CHAPTER I
MENTAL SECOND WIND
Are you an unusually persevering and persistent
person?
Or, like most
of us, do you sometimes find it difficult
to stick to the job until it
is done?
What is your usual experience in this respect?
Is it not this, that you work steadily along
until of a sudden you
become conscious of a feeling of weariness,
crying "Enough!" for the
time being, and that you then yield to the
impulse to stop?
Assuming that this is what generally happens,
does this feeling of
fatigue, this impulse to rest, mean that your
mental energy is
exhausted?
Suppose that by a determined effort of the
will you force your lagging
brain to take up the thread of work.
_There will invariably come a new
supply of energy, a "second wind," enabling
you to forge ahead with a
freshness and vigor that is surprising after
the previous lassitude._
Nor is this all.
The same process may be repeated a second
time and a
third time, each new effort of the will being
followed by a renewal of
energy.
Many a man will tell you that he does his
best work in the wee watches
of the morning, after tedious hours of persevering
but fruitless
effort.
Instead of being exhausted by its long hours
of persistent
endeavor, the mind seems now to rise to the
acme of its power, to
achieve its supreme accomplishments.
Difficulties melt into thin air,
profound problems find easy solution.
Flights of genius manifest
themselves.
Yet long before midnight such a one had perhaps
felt
himself yield to fatigue and had tied a wet
towel around his head or
had taken stimulants to keep himself awake.
The existence of this reserve supply of energy
is manifested in
physical as well as mental effort.
Men who work with their heads and men who
work with their hands,
scholars and Marathon runners, must alike
testify to the existence of
_reserve supplies of power not ordinarily
drawn upon_.
If we do not always or habitually utilize
this reserve power, it is
simply because we have accustomed ourselves
to yield at once to the
first strong feeling of fatigue.
Evidence of this same fact appears in our
feelings on different days.
How often does a man get up from his breakfast-table
after a long
night's rest, when he should be feeling fresh
and invigorated, and say
to himself, "I don't feel like working today."
And it may take him
until afternoon to get into his workaday stride,
if, indeed, he
reaches it at all.
You cannot yourself be immune from the feeling
on certain days that
you are not at your best.
Somehow or other, your wits seem befogged.
You hesitate to undertake important interviews.
Your interest lags.
And though crises arise in your business,
you feel weighted down and
unable to meet them with that shrewd discernment
and decisiveness of
action of which you know yourself capable.
But you realize, in your inmost self, that
_if you continue to exert
the will and persistently hold yourself to
the business in hand,
sooner or later you will warm to the work,
enthusiasm will come, the
clouds will be dispelled, the husks will fly.
Yet you have had no
rest; on the contrary, you have, by continued
conscious effort,
consumed more and more of your vital energy_.
Obviously it was not rest that you needed.
What you required was the impulse of some
_strong desire_ that should
carry you over the threshold of that first
inertia into the wide field
of reserve energy so rarely called upon and
so rich in power.
Under the lashings of necessity, or the spur
of love or ambition, men
accomplish feats of mental and physical endurance
of which they would
have supposed themselves incapable.
Here is what a certain lawyer says
of his early struggles:
"When I was twenty-three years old, married,
and with a family to
support, I entered the law course of a great
university.
Of the many
students in my class, seven, including me,
were making a living while
studying law.
"By special arrangement, I was relieved from
attendance at lectures
and simply required to pass examinations on
the various subjects, and
was thus enabled to retain my place as principal
of a large public
school.
During the third and last year of my law course,
I was
principal of a public day school of two thousand
children and an
alternate night school with an enrolment of
seven hundred and fifty,
and I worked at the law three nights in the
week and all day Sunday.
"After eight months of this, the final examinations
came around.
They
consumed a full week--from nine in the morning
until five or six at
night.
I had no opportunity for review, so I rented
a room near the
law school to save the time going and coming
and reviewed each night
the subjects of examination for the following
day.
"I did not sleep more than two hours any night
in that week.
On
Thursday, while bolting a bit of luncheon,
a fishbone stuck in my
throat.
Fearful of losing the result of my year's
effort, I returned
to my work, suffering much pain, and kept
at it until Saturday night,
when the examinations were concluded.
The next day the surgeon who
removed the fishbone said there was no reason
why I should not have
had 'a bad case of gangrene.'
"When I look back on that year's work I don't
see how I stood it.
I
don't see how I kept myself at it, day in,
day out, month after month
without rest, recreation or relief.
I am sure I could never go through
it again, even if I had the courage to undertake
it.
