How to Stop Worrying and Start Living: Difference between revisions
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=== VI – How to Keep From Worrying about Criticism ===
🐕 '''20 – Remember That No One Ever Kicks a Dead Dog.''' In 1929, at the University of Chicago, thirty‑year‑old Robert Maynard Hutchins was inaugurated as president of what was then called the nation’s fourth‑richest university; when a friend noted a harsh editorial, Hutchins’s father shrugged, “no one ever kicks a dead dog.” The chapter stacks examples that make the line concrete: a fourteen‑year‑old Prince of Wales bullied at Dartmouth (the British naval college), cadets later admitting they wanted to brag they had “kicked the King.” A Yale president once warned that electing Thomas Jefferson would debauch the nation; crowds even hissed George Washington and a cartoon imagined him at a guillotine. Explorer Robert E. Peary reached the North Pole on 6 April 1909, lost eight toes to frostbite, and still drew jealous attacks from Navy superiors until President McKinley intervened. After Ulysses S. Grant’s first great Civil War victory, he was arrested within six weeks—envy answering achievement. The pattern is consistent: prominence attracts potshots; idle minds find satisfaction in denouncing those who stand out. Reframing criticism as a side effect of doing consequential work strips it of sting. That shift frees attention for the next actionable step, which is the book’s larger theme of moving from rumination to effort.
🛡️ '''21 – Do This--and Criticism Can't Hurt You.''' Marine Corps legend Smedley Butler, nicknamed “Gimlet‑Eye,” told how thirty years under fire had thickened his skin; eventually, curses rolled off and he no longer turned to see who was talking. A New York Sun lampoon of Carnegie’s own night class once sent him fuming—until he realized most buyers never saw the article, most readers soon forgot it, and nearly everyone thinks mainly about themselves from breakfast to midnight. Eleanor Roosevelt recounted advice from Theodore Roosevelt’s sister: act by conscience because you will be criticized either way; a Dresden‑china existence is the only sure way to avoid attack. At 40 Wall Street, Matthew C. Brush learned to stop patching every complaint and instead to do his best and “put up the umbrella,” letting the rain of comment run off. Deems Taylor read a hate letter on his Philharmonic broadcast and smiled; Charles Schwab adopted “yust laugh” from a mill hand thrown into a river during an argument; Lincoln kept working, noting even ten angels couldn’t redeem a wrong result. The through line is selective indifference: weigh fair critique, ignore the rest. By deciding in advance how to react, you prevent other people’s moods from renting space in your head and keep your energy for useful work.
🤦 '''22 – Fool Things I Have Done.''' The chapter opens with a file labeled “FTD”—“Fool Things I Have Done”—where written records of blunders are stored, sometimes in longhand when they’re too personal to dictate. From that starting point it turns to H. P. Howell, who died suddenly on 31 July 1944 in the Hotel Ambassador drugstore in New York after a career that ran from a country‑store clerk to chairman of the Commercial National Bank & Trust Co., 56 Wall Street; each Saturday night he opened his engagement book and audited the week—what went wrong, what went right, and how to improve. Benjamin Franklin’s nightly scorecard of thirteen faults shows the same discipline: isolate a weakness, contest it, and log progress. In the marketplace, Charles Luckman at Pepsodent insisted on reading critical mail over praise, and Ford polled workers to invite complaints. A former Colgate soap salesman asked non‑buyers for blunt feedback after each failed call; years later, as E. H. Little, he led Colgate‑Palmolive‑Peet and ranked among the nation’s highest earners. The method is simple and hard: become your own sternest critic before rivals do it for you. Treat criticism as data, turned into weekly routines, and worry gives way to deliberate practice that compounds over time.
=== VII – Six Ways to Prevent Fatigue and Worry and Keep Your Energy and Spirits High ===
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