How to Live Part 11

In its proper place, "mind-cure" is an essential part of individual hygiene. In order to get the benefit of the other rules, there must be no worrying or watching of symptoms. After the regimen of exercise, baths, diet, etc., has been selected, it must be followed as a matter of course, with confidence that it will help, and with patience as to the rate of improvement which will follow.

[Sidenote: Worry]

It would seem that incessant, even if mild, worry is more exhausting than occasional fits of intense anger or fright or overexcitement, just as we waste more water from a spigot left slightly open all the time than from one which is alternately closed and wide open. Worry, if unceasing, will often drain away the largest store of nervous energy.

Worry seems, as it were, to short-circuit nerve currents in the brain, which normally form a long circuit through the body. One man, with this simile before him, has found he can stop worrying almost at will, avoid the supposed continuous short circuit and save up his nervous energy until it is needed.

[Sidenote: Rejoice at Things as They Are]

We must rejoice at things as they are; they might be worse! If we should count up we should be surprised to find how seldom the things we fear or worry about really happen. It is a true proverb that "half the trouble never comes."

[Sidenote: Serenity an Art]

Each must learn for himself how best to avoid anger, fear, worry, excitement, hate, envy, jealousy, grief, and all depressing or abnormal mental states. To do so is an art which must be practised, like skating or bicycle-riding. It can not be imparted merely by reading about it.

[Sidenote: "One Day at a Time"]

When, as unfortunately is often the case, the difficulty of maintaining one's serenity seems insuperable, the battle can often be won by "living one day at a time." Almost any one in ordinary conditions of adversity has it within his or her power, for merely one day or at any rate one hour, or one minute, to eliminate the fear, worry, anger, or other unwholesome emotions clamoring to take possession. At the expiration of say the hour, or minute, the same power can be exercised for the next ensuing period, and so on until one is caught napping, after which he must pick himself up and patiently try again.

[Sidenote: The Hurry Habit]

In modern life, which has been gradually speeded to the breaking-point, many people are suffering from a constant oppressive sense of hurry.

Most people have "so much to do," that they can not do it. This fact is of much annoyance and at the same time spurs them on in the vain endeavor to catch up. When once it is realized that the sense of hurry actually reduces the effective speed of work--in other words, that "the more haste, the less speed"--the situation has been reached in which the individual can teach himself some practical philosophy.

[Sidenote: Religion and Philosophy]

An immense help in the field of mental hygiene is to be obtained from religion and philosophy, although this is not the place to advocate any particular form of either, and from the standpoint of hygiene, it does not greatly matter! One may get his chief help from the Bible, from faith-healing cults, from writers like Emerson, from Tagore and other Orientals, or from Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus.

[Sidenote: "Religion of Healthymindedness"]

Professor William James commends the adoption of a "religion of healthymindedness" in which we renounce all wrong or diseased mental states, cultivating only the healthy ones, such as courage, patience, optimism, and reverence.

[Sidenote: The Habit of Happiness]

When the mind turns from shadow to suns.h.i.+ne, the body will tend also to a.s.sume the radiance of health. Stevenson said that there is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy. The habit of being happy enables one to be freed, or largely freed, from the domination of outward conditions. Though the trait is apparently totally lacking in some, while existing to a high degree in others, experience has shown that conscious cultivation will develop it to an appreciable degree, even in very stubborn cases. As in little Pollyanna's "Glad Game," it is possible to find something to be glad about in every situation in life.

[Sidenote: Control of Attention]

The secret of equanimity consists not so much in repressing the fear or worry, as in _dropping_ or ignoring it--that is, diverting and controlling the attention. It does no good to carry a mental burden.

"Forget it!" The main art of mental hygiene consists in the control of attention. Perhaps the worst defect in the Occidental philosophy of life is the failure to learn this control. The Oriental is superior in such self-training. The exceptional man in Western civilization who learns this control can do the most work and carry the most responsibility. On much the same principle as the Indians used when their young men were trained to endure pain self-inflicted, we might well devote a few minutes each day to the difficult task of changing at will our attention from the thing which is engrossing it to anything else we choose; or, what is more difficult still, to blank nothingness. When we have sufficiently strengthened this power, we can turn off the current of our thoughts as we turn off the lights and lie down to sleep in peace, as a trained sailor does in a storm.