"I ranked second in a class of one hundred
and eighty in my law
examinations, won the second prize for the
best graduating thesis,
received a complimentary vote for class oratorship,
and much to my
surprise was soon after offered an assistant
superintendency of the
public schools by the school board, who knew
nothing of my studies and
thought my work as a teacher worthy of promotion.
"It was not only the hardest year's work but
the best year's work I
ever did.
_It exemplifies my invariable experience that
the more we
want to do the more we can do and the better
we can do it._"
The following is an extract from a letter
quoted by Professor James as
written by Colonel Baird-Smith after the siege
of Delhi in 1857, to
the success of which he largely contributed:
"My poor wife had some reason to think that
war and disease, between
them, had left very little of a husband to
take under nursing when she
got him again.
An attack of scurvy had filled my mouth with
sores,
shaken every joint in my body and covered
me all over with scars and
livid spots, so that I was unlovely to look
upon.
A smart knock on the
ankle joint from the splinter of a shell that
burst in my face, in
itself a mere bagatelle of a wound, had been
of necessity neglected
under the pressing and insistent calls upon
me, and had grown worse
and worse until the whole foot below the ankle
became a black mass and
seemed to threaten mortification.
I insisted, however, on being
allowed to use it until the place was taken,
mortification or no; and
though the pain was sometimes horrible I carried
my point and kept up
to the last.
"On the day after the assault I had an unlucky
fall on some bad
ground, and it was an open question for a
day or two whether I hadn't
broken my arm at the elbow.
Fortunately it turned out to be only a
severe sprain, but I am still conscious of
the wrench it gave me.
To
crown the whole pleasant catalogue, I was
worn to a shadow by a
constant diarrhoea and consumed as much opium
as would have done
credit to my father-in-law (Thomas De Quincey).
"However, thank God, I have a good share of
Tapleyism in me and come
out strong under difficulties.
I think I may confidently say that no
man ever saw me out of heart or ever heard
a complaining word from me
even when our prospects were gloomiest.
We were sadly crippled by
cholera, and it was almost appalling to me
to find that out of
twenty-seven officers I could only muster
fifteen for the operations
of the attack.
However, it was done,--and after it was done
came the
collapse.
"Don't be horrified when I tell you that for
the whole of the actual
siege, and in truth for some little time before,
I almost lived on
brandy.
Appetite for food I had none, but I forced
myself to eat just
sufficient to sustain life, and I had an incessant
craving for brandy,
as the strongest stimulant I could get.
Strange to say, I was quite
unconscious of its affecting me in the slightest
degree.
"_The excitement of the work was so great
that no lesser one seemed to
have any chance against it, and I certainly
never found my intellect
clearer or my nerves stronger in my life._"
Such is the profound resourcefulness and enduring
power of the human
mind.
CHAPTER II
RESERVES OF POWER
Stored-up energy not in use has been given
a name by scientific men.
They call it _potential energy_.
In this way it is distinguished from
_kinetic_ or circulating energy by which is
meant energy that is at
work.
For example, a ton of coal in the bin contains
a certain amount
of potential energy, which is capable of being
converted into kinetic
energy by combustion.
You have a vast amount of potential energy
over and above what you
actually use.
You have formed the habit of giving up trying
a thing as
soon as you have spent the usual amount of
effort on it, and this
without regard to whether or not you have
accomplished anything.
While we all have the power of sustained mental
activity, not one in
ten thousand of us holds to the top pace.
Worse still, even such mental energy as we
do consume is dispersed and
scattered over a multitude of trivial interests
instead of being
focused upon some one possessing aim.
_We intend to show you how you can lose yourself
in your work with an
absorbing passion and how you can at any time
make special requisition
upon your hidden stores of potential energy
and draw new supplies of
power that will sweep you on to your goal._
More than anything else, it is the ability
to do this that lifts the
great men of the race above the common run
of mortals.
It is this that distinguishes genius from
mediocrity.
The master man
transforms his vast stores of reserve or potential
energy into
circulating or kinetic energy.
His work glows with living fire.
Yet, for every such man there are a multitude
of others, equally
gifted in some respect, but wanting that mysterious
"Open Sesame"
which would discover their hidden mental riches,
arouse them from
their accustomed inferiority to their best
selves, and transform
potentiality into accomplishment.
So it comes about that most of us
are gems that shine but to illumine the "dark
unfathomed caves of
ocean," flowers born to "blush unseen."
Take an illustration of the way in which this
reserve or potential
energy is transformed into circulating or
kinetic energy.
Suppose that
you are a countryman and come to live in a
large city.
