第6章　消除思想上的忧虑

我永远都忘不了几年前的一个晚上，当时马利安·道格拉斯是我班上的一个学员。（我没用他的真名。出于个人原因，他要求我不要说出他的身份。）但这是他的真实故事，他在我的一个成人教育班上讲过。他告诉我们他家里遭受的不幸——不只一次，而是两次。第一次他失去了5岁的女儿，这是他非常喜爱的孩子。他和他的妻子都以为他们无法承受这个打击。可是，正如他所说的：“10个月之后，上帝又赐给我们另一个小女儿——她只活了5天。”

接连而来的打击几乎使人无法承受。“我受不了，”这个父亲告诉我们，“我睡不着吃不下，也无法休息或放松。我精神上受到了致命的打击，信心全没了。”最后，他去看了医生。有一位医生建议他吃安眠药，而另一位医生则建议去旅行。

他试了这两个方法，可是都没有用。他说：“我的身体犹如夹在一把铁钳子里，而铁钳却越夹越紧。”那种悲哀——如果你曾经因为悲哀而感觉麻木的话，就知道是什么感受了。

“不过，感谢上帝，我们还有一个孩子——一个4岁大的儿子。他教我找到了解决问题的方法。一天下午，我悲伤地呆坐着，他问我：‘爸爸，你肯不肯给我做一条船？’我实在没有心情。事实上，我没有心情做任何事。可是我的儿子是个很

peace that I had had in months!

“That discovery jarred me out of my lethargy and caused me to do a bit of thinking—the first real thinking I had done in months. I realised that it is difficult to worry while you are busy doing something that requires planning and thinking. In my case, building the boat had knocked worry out of the ring. So I resolved to keep busy.

“The following night, I went from room to room in the house, compiling a list of jobs that ought to be done. Scores of items needed to be repaired: bookcases, stair steps, storm windows, window shades, knobs, locks, leaky taps.Astonishing as it seems, in the course of two weeks I had made a list of 242 items that needed attention.

“During the last two years I have completed most of them.Besides, I have filled my life with stimulating activities. Two nights per week I attend adult-education classes in New York. I have gone in for civic activities in my home town and I am now chairman of the school board. I attend scores of meetings. I help collect money for the Red Cross and other activities. I am so busy now that I have no time for worry.”

No time for worry! That is exactly what Winston Churchill said when he was working eighteen hours a day at the height of the war. When he was asked if he worried about his tremendous responsibilities, he said, “I'm too busy. I have no time for worry.”

Charles Kettering was in that same fix when he started out to invent a self-starter for automobiles.Mr.Kettering was, until his recent retirement, vice-president of General Motors in charge of the world-famous General Motors Research Corporation. But in those days, he was so poor that he had to use the hayloft of a barn as a laboratory. To buy groceries, he had to use fifteen hundred dollars that his wife had made by giving piano lessons; later, he had to borrow five hundred dollars on his life insurance. I asked his wife

会缠人的小家伙，我不得不屈服。

“做那条玩具船花了三个小时。等做好之后，我发现这三小时竟成了我这几个月以来第一次心情放松的时间。

“这个发现使我从恍惚中惊醒过来，也使我想了许多——这是我几个月来第一次认真思考。我发现，如果你忙着做一些需要计划和思考的事情时，就很难去忧虑了。对我来说，做那条船时忧虑全都消失了，所以我决定让自己忙起来。

“第二天晚上，我看了看每一个房间，把要做的事情列成一张单子。有许多东西如书架、楼梯、屋顶窗、窗帘、门把、门锁、漏水的龙头都需要修理。让人震惊的是，我在两个星期里竟然列出了242件需要做的事情。

“在过去的两年里，这些事情大部分都已经做完了。此外，我还给我的生活增加了富有启发的活动：每个星期到纽约市参加两晚上成人教育课，并参加了小镇上的一些活动。现在我是校董事会主席，参加过很多会议，并协助红十字会和其他活动募捐。现在我忙得没有时间忧虑。”

没有时间忧虑！这也正是丘吉尔曾说过的，当时战事紧张，他每天工作18个小时。当别人问他是不是担心这一巨大责任时，他说：“我太忙了，没有时间忧虑。”

查尔斯·吉特林着手发明汽车自动点火器的时候，也碰到过类似情形。吉特林先生一直担任通用汽车公司副总裁，主管世界知名的通用汽车研究公司，不久前才退休。可是当年他穷得只能租堆稻草的谷仓做实验室，全家的开销靠他太太教钢琴

if she wasn't worried at a time like that.“Yes,” she replied, “I was so worried I couldn't sleep; but Mr.Kettering wasn't. He was too absorbed in his work to worry.”

