mokhlis's Blog
What Is Self-Coaching? A New Self-Therapy You may feel confused, but one thing you’re sure of. Life’s not sup-posed to be this hard. You want answers—now! The last thing you want is to waste time. So let’s get started. The following self-quiz will show you how you can benefit from this book. Is Self-Coaching for Me? Identify each sentence as either mostly true or mostly false:
Total your “true” responses. A score of 12 or fewer suggests that you are a relatively well-adjusted individual. Self-coaching can teach you to shake off life’s setbacks. You can expect your social and personal effec-tiveness to improve as you begin to become less tripped-up by emo-tional interference. Mostly, you can expect to enhance your already healthy personality with a more dynamic approach to life. A score between 13 and 22 suggests that you have a moderate degree of personality erosion. Self-coaching can quickly and simply teach you to get beyond the self-limiting effects of anxiety or depres-sion, realizing a more spontaneous, natural way of life. If your score was above 22, you have significant difficulty with anx-iety and/or depression. For you, Self-coaching needs to become a pri-ority. With patience and practice, you can learn to live your life symptom free. As beleaguered as you are, I don’t expect you to be convinced easily. For now, just recognize that regardless of how anxious or depressed you are, something in you is managing to read these words. That some-thing, the part of you that hasn’t quit, that healthy part of your person-ality that’s still willing to try to solve the riddle that has become your life—that’s the healthy person in you that Self-coaching wants to reach. Self-Coaching, the Program It took me twenty-three years of clinical work to write this book. That’s not because I’m particularly slow or lazy (far from it), but because it takes a long time, a really long time, to see through the deceptive mist that shrouds anxiety and depression. What’s interesting, once you understand the nature of faulty perceptions, is that anxiety and depres-sion actually begin to make sense. As irrational as your particular symptoms may feel, when you learn the punch line, the riddle becomes apparent. You’ll see. These insights were the catalyst for a new form of therapy I developed to teach patients what they could do to make themselves better. (I dislike the term “patient,” but I like “client” even less, so I’ll use “patient” throughout the book.) I consider this method, which I call Self-coaching (Self, with a capital S), my most significant accomplishment. Symptoms of anxiety and depression are parts of normal day-to-day living. Getting uptight if you’re late for an appointment or feeling upset over an argument with a friend are inescapable parts of life. The problems occur when your anxiety and depression progress to a point beyond your immediate life circumstances, so that these feelings float for days, weeks, or months. As a psychologist, the talent I value most is my intuition. Intuition is the ability, as Carl Gustav Jung once said, to see around corners. In contrast to the intellect, intuition is much less deliberate—it just hap-pens. When it comes to psychology, strong intuitions are about as important as a telescope is to an astronomer. Just as the surface of the moon turns into pockmarked craters under a telescope’s magnification, intuition can begin to reveal the hidden aspects of anxiety or depression. Once I had magnified my view of anxiety and depression, I found myself reacting to my patients differently. Instead of treating them in a traditionally passive way, I responded to them in an active, rather spirited way. This wasn’t a conscious or deliberate strategy. I just allowed my intuition to guide me. With depressed patients, for exam-ple, I sensed that they were missing a vital energy necessary to combat their difficulties. Using my energy, my optimism, and my enthusiasm, I would model the attitude necessary to conquer the negativity, despair, and inertia. Essentially, I was reflecting what I perceived to be lacking in my patients. With anxiety patients, I followed my intuition, too. For these patients I became the voice of encouragement and conviction. I pushed hard for courage and risk taking against life’s worries and fears. Anxi-ety-prone people need to overcome self-doubt while building trust in themselves. Both anxiety and depression are weeds that grow from the fertile soil of insecurity. So I became a role model of a can-do attitude. With-out inner confidence, everything becomes a struggle. I realized that my new approach was a dramatic departure from the more traditional therapeutic methods I usually employed, yet I couldn’t seem to put my finger on exactly what it was that I was doing. One day, while working with a young man who had been struggling with anxiety and panic attacks, I heard myself telling him, “You keep looking to me to make your anxiety go away. I can’t do that for you. Think of me more as your coach than your psychologist.” There it was. I was coaching!—not analyzing, not passively listening, not reflecting. I was coaching strength, confidence, and a sense of empowerment. My patient quickly and easily related to this simple concept. Rather than seeing me as parent-authority-healer, he clearly understood my new, revitalized role—I was coaching his efforts, his determination, and most importantly his need to overcome anxiety and depression. The ease with which my patient and I progressed convinced me that approaching problems as a coach rather than a therapist could have far-reaching implications. By coaching the healing attitude that was miss-ing in my patients, and using a fail-safe technique I call Self-talk, they were able to stop anxiety and depression where it began, in the thoughts that preceded and fertilized these conditions. Self-talk is a method of replacing faulty, destructive thinking with healthy, liberated thinking. This method was first introduced in my book Healing Your Habits, where I called it “Directed Imagination.” It doesn’t matter whether you’re exercising to lose a few pounds, working to improve fitness through power walking, or preparing as a serious athlete for a big race, effective training always involves following a program of repetition and progressive effort. Psychological training is no different—requiring repetition and progressive effort. Self-talk will become the core of your training program, demanding a similar com-mitment—no magic, no gifts, no abracadabra insights, just plain old hard work—hard work that pays off. As I continued to develop my program, I found that the concept of training was particularly appealing to my highly motivated anxiety-prone patients. They usually struggle with traditional therapy’s passive approach, especially when they aren’t seeing results. A well-thought-out training program was clearly something they could sink their teeth into. Depressed people face a different challenge. Depression makes it hard to muster the energy to do anything. How could I motivate depressed patients to want to train? Depression is like driving a car with one foot on the gas (i.e., healthy desires) and one foot on the brake (i.e., negative distortions)—you’re forever feeling stuck, frus-trated, and discouraged. I knew that if my method was going to be suc-cessful, the training program had to offer release from the braking effects of depression—and that’s exactly what happened. By replacing negative thoughts with more objective, reality-based thinking, Self-talk, in combination with a coached attitude of optimism, made the difference. Once patients got a taste of being unstuck, the necessary motivation for continued training was no longer a problem. This training approach to therapy also explains why results are con-tingent not on therapeutic insights and aha! experiences, but on con-sistent, daily workouts using my Self-talk approach. If you walked into a gym expecting that ten minutes on the treadmill would take two inches off your waist, no doubt you’d be very discouraged. In contrast, what if you approached the treadmill with a more realistic attitude, combined with a genuine desire to begin training? First off, you’d real-ize that one treadmill session is just that, one treadmill session. Only after