-giving activity,

Jesus said.

I came that ye might have life and have it more abundantly.

Jesus denounced and attacked the dry forms and dead rituals that passed for religion in his day.

He was a rebel.

He preached a new land of religion,

A religion that threatened to upset the world.

That is why he was crucified.

He preached that religion should exist for man,

Not man for religion,

That the Sabbath was made for man,

Not man for the Sabbath.

He talked more about fear than he did about sin.

The wrong kind of fear is a sin,

A sin against your health,

A sin against the richest,

Fullest,

Happiest,

Courageous life that Jesus advocated.

Emerson spoke of himself as a professor of the science of joy.

Jesus,

Too,

Was a teacher of the science of joy.

He commanded his disciples to rejoice and leap for joy.

Jesus declared that there were only two important things about religion,

Loving God with all our heart and our neighbor as ourselves.

Any man that does that is religious,

Regardless of whether he knows it.

My father-in-law,

Henry Price of Tulsa,

Oklahoma,

Is a good example.

He tries to live by the golden rule,

And he is incapable of doing anything mean,

Selfish,

Or dishonest.

However,

He doesn't attend church and regards himself as an agnostic.

Nonsense.

What makes a man a Christian?

I'll let John Bale answer that.

He was a distinguished professor who taught theology at the University of Edinburgh.

He said,

What makes a man a Christian is neither his intellectual acceptance of certain ideas nor his conformity to a certain rule,

But his possession of a certain spirit and his participation in a certain life.

If that makes a man a Christian,

Then Henry Price is a noble one.

William James,

The father of modern psychology,

Wrote to his friend,

Professor Thomas Davidson,

Saying that as the years went by,

He found himself less and less able to get along without God.

Earlier in this book,

I mentioned that when the judges tried to pick the best story on worry sent in by my students' stories,

That much difficulty in choosing between two outstanding,

The money was split.

Here is the second story that tied for the first prize,

The unforgettable experience of a woman who had to find out the hard way that she couldn't get along without God.

I'm calling this woman Mary Cushman,

Although that is not her actual name.

She has children and grandchildren who might be embarrassed to see her story in print,

So I agreed to disguise her identity.

However,

The woman herself is real,

Very real.

Here's how her story goes.

During the depression,

She said,

My husband's average salary was $18 a week.

Many times we didn't have even that because he didn't get paid when he was ill,

And that was often.

He had a series of minor accidents.

He also had mumps,

Scarlet fever,

And repeated attacks of the flu.

We lost the little house that we had built with our own hands.

We owed $50 at the grocery store and had five children to feed.

I took in washing and ironing from the neighbors and bought secondhand clothes from the Salvation Army store and made them over for my children to wear.

I made myself ill with worry.

One day the grocer to whom we owed $50 accused my 11-year-old son of stealing a couple of pencils.

My son wept as he told me about it.

I knew he was honest and sensitive,

And I knew that he'd been disgraced and humiliated in front of other people.

That was the straw that broke my back.

I thought of all the misery we had endured,

And I couldn't see any hope for the future.

I must have been temporarily insane with worry,

For I shut off my washing machine,

Took my little five-year-old daughter into the bedroom,

And plugged up the windows in cracks with paper and rags.

My little girl said,

Mommy,

What are you doing?

And I answered,

There's a little trap in here.

When I turned on the gas heater we had in one bedroom and didn't light it.

As I laid down on the bed with my daughter beside me,

She said,

Mommy,

This is funny.

We just got up a little while ago.

But I said,

Never mind.

We'll take a little nap.

Then I closed my eyes,

Listening to the gas escape from the heater.

I shall never forget the smell of the gas.

Suddenly I thought I heard music.

I listened.

I had forgotten to turn the radio off in the kitchen.

It didn't matter now,

But the music kept on,

And presently I heard someone singing an old hymn.

What a friend we have in Jesus,

All our sins and griefs to bear.

What a privilege to carry everything to God in prayer.

Oh,

What peace we often forfeit.

Oh,

What needless pains we bear,

All because we do not carry everything in God in prayer.

As I listened to that hymn,

I realized that I'd been making a tragic mistake.

I had tried to fight all of my terrible battles alone.

I had not taken everything to God in prayer.

I jumped up,

Turned off the gas,

Opened the door and raised the windows.