The great scientist, Pasteur, spoke of “the peace that is found in libraries and laboratories.” Why is peace found there? Because the men in libraries and laboratories are usually too absorbed in their tasks to worry about themselves.Research men rarely have nervous breakdowns. They haven't time for such luxuries.

Why does such a simple thing as keeping busy help to drive out anxiety? Because of a law—one of the most fundamental laws ever revealed by psychology. And that law is: that it is utterly impossible for any human mind, no matter how brilliant, to think of more than one thing at any given time. You don't quite believe it? Very well, then, let's try an experiment.

Suppose you lean right back now, close your eyes, and try, at the same instant, to think of the Statue of Liberty and of what you plan to do tomorrow morning.（Go ahead, try it.）

You found out, didn't you, that you could focus on either thought in turn, but never on both simultaneously? Well, the same thing is true in the field of emotions. We cannot be pepped up and enthusiastic about doing something exciting and feel dragged down by worry at the very same time.

One kind of emotion drives out the other. And it was that simple discovery that enabled Army psychiatrists to perform such miracles during the Second World War.

When men came out of battle so shaken by the experience that they were called “psychoneurotic”, Army doctors prescribed “Keep'em busy” as a cure. Every waking minute of these nerve-shocked men was filled with activity—usually outdoor activity, such as fishing, hunting, playing ball, golf, taking pictures, making gardens, and dancing. They were given no time for brooding over their terrible experiences.

赚来的1500美元。后来，他不得不用他的人寿保险做抵押借来500美元。我问他太太，她在那段时期是不是很忧虑？“当然，”她回答说，“我担心得睡不着，可是我丈夫一点都不担心。他沉浸在工作中，没有时间忧虑。”

伟大的科学家巴斯特也曾经谈过“在图书馆和实验室找到的平静”。为什么会在那儿找到平静呢？因为在图书馆和实验室工作的人，通常都埋头于工作，没时间为自己担忧。研究人员也很少精神崩溃，因为他们没有时间享受这种奢侈。

为什么“让自己忙着”这么简单的一件事情，就能把忧虑赶走呢？因为有这么一个定理——这是心理学所发现的基本定理之一。这条定理就是：一个人不论多么聪明，都不可能在同一时间想一件以上的事情。不信？让我们来做一个实验：

假定你现在靠坐在椅子上，闭上双眼，试着在同一时间去想自由女神以及你明天早上打算做什么事情。

你会发现，你只能轮流想其中的一件事，而不可能同时想两件事，对不对？就你的情感来说也是如此。我们不可能充满热情地想去做一些令人兴奋的事情，同时又因为忧虑而拖延下来。

一种感觉会把另一种感觉赶出去。就是这么简单的发现，使得军方一些心理专家能够在二战时创造出医学奇迹。

当有些人因为在战场上受到打击而退下来时，他们都患上了“心理上的精神衰弱症”。军队医生采取了“保持忙碌”的治疗方法。这些精神受到打击的人每时每

“Occupational therapy” is the term now used by psychiatry when work is prescribed as though it were a medicine. It is not new. The old Greek physicians were advocating it five hundred years before Christ was born!

The Quakers were using it in Philadelphia in Ben Franklin's time. A man who visited a Quaker sanatorium in 1774 was shocked to see that the patients who were mentally ill were busy spinning flax. He thought these poor unfortunates were being exploited—until the Quakers explained that they found that their patients actually improved when they did a little work. It was soothing to the nerves.