repeated training sessions over time would you begin to reap the accumulated benefits of your efforts—but the benefits would come. Whether in the gym or in therapy, a training approach both requires and teaches three essential things: 1 Patience 2 Realistic understanding of the dynamics of change 3 Self-reliance This coaching/training program, using my Self-talk technique for breaking destructive thought patterns, became the heart and soul of the book you hold in your hands—with, of course, one major modifica-tion. Rather than having me be your coach, you become your own coach, directing your own liberation. Understand that the potential for healing, real healing, always resides within you. Remember, the best psychologist in the world can’t make you better. No one can. Only you can, and Self-coaching will teach you how. Becoming a Self-Coach Noticing how quickly and easily my patients responded to coaching, I wondered how effective this method would be in a self-help format. Could what I was doing for my patients be presented in a book? Had it not been for a cousin who asked me what she could do for her anx-iety, I might not have pursued this possibility. I discussed my technique of Self-talk with her and gave her a number of the handouts I had pre-pared for my patients, describing a few simple strategies and exercises. When she called me a few months later reporting that her anxiety was gone, I was more convinced than ever that coaching could, in fact, make the transition to Self-coaching. It didn’t take me long to make my final decision to start writing, but what finally convinced me wasn’t my cousin’s success. I Think I Can, I Thought I Could Somewhere back in my late thirties I had an inexplicable urge to run the New York City Marathon. I couldn’t tell you why I wanted to run it. Maybe I did because it just sounded so impossible—26 miles! Per-haps I just wanted to know whether I had it in me. Whatever the rea-son, I decided to give it a shot. I didn’t give my training much thought. After all, I had been a recreational, couple-of-miles-a-day jogger for years, what could be the problem? You just run longer and longer dis-tances. Right? Fast forward six months. The first couple of hours of the marathon were terrific. I was high-fiving the kids along Brooklyn’s Fourth Avenue, enjoying the crowd, my adrenalin, and the race. Why hadn’t I done this before? By the third hour however, more than halfway through the race and chugging through Queens, my high-fiving long since abandoned, I began to notice a deepening fatigue. Four hours into the race, the Bronx began to fade as all my attention became focused on the squish, squish of blis-ters. The fatigue that began ten miles earlier had become all consum-ing by the fifth hour as I entered Central Park. My mind was taken over by a survival instinct that sought only to stop the pain and cramp-ing. Somehow, I hung on and finished, five hours and twenty minutes after I had started. I shuffled through the chutes at the end of the race, trying not to think about the preceding three hours of my life. After recovering for a few months (months in which I vowed never, ever to entertain the notion of running another race), I began talking to a friend who had run the same marathon at a much more respectable pace. He couldn’t believe that I did all my training on the track. “What, no hill work? No speed work?” I realized how terribly flawed my training had been. I also realized that some things in life aren’t apparent—at least not at first. More months passed. I came across a great book written by two former coaches and marathoners The Competitive Runner’s Handbook. The book explained and analyzed elements of training in a compre-hensive program. In spite of my resolve never to think about another marathon, I found myself devouring the book. I began to understand why my legs had become stiff, why I had cramped, why I had fallen apart the last half of the race, and even why my feet had blistered. These problems, I learned, could all be eliminated by proper training. Given the proper program to follow, it should be possible to overcome the breakdowns that I had experienced. What had been a humiliating and chaotic experience could actually be deciphered, anticipated, pre-pared for, and—most importantly—conquered. I liked that. I was eager to put my self-coaching to the test. To date, I’ve run three marathons, and I’m currently training for my fourth. My times have dropped, not by minutes, but by hours. If I say so myself, I’ve learned a lot about self-coaching. My self-coached marathon experiences proved invaluable as I pondered the possibility of putting my experience coaching patients into a Self-coached format. Whether you’re anxious or depressed, Self-coaching can teach you how to do what’s necessary to eliminate your problems. Our minds, as well as our bodies, deteriorate if we allow ourselves to follow destruc-tive patterns. That’s what anxiety and depression are. They are pat- 2 The Seven Principles of The heart and soul of Self-coached healing can be condensed into seven basic principles. Although you’ve already had an overview of these ideas in Chapter 1, now, as your training gets underway, you will consolidate them into specific principles to support all your training efforts. With practical, daily use, these truths will become more appar-ent. For now, in preparation for the training that’s ahead, it’s important that you gain a feel for these principles. I recommend that you write these seven principles down on a slip of paper and keep them in your wallet or purse. Occasionally, just read through the list, allowing your-self to absorb them and reflect on them. As soon as you have a casual, working awareness of them, you’re ready to begin Part II—the prob-lems Self-coaching can heal. Principle 1: Everyone Has a Legacy of Insecurity, the Insecure Child Growing up human means growing up with some degree of insecurity. It’s inevitable. Children are ill equipped to cope with—much less make sense of—early traumas, conflicts, misunderstandings, or loss. When children feel out of control and vulnerable, they resort to any strategy that offers relief: tantrums, whining, sulking—whatever works. These are primitive tactics designed to reduce vulnerability by gaining more control. Over time, your strategies as a child become habits, and your per-sonality is shaped accordingly. These habits make your here-and-now thinking—when threatened—become primitive and coarse, reminis-cent of your earliest struggles. With practice, you can begin to be attuned to these simple-minded, tormented reactions to life. I call the “voice” in you that spews fear and panic the Insecure Child. Differen-tiating your Insecure Child’s voice from your healthy thinking is the first step to a more mature, liberated, healthy life. Chapter 3 will introduce you to a technique called Self-talk, which will teach you how to break the habit of listening to the dictates of your Insecure Child. Principle 2: Thoughts Precede Feelings, Anxieties, and Depressions Most people, when it comes to feeling anxious or depressed, see them-selves as victims: “She called me a jerk, so of course I’m depressed. Wouldn’t you be?” or “See, now you got me upset. Are you satisfied?” or “How could you stay out so late? I was worried sick.” Victims feel they have no choice; someone or something is always “making” them worry, panic, get upset, or unhappy. “How can I stop worrying? With my crazy job, I have no choice!” Sometimes, when a mood or anxiety seems to appear without rhyme or reason, you feel like a victim of fate: “I wasn’t doing anything, I was just driving to work and I got this panic attack.” When feeling like a victim, it never occurs to you that you can do anything about how you feel. Once you realize that thoughts precede feelings, you can understand that you’re not powerless. There is something you can do. You can change how you think and simultaneously discover that you’re begin-ning to feel better. Self-coaching can teach you how to take responsi-bility for your thoughts and change that victim attitude—especially the thoughts produced by your Insecure Child. If left unchallenged, your Insecure Child will ruin your life. Learning to challenge the primitive thoughts of your Insecure Child is how you’ll reclaim