The speed with
which we do things, our habits of quick decision,
the whirlwind of
activities of the busy man in town, appal
you.
You cannot see how we
live through it.
A day in the business district fills you with
terror.
The tumult and danger make it seem "like a
permanent earthquake."
But settle down to work here.
And in a year you will have "caught the
pulse beat," you will "vibrate to the city's
rhythm," and if you only
"make good" in your work, you will enjoy the
strain and hurry, you
will keep pace with the best of us, and you
will get more out of
yourself in a day in the city than you ever
did in a week on the farm.
_This change in degree of mental activity
does not necessarily mean
that you are making more of a success of life._
Your activities may be ill-directed.
Your new-found powers may be
misspent and dissipated.
But you are mentally more alert Your mental
forces have been
stimulated by the stirring environment.
And, mark this particularly, _a number of
mental pictures will pass
across the screen of your consciousness today
in the same time that
one mental image formerly required._
_Now, you have learned that with every idea
catalogued in memory,
there is wrapped up and stowed away an associated
"feeling tone" and
an associated impulse to some particular muscular
action._
Assuming this, you must at once see that here
is an explanation of
your new-found energy.
Your quickened step, your new-found decisiveness
of action, your more
observant eye, your clear-cut speech instead
of the former drawling
utterance, your livelier manner, your freshened
enthusiasm and
enjoyment of life--all of these are but manifestations
of a quickened
intelligence.
_They are the working out through the motor
paths of mental impulses
to muscular action._
And these impulses to muscular action come
thronging into
consciousness _because the livelier environment
brings about a more
rapid reproduction of memory pictures_.
And here comes a particularly striking fact.
One would naturally
suppose that the more energy a man consumed,
and the faster he lived,
the more quickly his vitality would be exhausted
and the shorter his
life would be.
As a matter of fact, by the divine beneficence
of Providence, _your
organism is so ordered as to adapt itself
within certain wide limits
to the demands made upon it_.
You may call into play all the stored-up resources
of your being and
still not stake everything upon a single throw.
For the supply of
mental energy is as inexhaustible as the reservoir
of all past
experience, while the supply of physical energy
involved in brain and
nerve activity is, like the immortal liver
of Prometheus, renewed as
fast as depleted.
Two sets of facts that have been established
by elaborate scientific
experiment will convince you of the truth
of these propositions.
Professor Patrick, of the State University
of Iowa, conducted some of
these experiments.
He caused three young men to remain awake
for four
successive days and nights.
They were then allowed to go to sleep, the
purpose of the experiment being to determine
just how much time Nature
required to recuperate from the long vigil.
They were allowed to sleep
themselves out, and all woke up thoroughly
rested.
_Yet the one who
slept the longest slept only one-third longer
than his customary
night's sleep._
You have doubtless had the same experience
yourself many times.
It all
goes to show that if we are awake four times
as long as usual, we do
not make up for it by sleeping four times
as _long_, but four times as
_soundly_, as customary.
The hard-working mechanic requires no more
hours of sleep than the corner loafer, the
active man of affairs no
more than the dawdler.
_The time of tissue repair is about the same
with all men under all
conditions.
It is the rate of repair that varies with
the demand that
has been put upon the body._
Again, look at the same subject from the standpoint
of food supply.
On
what you now eat and drink you have a certain
average weight.
Eat,
digest and assimilate a larger quantity of
food and your weight will
increase.
This increase will be greatest at the start
and will
gradually slow up until you shall have reached
the point beyond which
you can gain no more.
Given the same hygienic conditions that you
have
been accustomed to, you will maintain yourself
at the increased weight
on the increased supply of food.
Now, all this involves clearly enough a greatly
increased rate of
activity on the part of the bodily organs
of assimilation and repair.
It is a situation on all fours with that of
the countryman whose rate
of brain activity has been stimulated by an
increased mental demand.
No man will maintain that better, more nourishing
and more liberal
food rations, transformed into increased bodily
tissue, with a
consequent greater weight and greater muscular
strength, would result
in a loss of vitality or the shortening of
a man's life.
Pygmies cannot become giants physically or
intellectually.
But as the
puny youth can by systematic exercise broaden
his frame and develop
his muscles into at least a semblance of the
athlete, and can then
through his healthier appetite _and his faster
rate of repair_
maintain himself without effort at the new
standard; _so can the
mentally inert call forth their reserves of
energy and maintain a
higher standard of activity and fruitfulness_.
Few men live on the plane of their highest
efficiency.
Few search the
recesses of the well-springs of power.