Any psychiatrist will tell you that work—keeping busy—is one of the best anesthetics ever known for sick nerves.Henry W.Longfellow found that out for himself when he lost his young wife. His wife had been melting some sealing-wax at a candle one day, when her clothes caught on fire.Longfellow heard her cries and tried to reach her in time; but she died from the burns. For a while, Longfellow was so tortured by the memory of that dreadful experience that he nearly went insane; but, fortunately for him, his three small children needed his attention. In spite of his own grief, Longfellow undertook to be father and mother to his children. He took them for walks, told them stories, played games with them, and immortalised their companionship in his poem The Children's Hour. He also translated Dante; and all these duties combined kept him so busy that he forgot himself entirely, and regained his peace of mind. As Tennyson declared when he lost his most intimate friend, Arthur Hallam:“I must lose myself in action, lest I wither in despair.”

Most of us have little trouble “losing ourselves in action” while we have our noses to the grindstone and are doing our day's work. But the hours after work—they are the dangerous ones. Just when we're free to enjoy our own leisure, and ought to be happiest—

刻都在活动，例如钓鱼、打猎、打篮球、打高尔夫球、拍照、种花、跳舞，根本不让他们有时间回想那些可怕的经历。

“职业治疗”是精神病学发明的名词，就是拿工作当作治疗疾病的药。这并不是什么新方法，耶稣诞生前500年古希腊医生就已经使用这种方法。

在富兰克林时代，费城教友会的教徒也使用过这种方法。1774年，有一个人去参观教友会办的疗养院，当他看见那些精神病人正忙着纺纱时，他大为震惊。他认为那些可怜而不幸的人正在被剥削。后来教友会的人向他解释说，他们发现那些病人只有在工作时病情才能真正好转，因为工作能让他们安定。

任何精神病专家都会告诉你：工作——保持忙碌——是治疗精神病的良方。亨利·朗费罗在他年轻的妻子去世之后，也发现了这个道理。有一天，他太太在蜡烛上熔化一些封蜡，结果衣服着火了。朗费罗听见她的叫喊声，立即赶过去，但她还是因为烧伤而离开了人世。很长一段时间，朗费罗都忘不掉这件可怕的事情，几乎发疯。幸好他的三个幼小的孩子需要他照料。他虽然很伤心，但还是要父兼母职。他带他们散步，给他们讲故事，和他们做游戏，把他们的亲情永存在《孩子们的时间》一诗里。他还翻译了但丁的诗。所有这些使他忙得完全忘了自己，思想上重新得到了平静。这正如丹尼森在他最好的朋友亚瑟·哈兰死的时候曾说过的：“我必须让自己沉浸在工作中，否则我会在绝望中死去。”

对大部分人来说，当日常工作使我们忙得团团转的时候，“沉浸在工作中”不

that's when the blue devils of worry attack us.

That's when we begin to wonder whether we're getting anywhere in life; whether we're in a rut; whether the boss “meant anything” by that remark he made today; or whether we're getting bald.

When we are not busy, our minds tend to become a near-vacuum. Every student of physics knows that “nature abhors a vacuum”. The nearest thing to a vacuum that you and I will probably ever see is the inside of an incandescent electric-light bulb.Break that bulb—and nature forces air in to fill the theoretically empty space.

Nature also rushes in to fill the vacant mind. With what? Usually with emotions. Why? Because emotions of worry, fear, hate, jealousy, and envy are driven by primeval vigour and the dynamic energy of the jungle. Such emotions are so violent that they tend to drive out of our minds all peaceful, happy thoughts and emotions.

James L.Mursell, professor of education, Teachers College, Columbia, puts it very well when he said:“Worry is most apt to ride you ragged not when you are in action, but when the day's work is done. Your imagination can run riot then and bring up all sorts of ridiculous possibilities and magnify each little blunder. At such a time,” he continued, “your mind is like a motor operating without its load. It races and threatens to burn out its bearings or even to tear itself to bits. The remedy for worry is to get completely occupied doing something constructive.”

