Controlling one's thoughts.
What can it profit a man to be able to think, if he does not dare to?
One must have the courage to go where the mind leads, no matter
how startling the conclusion, how shattering, how much it may
hurt oneself or particular class, no matter how unfashionable or
how obnoxious it may at first seem.
This may require the courage to stand against the whole world.
Great is the man who has that courage, for he indeed has achieved willpower.
We have seen that whatever our ideals, whatever our resolutions, we should, before adopting
those resolutions, calmly and coldly count the price
of carrying them out.
Once you have made your decision, having coldly decided that that is what you
want and that you are willing to pay the price, your decision is forever
beyond dispute.
You should never ask yourself again whether the other course is possible.
Those questions are forever closed; you have asked them before
and have decided them.
You will know that thoughts determine action, and to control your actions you will begin
by controlling your thought.
You will vivify all the advantages that will come from carrying
out your resolution.
You will paint them in glowing colors.
You will dwell on them constantly.
The disadvantages you will ignore.
They are disadvantages only to fools.
A wise man does not think them so.
Before you make any formal resolutions whatsoever, make certain
that you genuinely desire to carry it out.
Let there be no doubt that the end you have in view is so desirable
or advantageous that it will outweigh all desires or advantages or
all other ends that are likely to have to be foregone or abandoned
in order to attain it.
In short, be sure you are willing to pay the
price.
This rule is the corner-stone.
Here I need to give a warning.
Concentrate on the positive side, avoid the negative.
That is, dwell on the benefits of carrying your resolve
out, not on the evils of failing.
A morbid, terrible picture is a mind-filling picture,
it exerts astrange fascination.
If a thought once sufficiently fills the mind, be
it never so terrible, unreasonable or self-destructive, it will be acted
upon.
I need merely cite the familiar experience of dizziness when
looking over a precipice or a high building, or even a low building if
there be no rail around.
The height from sea-level has nothing to do with it; and the height of the potential fall
is less important than the actual danger of falling.
You grow dizzy because you think of what would happen to you if you lost your balance
and fell, or even if you were to throw yourself off.
The higher the roof or precipice, the more fascinating does this idea become; hence the
greater the dizziness.
It is the very terror of the thought, the reality
of the fear that you are going to act upon it, that makes you dizzy.
If you could get completely rid of the idea, you would completely lose
the dizziness.
I knew a man living in Buffalo who did not dare to
visit Niagara Falls, lest he should throw himself into the magnificent
rapids just above them.
There are doubtless many like him.
Fill the mind with the positive idea of your resolve, and you will carry it out.
Some readers will have recognized an affinity between this rule
and the doctrine known as "suggestion."
Little is yet known of suggestion, but enough is known for scientific men to
become assured that it is no mere superstition.
practicing physicians recognize its great value.
One writer, T. Sharper Knowlson, has made some pointed remarks on the subject.
Quote.
We have not to aim at a strong will, and wait until
it "comes."
Act as if it had already come.
The man who feels he cannot pass a public house
without an irresistible temptation to enter and drink
to excess, must tell himself he can, and proceed to
walk past the place of temptation.
End quote.
He suggests a method for combating insomnia.
One should say to oneself, "I sleep, I sleep," repeating
these words until a state of drowsiness is induced.
It is wrong to say, "I shall sleep," because that
implies desire, and hence a possibility of non-fulfillment.
Suggestion works by affirmation, not by promise.
My next piece of advice is this: Never defy temptation — evade it.
You may look upon this advice as inconsistent with the above
quotation.
I maintain that it is prudent.
For urging it I have the strongest psychologic grounds.
In one of his studies in pessimism, Schopenhauer makes a remark
to the effect that man has thousands of desires, and as at any
moment not more than a few of them are fulfilled, man's existence
must necessarily always be miserable.
Schopenhauer could only arrive at a conclusion so opposed to common sense
because his psychology was defective.
Desires are not ever-present.
Desires are like thoughts—they are thoughts—that come and
go.
They are aroused by association and suggestion, and less apt to
appear when there is no association or suggestion to call them up.
