A very interesting statement of one of our contemporaries is that any person, to one degree or another, is both a psychologist and a philosopher - they say, life forces him to. On the one hand, the main driving force of every person is the craving for knowledge, the desire to reach certain social heights, the desire to be wise in any everyday situations - and this is the philosophy of life. Initiative Psychic Energy by Warren Hilton (best thriller books to read TXT) 📖
- Author: Warren Hilton
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Another thing you need is poise. One trouble with you now is that you waste your priceless powers in useless anxiety.
The minute business falls off you begin to worry. You fritter your mental energies in fretting until you are incapable of real thought, and being unable to think your way out you get excited.
Remember it is all just a game, and you are in it only for the fun of the thing. You will never win out if you persist in tearing your hair.
Before he crossed the Rubicon Julius Cæsar was staggered at the greatness of the undertaking before him. The more he reflected and took counsel of his friends, the greater loomed the difficulties of the attempt and the more appalling the calamities his passage of that river would bring upon the Roman world. But when at last with the cry, "The die is cast!" he plunged into the river, there was an end for him to mental dissension, a freedom to plan and execute, an expansion of courage and power.
So it will be with you. With doubt and uncertainty the pressure may be high in the gauge, but the engine does not move. Make up your mind, and you release energies previously wasted in conflicts between opposing thought complexes struggling for supremacy.
A fine illustration of this is shown in the religious experience known as conversion. To the convert, conversion means the profound acceptance of a mighty spiritual truth. It means positive knowledge taking the place of doubt or indifference. Conflicting ideas are no longer present in his consciousness. Pent-up energies are released. He wants to do things. His soul is fired with overmastering impulses to action. He wants to go forth and preach the gospel of his faith. He is lifted to a high plane of exhilaration. He experiences the "peace that passeth understanding."
"Christian Science," "Truth," "The New Thought," and similar movements all achieve their really marvelous results in much the same way. All proclaim doctrines of exuberant optimism, having a tendency to banish fear-thoughts and self-consciousness and self-depreciation, and to set up in their stead ideas of courage and of achievement and of individual power. If these teachings are successful—that is to say, if they inherently possess the right appeal for the particular individual—they have the happy effect of begetting a stoical indifference to petty physical disorders and social vexations and bringing about a concentration upon the main business of life of the mental energies thus previously wasted.
Decide the matter that is troubling you. Make an end of hesitation and uncertainty and fear. Your very act of decision will release large stores of pent-up mental power and add immeasurably to your effectiveness.
So long as you are in doubt and perplexity conflicting ideas and impulses balance each other. You are not then a man of action; you are a wavering coward. You are afflicted with paralysis of will and mental stagnation.
Decide the matter—that is to say, let one mental picture assume a greater vividness than the other until it possesses your soul—and forthwith the banked fires of your mental energy will burst into flame.
Another thing: Stop wasting your time.
How much time do you spend in rest and relaxation? How much should you spend? Can you answer these questions accurately?
Thomas A. Edison has contended for years that four hours' sleep a day was sufficient for any man. He has conducted experiments with a large number of men, giving careful attention to matters of diet and exercise, and the results have seemed in a measure to support his theory.
Dr. Fred W. Eastman reports that owing to pressure of work he was recently unable to get more than three or four hours' sleep out of the twenty-four during a period of many months, and that so far from being hurt by it he gained five pounds. He says: "If restoration during sleep is a task so relatively small, the question arises whether, in order to complete restoration, it is necessary for us to spend so much time in sleep as we do. Perhaps on account of popular opinion and personal habit, we waste much time in this jelly-fish condition that could more profitably be spent in active pursuit of our ambitions. The answer, of course, depends upon the nature of our occupations. If there is muscular effort involved, with a correspondingly large amount of waste in the cells and blood, eight hours or more are probably necessary. But if the work is of a sedentary nature, and mainly of the brain, there is naturally a smaller quantity of accumulated waste, and less time is required for removal. Many are the instances of great men, past and present, who have lived healthily and worked unceasingly and strenuously on only four or five hours of sleep, or half the laborer's portion. Surely we do not suppose that these men were or are physically different from others, but rather that by inclination or necessity they have developed a habit of sleeping intensely for a short period, with resulting gain of time and efficiency."