But you don't have to be a college professor to realise this truth and put it into practice.During the Second World War, I met a housewife from Chicago who told me how she discovered for herself that “the remedy for worry is to get completely occupied doing something constructive.” I met this woman and her husband in the dining-car while I

会有多大问题。可是下班以后——也就是我们能够自由自在地享受我们的轻松和快乐的时候——忧虑之魔就会袭击我们。

这时我们会想各种问题：我们的生活有什么成就、我们是不是墨守成规、老板今天说的那句话是不是“有什么特别意思”，或者我们是不是开始秃头了……

当我们不忙的时候，大脑常常会变成一片真空。每一个物理专业的学生都知道“自然界没有真空状态”。我们看过的最接近真空状态的是电灯泡。打破灯泡，空气就会进去，充满了从理论上来说是真空的那个空间。

大脑空出来时，也会有东西补充进去。是什么呢？通常是感觉。为什么？因为忧虑、恐惧、憎恨、嫉妒和羡慕等情绪都是受思想控制的，而这些情绪都非常强烈，往往会撵走我们思想中所有平静、快乐的思想和情绪。

詹姆斯·马歇尔是哥伦比亚师范学院教育系教授。他在这方面说得很清楚：“忧虑对你伤害最大的时候，不是在你忙着工作的时候，而是在你干完一天的工作之后。那时，你的想象力会混乱，使你想到各种荒诞不经的事情，夸大每一个小错误。在这个时候，你的思想就像一辆没有载重的汽车，横冲直撞，摧毁一切，甚至把自己撞成碎片。消除忧虑的良方，就是让自己做一些有意义的事情。”

并非成为大学教授才能懂得这个道理，才能将其付诸实践。我在二战时碰到一位住在芝加哥的家庭主妇，她告诉我说，她发现“消除忧虑的良方，就是让自己做一些有意义的事情”。当时我正在由纽约到密苏里州农庄的路上，正好在火车餐车

was travelling from New York to my farm in Missouri.（Sorry I didn't get their names—I never like to give examples without using names and street addresses—details that give authenticity to a story.）

This couple told me that their son had joined the armed forces the day after Pearl Harbour. The woman told me that she had almost wrecked her health worrying over that only son. Where was he? Was he safe? Or in action? Would he be wounded? Killed?

When I asked her how she overcame her worry, she replied:“I got busy.” She told me that at first she had dismissed her maid and tried to keep busy by doing all her housework herself. But that didn't help much.“The trouble was,” she said, “that I could do my housework almost mechanically, without using my mind. So I kept on worrying. While making the beds and washing the dishes. I realised I needed some new kind of work that would keep me busy both mentally and physically every hour of the day. So I took a job as a saleswoman in a large department store.

“That did it,” she said.“I immediately found myself in a whirlwind of activity: customers swarming around me, asking for prices, sizes, colours. Never a second to think of anything except my immediate duty; and when night came, I could think of nothing except getting off my aching feet. As soon as I ate dinner, I fell into bed and instantly became unconscious. I had neither the time nor the energy to worry.”

She discovered for herself what John Cowper Powys meant when he said, in The Art of Forgetting the Unpleasant:“A certain comfortable security, a certain profound inner peace, a kind of happy numbness, soothes the nerves of the human animal when absorbed in its allotted task.”

And what a blessing that it is so! Osa Johnson, the world's most famous woman

上碰到这位太太和她的先生。（很抱歉我没有他们的姓名，这是增加故事可靠性的细节。我不喜欢不带姓名、地址地举例。）

这对夫妇告诉我，他们的儿子在“珍珠港事变”的第二天加入陆军部队。母亲当时很担忧她的独生子，这使她的健康严重受损。她常常想：他在哪里？是不是安全？是不是在打仗？会不会受伤？会不会阵亡？

我问她是怎么克服忧虑的，她回答说：“我让自己忙着。”她告诉我，她先是把女佣辞退，试图做家务保持忙碌，可是作用不大。“问题是，”她说，“我做家务总是机械式的，完全不用思想。所以当我铺床和洗碟子时，还总是担忧。我发现我需要一些新的工作，才能使我每时每刻都能身心忙碌，于是我去了一家大百货公司当售货员。

“这次好了，”她说，“我马上发现自己身处一个运动的大漩涡：四周全是顾客，问价钱、尺码、颜色等。除了工作，我没有一秒钟想其他问题。到了晚上，我也只能想如何让双脚休息一下。吃完晚饭之后，我躺在床上很快就睡着了。我既没有时间，也没有精力忧虑。”

