"Iron John" by Robert Bly

Robert Bly is primarily a poet, if that sentence makes any sense, as who's a professional poet anymore? Thus, his work to resurrect ancient fairy tales about male initiation and man's role in life.  Because of Bly's poetic inclination the movement he jumpstarted in the early 90s has been called Men's Mythopoetic movement.  It was similar to the Men Groups that were formed around that time as a reaction to extreme feminism which seemed to wand a society without men, or only with castrate, feminine men, much to their own detrement born out of ignorance and hate. 

Bly used the Grimm Brothers collected tale about EisenHans or better known in English as Iron John, to get insight into the proper way of initiating men into society and adulthood while at the same time giving meaning to their lives and determining their place in society.  Bly points out that each element in the story is not accidental or random, but it is clearly meant to convey meaning and instruction, something like a mathematical formula where each element is indispensable for the correctness of the whole. 

Fairy tales have been used for centuries to glean wisdom from the past, as our ancestors, largely illiterate, but no less intelligent, preserved the main principles of organizing the life of men and women in stories.  Freud and Jung both have looked into fairy tales, with differing conclusions.  Bly's move adds poetry and mysticism to the Men's movement, which grows and falters in turns, but which is a clear sign of the realization that feminine men will not do for fulfilling the society's male roles. 

"How to stop worrying and start living" by Dale Carnegie

Another reading of the classic Dale C. hustling and bustling his way through human emotions.  The book is full of "grandaddy" advice with some pretty trivial things given as cures, like religion.  Maybe in the 1930s religion was still considered something to show off and be proud off, but in 2014 that is not the case.  Religion has been delegated to the category of mass hallucination or consensus deception, for some higher, societal reasons. 

The book reads, more or less, like a 12 step program.  "Surrender your worries to a higher power."  Hmmm, ok, but doesn't that mean substituting your worrying (not a good thing, of course) with a more dangerous delusion that is bound to have detrimental influence on your life unless you keep it extremely narrow and bounded (virtually impossible in the case of religion)?

Lenin used to say "Religion is Opium for the masses."  In this case Dale recommends one takes religion, not because one believes in some kind of deity, or for the inherent goodness of many religious principles, but simply as a 'magic pill' that will take your worries away.  I guess the same could be said about Opium, or other drugs.  And who is to say which is more harmful, having in mind how many lives have been ruined  by fundamentalist religion. 

The other advices is OK, but probably the same things you heard from your grandfather, and you never paid any attention to anyway.  One maxim that stuck in my mind was "live in day-tight compartments."  Never allow the worries of tomorrow to spoil today, as tomorrow those worries might still be there to worry about, or they might disappear, or something may happen to make them irrelevant (like you getting hit by a bus).

All in all, worry is a good motivator, but mostly a waste of time.