I wept and prayed all the rest of the day,

Only I didn't pray for help.

You see,

I poured out my soul and thanksgiving to God for all the blessings he had given me.

Five splendid children,

All of them healthy and fine,

Strong in body and mind.

I promised God that I would never again prove so ungrateful,

And I kept that promise.

Even after we lost our home and had to move into a little country school house that we rented for $5 a month,

I thank God for that schoolhouse.

I thank him for the fact that I at least had a roof to keep us warm.

I thank God honestly that things were not worse,

And I believe that he heard me,

For in time things improved.

Oh,

Not overnight,

But as the depression lightened,

We made a little more money.

I got a job as a hat check girl in a large country club and sold stockings as a sideline.

To help put myself through college,

One of my sons got a job on a farm and milked 13 cows morning and night.

Today my children are grown up and married.

I have three fine grandchildren,

And as I look back on that terrible day when I turned on the gas,

I thank God over and over that I had woke up in time.

What joys I would have missed out on if I had carried out that act.

How many wonderful years I would have forfeited forever.

Whenever I hear now of someone who wants to end his life,

I feel like crying out,

Don't do it,

Don't.

The blackest moments we live through can only last a little time,

And then comes the future.

On the average,

Someone commits suicide in these United States every 35 minutes.

On the average,

Someone goes insane every 120 seconds.

Most of these suicides and probably many of the tragedies of insanity could have been prevented if these people had the solace and peace that are found in religion and prayer.

One of the most distinguished of psychiatrists,

Dr.

Carl Young,

Says on page 264 of his book,

Modern Man in Search of a Soul,

During the past 30 years,

People from all the civilized countries of the earth have consulted me.

I have treated many hundreds of patients,

Among all my patients,

In the second half of life.

That is to say,

Over 35.

There has not been one whose problem in the last resort was not that of finding religious outlook on life.

It is safe to say that every one of them felt ill because he had lost that which the living religions of every age had given to their followers.

And none of them has been really healed who did not regain his religious outlook.

That statement is so significant.

I want to repeat it in bold type.

Dr.

Carl Young said,

During the past 30 years,

People from all the civilized countries of the earth have consulted me.

I have treated many hundreds of patients,

Among all my patients,

In the second half of life.

That is to say,

Over 35.

There has not been one whose problem in the last resort was to say that everyone felt ill because he had lost that which the living religions of every age had given to their followers.

And none of them has been really healed who did not regain his religious outlook.

William James said approximately the same thing.

Faith is one of those forces by which men live,

He declared,

And the total absence of it means collapse.

The late Mahatma Gandhi,

The greatest Indian leader since Buddha,

Would have collapsed if he had not been inspired by the sustaining power of prayer.

How do I know?

Because Gandhi himself said so.

Without prayer,

He wrote,

I should have been a lunatic long ago.

Thousands of people could give similar testimony.

My own father,

Well,

As I've already said,

My own father would have drowned himself had it not been for my mother's prayers and faith.

Probably thousands of the tortured souls who are now screaming in our insane asylums could have been saved if they had only turned to the higher power for help instead of trying to fight life's battles alone.

When we are harassed and reach the limit of our own strength,

Many of us turn to desperation to God.

There are no atheists in foxholes.

But why wait till we are desperate?

Why not renew our strength every day?

Why wait even until Sunday?

For years I've had the habit of dropping into empty churches on weekday afternoons.

When I feel that I am too rushed and hurried to spare a few minutes to think about spiritual things,

I say to myself,

Del Carnegie,

Wait a minute.

Why all the feverish hurry and rush,

Little man?

You need to pause and acquire a little perspective.

At such times,

I frequently drop into the first church that I find open.

Although I'm a Protestant,

I frequently on weekday afternoons drop into St.

Patrick's Cathedral on Fifth Avenue and remind myself that I'll be dead in another 30 years,

But that the great spiritual truths that all churches teach are eternal.

I close my eyes and pray.

I find that doing this calms my nerves,

Rests my body,

Clarifies my perspective,

And helps me revalue my value.

May I recommend this practice to you?

During the past six years that I've been writing this book,

I've collected hundreds of examples and concrete cases of how men and women conquered fear and worry by prayer.

I have in my filing cabinet folders bolting with case histories.

Let's take a typical example of a story of a discouraged and disheartened book salesman,

John R.