The lives of most of us are
passed among the shallows of the mind without
thought of the
possibilities that lurk within the deeper
pools.
This accumulation of potential subconscious
reserve energy is a result
of the evolution of man and the growing complexity
of his life.
No man could, if he would, respond to all
the impulses to muscular
action aroused in him by sense-impressions.
It would be still less
possible for him to respond to every impulse
to muscular action
awakened from the past with the remembered
thought with which it is
associated.
Desire, interest, attention and the selective
will must pick and
choose among these multitudinous tendencies
to action.
Here, then, is another fact that has immediate
bearing upon your
ability to carry out any ambition you may
have.
Your every action is
the net result of selection among a number
of impulses and inhibitory
forces or tendencies.
As a general thing, consciousness is made
up of a number of
conflicting ideas, each with its associated
feeling and its impulse to
action.
Just what you do in any particular case depends
upon what
mental picture is strongest, is most vivid
in consciousness, and thus
able to overcome all contrary tendencies.
As life becomes more and more complex, the
number and variety of our
sensory experiences increase correspondingly.
And so it comes about,
that _we have untold millions of sensory experiences,
carrying with
them the impulses to muscular response, none
of which, on account of
the multiplicity of conflicting ideas, is
ever allowed to find release
and actually take form in muscular activity_.
The consequence is that only an exceedingly
small proportion of the
mental energy that is developed within us
is ever actually displayed.
_The rest is somehow and somewhere locked
up behind the inhibitory
threshold._ It is stored away in _subconsciousness_
with the sensory
experiences of the past with which it is associated.
Quoting Mr. Waldo P. Warren: "Much of the
strength within men is
hidden, awaiting an occasion to reveal it.
The head of a department in
a great manufacturing concern severed his
connection with the firm,
his work falling upon a young man of twenty-five
years.
The young man
rose to the occasion, and in a very short
time was conceded to be the
stronger executive of the two.
He had been with the concern for
several years, and was regarded as a bright
fellow, but his marked
success was a surprise to all who knew him--even
to himself.
"The fact is, the young man had that ability
all the time and didn't
know it; and his employers didn't know it.
He might have been doing
greater things all along if there had been
the occasion to reveal his
strength.
"Do you employers and superior officers in
business realize how much
of this hidden strength there is in your men?
Perhaps a word from you,
giving certain men more scope, would liberate
that ability for the
development of both your business and your
men.
"Do you workers know your own strength?
Are you working up to your
capacity?
Or are you accepting the limits which the
circumstances
place about you?"
CHAPTER III
THE INITIATIVE ENERGY OF SUCCESS
In such instances as we have recounted, men
have found that persistent
effort along certain lines has had the effect
of making presently
available what would otherwise be simply unused
storage batteries of
reserve power.
What was the source and inspiration for this
persistent
effort?
You will say that it was ambition or patriotism
or some similar
semi-emotional influence.
And so it was.
But what is ambition, what is
patriotism, _what is any desire but a picturing
to the mind's eye of
the things desired, an awakening of a mental
image_ of the result to
be attained, the reward that is to follow
certain efforts?
And these
mental pictures coming into consciousness
have brought with them their
associated emotions and their associated impulses
to muscular action,
impulses appropriate to the picture _and automatically
tending to work
its realization_.
These impulses constitute the whole of man's
achieving power.
They are
the Initiative Energy of all Success.
When you are afflicted with doubt and fear,
timidity and lack of
confidence, this means that your mental inhibitions
are too numerous,
too high or too strong.
Remove them and access is had to the latent
energy of accumulated and creative thought
complexes.
You will then
become buoyant, cheerful, overflowing with
enthusiasm, and ready for a
fresh, definite, active part in life.
_Ideas, then, when latent, may be considered
as possessing an
energizing influence_.
The same idea does not necessarily have the
same effect upon the same
persons at different times.
What its effect may be at any time or with
any individual depends upon the make-up of
the consciousness in which
it finds itself.
The setting of consciousness may be entirely
different upon the
present appearance of the particular idea
from what it was on the
occasion when this same idea last appeared.
Yesterday there may have
been present no conflicting tendencies, and
this particular idea may
therefore have been allowed free and joyous
expression.
Today other
thoughts may be in the ascendency so that
we look upon the idea of
yesterday with a feeling of revulsion.
The thought that aroused new energy in you
yesterday may then sicken
you at your task today.
The thought that stirs the soul of a vigorous
man may shock the sensibilities of a delicate
woman.
Yet there are some ideas to which all men
in varying degrees seem
alike to respond.
How often in battle have the failing spirits
of an
army been revived by the appearance of the
leader shouting his
battle-cry and waving his shining sword!
