The-Conquest-of-Happiness-by-Bertrand-Russell

causing the anxiety. I have done in my time a
considerable amount of public speaking; at first
every audience terrified me, and nervousness made
me speak very badly; I dreaded the ordeal so much
that I always hoped I might break my leg before I
had to make a speech, and when it was over I was
exhausted from the nervous strain. Gradually I
taught myself to feel that it did not matter whether I
spoke well or ill, the universe would remain much
the same in either case. I found that the less I cared
whether I spoke well or badly, the less badly I
spoke, and gradually the nervous strain diminished
almost to vanishing point. A great deal of nervous
fatigue can be dealt with in this way. Our doings
are not so important as we naturally suppose; our
successes and failures do not after all matter very
much. Even great sorrows can be survived;
troubles which seem as if they must put an end to
happiness for life fade with the lapse of time until
it becomes almost impossible to remember their
poignancy. But over and above these self-centred
considerations is the fact that one’s ego is no very
large part of the world. The man who can centre