your life. Principle 3: Anxiety and Depression Are Misguided Attempts to Control Life When insecurity leaves you feeling vulnerable and helpless, anxiety and depression are nothing more than misguided attempts to regain con-trol. Anxiety does this through an expenditure of energy (worry, panic, rumination, “what-iffing,” etc.), depression by a withdrawal of energy (isolation and withdrawal, fatigue, avoidance, not caring, etc.). Unfor-tunately, rather than helping, anxiety and depression become part of the problem, a big part. It may seem strange to view anxiety and depression as coping strate-gies trying to protect you from perceived harm. Rather than coping strategies, you can view them as “controlling strategies.” Anxiety mobi-lizes all your anticipatory resources trying to brace (i.e., control) you for a collision. Depression, on the other hand, controls through disen-gagement from what you perceive as a threat. Whether you wind up depressed or anxious really isn’t important—either way, you lose. Either way, you’re being duped by your Insecure Child. Principle 4: Control Is an Illusion, Not an Answer Insecurity creates a feeling of vulnerability. When you feel vulnerable, wanting to be in control seems like a natural, constructive desire. It may start out as a constructive desire, but a controlled life always invites anxiety and depression. Insecurity is greedy: The more control you have, the more you seek. Nothing ever makes you feel secure enough. You’re doomed to chase control’s carrot. As you grow desper-ate and pursue your “carrots” with increased agitation, you can’t help but notice that depression and anxiety are becoming permanent fix-tures in your life. The truth is that life cannot be controlled. What confuses most is the fact that control does give temporary relief. If you’ve managed to manipulate or cajole life into appearing tamed and controlled, you do feel relief—for the moment. When you’re desperate, this temporary relief is spelled with a capital “R.” If you’re honest, however, you know that control is only and always an illusion. Like the eye of a hurricane, it’s a false sense of calm before the remainder of the storm. If controlling life is an impossibility—nothing more than a dan-gling carrot—then what’s the answer? The answer is to resurrect a feel-ing of self-trust and confidence so that instead of controlling life, we are courageous enough just to live it. Principle 5: Insecurity Is a Habit, and Any Habit Can Be Broken You weren’t born insecure; you learned it. Because children are ill equipped to adequately cope with early traumas, conflicts, misunder-standings, or loss, some amount of insecurity is inescapable. We learn self-doubt and self-distrust, and if these destructive attitudes are rein-forced, they become habits. Habits are difficult to break because, like any muscle, given enough exercise, they grow in strength. Self-coaching will give you the strength, technique, and willpower to break your habits of insecurity. Start convincing yourself now that what you learned can be unlearned. No question about it—any habit can be broken. All that’s needed is a plan, a little patience, and a Self-coached determination. Principle 6: Healthy Thinking Is a Choice You may not realize it (not yet), but you have a choice not to be ham-mered by anxiety or depression. Perhaps you can’t control thoughts from popping into your mind, but you don’t have to follow them around like an obedient puppy. If, for example, you have the thought, “I can’t do it; I’m going to fail,” you’re obviously being challenged by your Insecure Child. Here is where you have the choice. Do you continue with this thought, “What if I fail? What will I do? This is terrible . . . ,” or do you stop the Insecure Child in her or his tracks? If you realize you have a choice, then you can insist, “This is my Insecure Child talking, and I refuse to listen. I choose not to be bullied by these thoughts.” Self-talk will make it crystal clear how you build the necessary muscle to choose healthy thinking. Principle 7: A Good Coach Is a Good Motivator The best coach in the world must also be a good motivator. Technique, skill, and conditioning will get you so far, but without proper motiva-tion, your results will be disappointing. Nowhere is this more impor-tant than in Self-coached healing. If you’re suffering from anxiety or depression, then your Insecure Child has all the muscle (i.e., habit strength). This puts your emotional health at a grave disadvantage. Why? Because your Child has been constantly undermining your attempts to feel better. In order to turn the tide—building healthy muscle/habit to resist the distortions of insecurity—you must keep yourself pumped up for the challenge. You’re going to learn to disregard your Insecure Child’s resistance, using Self-coaching tools to bring out the best in yourself. Fighting the good fight requires two things: the right attitude and proper motiva-tion. Attitude is simply having the right, positive frame of mind, and motivation is infusing this can-do attitude with energy. Motivation is what allows you to sustain your efforts and go the distance. Start shift-ing that attitude right now. Begin with some positive affirmations— “I’m going to beat this.” ✤✤✤ TRAINING SUGGESTION Because anxiety and depression have a tendency to confuse and disorient you, be sure to write down these seven principles on a slip of paper. You might find it helpful in moments of stress or struggle to read through the list. These principles will become your mantra for success. Read and repeat them to yourself often.
How to Live on Twenty-Four Hours a Day PREFACE TO THIS EDITION This preface, though placed at the beginning, as a preface must be, I have received a large amount of correspondence concerning thissmall work, and many reviews of it--some of them nearly as longas the book itself--have been printed. But scarcely any of thecomment has been adverse. Some people have objected to afrivolity of tone; but as the tone is not, in my opinion, at allfrivolous, this objection did not impress me; and had no weightierreproach been put forward I might almost have been persuaded thatthe volume was flawless! A more serious stricture has, however,been offered--not in the press, but by sundry obviously sincerecorrespondents--and I must deal with it. A reference to page 43will show that I anticipated and feared this disapprobation. Thesentence against which protests have been made is as follows:-"In the majority of instances he [the typical man] does notprecisely feel a passion for his business; at best he does notdislike it. He begins his business functions with some reluctance,as late as he can, and he ends them with joy, as early as he can.And his engines, while he is engaged in his business, are seldom attheir full 'h.p.'" I am assured, in accents of unmistakable sincerity, that there are I am ready to believe it. I do believe it. I know it. I alwaysknew it. Both in London and in the provinces it has been my lot tospend long years in subordinate situations of business; and the factdid not escape me that a certain proportion of my peers showed whatamounted to an honest passion for their duties, and that whileengaged in those duties they were really *living* to the fullestextent of which they were capable. But I remain convinced thatthese fortunate and happy individuals (happier perhaps than theyguessed) did not and do not constitute a majority, or anything likea majority. I remain convinced that the majority of decent averageconscientious men of business (men with aspirations and ideals) donot as a rule go home of a night genuinely tired. I remainconvinced that they put not as much but as little of themselves asthey conscientiously can into the earning of a livelihood, and thattheir vocation bores rather than interests them. Nevertheless, I admit that the minority is of sufficient importanceto merit attention, and that I ought not to have ignored it socompletely as I did do. The whole difficulty of the hard-workingminority was put in a single colloquial sentence by one of mycorrespondents. He wrote: "I am just as keen as anyone on doingsomething to 'exceed my programme,' but allow me to tell you thatwhen I get home at six thirty p.m. I am not anything like so freshas you seem to imagine." Now I