How To Conquer Fear (Part 2)
Dale Carnegie Detroit and Southeast Michigan
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The story below comes from an unpublished book by Dale Carnegie. Read Part 1 here .
“Do the thing you fear to do,” said Emerson, “and the death of fear is certain.”
Those ringing words out to be carved in Carrara marble and set above the entrance to every home in America: “Do the thing you fear to do and the death of fear is certain.”
Why is that statement true? Because we naturally fear the unknown, the uncertain, the untried. Remember how tense and nervous you were the first time you tried to drive a car? Remember how confident you became after you got the feel of the car, after you got a record of successful experience behind you? With successful experience, confidence always emerges. Yes, and pride often emerges too, pride in being able to do the thing we formally feared to do.
For example, I remember the first few times I tried to speak before the Irving Literary Society in the State Teachers College at Warrensburg, Missouri. I can shut my eyes now and see the room where it occurred and still feel the trembling hands and knees. But when I kept on forcing myself to speak in public until I got a passable record of achievement behind me. I continued until I sensed the power of it, the joy and thrill of it. And now? Well, now, if I have something to say that I know and feel and want to say, I would rather talk to an audience of five thousand than to sit down to a dinner of canvas-back duck and wild rice.
I personally know literally hundreds of men and women who have had similar experiences.
And speaking of dinner, reminds me of a story that was told to me at dinner in Peking, China on August 15, 1939. I had dinner that day at the Sergeant’s Mess of the United States Marines attached to the United States Embassy in Peking.
During dinner, I sat next to Sergeant James E. Thompson. He told me an inspiring story of how he had conquered fears.
Reared in Terre Haute, Indiana, this landlocked boy suffered from an unholy fear of water. He was so afraid of water that he refused to ride a ferry boat across the Wabash River. He was so afraid of water that he feared to walk across the bridge that spanned the El River, a stream so shallow he could have waded across it. He was so afraid he had to shut his eyes in the theater when an ocean scene flashed on the screen.
How did he conquer his fear of water? Here is his own story, as he told it to me that hot August afternoon in colorful, exotic, far-off Peking.
“I began by forcing myself to wade along the edge of a little Lake - on the outskirts of town,” he said. “At first, I never waded where the water was more than knee deep. I did that every day for three weeks. Then I paddled around the edge of the lake in a canoe every day for a month. Then I summoned all the courage I possessed to forced myself to paddle the canoe about one hundred yards across the lake. Every day after that, that waded out a little further until the water was up to my waist. Then, closing my eyes, I held my breath and ducked down and forced myself to stay under the water as long as I could.
“That was a turning point in my battle with fear. A few weeks later, I was swimming in shallow water, but I was still afraid to swim in deep water. Then one day I was wading in the El River with Bessie Steins, who ran a beauty shop in Coalmont, Indiana. There have been heavy rains up north; and the strong current swept Bessie and me off our feet and carried us into swirling waters ten feet deep.
“I was terrified until I saw Bessie about to go down. Then, a strange thing happened; when I stopped thinking about myself and started to think of saving Bessie, I was no longer afraid. I swim out to Bessie, put my arm around her and brought her to safety. That experience bucked up my courage enormously. But just to make sure that I had conquered my fear of water forever, I joined the United States Marines; and, during the past eleven years, I have sailed over forty thousand miles of rolling seas.
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“I love the ocean now. It is my home. I have no more fear of water now than I have of ham and eggs.”
Sergeant Thompson told me that, as a child, he was so tense, so filled with fear that he stuttered and stammered. “When I was called upon to recite in class, I actually perspired,” he said. “I was so tense that I felt weak after reciting. I was afraid to play ball with the boys. I would always cross the street to avoid meeting anyone I knew. I was so unhappy I wanted to die.
“In order to get rid of my fear of talking, I took Zane Grey's novel, Desert Gold, out of the woodshed and read every word of it aloud to myself slowly and carefully fourteen times. Then I rigged up a toy telephone in the woodshed and pretended I was talking over it. Then I got a friend to sit there and ask me questions over the toy telephone. By doing these things from two to four hours a day for five months I finally cured myself of stuttering.
“But my worst fear was a horror of dead bodies. I would have walked miles to keep from passing a cemetery. One day, old Mrs. Locke, who had lived next door for a long time, died. Our family had to go in and view the body. I accidentally touched the corpse. I troubled for hours. I was so terrified that I would wake up in the middle of the night screaming.
“And what do you suppose happened to me when I joined the Marines? I was made a hospital orderly. One night, six months later, when I was on watch all by myself, a big man weighing 250 pounds died. I called the doctor; he ordered me to take care of the body, slammed the door and left me alone with a corpse at one o'clock in the morning. I literally trembled. But in the Navy orders are orders; so I put the body on a wheel stretcher and wheeled it to the morgue, and slid it off on a slab. After that, I was no longer afraid of corpses.”
Sergeant James E. Thompson of the United States Marines conquered his fear of water, his fear of talking, his fear of dead bodies, by doing the thing that he feared to do - a technique you can start using tomorrow.
A century ago, Ralph Waldo Emerson was America's most famous living scholar. After a visit to Europe, he came back to America on a sailing ship. One day, as he sat on the deck with the sails billowing in the breeze and the winds singing through the masts, he wrote these memorable words in his diary: “A man contains all that is needful to his government within himself... all good or evil that can befall him must be from himself.”
Yes, the fear that befalls and the courage to uplift you must come from within yourself.
And from within yourself must also come the desire, the urge, the iron determination to force yourself to do the thing you fear to do.
Will this be easy? In some cases, yes. But in many cases, it requires so much of self-discipline, so much of initial suffering that many people will simply refuse to put themselves through this whole ordeal of fire; and so will doom themselves to spend all the days of their years and a twilight of fear and anguish.
Forcing yourself to do the thing you ought to do but fear to do, may make all the difference between living a life of tragedy such as Mrs. Arlie Page of Pittsburg, Kansas experienced for a third of a century, or the kind of triumphant life she was living now - a life filled with zest, gusto and la joie de vivre.