Anthony of Houston,

Texas.

Here is his story as he told me.

22 years ago,

I closed my private law office to become state representative of an American law book company.

My specialty was selling a set of law books to lawyers and a set of books that were almost indispensable.

I was ably and thoroughly trained for the job.

I knew all the direct sales talks and the convincing answers to all possible objections.

Before calling on a prospect,

I familiarized myself with his ratings as an attorney,

The nature of his practice,

His politics,

And hobbies.

During my interview,

I used that information with ample skill.

Yet something was wrong.

I just couldn't get orders.

I grew discouraged.

As the days and the weeks passed,

I doubled and redoubled my efforts,

But was still unable to close enough sales to pay my expenses.

A sense of fear and dread grew within me.

I became afraid to call on people.

Before I could enter a prospect's office,

That feeling of dread flared up so strong that I would pace up and down the hallway outside the door or go out of the building and circle the block.

Then after losing much viable time and feigning enough courage by sheer willpower to crash the office door,

I feebly turned the doorknob with trembling hands,

Half hoping the prospect would not be in.

My sales manager threatened to stop my advances if I didn't send in more orders.

My wife at home pleaded with me for money to pay the grocery bills for herself and our three children.

Worry seized me.

Day by day,

I grew more desperate.

I didn't know what to do.

As I've already said,

I've closed my private law office at home and had given up my clients.

Now I was broke.

I didn't have the money to even pay my hotel bill.

Neither did I have the money to buy a ticket back home,

Nor did I have the courage to return home a beaten man,

Even if I had had the ticket.

Finally,

At the miserable end of another bad day,

I trudged back to the hotel room for the last time.

Or so I thought.

So far as I was concerned,

I was thoroughly beaten,

Heartbroken,

Depressed,

And I didn't know which way to turn.

I hardly cared whether I lived or died.

I was sorry I had ever been born.

I had nothing but a glass of hot milk that night for dinner.

Even that was more than I could afford.

I understood that night why desperate men raise a hotel window and jump.

I might have done it myself if I had had the courage.

I began wondering what was the purpose of life.

I didn't know.

I couldn't figure it out.

Since there was no one else to turn to,

I turned to God.

I began to pray.

I implored the Almighty to give me light and understanding and guidance through the dark,

Dense wilderness of despair that had closed in around me.

I asked God to help me get orders for my books and to give me money to feed my wife and children.

After that prayer,

I opened my eyes and saw a Gideon Bible that lay on the dresser in that lonely hotel room.

I opened it and read those beautiful,

Immortal promises of Jesus that must have inspired countless generations of lonely,

Worried,

And beaten men throughout the ages.

A talk that Jesus gave to his disciples about how to keep them from worrying.

Take no thought for your life,

What ye shall eat or what ye shall drink,

Nor yet for your body,

What ye shall put on.

Is not the life more than meat and the body than raiment?

Behold the fallows of the air,

For they sow not.

Neither do they reap nor gather into barns,

Yet your heavenly Father feedeth them.

Are ye not much better than they?

But seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness,

And all these things shall be added unto you.

As I prayed and prayed and as I read those words,

A miracle happened.

My nervous tension fell away.

My anxieties,

Fears,

And worries were transformed into heartwarming courage and hope and triumphant faith.

I was happy,

Even though I didn't have enough money to pay my hotel bill.

I went to bed and slept soundly,

Free from care,

As I had not done for many years.

Next morning,

I could hardly hold myself back until the offices of my prospects were open.

I approached the office door of my first prospect,

That beautiful,

Cold,

Rainy day with a bold and positive strife.

I turned the doorknob with a firm and steady grip,

And as I entered,

I made a beeline for my man,

Energetically chin up and with appropriate dignity,

All smiles and saying,

Good morning,

Mr.

Smith.

I'm John R.

Anthony of the All-American Law Book Company.

Oh,

Yes,

Yes,

He replied smiling.

He rose from his chair with outstretched hands.

I'm glad to see you.

Have a seat.

I made more sales that day than I made in two weeks.

That evening,

I proudly returned to my hotel like I was a conquered hero.

I felt like a new man,

And I was a new man,

Because I had a new and victorious mental attitude.

No dinner of hot milk that night.

No,

Sir.

I had steak with all the fixings.

From that day on,

My sales zoomed.