I walk along the street.
I am, so far as I am consciously aware, content; which is the same thing as being
so.
But I pass by a fruit-stand; I espy some delicious peaches, and there is
immediately aroused the desire for peaches.
The absence of the fruit then produces in me a
maw, which must be filled.
When I watch an exhibition tennis match, my desire to become a marvelous player
is intense.
When I go to a skating rink, I attach great value
to the personal achievement of expert skating.
When I read a book on the history of metaphysics, I desire to become a great philosopher.
When I listen to speeches in the midst of a presidential campaign, I fancy
that the one thing worthwhile is to become an eminent statesman.
Between campaigns, this ambition falls into the background.
If I have not been skating for a long time, my desire for preeminence
in it fades.
The moral of all this, on its positive side, is to cultivate most
your desires for the activities which will best forward your final purposes,
those purposes which you have calmly, deliberately and fully
reasoned out.
On the negative side, the moral is to avoid all associations,
suggestions, lines of thought, which arouse desires that interfere
with your final purposes, that is to say, desires that you have resolved against.
The drunkard often has little difficulty in keeping straight until
he sees liquor; even then he is better able to resist than after he has
scented or tasted liquor.
If you have resolved forever to cease drinking, do not, to show the strength of your determination,
as people do in motion picture dramas, put the red glass
to your lips and then set it down.
Putting the glass to your lips is liable to be your undoing.
Do not raise the glass.
Do not order the drink.
Do not enter the saloon.
If the saloon is directly in line on your way home, and habit
has dictated your entrance, walk a block out of the way if necessary.
You should tell yourself you can walk past, and then do it.
That is all very well for the later stages, but I
fancy you will find that suggestion and self-faith have their greatest
value when not over strained.
You cannot lift a 500-pound weight at arm's length by telling yourself you can.
But by gradual exercises, adding a little bit each week, a man may develop
a physique which may enable him to accomplish marvels he never
dreamed of before.
And the will is just like that.
It must be developed slowly.
This is not my discovery.
Bacon discovered it some three centuries ago, and though his language is somewhat antiquated,
his wisdom is as wise today as on the day it was written.
Quote.
He that seeketh victory over his nature, let him not
set himself too great nor too small tasks.
For the first will make him dejected by often failings,
and the second will make him a small proceeder.
But after a time let him practice with disadvantages as dancers do with thick
shoes, for it breeds great perfection if the practice
be harder than the use.
End Quote.
Therefore it is better to walk around the block a while, if you
must, before going past.
Then you may have faith; and your faith will be strengthened by the modest record
of avoidance behind you.
This alcoholic illustration, as I have indicated before is sufficient to indicate to a reader
fertile in ideas the application of the principle to
any other instance.
Sad is the day for any man when he becomes absolutely
satisfied with the life that he is living, the
thoughts that he is thinking and the deeds that he
is doing; when there ceases to be forever beating
at the doors of his soul a desire to do something larger, which he feels and knows he was meant
and intended to do.
I must extend a few warnings before we part, and I can do it
briefly.
Never boast to your friends about your will-power.
They are apt to become cynical and facetious, especially
when you have broken some major or minor resolution in a fit of
absent-mindedness.
You want your friends to know of your will-power,
but the best way for them to discover it will be through your actions,
not your words.
Don't try to be a "dominating personality" by shouting down your opponents or co-workers.
Don't be stubborn.
Especially don't be stubborn in your social recreations, under the impression that that
is will-power.
Don't "break up the party" just because it won't
play your way.
Don't fancy that will-power is incompatible with making
yourself agreeable.
The difference between stubbornness and backbone you may
imagine to be merely a difference in invective.
A man who stands for principles in which you believe, has backbone;
a man who stands for principles in which you do not believe, is
stubborn.
But the true difference, as I conceive it, is that the stubbornman
will not listen to reason.
He will persist in a course he has adopted simply to maintain his
vanity.
He won't admit that he has been wrong, though he may know
it in his heart.
His notion of will-power is sadly false.
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