HOW OUR WORRY AFFECTS OTHERS
If worry affected merely ourselves it would be bad enough, but we
could tolerate it more than we do. For it is one of the infernal
characteristics of worry that our manifestation of it invariably
affects others as injuriously as it affects ourselves.
An employer who worries his employees never gets the good work out
of them as does the one who has sense enough to keep them happy,
good-natured and contented. I was lecturing once for a large
corporation. I had two colleagues, who "spelled me" every hour. For
much of the time we had no place to rest, work or play between our
lectures. Our engagement lasted the better part of a year, and the
result was that, during that period where our reasonable needs were
unprovided for, we all failed to give as good work as we were capable
of. We were unnecessarily worried by inadequate provision and our
employers suffered. Henry Ford, and men of his type have learned this
lesson. Men respond rapidly to those who do not worry them. Governor
Hunt and Warden Sims, of Arizona, have learned the same fact in
dealing with prisoners of the State Penitentiary. The less the men
are "worried" by unnecessarily harsh treatment, absurd and cruel
restrictions, curtailment of natural rights, the better they act, the
easier they are liable to reform and make good.
Dr. Musgrove to his _Nervous Breakdowns_, tells a story of two
commanders which well illustrates this point:
In a certain war two companies of men had to march an equal
distance in order to meet at a particular spot. The one
arrived in perfect order, and with few signs of exhaustion,
although the march had been an arduous one. The other company
reached the place utterly done up and disorganised. It was all
a question of leadership; the captain of the first company
had known his way and kept his men in good order, while the
captain of the second company had never been sure of himself,
and had harassed his subordinates with a constant succession
of orders and counter-orders, until they had hardly known
whether they were on their heads or their heels. That was why
they arrived completely demoralised.
In war, as in peace, it is not work that kills so much as worry.
A general may make his soldiers work to the point of exhaustion as
Napoleon often did, yet have their almost adoring worship. But the
general who worries his men gets neither their good will nor good
work.
A worrying mother can keep a whole house in a turmoil, from father
down to the latest baby. The growing boys and girls soon learn to
dread the name of "home," and would rather be in school, in the
backyard playing, in the attic, at the neighbors, or in the streets,
anywhere, than within the sound of their mother's worrying voice,
or frowning countenance. A worrying husband can drive his wife
distracted, and vice versa. I was dining not long ago with a couple
that, from outward appearance, had everything that heart could desire
to make them happy. They were young, healthy, had a good income, were
_both_ engaged in work they liked, yet the husband worried the
wife constantly about trifles. If she wished to set the table in a
particular way he worried because she didn't do it some other way; if
she drove one of their autos he worried because she didn't take the
other; and when she wore a spring-day flowery kind of a hat he worried
her because his mother never wore any other than a black hat. The
poor woman was distracted by the absolute absurdities, frivolities and
inconsequentialities of his worries, yet he didn't seem to have sense
to see what he was doing. So I gave him a plain practical talk--as I
had been drawn into a discussion of the matter without any volition on
my part--and urged him to quit irritating his wife so foolishly and so
unnecessarily.
Some teachers worry their pupils until the latter fail to do the work
they are competent to do; and the want of success of many an ambitious
teacher can often be attributed to his, her, worrying disposition.
Remember, therefore, that when you worry you are making others unhappy
as well as yourself, you are putting a damper, a blight, upon other
lives as well as your own, you are destroying the efficiency of other
workers as well as your own, you are robbing others of the joy of life
which God intended them freely to possess. So that for the sake of
others, as well as your own, it becomes an imperative duty that you
QUIT YOUR WORRYING.