How often have men been
roused to heights of heroic achievement by
the strains of martial
music!
How often have troops spent with exhaustion
responded to the
call of such simple phrases as "The Flag,"
"Our Country," "Liberty,"
or such songs as "The Marseillaise," "God
Save the King," "Dixie"!
These phrases are but the signs of ideas,
yet the sounding of these
phrases has summoned these ideas into consciousness,
and the summoning
of these ideas into consciousness has placed
undreamed-of and
immeasurable foot-pounds of energy on the
hair-trigger of action.
And so it is with you.
Down deep in the inmost chambers of your soul
are untouched stores of energy that properly
applied will exalt your
personality and illumine your career.
But to find and claim these hidden riches
you must persevere.
You must
endure.
In a Marathon race it is endurance that wins.
The graceful sprinter
who is off with a leap at the bark of the
pistol soon falls by the
wayside.
Life is a Marathon in which persistence triumphs.
There are many "good starters," but few "strong
finishers."
That is
why the failures so outnumber the successes.
The man who travels fastest does more than
he is told to do.
To merely
comply with a fixed routine is to fall short
of one's duty.
The
progressive man adds to the work of today
his preparation for the work
of tomorrow.
He delights in attempting more and more difficult
tasks,
because in every task he sets himself he sees
a step forward in the
development of his own abilities.
He loves his work more than he loves
his pay, and he delves deeper than the exigencies
of the moment
require, because he craves the power to do
more.
Most men start with enthusiasm.
No hours are too long, no task too
difficult.
But soon they tire.
And lacking will-power to persist, they
succumb to the lure of distracting interests.
They become disheartened
and indifferent.
And so they fail.
A young man married.
He was proprietor of a flourishing "general"
store in Princeton, Indiana.
He and his bride forthwith resolved that
they could and would lay aside out of their
income a thousand dollars
a year for ten years, by which time they would
have ten thousand
dollars and accumulated interest and could
go into business in a big
city.
At the end of the first year, when they took
stock of their
savings, they decided that thereafter, instead
of trying to save a
thousand dollars a year for ten years, they
would undertake to save
ten dollars a year for a thousand years and
would be more apt to
succeed.
Today they are just where they began.
You all know such men--men who are always
starting and never
finishing.
Ninety-five per cent of the men who go into
business are "quitters."
The very first disappointment sends them scurrying
to cover.
They
begin to look for a "soft snap" away from
the firing line.
Is it any
wonder that so few reach any great success?
That there is an enormous lack of appropriation
of energy in most
men's lives is an undoubted fact.
Just where this energy is stored,
and just what its eternal significance may
be, is immaterial to our
purpose.
It may be that this reserve is Nature's safeguard
against our
extravagance.
It may be, as some philosophers contend, that
the subconscious, with
its vast stores of energy, is a higher, more
spiritual phase of man.
It may be that the subconscious is for each
one of us his individual
segment of the Divine Essence--that it marks
our "at-one-ment" with
God.
It may be that to evoke these latent energies
is to call upon those
resources of our being which are the embodiment
within us of the
spirit of the Creator of all things.
It may be that this Divine Essence, if adequately
aroused, may exert
an absolute transcendence over material things
and lift humanity to a
God-like plane.
"What we call man," wrote Emerson, "the eating,
drinking, planting,
counting man, does not, as we know him, represent
himself, but
misrepresents himself.
Him we do not respect; but the real soul whose
organ he is, would he let it appear through
his action, would make our
knees bend."
"I said, ye are gods," quoth the Psalmist.
"Be ye
perfect, even as your Father," was the injunction
of the Master.
Whatever the eternal significance of your
latent energy may be, the
fact remains that it is yours, and yours to
use.
If you are to succeed, if you are to do big
things, you must be a man
of "doggedness."
You must keep your eyes trained everlastingly
upon
the vision of the thing you want.
You must stay in the race until you
get your "second wind."
You must be master of yourself and draw freely
on your stored-up powers.
Do as we shall tell you in this _Course_ and
you will become a master
man, the kind of man who "lasts," the kind
of man who works his
imagination overtime, the kind of man who
can strain his energies to
the utmost and then, finding himself still
a failure, can rise "like
the glow of the sun" to do bolder and bigger
things--the kind of man
who wins.
CHAPTER IV
HOW TO AVOID WASTES THAT DRAIN THE ENERGY
OF SUCCESS
We have shown you that you have within you
the potentialities of
success in the form of latent mental energy.
