Skip to main content

Book Review - How to stop worrying and start living

The internet is telling me that the Carnegie Library was founded in 1916 and named after a Scottish born American philanthropist Anthony Carnegie who donated £2,500 to establish the library. My wonder if the library in San Fernando in Trinidad was named after Dale Carnegie was answered and no it was not.

I have gotten much better at not worrying. I know the struggles from many years living with mental illness. This book is a welcomed input for my life's journey. A stepping stone to improving the way I handle situations and navigate life's challenges. I chuckled when the back of the book says "shows you how to avoid fatigue and keep looking young". People do tell me often that I look young for my age.

I liked the tone of the book from the beginning. This was someone who had gone through struggles himself and had first hand experience. He had interacted with many persons who had seen the worst of worries. As a teacher, the author is inviting. We are encouraged to live in the now. Imagine that today is the only life we have. The book was a calm read. The author shared others' experiences and it was comforting to know others had conquered worry and that we are not alone.

We worry less if we accept where we are. My mom likes to say, "worrying about sickness is worse than having the sickness". Worrying makes us more sick. The book gives practical advice and steps we can take.

A busy person and mind is less likely to have time to worry. Don't sweat the small stuff. Sometimes we worry about things that have little chance of happening. We would do good to be masters of the inevitable. Let go of what is out of our control. The cost of worry is too much. Save our energy for other things. Let go of the past. I advocate for an attitude of gratitude. Things can always be worse than they are. I found a quote in this book that lends itself to the photography journey I am on. The mind and spirit are very powerful and we should use this for our well being. Love is the answer. Do without expecting anything in return.

As you read this book there will be things that stand out for you like a light going on over your head. I could keep adding the things that stood out for me but then this review would be too long. I like that there is a recap at the end of each chapter to make sure that we got to the point.

It is wonderfully narrated through the experiences and thoughts of others who had to deal with worries. This book will change the way you think and act. It will tug at you to let go of the things that are holding you back. If I remember just one thing from this book, I want it to be, don't cry over spilled milk. I felt a beautiful serenity come over me when I was reading the chapter that talked about the value of God and faith and prayer. I understood it because I live it myself. When you find something so beautiful and abundant you just want to share it.

Reading this book had made me enthusiastic about reading more books and self help books. Books that can make me a better person. Books that make us think and see things differently. In the ending of the book, the author inserts thirty one stories told by others of how they conquered worry. One day I will write about how I deal with worry.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

God opens doors

It is 1203am and I have decided to write. Saturday I spent the night coding. I was trying to get a FastAPI app up and running, all from my budget Android phone. The test cases were written to use Puppeteer. I ended up using Replit for that. Coding is more challenging when using a mobile phone. Not impossible but more challenging. I hardly blog about technology and coding anymore but the love is still there. I still have a dream of creating my own coding and youtube studio with a nice desk setup. That is nice but what should I make this blog post about? What do I want to write about? What should I write about? I love creating presentations. That is something I could do to revive my youtube channel. I love Maths too. I have this feeling that I could solve one of those longstanding Maths problems that seems impossible. Sometimes, like right now, I feel like abandoning my blog post. It is going nowhere. Maybe I should get up and go wash the wares. I wish God could tell me what to write abo...

Mundane

It is 123am and I have decided to write. I have this new idea for a book called Mundane. It would be me writing about the ordinary. We chase the extraordinary but there is beauty in the ordinary. There is beauty in the simple. There is beauty in the everyday. What about God? We often think about God in grand terms. But what if God is simple too? What if God is mundane? What if we look for God in the everyday moments? I sit in this dark room with the air conditioning on. The fan is also on. The curtain is down but I imagine the moonlight shining on the grass outside. The cats are probably sleeping. I wonder if anyone else in the neighbourhood is awake at this hour? Is there another writer around who is also writing about the mundane? The fan breeze helps the air conditioning cool me down. These nights are warm otherwise. A mosquito flies across my screen. Hello friend or foe. I cannot quite decide which one. If I had a swatter you would be gone. I check my notifications and there is an ...

What we do not know

It is 1245am and I have decided to write. I had this weird alienish dream and it ended with me winning by simply stating "the truth is that we do not know". In the dream everyone was having an opinion of what was happening as if they knew. On to something random. I had this question. What is the most unrandom thing? Then what is the most random thing? What if everything is equally random. My friend Chatty thinks that randomness is not an absolute property—it is a relation between you and the system you observe. Randomness is not absolute—it depends on perspective. Something perfectly ordered can seem random if you do not know its pattern. So in a sense, everything can be "equally random" relative to the observer's knowledge, making randomness more about perception than an intrinsic property. The more we know the less random things become. Let me make a detour. Suppose we do not predict things but things predict us. For example, when I flip a coin, did I predict ...