Serenity and Poise, Part 3

How to Live; Rules for Healthful Living
by Irving Fisher, Eugene Lyman Fisk, M.D.

(Page 11 of 12)

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.

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.

"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.

The Habit of Happiness

When the mind turns from shadow to sunshine, the body will tend also to assume 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.

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.

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!

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.

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 pass 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 pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as Thou wilt."

Copyright 1915 by Funk & Wagnalls Company
New York and London, 1916