must point out that the case of the minority, who throwthemselves with passion and gusto into their daily business task, isinfinitely less deplorable than the case of the majority, who gohalf-heartedly and feebly through their official day. The formerare less in need of advice "how to live." At any rate during theirofficial day of, say, eight hours they are really alive; theirengines are giving the full indicated "h.p." The other eightworking hours of their day may be badly organised, or even fritteredaway; but it is less disastrous to waste eight hours a day thansixteen hours a day; it is better to have lived a bit than never tohave lived at all. The real tragedy is the tragedy of the man who isbraced to effort neither in the office nor out of it, and to thisman this book is primarily addressed. "But," says the other andmore fortunate man, "although my ordinary programme is bigger thanhis, I want to exceed my programme too! I am living a bit; I wantto live more. But I really can't do another day's work on the top of my official day." The fact is, I, the author, ought to have foreseen that I shouldappeal most strongly to those who already had an interest inexistence. It is always the man who has tasted life who demandsmore of it. And it is always the man who never gets out of bedwho is the most difficult to rouse. Well, you of the minority, let us assume that the intensity of yourdaily money-getting will not allow you to carry out quite all thesuggestions in the following pages. Some of the suggestions mayyet stand. I admit that you may not be able to use the time spenton the journey home at night; but the suggestion for the journey tothe office in the morning is as practicable for you as for anybody.And that weekly interval of forty hours, from Saturday to Monday, isyours just as much as the other man's, though a slight accumulationof fatigue may prevent you from employing the whole of your "h.p."upon it. There remains, then, the important portion of the three ormore evenings a week. You tell me flatly that you are too tired todo anything outside your programme at night. In reply to which Itell you flatly that if your ordinary day's work is thus exhausting,then the balance of your life is wrong and must be adjusted. Aman's powers ought not to be monopolised by his ordinary day's work.What, then, is to be done? The obvious thing to do is to circumvent your ardour for yourordinary day's work by a ruse. Employ your engines in somethingbeyond the programme before, and not after, you employ them on theprogramme itself. Briefly, get up earlier in the morning. You sayyou cannot. You say it is impossible for you to go earlier to bedof a night--to do so would upset the entire household. I do notthink it is quite impossible to go to bed earlier at night. I thinkthat if you persist in rising earlier, and the consequence isinsufficiency of sleep, you will soon find a way of going to bedearlier. But my impression is that the consequences of risingearlier will not be an insufficiency of sleep. My impression,growing stronger every year, is that sleep is partly a matter ofhabit--and of slackness. I am convinced that most people sleep aslong as they do because they are at a loss for any other diversion.How much sleep do you think is daily obtained by the powerfulhealthy man who daily rattles up your street in charge of CarterPatterson's van? I have consulted a doctor on this point. He is a doctor who for twenty-four years has had a large general practice in "Most people sleep themselves stupid." He went on to give his opinion that nine men out of ten would have Other doctors have confirmed this judgment, which, of course, does Rise an hour, an hour and a half, or even two hours earlier; and--ifyou must--retire earlier when you can. In the matter of exceedingprogrammes, you will accomplish as much in one morning hour asin two evening hours. "But," you say, "I couldn't begin withoutsome food, and servants." Surely, my dear sir, in an age when anexcellent spirit-lamp (including a saucepan) can be bought for lessthan a shilling, you are not going to allow your highest welfare todepend upon the precarious immediate co-operation of a fellowcreature! Instruct the fellow creature, whoever she may be, atnight. Tell her to put a tray in a suitable position over night.On that tray two biscuits, a cup and saucer, a box of matches and aspirit-lamp; on the lamp, the saucepan; on the saucepan, the lid-but turned the wrong way up; on the reversed lid, the small teapot,containing a minute quantity of tea leaves. You will then have tostrike a match--that is all. In three minutes the water boils, andyou pour it into the teapot (which is already warm). In three moreminutes the tea is infused. You can begin your day while drinkingit. These details may seem trivial to the foolish, but to thethoughtful they will not seem trivial. The proper, wise balancingof one's whole life may depend upon the feasibility of a cup of teaat an unusual hour. A. B. CONTENTS PREFACE, V I THE DAILY MIRACLE, 21 II THE DESIRE TO EXCEED ONE'S PROGRAMME, 28 III PRECAUTIONS BEFORE BEGINNING, 35 IV THE CAUSE OF THE TROUBLE, 42 V TENNIS AND THE IMMORTAL SOUL, 49 VI REMEMBER HUMAN NATURE, 56 VII CONTROLLING THE MIND, 62 VIII THE REFLECTIVE MOOD, 69 IX INTEREST IN THE ARTS, 76 X NOTHING IN LIFE IS HUMDRUM, 83 XI SERIOUS READING, 90 XII DANGERS TO AVOID, 97 THE DAILY MIRACLE "Yes, he's one of those men that don't know how to manage.Good situation. Regular income. Quite enough for luxuriesas well as needs. Not really extravagant. And yet the fellow'salways in difficulties. Somehow he gets nothing out of hismoney. Excellent flat--half empty! Always looks as if he'd hadthe brokers in. New suit--old hat! Magnificent necktie--baggytrousers! Asks you to dinner: cut glass--bad mutton, or Turkishcoffee--cracked cup! He can't understand it. Explanation simplyis that he fritters his income away. Wish I had the half of it!I'd show him--" So we have most of us criticised, at one time or another, in our We are nearly all chancellors of the exchequer: it is the pride ofthe moment. Newspapers are full of articles explaining how to liveon such-and-such a sum, and these articles provoke a correspondencewhose violence proves the interest they excite. Recently, in adaily organ, a battle raged round the question whether a woman canexist nicely in the country on L85 a year. I have seen an essay,"How to live on eight shillings a week." But I have never seen an essay, "How to live on twenty-four hours a day." Yet it has beensaid that time is money. That proverb understates the case. Timeis a great deal more than money. If you have time you can obtainmoney--usually. But though you have the wealth of a cloak-roomattendant at the Carlton Hotel, you cannot buy yourself a minutemore time than I have, or the cat by the fire has. Philosophers have explained space. They have not explained time.It is the inexplicable raw material of everything. With it, all ispossible; without it, nothing. The supply of time is truly a dailymiracle, an affair genuinely astonishing when one examines it. Youwake up in the morning, and lo! your purse is magically filled withtwenty-four hours of the unmanufactured tissue of the universe ofyour life! It is yours. It is the most precious of possessions. Ahighly singular commodity, showered upon you in a manner as singularas the commodity itself! For remark! No one can take it from you. It is unstealable. And Talk about an ideal democracy! In the realm of time there is noaristocracy of wealth, and no aristocracy of intellect. Genius isnever rewarded by even an extra hour a day. And there is nopunishment. Waste your infinitely precious commodity as much as youwill, and the supply will never be withheld from you. No mysteriouspower will say:--"This man is a fool, if not a knave. He does notdeserve time; he shall be cut off at the meter." It is more certainthan consols, and payment of income is not affected by Sundays.Moreover, you cannot draw on the future. Impossible to get intodebt! You can only waste the passing moment. You cannot wasteto-morrow; it is kept for you. You cannot waste the next hour; itis kept for you. I said the affair was a miracle. Is it not? You have to live on this twenty-four hours of daily time. Out of ityou have to spin health, pleasure, money, content, respect, and theevolution of your immortal soul. Its right use, its most effectiveuse, is a matter of the highest urgency and of the most thrillingactuality. All depends on that. Your happiness--the elusive prizethat you are all clutching for, my friends!