I was born anew that desperate night,

22 years ago,

In a little hotel in Amarillo,

Texas.

My outward situation the next day was the same as it had been through my weeks of failure,

But a tremendous thing had happened inside me.

I had suddenly become aware of my relationship with God.

A mere man alone can easily be defeated,

But a man alive with the power of God within is invincible.

I know I saw it with my own eyes.

Ask and it shall be given.

When Miss LG Barrett of Highland,

Illinois was faced with stark tragedy,

She discovered that she could find peace and tranquility by kneeling down and saying,

Oh,

Lord,

I will not mind be done.

One evening our telephone rang.

She writes in a letter that I have now before me.

It rang 14 times before I had the courage to pick up the receiver.

I knew it must be the hospital and I was terrified.

I feared it was our little boy dying.

He had meningitis.

He'd already been given penicillin,

But it made his temperature fluctuate and the doctors feared that the disease would travel to his brain and might cause the development of a brain tumor or death.

The phone call was just what I had feared.

The hospital was calling.

The doctor wanted me to come immediately.

Maybe you can picture the anguish my husband and I went through sitting in that waiting room.

When we were finally called into the doctor's private office,

The expression on his face filled our hearts with terror.

His words brought even more terror.

He told us that there was only one chance in four that our baby would live.

On the way home,

My husband broke down and doubling his fist hit the steering wheel saying,

Bets,

I can't give that little guy up.

Have you ever seen a man cry?

It isn't a pleasant experience.

We stopped the car and after talking things over,

Decided to stop in church and pray that if it was God's will to take our baby,

We would resign our will to his.

I sank in the pew and said with tears rolling down my cheek,

Not my will,

But thine be done.

The moment I uttered those words,

I felt better.

A sense of peace that I hadn't felt for a long time came over me.

All the way home,

They kept repeating,

Oh God,

Thy will not mine be done.

I slept soundly that night for the first time in a week.

The doctor called a few days later and said that Bobby had passed the crisis.

I thank God for the strong and healthy four year old boy we have today.

I know men who regard religion as something for women and children and preachers.

They pride themselves on being he men who can fight their battles alone.

How surprised they might be to learn that some of the most famous he men in the world pray every day.

For example,

He man,

Jack Dempsey,

Told me that he never went to bed without saying his prayers.

He told me that he never ate a meal without first thanking God for it.

He told me that he prayed every day when he was training for a bout and that when he was fighting,

He always prays just before the bell sounded for each round.

Praying,

He said,

Helped me fight with courage and confidence.

He men,

Connie Mack,

Told me that he couldn't go to sleep without saying his prayers.

He men,

Eddie Rickenbacker,

Told me that he believed his life had been saved by prayer.

On and on a lot of he men are discovering that 72 million Americans are church members now and all time record.

As I said before,

Even the scientists are turning to religion.

Take for example,

Dr.

Alexis Carell,

Who wrote Man the Unknown and won the greatest honor that can be bestowed upon a scientist,

The Nobel Prize.

He said in Reader's Digest article,

Prayer is the most powerful form of energy one can generate.

It is a force as real as terrestrial gravity.

As a physician,

I have seen men after all other therapy had failed,

Lifted out of disease and melancholy by the serene effort of prayer.

Prayer like radium is a source of luminous self generating energy.

In prayer,

Human beings seek and augment their infinite energy by addressing themselves to the infinite source of all energy.

When we pray,

We link ourselves with the inexhaustible mode of power that spins the universe.

We pray that a part of this power be a portion to our needs.

Even in asking our human deficiencies are filled and we arise strengthened and repaired.

Whenever we address God in fervent prayer,

We change both soul and body for the better.

It could not happen that any man or woman could pray for a single moment without some good result.

Admiral Byrd knew what it meant to link ourselves with the inexhaustible mode of power that spins the universe.

His ability to do that pulled him through the most trying ordeal of his life.

He tells the story in his book alone.

In 1934,

He spent five months in a hut buried beneath the ice cap of Ross Barrier deep in the Antarctic.

He was the only living creature south of the latitude 78.

Blizzards roared above his shack.

The cold plunged down to 82 degrees below zero.

He was completely surrounded by unending night.

And then he found with horror,

He was slowly poisoned by carbon monoxide that escaped from his scope.

What could he do?

The near self was 123 miles away.

