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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Initiative Psychic Energy, by Warren Hilton
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Initiative Psychic Energy
+       Being the Sixth of a Series of Twelve Volumes on the
+       Applications of Psychology to the Problems of Personal and
+       Business Efficiency
+
+Author: Warren Hilton
+
+Release Date: December 17, 2005 [EBook #17334]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK INITIATIVE PSYCHIC ENERGY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Clarke, Sankar Viswanathan, and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+(This file was produced from images generously made
+available by The Internet Archive/Million Book Project)
+
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+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                          Applied Psychology
+
+                              INITIATIVE
+                            PSYCHIC ENERGY
+
+
+
+
+                   _Being the Sixth of a Series of
+                  Twelve Volumes on the Applications
+                   of Psychology to the Problems of
+                         Personal and Business
+                              Efficiency_
+
+
+
+                                  BY
+
+                      WARREN HILTON, A.B., L.L.B.
+             FOUNDER OF THE SOCIETY OF APPLIED PSYCHOLOGY
+
+
+
+                     ISSUED UNDER THE AUSPICES OF
+                          THE LITERARY DIGEST
+                                  FOR
+                  _The Society of Applied Psychology_
+                          NEW YORK AND LONDON
+                                 1920
+
+
+
+                            COPYRIGHT 1914
+                    BY THE APPLIED PSYCHOLOGY PRESS
+                             SAN FRANCISCO
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+Chapter
+
+I. MENTAL SECOND WIND
+
+   STICKING TO THE JOB
+   THE LAGGING BRAIN
+   RESERVE SUPPLIES OF POWER
+   "BLUE" MONDAYS
+   HOW TO STRIKE ONE'S STRIDE
+   THE SPUR OF DESIRE
+   HOW TO RELEASE STORED-UP ENERGIES
+   THE LAWYER WHO "OVERWORKS"
+   EXCITEMENT AND THE HERO
+   ENDURING POWER OF MIND
+
+II. RESERVES OF POWER
+
+   MAN'S POTENTIAL AND KINETIC ENERGIES
+   HOLDING THE TOP PACE
+   GENIUS AND THE MASTER MAN
+   MENTAL EFFECTS OF CITY LIFE
+   NEW-FOUND ENERGIES EXPLAINED
+   QUICKENED MENTALITY
+   FAST LIVING AND LONG LIVING
+   PROFESSOR PATRICK'S EXPERIMENTS
+   RATIO BETWEEN REPAIR AND DEMAND
+   PYGMIES AND GIANTS
+   TRANSFORMING INERTNESS INTO ALERTNESS
+   HOW THE MIND ACCUMULATES ENERGY
+   THE THRESHOLD OF INHIBITION
+   HIDDEN STRENGTH
+   GIVING A MAN SCOPE
+
+III. THE INITIATIVE ENERGY OF SUCCESS
+
+   SOURCES OF PERSISTENCE
+   IMPORTANCE OF THE MENTAL SETTING
+   IDEAS ALL MEN RESPOND TO
+   HOW TO EXALT THE PERSONALITY
+   "GOOD STARTERS" AND "STRONG FINISHERS"
+   STEPS IN SELF-DEVELOPMENT
+   SAVING A THOUSAND A YEAR
+   LOOKING FOR A "SOFT SNAP"
+   DRAWING POWER FROM ON HIGH
+   THE MAN WHO LASTS
+
+IV. HOW TO AVOID WASTES THAT DRAIN THE ENERGY OF SUCCESS
+
+   SPEEDING THE BULLET WITHOUT AIMING
+   WHY MOST MEN FAIL
+   THE SUCCESSFUL PROMOTER
+   THE HUMAN DYNAMO
+   COOL BRAINS AND HOT BOXES
+   MARVELOUS INCREASED EFFICIENCY HANDLING "PIG"
+   "OVERLOADED" HUMAN ENGINES
+   SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT OF SELF
+   PHYSIOLOGICAL CAUSES OF WASTE
+   TESTS FOR SENSORY DEFECTS
+   MENTAL FRICTION AND INNER WHIRLWINDS
+   PROMINENT TRAITS OF GREAT ACHIEVERS
+   WHY A MAN BREAKS DOWN
+   HOW TO ECONOMIZE EFFORT
+   HOW YOUR MENTAL CAPITAL IS DISSIPATED
+   CONQUERING INDECISION
+   WHY "CHRISTIAN SCIENCE" WORKS
+   HOW TO RELEASE PENT-UP POWER
+   PROPER RATIO BETWEEN WORK AND REST
+   DETERMINING YOUR NORM OF EFFICIENCY
+
+V. THE SECRET OF MENTAL EFFICIENCY
+
+   WHERE ENERGY IS STORED
+   BODILY EFFECTS OF IDEAS
+   IMPULSES AND INHIBITIONS
+   TRAINING FOR MENTAL "TEAM-WORK"
+   RUST AND THE "DAILY GRIND"
+   IDEAS THAT HARMONIZE
+   FIVE RULES FOR CONSERVING ENERGY
+   BUSINESS LUCK AND "BLUE-SKY" THEORIES
+   DEVICES FOR COMMERCIAL EFFICIENCY
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+MENTAL SECOND WIND
+
+
+[Sidenote: _Sticking to the Job_]
+
+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?