--depends on that. Strange that the newspapers, so enterprising and up-to-date as theyare, are not full of "How to live on a given income of time,"instead of "How to live on a given income of money"! Money is farcommoner than time. When one reflects, one perceives that money isjust about the commonest thing there is. It encumbers the earth ingross heaps. If one can't contrive to live on a certain income of money, oneearns a little more--or steals it, or advertises for it. Onedoesn't necessarily muddle one's life because one can't quite manageon a thousand pounds a year; one braces the muscles and makes itguineas, and balances the budget. But if one cannot arrange that anincome of twenty-four hours a day shall exactly cover all properitems of expenditure, one does muddle one's life definitely. Thesupply of time, though gloriously regular, is cruelly restricted. Which of us lives on twenty-four hours a day? And when I say"lives," I do not mean exists, nor "muddles through." Which of usis free from that uneasy feeling that the "great spendingdepartments" of his daily life are not managed as they ought to be?Which of us is quite sure that his fine suit is not surmounted by ashameful hat, or that in attending to the crockery he has forgottenthe quality of the food? Which of us is not saying to himself-which of us has not been saying to himself all his life: "I shallalter that when I have a little more time"? We never shall have any more time. We have, and we have always had,all the time there is. It is the realisation of this profound andneglected truth (which, by the way, I have not discovered) that hasled me to the minute practical examination of daily time-expenditure. THE DESIRE TO EXCEED ONE'S PROGRAMME "But," someone may remark, with the English disregard of everything a day? I have no difficulty in living on twenty-four hours a day. I To you, my dear sir, I present my excuses and apologies. You areprecisely the man that I have been wishing to meet for about fortyyears. Will you kindly send me your name and address, and stateyour charge for telling me how you do it? Instead of me talking toyou, you ought to be talking to me. Please come forward. That youexist, I am convinced, and that I have not yet encountered you is myloss. Meanwhile, until you appear, I will continue to chat with mycompanions in distress--that innumerable band of souls who arehaunted, more or less painfully, by the feeling that the years slipby, and slip by, and slip by, and that they have not yet been ableto get their lives into proper working order. If we analyse that feeling, we shall perceive it to be, primarily,one of uneasiness, of expectation, of looking forward, ofaspiration. It is a source of constant discomfort, for it behaveslike a skeleton at the feast of all our enjoyments. We go to thetheatre and laugh; but between the acts it raises a skinny finger atus. We rush violently for the last train, and while we are coolinga long age on the platform waiting for the last train, it promenadesits bones up and down by our side and inquires: "O man, what hastthou done with thy youth? What art thou doing with thine age?" Youmay urge that this feeling of continuous looking forward, ofaspiration, is part of life itself, and inseparable from lifeitself. True! But there are degrees. A man may desire to go to Mecca. Hisconscience tells him that he ought to go to Mecca. He fares forth,either by the aid of Cook's, or unassisted; he may probably neverreach Mecca; he may drown before he gets to Port Said; he may perishingloriously on the coast of the Red Sea; his desire may remaineternally frustrate. Unfulfilled aspiration may always trouble him.But he will not be tormented in the same way as the man who,desiring to reach Mecca, and harried by the desire to reach Mecca,never leaves Brixton. It is something to have left Brixton. Most of us have not left Brixton. We have not even taken a cab to Ludgate Circus andinquired from Cook's the price of a conducted tour. And our excuseto ourselves is that there are only twenty-four hours in the day. If we further analyse our vague, uneasy aspiration, we shall, Ithink, see that it springs from a fixed idea that we ought to dosomething in addition to those things which we are loyally andmorally obliged to do. We are obliged, by various codes written andunwritten, to maintain ourselves and our families (if any) in healthand comfort, to pay our debts, to save, to increase our prosperityby increasing our efficiency. A task sufficiently difficult! Atask which very few of us achieve! A task often beyond our skill!Yet, if we succeed in it, as we sometimes do, we are not satisfied;the skeleton is still with us. And even when we realise that the task is beyond our skill, that And such is, indeed, the fact. The wish to accomplish something Until an effort is made to satisfy that wish, the sense of uneasywaiting for something to start which has not started will remain todisturb the peace of the soul. That wish has been called by manynames. It is one form of the universal desire for knowledge. Andit is so strong that men whose whole lives have been given to thesystematic acquirement of knowledge have been driven by it tooverstep the limits of their programme in search of still moreknowledge. Even Herbert Spencer, in my opinion the greatest mindthat ever lived, was often forced by it into agreeable littlebackwaters of inquiry. I imagine that in the majority of people who are conscious of the one's self--to increase one's knowledge--may well be slaked quite PRECAUTIONS BEFORE BEGINNING Now that I have succeeded (if succeeded I have) in persuading you to I have found no such wonderful secret. Nor do I expect to find it,nor do I expect that anyone else will ever find it. It isundiscovered. When you first began to gather my drift, perhapsthere was a resurrection of hope in your breast. Perhaps you saidto yourself, "This man will show me an easy, unfatiguing way ofdoing what I have so long in vain wished to do." Alas, no! Thefact is that there is no easy way, no royal road. The path to Meccais extremely hard and stony, and the worst of it is that you neverquite get there after all. The most important preliminary to the task of arranging one's life If you imagine that you will be able to achieve your ideal by ingeniously planning out a time-table with a pen on a piece ofpaper, you had better give up hope at once. If you are not preparedfor discouragements and disillusions; if you will not be contentwith a small result for a big effort, then do not begin. Lie downagain and resume the uneasy doze which you call your existence. It is very sad, is it not, very depressing and sombre? And yet Ithink it is rather fine, too, this necessity for the tense bracingof the will before anything worth doing can be done. I rather likeit myself. I feel it to be the chief thing that differentiates mefrom the cat by the fire. "Well," you say, "assume that I am braced for the battle. Assumethat I have carefully weighed and comprehended your ponderousremarks; how do I begin?" Dear sir, you simply begin. There is nomagic method of beginning. If a man standing on the edge of aswimming-bath and wanting to jump into the cold water should askyou, "How do I begin to jump?" you would merely reply, "Just jump.Take hold of your nerves, and jump." As I have previously said, the chief beauty about the constantsupply of time is that you cannot waste it in advance. The nextyear, the next day, the next hour are lying ready for you, asperfect, as unspoilt, as if you had never wasted or misapplied asingle moment in all your career. Which fact is very gratifying andreassuring. You can turn over a new leaf every hour if you choose.Therefore no object is served in waiting till next week, or evenuntil to-morrow. You may fancy that the water will be warmer nextweek. It won't. It will be colder. But before you begin, let me murmur a few words of warning in your Let me principally warn you against your own ardour. Ardour inwell-doing is a misleading and a treacherous thing. It cries