[Sidenote: Making Up One's Mind]

If a person's work is drudgery but has to be endured, the making up of the mind to endure it cheerfully, the relinquishment of the doubtful but fascinating pleasure of dwelling upon one's misery, is found to largely obviate the burden. It is the making up of the mind which presents the difficulty. The truth is that we instinctively shrink from making, _without reservation_, important decisions as to our future course of conduct. We balk even at really committing ourselves not to worry. A man who, when he complained of his lot, was advised to "grin and bear it,"

replied that he'd have to bear it, but he'd be hanged if he'd grin!

[Sidenote: Intensity of Desires]

The decision which is perhaps the hardest to make and, at the same time, the most important from the standpoint of health and working-power, is the decision _not to care too much_ about the objects we are seeking to achieve. We need not subscribe to the Nirvana philosophy. A certain intensity of desire is normal, but modern life tends to a morbid frenzied intensity. Most of us need, in the interest of mental health or sanity, to moderate our desires. A business man who had set his heart on fulfilling a large responsibility nearly wrecked his health from worry over the outcome. His wise physician prescribed that, before sitting down to his desk each day, he should spend five minutes repeating and impressing on his mind the words, "I don't give a hang! I don't give a hang!" The truth is many people fail because of over-anxiety lest they fail. Some invalids die from an exaggerated desire not to die.

[Sidenote: Ruling Ourselves]

A helpful precept, when one is failing in some crucial undertaking from his very over-anxiety to succeed, is to replace the ambition to succeed by a determination to pa.s.s the crisis unruffled, whether one succeeds or fails, "He that ruleth himself is greater than he that taketh a city,"

and incidentally if we rule ourselves we are far more likely than otherwise to take the city, if that be possible at all.

An ideal course of conduct implies a constant readiness, after all has been done which can be done, to renounce one's feverish desires and accept whatever higher powers decree, even if it be death. This is one of the supreme aims of every great philosophy or religion. Job (13:15) said, "Though He slay me, yet will I put my trust in Him," and Christ exclaimed, "If it be possible let this cup pa.s.s from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as Thou wilt."

CHAPTER V

HYGIENE IN GENERAL

Section I--The Fifteen Rules of Hygiene

The aids to health discussed in the preceding chapters may be summarized in specific formulas cla.s.sified under the four heads, Air, Food, Poisons, and Activity, corresponding to the four chapters, and under fifteen sub-heads, corresponding to the fifteen sections.

I. AIR.

1. Ventilate every room you occupy.

2. Wear light, loose and porous clothes.

3. Seek out-of-door occupations and recreations.

4. Sleep out, if you can.

5. Breathe deeply.

II. FOOD.

6. Avoid overeating and overweight.

7. Eat sparingly of meats and eggs.

8. Eat some hard, some bulky, some raw foods.

9. Eat slowly.

III. POISONS.

10. Evacuate thoroughly, regularly and frequently.

11. Stand, sit and walk erect.

12. Do not allow poisons and infections to enter the body.

13. Keep the teeth, gums and tongue clean.

IV. ACTIVITY.

14. Work, play, rest and sleep in moderation.

15. Keep serene.

The application of these rules to one's daily life must be varied with each individual. The most practical method is for the individual to begin the improvement he would seek by constructing a typical day's program in which time is provided for, say, breathing and other exercises in bed, bath, toilet, walk to business, meals, amus.e.m.e.nt, etc., with special notes and memoranda as to the particular faults of omission and commission to be corrected. One might also, as Benjamin Franklin records in his autobiography, keep a daily record for a week as to how nearly the program is lived up to. By dint of such and other stimuli, the transition in habits can be made, after which the "rules"

cease to be rules, as carrying any sense of restriction, and become automatic like putting on or taking off one's clothes.

Section II--The Unity of Hygiene

[Sidenote: The Rules Interrelated]