+
+[Sidenote: _The Lagging Brain_]
+
+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.
+
+[Sidenote: _Reserve Supplies of Power_]
+
+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_.
+
+[Sidenote: _"Blue" Mondays_]
+
+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.
+
+[Sidenote: _How to Strike One's Stride_]
+
+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_.
+
+[Sidenote: _The Spur of Desire_]
+
+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:
+
+[Sidenote: _How to Release Stored-Up Energies_]
+
+"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.
+
+[Sidenote: _The Lawyer Who "Overworks"_]
+
+"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._"
+
+[Sidenote: _Excitement and the Hero_]
+
+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.
+
+[Sidenote: _Enduring Power of Mind_]
+
+"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
+
+
+[Sidenote: _Man's Potential and Kinetic Energies_]
+
+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.
+
+[Sidenote: _Holding the Top Pace_]
+
+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._
+
+[Sidenote: _Genius and the Master Man_]
+
+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."
+
+[Sidenote: _Mental Effect of City Life_]
+
+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.
+
+[Sidenote: _New-Found Energies Explained_]
+
+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.
+
+[Sidenote: _Quickened Mentality_]
+
+_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_.
+
+[Sidenote: _Fast Living and Long Living_]
+
+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.
+
+[Sidenote: _Professor Patrick's Experiments_]
+
+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.
+
+[Sidenote: _Ratio Between Repair and Demand_]
+
+_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.
+
+[Sidenote: _Pygmies and Giants_]
+
+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.
+
+[Sidenote: _Transforming Inertness into Alertness_]
+
+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.
+
+[Sidenote: _How the Mind Accumulates Energy_]
+
+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.
+
+[Sidenote: _The Threshold of Inhibition_]
+
+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_.
+
+[Sidenote: _Hidden Strength_]
+
+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.
+
+[Sidenote: _Giving a Man Scope_]
+
+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
+
+
+[Sidenote: _Sources of Persistence_]
+
+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.
+
+[Sidenote: _Importance of the Mental Setting_]
+
+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.
+
+[Sidenote: _Ideas All Men Respond to_]
+
+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.
+
+[Sidenote: _How to Exalt the Personality_]
+
+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.
+
+[Sidenote: _"Good Starters" and "Strong Finishers"_]
+
+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.
+
+[Sidenote: _Steps in Self-Development_]
+
+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.
+
+[Sidenote: _Saving a Thousand a Year_]
+
+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.
+
+[Sidenote: _Looking for a "Soft Snap"_]
+
+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.
+
+[Sidenote: _Drawing Power from on High_]
+
+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.
+
+[Sidenote: _The Man Who Lasts_]
+
+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
+
+
+[Sidenote: _Speeding the Bullet Without Aiming_]
+
+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.
+
+[Sidenote: _Why Most Men Fail_]
+
+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.
+
+[Sidenote: _The Successful Promoter_]
+
+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.
+
+[Sidenote: _The Human Dynamo_]
+
+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.
+
+[Sidenote: _Cool Brains and Hot Boxes_]
+
+"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."
+
+[Sidenote: _Marvelous Increased Efficiency Handling "Pig"_]
+
+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."
+
+[Sidenote: _"Overloaded" Human Engines_]
+
+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.
+
+[Sidenote: _Scientific Management of Self_]
+
+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.
+
+[Sidenote: _Psychological Causes of Waste_]
+
+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.
+
+[Sidenote: _Tests for Sensory Defects_]
+
+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.
+
+[Sidenote: _Mental Friction and Inner Whirlwinds_]
+
+_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.
+
+[Sidenote: _Prominent Traits of Great Achievers_]
+
+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."
+
+[Sidenote: _Why a Man Breaks Down_]
+
+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."
+
+[Sidenote: _How to Economize Effort_]
+
+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.
+
+[Sidenote: _How Your Mental Capital is Dissipated_]
+
+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 Caesar 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.
+
+[Sidenote: _Conquering Indecision_]
+
+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.
+
+[Sidenote: _Why "Christian Science" Works_]
+
+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.
+
+[Sidenote: _How to Release Pent-Up Power_]
+
+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?
+
+[Sidenote: _Proper Ratio Between Work and Rest_]
+
+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."
+
+[Sidenote: _Determining Your Norm of 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
+
+
+[Sidenote: Where Energy Is Stored]
+
+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_.
+
+[Sidenote: _Bodily Effects of Ideas_]
+
+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.
+
+[Sidenote: _Impulses and Inhibitions_]
+
+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.
+
+[Sidenote: _Training for Mental "Team-Work"_]
+
+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.
+
+[Sidenote: _Rust and the "Daily Grind"_]
+
+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_.
+
+[Sidenote: _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.
+
+[Sidenote: _Five Rules for Conserving Energy_]
+
+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_.
+
+[Sidenote: _Business Luck and "Blue-Sky" Theories_]
+
+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.
+
+[Sidenote: _Devices for Commercial Efficiency_]
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Initiative Psychic Energy, by Warren Hilton
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK INITIATIVE PSYCHIC ENERGY ***
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