outloudly for employment; you can't satisfy it at first; it wants moreand more; it is eager to move mountains and divert the course ofrivers. It isn't content till it perspires. And then, too often,when it feels the perspiration on its brow, it wearies all of asudden and dies, without even putting itself to the trouble ofsaying, "I've had enough of this." Beware of undertaking too much at the start. Be content with quitea little. Allow for accidents. Allow for human nature, especiallyyour own. A failure or so, in itself, would not matter, if it did not incur aloss of self-esteem and of self-confidence. But just as nothingsucceeds like success, so nothing fails like failure. Most peoplewho are ruined are ruined by attempting too much. Therefore, insetting out on the immense enterprise of living fully andcomfortably within the narrow limits of twenty-four hours a day, letus avoid at any cost the risk of an early failure. I will not agreethat, in this business at any rate, a glorious failure is betterthan a petty success. I am all for the petty success. A gloriousfailure leads to nothing; a petty success may lead to a success thatis not petty. So let us begin to examine the budget of the day's time. You sayyour day is already full to overflowing. How? You actually spendin earning your livelihood--how much? Seven hours, on the average?And in actual sleep, seven? I will add two hours, and be generous.And I will defy you to account to me on the spur of the moment forthe other eight hours. THE CAUSE OF THE TROUBLES In order to come to grips at once with the question of time- But if I take the case of a Londoner who works in an office, whose Fortunately the financial side of existence does not interest us Now the great and profound mistake which my typical man makes inregard to his day is a mistake of general attitude, a mistake whichvitiates and weakens two-thirds of his energies and interests. Inthe majority of instances he does not precisely feel a passion forhis business; at best he does not dislike it. He begins hisbusiness functions with reluctance, as late as he can, and he endsthem with joy, as early as he can. And his engines while he isengaged in his business are seldom at their full "h.p." (I knowthat I shall be accused by angry readers of traducing the cityworker; but I am pretty thoroughly acquainted with the City, and Istick to what I say.) Yet in spite of all this he persists in looking upon those hours This general attitude is utterly illogical and unhealthy, since itformally gives the central prominence to a patch of time and a bunchof activities which the man's one idea is to "get through" and have"done with." If a man makes two-thirds of his existence subservientto one-third, for which admittedly he has no absolutely feverishzest, how can he hope to live fully and completely? He cannot. If my typical man wishes to live fully and completely he must, inhis mind, arrange a day within a day. And this inner day, a Chinesebox in a larger Chinese box, must begin at 6 p.m. and end at 10 a.m.It is a day of sixteen hours; and during all these sixteen hours hehas nothing whatever to do but cultivate his body and his soul andhis fellow men. During those sixteen hours he is free; he is not awage-earner; he is not preoccupied with monetary cares; he is justas good as a man with a private income. This must be his attitude.And his attitude is all important. His success in life (much moreimportant than the amount of estate upon what his executors will have to pay estate duty) depends on it. What? You say that full energy given to those sixteen hours willlessen the value of the business eight? Not so. On the contrary,it will assuredly increase the value of the business eight. One ofthe chief things which my typical man has to learn is that themental faculties are capable of a continuous hard activity; they donot tire like an arm or a leg. All they want is change--not rest,except in sleep. I shall now examine the typical man's current method of employing In justice to him I must say that he wastes very little time beforehe leaves the house in the morning at 9.10. In too many houses hegets up at nine, breakfasts between 9.7 and 9.9 1/2, and then bolts.But immediately he bangs the front door his mental faculties, whichare tireless, become idle. He walks to the station in a conditionof mental coma. Arrived there, he usually has to wait for thetrain. On hundreds of suburban stations every morning you see mencalmly strolling up and down platforms while railway companiesunblushingly rob them of time, which is more than money. Hundredsof thousands of hours are thus lost every day simply because mytypical man thinks so little of time that it has never occurred tohim to take quite easy precautions against the risk of its loss. He has a solid coin of time to spend every day--call it a sovereign. Supposing that in selling him a ticket the company said, "We will You say I am dealing with minutiae. I am. And later on I will Now will you kindly buy your paper and step into the train? V TENNIS AND THE IMMORTAL SOUL You get into the morning train with your newspaper, and you calmlyand majestically give yourself up to your newspaper. You do nothurry. You know you have at least half an hour of security in frontof you. As your glance lingers idly at the advertisements ofshipping and of songs on the outer pages, your air is the air of aleisured man, wealthy in time, of a man from some planet where thereare a hundred and twenty-four hours a day instead of twenty-four. Iam an impassioned reader of newspapers. I read five English and twoFrench dailies, and the news-agents alone know how many weeklies,regularly. I am obliged to mention this personal fact lest I shouldbe accused of a prejudice against newspapers when I say that Iobject to the reading of newspapers in the morning train. Newspapersare produced with rapidity, to be read with rapidity. There is noplace in my daily programme for newspapers. I read them as I may inodd moments. But I do read them. The idea of devoting to themthirty or forty consecutive minutes of wonderful solitude (fornowhere can one more perfectly immerse one's self in one's self thanin a compartment full of silent, withdrawn, smoking males) is to merepugnant. I cannot possibly allow you to scatter priceless pearlsof time with such Oriental lavishness. You are not the Shah oftime. Let me respectfully remind you that you have no more time thanI have. No newspaper reading in trains! I have already "put by"about three-quarters of an hour for use. Now you reach your office. And I abandon you there till sixo'clock. I am aware that you have nominally an hour (often inreality an hour and a half) in the midst of the day, less than halfof which time is given to eating. But I will leave you all that tospend as you choose. You may read your newspapers then. I meet you again as you emerge from your office. You are pale andtired. At any rate, your wife says you are pale, and you give her tounderstand that you are tired. During the journey home you have been gradually working up the tired feeling. The tired feelinghangs heavy over the mighty suburbs of London like a virtuous andmelancholy cloud, particularly in winter. You don't eat immediatelyon your arrival home. But in about an hour or so you feel as if youcould sit up and take a little nourishment. And you do. Then yousmoke, seriously; you see friends; you potter; you play cards; youflirt with a book; you note that old age is creeping on; you take astroll; you caress the piano.... By Jove! a quarter past eleven.You then devote quite forty minutes to thinking about going to bed;and it is conceivable that you are acquainted with a genuinely goodwhisky. At last you go to bed, exhausted by the day's work. Sixhours, probably more, have gone since you left the office--gone likea dream, gone like magic, unaccountably gone! That is a fair sample case. But you say: "It's all very well foryou to talk. A man *is* tired. A man must see his friends. Hecan't always be on the stretch." Just so. But when you arrange togo to the theatre (especially with a pretty woman) what happens?You rush to the suburbs; you spare no toil to make yourself gloriousin fine raiment; you rush back to town in another train; you keepyourself on the stretch for four hours, if not five; you take