So far as this matter of relaxation, rest and sleep is concerned, the rule to follow is obviously this: Determine accurately by experiment the proper relation between periods of work and periods of rest in your own case, then increase your efficiency by maintaining this relation.
In Denmark they feed cows scientifically. Day by day they increase the allowance of milk-producing food. Day by day the yield of milk increases. At last there comes a day when measurement shows that there is no longer any increase in the production of milk. They then decrease the food till the output of milk diminishes. So they determine the normal.
So with you and your hours of work and leisure. Give more and more time to your business each day until there comes an impairment in the quality of your work. Stop short of this. You have found your norm of efficiency.
Chapter V THE SECRET OF MENTAL EFFICIENCYYou are called upon to master and conserve the innate energies of your mind. This means that you must (1) find out where these energies are stored, and (2) learn the conditions that determine their activity.
All past experiences are conserved within us in the form of complexes. These complexes consist of ideas, emotions and impulses to muscular activity. By the primary law of association the recall to consciousness of any one of these component elements of a complex brings with it all the rest.
For example, the ideas pertaining to any terrifying experience, when recalled to consciousness, bring with them the trembling, the wildly beating heart, the shaking knees, with which they were originally accompanied. The victim of stage-fright feels his knees give way and that he is sinking to the floor; his heart beats tumultuously, cold perspiration covers his body, he blushes, his mouth is dry, and his voice sticks in his throat. Afterwards, alone in his own room, the memory of that dreadful moment, the thought of another appearance before that audience, will be accompanied by the same physiological effects.
Every such bodily movement is an expression of energy. The recall to consciousness of the terrifying experience, the recall of the picture of the assembled audience, these things automatically produce bodily activities. So we must conclude that Every idea in memory has associated with it the potential energy necessary for the production of muscular movement.
It does not necessarily follow that the recall to consciousness of a given idea will be invariably followed by an outwardly visible muscular activity expressive of its energy. Just as the mere presence of an idea in consciousness tends to bring about a movement, so the presence of a contrary idea will tend to inhibit it.
Try to imagine that you are bending your forefinger. At the same time hold it straight. Your finger will actually tremble with the dammed-up energy of the repressed impulse. But the finger will not actually move, because the idea of its not moving is just as much a part of your consciousness as the idea of its moving. Put out of your consciousness this thought of the finger's not moving, and forthwith the finger will bend.
Your conduct during your waking hours is thus always the result of opposing forces, some tending in one direction, others tending to counteract the first. Thus there comes about a great waste of mental power and an appalling loss of individual efficiency.
In the language of sport, you are suffering from a lack of mental "team work." The effect is the same as if the members of a football team, instead of combining their forces against the opposing side, should spend their time in restraining one another.
It requires but one step, and not a difficult one at that, to lead you to the conclusion that the solution of this problem lies in having in consciousness at any one moment only such ideas as harmonize. Let that condition prevail, and the potential energies of all ideas in consciousness must flow together in a broad stream of useful and exhilarating activity.
Your work should be a source of pleasure to you. If it is simply a disagreeable task that has to be performed, if it is a "daily grind," if you have to hold yourself to it by unremitting effort of the will, you are no better than a rusty engine, and all your workings will be accompanied by jars, frictions, and complaining squeaks that bespeak a positively wicked loss of power.
Hold the right thoughts persistently in mind, and you cannot help working steadily on toward the goal you are thinking of. Keep steadily at work with the right thoughts persistently in mind and success is sure to come.
Success, then, lies in the concentration of mental energies. And this concentration is to be brought about by holding in consciousness only those ideas that harmonize.
There must be the greatest discrimination and care used in the selection of these ideas that are to constitute such a co-ordinating consciousness. There must be a "re-imaging" or imagination in a literal and practical sense of those ideas only that carry with them impulses to motion in the same general direction. You must have a set purpose in life, and you must yield your powers without hindrance and without reservation to the accomplishment of that set purpose.
I. You must exercise deliberate, patient and persistent watchfulness to detect and repress all useless bodily movements. You have all sorts of silly habits, twitchings, jerkings, itchings, winkings, shrugs, frowns, coughs, snifflings and odd and meaningless gestures. Watch yourself. Do these things no more. Save your eyes and ears and hands and nerves, all your mental energy, for useful effort.
II. You must give yourself, mind and body,
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