So what saved his life?

One day in the depths of his despair,

He reached for his diary and tried to set down his philosophy of life.

The human race,

He wrote,

Is not alone in this universe.

And then he wrote in his diary,

I am not alone.

This realization that he was not alone,

Not even in a hole in the ice at the end of the world is what saved Richard Byrne.

Richard Byrne learned to tap those wells of strength and use those resources by turning to God.

Glenn A.

Arnold learned amidst the cornfields of Illinois the same lesson.

Mr.

Arnold,

An insurance broker in Illinois,

Opened his speech on conquering worry like this.

Eight years ago,

I turned the key to the lock on the front door for what I believe was the last time in my life.

I then climbed in my car and started down the river.

I was a failure.

One month before my entire little world had changed and come crashing down on my head.

My electrical appliance business had gone on the rocks.

In my home,

My mother lay at the point of death.

My wife was carrying our second child.

Doctor bills were mounting.

We had mortgaged everything.

We had started the business.

So I climbed into my car and started for the river,

Determined to end the sorry mess.

I drove a few miles out in the country,

Pulled off the road and got out and sink from the ground and wept like a child.

I decided then and there the whole problem to hand it over the Lord.

I prayed.

I prayed hard.

I prayed as though my life depended on it.

And as soon as I turned all my problems over,

A strange thing happened.

I immediately felt a peace of mind that I hadn't known in months.

I must have sat there for half an hour weeping and praying.

Then I went home and slept like a child.

The next morning I arose with confidence.

As I look back,

I am glad now that I had lost everything and became so depressed that I started for the river because tragedy taught me to rely on God.

And now I have a peace and confidence that I never dreamed were possible.

Why does religious faith bring us such peace and calm and fortitude?

I'll let William James answer that.

He says the turbulent billows of the fretful surface leave the deep parts of the ocean undisturbed and to him who has a hold on vaster and more permanent realities,

The hourly vicitudes of his personal destiny seem relatively insignificant things.

The really religious person is accordingly unshakable and full of equanimity and calmly ready for any duty that the day may bring forth.

If we are worried and anxious,

Why not try God?

Even if you're not a religious person by nature or training,

Even if you are out and out skeptic,

Prayer can help you much more than you believe.

What do I mean practical?

I mean that prayer fulfills three basic principles.

Number one,

Prayer helps us to put into words exactly what's troubling you.

We saw in chapter four that it is almost impossible to deal with a problem while it remains vague and nebulous.

Praying in a way is very much like writing our problems down on paper.

If we ask help for a problem,

Even from God,

We must put it into words.

Number two,

Prayer gives us a sense of sharing our burdens,

Of not being alone.

Few of us are so strong that we can bear our heaviest burdens,

Our most agonizing troubles all by ourselves.

Sometimes our worries are so ultimate in nature that we cannot discuss them even with our closest friends or relatives.

Then prayer is the answer.

Any psychiatrist will tell us that when we are pent up in tents and in agony of spirit,

It is therapeutically good to tell someone our troubles.

When we can't tell anyone else,

We can always tell God.

And number three,

Prayer puts into force an active principle of doing.

It's the first step towards action.

I doubt if anyone can pray for some fulfillment day after day without benefiting from it.

In other words,

Without taking some steps to bring it to pass.

Why not close this book right now?

Shut the door,

Kneel down,

And unburden your heart.

If you have lost your faith,

Beseech Almighty God to renew it.

And repeat this beautiful prayer written by Saint Francis of Assisi 700 years ago.

Lord,

Make me an instrument of thy peace.

Where there is hatred,

Let me sow love.

Where there is injury,

Pardon.

Where there is doubt,

Where there is faith.

Where there is despair,

Hope.

Where there is darkness,

Light.

Where there is sadness,

Joy.

Oh,

Divine master,

Grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console,

To be understood as to understand,

To be loved as to love.

For it is in giving that we receive.

It is in pardoning that we are pardoned.

And it is dying that we are born to eternal life.

That is all for tonight.

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

Until next time.

Reviews

This book is so inspiring! Such long chapters; thank you for reading them all to us. 🙏

Great reminder that you can go back to god even if “religion” doesn’t appeal to you. We all need to turn to god at times like these and always.🙏🙏🙏

I am not alone.

Thank you for reminding me about the power of prayer. 💕