We have shown you that
your ability to achieve depends upon your
ability to utilize to the
full your underground mental resources.
But success demands that you do more than
merely use all your mental
energies.
You must use them intelligently.
Most men fail because they speed the bullet
without aiming.
They fire
at random, and so bag no game.
Your pent-up mental energy is the powder in
the cartridge.
Its
usefulness depends upon the man behind the
gun.
_To succeed in business you must intelligently
control and direct_
(1) _your own mental energies_, (2) _the mental
energies of others._
The course of the average man through life
is an aimless zigzag.
It
has neither direction nor purpose.
It represents wasted energy
capriciously expended.
Mental energy is like water: it has a tendency
to scatter.
It is
diffusive.
It seeks release in a thousand different directions
at the
same time.
As a boy, first learning to write, you were
unable to prevent the
simultaneous squirming of tongue and legs,
all ludicrously irrelevant
to your purpose of writing.
So now, as a business man, unless you have
learned the secret of self-mastery, you are
unable to concentrate your
efforts, your attention is easily distracted,
you exhaust yourself in
displays of passion, you are forever doing
things during business
hours that have no relation to your business,
you are forever doing
things in connection with your business that
do not contribute to its
progress, you expend just as much energy as
the accomplished executive
or the successful "hustler," but you fritter
it away in unprofitable
activities.
To correct this is to gain mastery and power.
Concentrate your mental energies on one thing
at a time.
Stop
spreading them around.
The promoter may have a dozen big enterprises
under way at once, but he takes them up one
at a time.
He transfers
his whole mind and thought from one to the
next.
You cannot of course
be eternally doing the same thing; but make
no mistake about it, the
only way to succeed at anything is to consciously
control your mental
energies.
You may throw them now into this attack, now
into another;
but you must always have a tight grip on yourself,
or you cannot
succeed.
You will often hear some "live-wire" business
man spoken of as a
"human dynamo."
He has the faculty of turning out a stupendous
amount
of work in a comparatively short time.
How he can carry in his mind
the details of so many large projects, how
he can accomplish so much
in actual, tangible results in many directions,
how he can pull the
strings of so many enterprises without getting
lost in the maze of
detail, is the marvel of his associates.
And yet this man is never
"hurried, nor flurried, nor worried."
But every word and every act is
straight to the point and productive of results
worth while.
"A cool brain is the reverse of a hot box.
It carries the business of
the day along with a steady drive, and is
invariably the mark of the
big man.
The man who dispatches his work quietly, promptly
and
efficiently, with no trace of fuss and flurry,
is a big man.
It is not
the hurrying, clattering and chattering individual
who turns off the
most work.
He may imagine he is getting over a lot of
track, but he
wastes far more than the necessary amount
of steam in doing it.
The
fable of the hare and the tortoise would not
be a bad primer for a
number of us, and the lesson relearned would
not only be beneficial in
a business-producing way, but it would help
us in the full enjoyment
of our work."
Progress in mental efficiency must result
from the application of
knowledge of the mental machine.
Just as we watch the steam-engine and
the electric motor to see that they are not
"overloaded," so we must
watch the mental machine, that no more power
be turned on than can be
profitably employed.
This principle has already been applied to
physical labor by Mr.
Frederick W. Taylor in his ground-breaking
studies in "scientific
management."
Mr. Taylor's celebrated experiments in the
handling of
pig-iron, by which the quantity handled in
a day by one man was
increased from twelve and one-half tons to
forty-seven and one-half
tons, "showed that a man engaged in such extremely
heavy work could
only be under load forty-three per cent of
the working day, and must
be entirely free from load for fifty-seven
per cent, to attain the
maximum efficiency."
There is no reason why efficiency in mental
effort should not be
gauged just as accurately as in muscular activity.
If there are times
when your wits are not as keen, when you have
not the same grasp of
fundamentals, as at other times, it is because
you are mentally
"overloaded."
It may be the result of a great variety of
causes.
It
may be from too many hours of continuous mental
effort.
But the
probabilities are that it is the result of
vexation, worry,
dissipation, or allowing the mind to be burdened
with the strain of
vicious, or at least irrelevant and distracting,
impulses and desires.
And so efficiency is lost.
The "human dynamo" is a man who long ago learned
the lesson of
scientific management of his own mental forces.
He does one thing at a
time, and does it the best he knows how.
He directs the whole power of
his mentality to the one problem and solves
it with accuracy and
dispatch.
There is no more of a "load" on his "gray
matter" than there
is on that of the fretting, fuming, finger-biting
fritterer, but every
pound of steam is spent in useful work.