她发现的这一点，正如约翰·科伯尔·波斯在《忘记不快的艺术》一书中所说的：“一种舒适的安全感，一种内在的宁静，一种因快乐的迟钝，都能使人在专心工作时精神平静。”

能做到这一点的人实在太幸运了！世界著名的女冒险家奥莎·琼森最近告诉

explorer, recently told me how she found release from worry and grief. You may have read the story of her life. It is called I Married Adventure. If any woman ever married adventure, she certainly did.Martin Johnson married her when she was sixteen and lifted her feet off the sidewalks of Chanute, Kansas, and set them down on the wild jungle trails of Borneo. For a quarter of a century, this Kansas couple travelled all over the world, making motion pictures of the vanishing wild life of Asia and Africa.Back in America nine years ago, they were on a lecture tour, showing their famous films. They took a plane out of Denver, bound for the Coast. The plane plunged into a mountain.Martin Johnson was killed instantly. The doctors said Osa would never leave her bed again. But they didn't know Osa Johnson. Three months later, she was in a wheel chair, lecturing before large audiences. In fact, she addressed over a hundred audiences that season—all from a wheel chair. When I asked her why she did it, she replied, “I did it so that I would have no time for sorrow and worry.”

Osa Johnson had discovered the same truth that Tennyson had sung about a century earlier:“I must lose myself in action, lest I wither in despair.”

Admiral Byrd discovered this same truth when he lived all alone for five months in a shack that was literally buried in the great glacial ice-cap that covers the South Pole—an ice-cap that holds nature's oldest secrets—an ice-cap covering an unknown continent larger than the United States and Europe combined.Admiral Byrd spent five months there alone. No other living creature of any kind existed within a hundred miles. The cold was so intense that he could hear his breath freeze and crystallise as the wind blew it past his ears. In his book Alone, Admiral Byrd tells all about those five months he spent in bewildering and soul-shattering darkness. The days were as black as the nights. He had to keep busy to preserve his sanity.

“At night,” he says, “before blowing out the lantern, I formed the habit of blocking out

我，她是如何从忧虑悲伤中解脱出来的。你也许读过她的自传《与冒险结缘》。如果说有哪个女人能跟冒险结缘，那就是她。马丁·琼森在她16岁时娶了她，在堪萨斯州查那提镇的街上将她一把抱起，直到婆罗洲的原始森林才把她放下。25年来，这对来自堪萨斯州的夫妇周游了全世界，拍下了亚洲和非洲逐渐绝迹的野生动物的影片。当他们9年前回到美国，到处旅行演讲时，放映了他们的电影。有一次，他们在丹佛城乘飞机前往西海岸，飞机撞在山上，马丁·琼森当场死亡，医生说奥莎也永远不能再下床了。可是他们并不了解奥莎·琼森。3个月后，她就坐着一辆轮椅，当着一大群人演讲。事实上，她在那段时间做了100多场演讲，每次都是坐轮椅去的。当我问她为什么要这样做时，她回答说：“我这样做，是想让我没有时间悲伤忧虑。”

奥莎·琼森发现了丹尼森先生一个世纪前曾在诗中说的同一真理：“我必须让自己沉浸在工作中，否则我会在绝望中死去。”

海军上将拜德也是在覆盖着冰雪的南极小茅屋里单独住了5个月才发现这个道理的。在那冰天雪地里，是一片无人知晓、比美国和欧洲加起来还要大的大陆。拜德上将单独在那里待了5个月，周围100英里（1英里约为1.6千米）以内没有任何生物。天出奇的冷，当风吹过他耳边的时候，他能听见他的呼吸几乎冻住了，结得像水晶一样。他在《孤寂》这本书里，叙述了他在既难过又可怕的黑暗中度过的那5个月。他不得不一直忙着，才不至于发疯。

the morrow's work. It was a case of assigning myself an hour, say, to the Escape Tunnel, half an hour to leveling drift, an hour to straightening up the fuel drums, an hour to cutting bookshelves in the walls of the food tunnel, and two hours to renewing a broken bridge in the man-hauling sledge...

