How to Stop Worrying and Start Living

I used to read books during high school and in my freshman year in college, but got a bit busy with curriculum and extra-curricular activities, and reading took a back seat. How to Stop Worrying and Start Living was the first book I read when I restarted reading in 2020 after a gap of 3 years.

This book was exactly what I needed at that point of time — and sometimes even now — and I have read it end-to-end 3 times to date. The thought of re-reading it excites me even now. That is because this book has a profound effect on my thought process.

The titles of Dale Carnegie's books are a bit catchy. This title itself makes an otherwise ordinary person believe that the reader of this book must be such an awful person, that their life must be so stressful and they resort to so much unnecessary worry that they have to read a book on how to manage stress. But this is far from reality. The content of this book is such that it is useful to anyone who earnestly applies the teachings mentioned over here. It teaches a new way of thinking, a way that is more liberating in nature. Of course this book is particularly helpful to people who are very anxious by their nature, but that doesn't mean the general public won't benefit from it.

Before reading that book, I was of the opinion that I do not usually take unnecessary stress. But reading this book made me confront several otherwise ordinary moments of life where we take micro stress about things that don't matter in a span of a week — let alone a span of a year or so.

One thing that I love about Dale Carnegie's books is that there are a lot of references to events, books and research, and what it does is help in knowing about a lot of otherwise unknown stuff. I was introduced to books like Release From Nervous Tension by David Fink via this book.