Look at the victim of St. Vitus' dance.
There you have an illustration
of wasted energy.
And it is mental energy, for every muscular
movement
represents the release of thought power.
The mental lives of most men
are equally aimless.
They are lives of ceaseless activity producing
nothing.
Sometimes it happens that a man is not working
to advantage because of
some defect in his physical make-up.
He may have defective vision or
some peculiarity of hearing that renders him
unable to respond as
quickly as he should to the demands made upon
him.
If these defects
are ascertained, it is usually a simple matter
to correct the defects
by mechanical means or readjust the relative
duties of different
persons so that the defects will be minimized.
Where large numbers of people are employed,
it is comparatively easy
to use tests for discovering defects of sight
or hearing by simple
apparatus without requiring the services of
a high-priced expert.
By
adopting these test methods any manager of
a large industrial
establishment can satisfy himself whether
his employees are up to
certain normal standards.
He can even apply the tests to himself.
Optical tests can be conducted by securing
an ordinary letter chart
such as is used by oculists and opticians.
Seat the subject twenty
feet away.
If he can read all the lines of letters from
the largest
down to the smallest his eyesight is practically
perfect.
In a large
percentage of cases the smaller lines of type
are blurred and
invisible.
To detect the cause and degree of defects
of the eyes it is
necessary to try out the eyes by using a trial
spectacle frame and
inserting detached lenses before the right
eye and the left eye
alternately.
One of the most common forms of defective
vision is
astigmatism.
A chart has been designed with a series of
circles and
straight lines radiating from the center.
If the subject is astigmatic
he will see some of the straight lines distinctly
while others will be
blurred.
For instance, one or two of the vertical lines
may appear
very black and strong while all others will
look like a hazy network.
This defect, due to unevenness of the spherical
surface of the
eyeball, is easily corrected with properly
ground glasses.
Defects in hearing can be easily determined
by means of an
"acoumeter."
This little instrument measures the acuteness
of the
hearing very accurately by means of shot dropped
from varying heights
upon strips of glass, copper and cardboard.
Tests with this device
indicate whether the subject's hearing is
above or below normal.
_Stop wasting your energy._
Heretofore you have used your powers in a
more or less haphazard way,
with a vast amount of waste and no efficient
direction.
From now on
you are to exercise more intelligence in this
respect and make all
your energies contribute to your business
progress and your personal
success.
You are losing power in fruitless outward
activities.
You are losing power in the thinking of useless
thoughts.
You cannot
stop the ceaseless activity of the mind.
But you can conserve its
forces by directing them into channels that
are worth while.
You are losing power in a turmoil of inward
mental strains and
inharmonies.
Catch yourself at some moment when you are
forging ahead
in a crowded day's work.
You will then see what an inner whirlwind
of
excitement is in progress, what stresses and
strains are at work, what
contrary impulses, what frictions and obstacles
are being overcome.
Now, to the engineer every one of these words--friction,
obstacle,
strain--spells loss of efficiency, and in
this _Course_ we shall teach
you how you may do away with antagonistic
impulses, may bring your
combined mental forces to bear upon the common
enemy, and may hurl
yourself into the struggles of business and
practical life with a
joyful and headlong impetuosity that no obstacle
can withstand.
Professor Walter Dill Scott, of Northwestern
University, has said: "In
studying the lives of contemporary business
men, two facts stand out
pre-eminently.
The first is that their labors have brought
about
results that to most of us would have seemed
impossible.
Such men
appear as giants in comparison with whom ordinary
men sink to the size
of pygmies.
The second fact, which a study of successful
business men
(or any class of successful men) reveals,
is that they never seem
rushed for time.
"Such men have time to devote to objects in
no way connected with
their business.
It cannot be regarded as accidental that this
characteristic of mind is found so commonly
among successful men
during the years of their most fruitful labor.
According to the
American ideal, the man who is sure to succeed
is the one who is
continuously 'keyed up to concert pitch'--who
is ever alert and is
always giving attention to his business or
profession."
And again: "It is not necessarily true that
the greatest and most
constant display of energy accompanies the
greatest presence of
energy.
The tug-boat on the river is constantly blowing
off steam and
making a tremendous display of energy, while
the ocean liner proceeds
on its way without noise and without commotion.
The man who frets and
fumes, who is nervous and excited, is strung
up to such a pitch that
energy is being dissipated in all directions."
Many business men know they are going at a
pace that kills, and at the
same time they feel that they are accomplishing
too little.
For such
the pertinent question is, How may I reduce
the expenditure of energy
without reducing the efficiency of my labor?