herhome; you take yourself home. You don't spend three-quarters of anhour in "thinking about" going to bed. You go. Friends and fatiguehave equally been forgotten, and the evening has seemed soexquisitely long (or perhaps too short)! And do you remember thattime when you were persuaded to sing in the chorus of the amateuroperatic society, and slaved two hours every other night for threemonths? Can you deny that when you have something definite to lookforward to at eventide, something that is to employ all yourenergy--the thought of that something gives a glow and a moreintense vitality to the whole day? What I suggest is that at six o'clock you look facts in the face andadmit that you are not tired (because you are not, you know), andthat you arrange your evening so that it is not cut in the middle bya meal. By so doing you will have a clear expanse of at least threehours. I do not suggest that you should employ three hours everynight of your life in using up your mental energy. But I do suggestthat you might, for a commencement, employ an hour and a half everyother evening in some important and consecutive cultivation of themind. You will still be left with three evenings for friends,bridge, tennis, domestic scenes, odd reading, pipes, gardening, pottering, and prize competitions. You will still have the terrificwealth of forty-five hours between 2 p.m. Saturday and 10 a.m.Monday. If you persevere you will soon want to pass four evenings,and perhaps five, in some sustained endeavour to be genuinely alive.And you will fall out of that habit of muttering to yourself at 11.15 p.m., "Time to be thinking about going to bed." The man who But remember, at the start, those ninety nocturnal minutes thrice aweek must be the most important minutes in the ten thousand andeighty. They must be sacred, quite as sacred as a dramaticrehearsal or a tennis match. Instead of saying, "Sorry I can't seeyou, old chap, but I have to run off to the tennis club," you mustsay, "...but I have to work." This, I admit, is intensely difficultto say. Tennis is so much more urgent than the immortal soul. REMEMBER HUMAN NATURE I have incidentally mentioned the vast expanse of forty-four hoursbetween leaving business at 2 p.m. on Saturday and returning tobusiness at 10 a.m. on Monday. And here I must touch on the pointwhether the week should consist of six days or of seven. For manyyears--in fact, until I was approaching forty--my own week consistedof seven days. I was constantly being informed by older and wiserpeople that more work, more genuine living, could be got out of sixdays than out of seven. And it is certainly true that now, with one day in seven in which Ifollow no programme and make no effort save what the caprice of themoment dictates, I appreciate intensely the moral value of a weeklyrest. Nevertheless, had I my life to arrange over again, I would doagain as I have done. Only those who have lived at the full stretchseven days a week for a long time can appreciate the full beauty ofa regular recurring idleness. Moreover, I am ageing. And it is aquestion of age. In cases of abounding youth and exceptional energyand desire for effort I should say unhesitatingly: Keep going, dayin, day out. But in the average case I should say: Confine your formal programme(super-programme, I mean) to six days a week. If you find yourselfwishing to extend it, extend it, but only in proportion to yourwish; and count the time extra as a windfall, not as regular income,so that you can return to a six-day programme without the sensationof being poorer, of being a backslider. Let us now see where we stand. So far we have marked for saving outof the waste of days, half an hour at least on six mornings a week,and one hour and a half on three evenings a week. Total, sevenhours and a half a week. I propose to be content with that seven hours and a half for thepresent. "What?" you cry. "You pretend to show us how to live, andyou only deal with seven hours and a half out of a hundred andsixty-eight! Are you going to perform a miracle with your sevenhours and a half?" Well, not to mince the matter, I am--if you willkindly let me! That is to say, I am going to ask you to attempt anexperience which, while perfectly natural and explicable, has allthe air of a miracle. My contention is that the full use of thoseseven-and-a-half hours will quicken the whole life of the week, addzest to it, and increase the interest which you feel in even themost banal occupations. You practise physical exercises for a mereten minutes morning and evening, and yet you are not astonished whenyour physical health and strength are beneficially affected everyhour of the day, and your whole physical outlook changed. Whyshould you be astonished that an average of over an hour a day givento the mind should permanently and completely enliven the wholeactivity of the mind? More time might assuredly be given to the cultivation of one's self. It is not really a trifling effort, as those will discover who haveyet to essay it. To "clear" even seven hours and a half from thejungle is passably difficult. For some sacrifice has to be made.One may have spent one's time badly, but one did spend it; one diddo something with it, however ill-advised that something may havebeen. To do something else means a change of habits. And habits are the very dickens to change! Further, any change,even a change for the better, is always accompanied by drawbacks anddiscomforts. If you imagine that you will be able to devote sevenhours and a half a week to serious, continuous effort, and stilllive your old life, you are mistaken. I repeat that some sacrifice,and an immense deal of volition, will be necessary. And it isbecause I know the difficulty, it is because I know the almostdisastrous effect of failure in such an enterprise, that I earnestlyadvise a very humble beginning. You must safeguard your self-respect. Self-respect is at the root of all purposefulness, and afailure in an enterprise deliberately planned deals a desperatewound at one's self-respect. Hence I iterate and reiterate: Startquietly, unostentatiously. When you have conscientiously given seven hours and a half a week to Before coming to the method of using the indicated hours, I have onefinal suggestion to make. That is, as regards the evenings, toallow much more than an hour and a half in which to do the work ofan hour and a half. Remember the chance of accidents. Rememberhuman nature. And give yourself, say, from 9 to 11.30 for your taskof ninety minutes. CONTROLLING THE MIND People say: "One can't help one's thoughts." But one can. Thecontrol of the thinking machine is perfectly possible. And sincenothing whatever happens to us outside our own brain; since nothinghurts us or gives us pleasure except within the brain, the supremeimportance of being able to control what goes on in that mysteriousbrain is patent. This idea is one of the oldest platitudes, but itis a platitude whose profound truth and urgency most people live anddie without realising. People complain of the lack of power toconcentrate, not witting that they may acquire the power, if they choose. And without the power to concentrate--that is to say, without the Hence, it seems to me, the first business of the day should be toput the mind through its paces. You look after your body, insideand out; you run grave danger in hacking hairs off your skin; youemploy a whole army of individuals, from the milkman to the pig-killer, to enable you to bribe your stomach into decent behaviour.Why not devote a little attention to the far more delicate machineryof the mind, especially as you will require no extraneous aid? Itis for this portion of the art and craft of living that I havereserved the time from the moment of quitting your door to themoment of arriving at your office. "What? I am to cultivate my mind in the street, on the platform, inthe train, and in the crowded street again?" Precisely. Nothingsimpler! No tools required! Not even a book. Nevertheless, theaffair is not easy. When you leave your house, concentrate your mind on a subject (no Bring it back by the scruff of the neck. Ere you have reached thestation you will have brought it back about forty times. Do notdespair. Continue. Keep it up. You will succeed. You cannot byany chance fail if you persevere. It is