“It was wonderful,” he says, “to be able to dole out time in this way. It brought me an extraordinary sense of command over myself... ” And he adds, “Without that or an equivalent, the days would have been without purpose; and without purpose they would have ended, as such days always end, in disintegration.”

Note that last again:“Without purpose, the days would have ended, as such days always end, in disintegration.”

If you and I are worried, let's remember that we can use good old-fashioned work as a medicine. That was said by no less an authority than the late Dr. Richard C. Cabot, formerly professor of clinical medicine at Harvard. In his book What Men Live By, Dr. Cabot says, “As a physician, I have had the happiness of seeing work cure many persons who have suffered from trembling palsy of the soul which results from overmastering doubts, hesitations, vacillation and fear... Courage given us by our work is like the self-reliance which Emerson has made for ever glorious.”

If you and I don't keep busy—if we sit around and brood—we will hatch out a whole flock of what Charles Darwin used to call the “wibber gibbers”. And the “wibber gibbers” are nothing but old-fashioned gremlins that will run us hollow and destroy our power of action and our power of will.

I know a businessman in New York who fought the “wibber gibbers” by getting so busy that he had no time to fret and stew. His name is Tremper Longman, and his office

“在夜晚，”他说，“熄灯之前，我养成了安排第二天工作的习惯。也就是说，我要为自己安排工作。比如，一小时检查逃生隧道，半小时挖横坑，一小时检查燃料罐，一小时在放食物的隧道墙上挖地方放书，再花两小时修整雪橇……

“能把时间分开，”他说，“是一件非常好的事。这使我产生了一种可以主宰自我的感觉……要是没有这些工作，那日子就过得漫无目标了。而没有目标的话，这些日子就会像平常一样，最后崩溃。”

（注意最后那句话：“没有目标，这些日子就会像平常一样，最后崩溃。”）

要是我们忧虑的话，就让我们记住，我们可以把工作当作一种很好的古老疗法。原哈佛大学临床医学教授、已故博士理查德·卡伯特在《生活的条件》这本书中也说过：“作为一个医生，我很高兴地看到，工作可以治愈很多病人。他们所患的病，是由于过分疑惧、迟疑、踌躇和恐惧造成的。工作带给我们的勇气，就像爱默生永垂不朽的自信一样。”

如果你和我不能一直忙着，如果我们呆坐发愁的话，我们就会孵出许多达尔文称为“胡思乱想”的东西，而这些“胡思乱想”犹如传说中的魔鬼，会掏空我们的思想，摧毁我们的行动和意志。

我认识纽约的一个商人，他就是用忙碌来赶走“胡思乱想”，使自己没有时间烦恼和忧虑的。他叫查伯尔·朗曼，办公室在第40大街，他也是我成人教育班的学员。他征服忧虑的经历非常有意思，也非常特殊，所以上完课之后我请他和我一

is at 40 Wall Street. He was a student in one of my adult-education classes; and his talk on conquering worry was so interesting, so impressive, that I asked him to have a late supper with me after class; and we sat in a restaurant until long past midnight, discussing his experiences.Here is the story he told me:“Eighteen years ago, I was so worried I had insomnia. I was tense, irritated, and jittery. I felt I was headed for a nervous breakdown.

“I had reason to be worried. I was treasurer of the Crown Fruit and Extract Company，418 West Broadway, New York. We had half a million dollars invested in strawberries packed in gallon tins. For twenty years, we had been selling these gallon tins of strawberries to manufactures of ice cream.

“Suddenly our sales stopped because the big ice-cream makers, such as National Dairy and Borden's, were rapidly increasing their production and were saving money and time by buying strawberries packed in barrels.

“Not only were we left with half a million dollars in berries we couldn't sell, but we were also under contract to buy a million dollars more of strawberries in the next twelve months! We had already borrowed $350，000 from the banks. We couldn't possibly pay off or renew these loans. No wonder I was worried!

“I rushed out to Watsonville, California, where our factory was located, and tried to persuade our president that conditions had changed, that we were facing ruin. He refused to believe it. He blamed our New York office for all the trouble—poor salesmanship.

“After days of pleading, I finally persuaded him to stop packing more strawberries and to sell our new supply on the fresh berry market in San Francisco. That almost solved our problems. I should have been able to stop worrying then; but I couldn't.Worry is a habit; and I had that habit.