One of the busiest and most efficient men
in England is quoted as
having explained his own accomplishment of
big results with the least
expenditure of effort: "By organizing myself
to run smoothly, as well
as my business; by schooling myself to keep
cool, and to do what I
have to do without expending more nervous
energy on the task than is
necessary; by avoiding all needless friction.
In consequence, when I
finish my day's work, I feel nearly as fresh
as when I started."
The late Professor James, of Harvard University,
often referred to as
the founder of modern psychology, spoke thus
disparagingly of
untrained effort: "Your convulsive worker
breaks down and has bad
moods so often that you never know where he
may be when you most need
his help,--he may be having one of his 'bad
days.'
We say that so many
of our fellow-countrymen collapse and have
to be sent abroad to rest
their nerves, because they work so hard.
I suspect that this is an
immense mistake, I suspect that neither the
nature nor the amount of
our work is accountable for the frequency
and the severity of our
breakdowns, but that their cause lies rather
in those absurd feelings
of hurry and having no time, in the breathlessness
and tension, that
anxiety of feature and solicitude for results,
that lack of inner
harmony and ease, in short, by which with
us the work is apt to be
accompanied."
The fact is that to be a truly busy man you
must be never in a hurry.
You must work systematically.
You must economize effort.
You must
permit no distractions and do your work leisurely.
You must take time
to think things over in a natural way.
You must waste no thoughts in
business hours on social or pleasurable pursuits
that would dissipate
your mental capital.
You must work when you work, and you may play
when you play, but your business must be the
most fascinating of games
and the only one you play during business
hours.
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 EFFICIENCY
You 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, to
one thing at a time,
disregarding all that would lure you from
your chosen task_.
III.
_You must acquire a self-conscious sense of
your own
self-mastery._ It will help you to acquire
this feeling if you will
continually assert, "I can and will accomplish
anything that I am
determined upon!
I have the power of will!
I will accomplish this
thing!
I will!"
Make these assertions with all the force and
intensity
of your whole being until you are pervaded
with a sense of your own
power.
Do this faithfully, and in time this courageous
and manly
attitude will become an inherent part of your
personality.
IV. _You must have confidence._ And when we
say confidence we do not
mean a purely intellectual conviction.
We mean a profoundly emotional
faith.
It will help you to cultivate this feeling
of confidence if you
will affirm many times a day, "I have implicit
confidence in myself!
I
have perfect faith in my own powers!
I am absolute master of myself
and of my career!"
Practice affirmations of this kind persistently,
and in time your mind will have permanently
acquired the habit of
facing the facts of life in the way essential
to success.
V. _You must exert a favorable influence upon
the mental attitude of
those about you_.
This is not so difficult as it would appear.
You
cannot yourself acquire will-power, confidence
and courage without
impressing others with your possession of
these qualities.
Personalities are revealed one to another
by faint and suggestive
activities all unconsciously perceived.
Your concentration of energy
will inspire others.
You will radiate an "atmosphere" of success.
You
will subtly influence your associates.
You will be a force to reckon
with, and the world will know it.
Your air of success will draw others
to you, will bring business and goodwill,
and men and money will seek
a share in your enterprises.
Master your mental energies, train them, concentrate
them,--thus only
may you win riches with honor.
Thus broadly put, there is, or perhaps it
would be more accurate to
say there seems to be, nothing startlingly
new about this proposition.
The world has always realized that singleness
of purpose,
concentration of effort, is essential to success.
_But in the past the world has possessed no
formula by which these
qualities might be acquired_.
Men have endeavored to create in themselves
the necessary qualities
for success, having no knowledge of the mental
elements that went into
their composition.
They have tried to run the mental engine knowing
nothing of its
mechanism.
Some few have been lucky, but the path has
been strewn with a thousand
failures to one that passed on to success.
There are some business men who look upon
psychology as "blue-sky"
theorizing or "new thought."
There are others who have a hazy idea
that it is a sort of unfathomable mystery
intended to amuse
long-haired scientists.
The truth is that every one of these same
business men, if he is getting ahead, is unconsciously
using
psychological principles to the profit of
his own business every day
in the year.
In the books that are to follow we shall show
you the immense
practical value of a truly scientific psychology.
You shall come into
the psychological laboratory with us and work
out rational, scientific
and exact methods by which, without possibility
of failure and with
but reasonable effort, you can at any moment
completely concentrate
your mental powers.
You shall be instructed in simple devices
for
mastering scattered energies, repressing wasteful
habits, banishing
depressive moods and raising yourself to a
far higher level of
commercial efficiency.