起去吃宵夜。我们在一间餐馆一直坐到半夜，谈他的经历。下面就是他告诉我的故事：“18年前，我因为忧虑患上了失眠症。我紧张不安，爱发脾气。我想我快要精神崩溃了。

“我之所以发愁，是有原因的。当时我是纽约市西百老汇418号皇冠水果制品公司的财务经理。我们投资50万美元，把草莓装在一加仑的罐子里。20年来，我们一直向冰淇淋厂销售这种一加仑装的草莓。

“突然，我们的销售大跌，因为那些大冰淇淋厂商的产量迅速增加，他们为了节省开支和时间，都买桶装草莓。

“我们50万美元的草莓不仅卖不出去，而且根据合同，我们在接下来的一年还要再购买100万美元的草莓。我们已经向银行借了35万美元，既还不出钱，也不能再续借贷款，我当然担忧了！

“我赶到我们在加州华生维里的工厂，想让总经理相信情况有所改变，我们将面临毁灭。但他不肯相信，而是把这些问题都归罪给纽约的公司以及那些可怜的业务员。

“经过几天的协商，我终于说服他不再用这种包装，把新包装投放在旧金山市场上卖。这几乎可以解决我们的问题，因此我应该不再忧虑了，可我还是有些担忧。忧虑是一种习惯，而我已经染上这种习惯了。

“回到纽约后，我开始担心每一件事：在意大利买的樱桃、在夏威夷买的凤

“When I returned to New York, I began worrying about everything: the cherries we were buying in Italy, the pineapples we were buying in Hawaii, and so on. I was tense, jittery, couldn't sleep; and, as I have already said, I was heading for a nervous breakdown.

“In despair, I adopted a way of life that cured my insomnia and stopped my worries. I got busy. I got so busy with problems demanding all my faculties that I had no time to worry. I had been working seven hours a day. I now began working fifteen and sixteen hours a day. I got down to the office every morning at eight o'clock and stayed there every night until almost midnight. I took on new duties, new responsibilities. When I got home at midnight, I was so exhausted when I fell in bed that I became unconscious in a few seconds.

“I kept up this program for about three months. I had broken the habit of worry by that time, so I returned to a normal working day of seven or eight hours. This event occurred eighteen years ago. I have never been troubled with insomnia or worry since then.”

George Bernard Shaw was right. He summed it all up when he said:“The secret of being miserable is to have the leisure to bother about whether you are happy or not.” So don't bother to think about it! Spit on your hands and get busy. Your blood will start circulating; your mind will start ticking—and pretty soon this whole positive upsurge of life in your body will drive worry from your mind.Get busy.Keep busy. It's the cheapest kind of medicine there is on this earth—and one of the best.

To break the worry habit, here is:

Rule 1：Keep busy. The worried person must lose himself in action, lest be wither in despair.

梨……我紧张不安，睡不着觉，就像我刚才所说的，简直精神崩溃了。

“在绝望中，我换了一种新的生活方式，它治好了我的失眠症和忧虑。我一直忙着，忙到必须全力以赴，根本没有时间忧虑。以前我一天工作7小时，现在一天工作十五六个小时。我每天早上8点就到办公室，一直干到半夜。我接下新的工作，担负起新的责任。每当我半夜回家时，总是筋疲力尽地躺在床上，不过几秒钟就浑然入睡。

“这样过了将近3个月，我改掉了忧虑的习惯，恢复到每天工作七八个小时的正常情形。这事情发生在18年前。从那以后，我再也没有失眠和忧虑过。”

萧伯纳说得对，他总结这些说：“人们之所以忧虑，就是有空闲来想自己到底快乐不快乐。”所以，不必去想它！在手掌心吐口唾沫，让自己忙起来，你的血液就会开始循环，你的思想就会变得敏锐——不久这种积极的情绪就会驱除思想上的忧虑。让自己一直忙着！这是世界上治疗忧虑最便宜、最有效的良药。

要改掉忧虑的习惯，下面是第一条规则：

保持忙碌。忧虑的人一定要让自己沉浸在工作中，否则会在绝望中挣扎。