idle to pretend that yourmind is incapable of concentration. Do you not remember that morningwhen you received a disquieting letter which demanded a verycarefully-worded answer? How you kept your mind steadily on thesubject of the answer, without a second's intermission, until youreached your office; whereupon you instantly sat down and wrote theanswer? That was a case in which *you* were roused by circumstancesto such a degree of vitality that you were able to dominate yourmind like a tyrant. You would have no trifling. You insisted thatits work should be done, and its work was done. By the regular practice of concentration (as to which there is nosecret--save the secret of perseverance) you can tyrannise overyour mind (which is not the highest part of *you*) every hour of theday, and in no matter what place. The exercise is a very convenientone. If you got into your morning train with a pair of dumb-bellsfor your muscles or an encyclopaedia in ten volumes for yourlearning, you would probably excite remark. But as you walk in thestreet, or sit in the corner of the compartment behind a pipe, or"strap-hang" on the Subterranean, who is to know that you areengaged in the most important of daily acts? What asinine boor canlaugh at you? I do not care what you concentrate on, so long as you concentrate. Do not, I beg, shy at their names. For myself, I know nothing more"actual," more bursting with plain common-sense, applicable to thedaily life of plain persons like you and me (who hate airs, pose,and nonsense) than Marcus Aurelius or Epictetus. Read a chapter-and so short they are, the chapters!--in the evening andconcentrate on it the next morning. You will see. Yes, my friend, it is useless for you to try to disguise the fact.I can hear your brain like a telephone at my ear. You are saying toyourself: "This fellow was doing pretty well up to his seventhchapter. He had begun to interest me faintly. But what he saysabout thinking in trains, and concentration, and so on, is not forme. It may be well enough for some folks, but it isn't in my line." It is for you, I passionately repeat; it is for you. Indeed, you Throw away the suggestion, and you throw away the most precioussuggestion that was ever offered to you. It is not my suggestion.It is the suggestion of the most sensible, practical, hard-headedmen who have walked the earth. I only give it you at second-hand.Try it. Get your mind in hand. And see how the process cures halfthe evils of life--especially worry, that miserable, avoidable,shameful disease--worry! THE REFLECTIVE MOOD The exercise of concentrating the mind (to which at least half an Now as to what this course of study should be there cannot be anyquestion; there never has been any question. All the sensiblepeople of all ages are agreed upon it. And it is not literature,nor is it any other art, nor is it history, nor is it any science.It is the study of one's self. Man, know thyself. These words areso hackneyed that verily I blush to write them. Yet they must bewritten, for they need to be written. (I take back my blush, beingashamed of it.) Man, know thyself. I say it out loud. The phraseis one of those phrases with which everyone is familiar, of whicheveryone acknowledges the value, and which only the most sagaciousput into practice. I don't know why. I am entirely convinced thatwhat is more than anything else lacking in the life of the averagewell-intentioned man of to-day is the reflective mood. We do not reflect. I mean that we do not reflect upon genuinely And yet you are in search of happiness, are you not? Have you The chances are that you have not. The chances are that you havealready come to believe that happiness is unattainable. But menhave attained it. And they have attained it by realising that happiness does not spring from the procuring of physical or mental I suppose that you will not have the audacity to deny this. And if Now, shall I blush, or will you? Do not fear that I mean to thrust certain principles upon yourattention. I care not (in this place) what your principles are.Your principles may induce you to believe in the righteousness ofburglary. I don't mind. All I urge is that a life in which conductdoes not fairly well accord with principles is a silly life; andthat conduct can only be made to accord with principles by means ofdaily examination, reflection, and resolution. What leads to thepermanent sorrowfulness of burglars is that their principles arecontrary to burglary. If they genuinely believed in the moralexcellence of burglary, penal servitude would simply mean so manyhappy years for them; all martyrs are happy, because their conductand their principles agree. As for reason (which makes conduct, and is not unconnected with themaking of principles), it plays a far smaller part in our lives thanwe fancy. We are supposed to be reasonable but we are much moreinstinctive than reasonable. And the less we reflect, the lessreasonable we shall be. The next time you get cross with the waiterbecause your steak is over-cooked, ask reason to step into thecabinet-room of your mind, and consult her. She will probably tellyou that the waiter did not cook the steak, and had no control overthe cooking of the steak; and that even if he alone was to blame,you accomplished nothing good by getting cross; you merely lost yourdignity, looked a fool in the eyes of sensible men, and soured thewaiter, while producing no effect whatever on the steak. The result of this consultation with reason (for which she makes no kindly spirit, and politely insist on having a fresh steak. The In the formation or modification of principles, and the practice ofconduct, much help can be derived from printed books (issued atsixpence each and upwards). I mentioned in my last chapter MarcusAurelius and Epictetus. Certain even more widely known works willoccur at once to the memory. I may also mention Pascal, La Bruyere,and Emerson. For myself, you do not catch me travelling without myMarcus Aurelius. Yes, books are valuable. But not reading of bookswill take the place of a daily, candid, honest examination of whatone has recently done, and what one is about to do--of a steadylooking at one's self in the face (disconcerting though the sightmay be). When shall this important business be accomplished? The solitude ofthe evening journey home appears to me to be suitable for it. Areflective mood naturally follows the exertion of having earned theday's living. Of course if, instead of attending to an elementaryand profoundly important duty, you prefer to read the paper (whichyou might just as well read while waiting for your dinner) I havenothing to say. But attend to it at some time of the day you must.I now come to the evening hours. INTEREST IN THE ARTS Many people pursue a regular and uninterrupted course of idleness in Of course it is impossible, or at any rate very difficult, properlyto study anything whatever without the aid of printed books. But ifyou desire to understand the deeper depths of bridge or of boat-sailing you would not be deterred by your lack of interest inliterature from reading the best books on bridge or boat-sailing.We must, therefore, distinguish between literature, and bookstreating of subjects not literary. I shall come to literature in due course. Let me now remark to those who have never read Meredith, and who arecapable of being unmoved by a discussion as to whether Mr. StephenPhillips is or is not a true poet, that they are perfectly withintheir rights. It is not a crime not to love literature. It is not asign of imbecility. The mandarins of literature will order out toinstant execution the unfortunate individual who does notcomprehend, say, the influence of Wordsworth on Tennyson. But thatis only their impudence. Where would they be, I wonder, ifrequested to explain the influences that went to make Tschaikowsky's"Pathetic Symphony"? There are enormous fields of knowledge quite outside literaturewhich will yield magnificent results to cultivators. For example(since I have just mentioned the most popular piece of high-classmusic in England to-day), I am reminded that the Promenade Concertsbegin in August. You go to them. You smoke your cigar or cigarette(and I regret to say that you strike your matches during the softbars of the "Lohengrin" overture), and you enjoy the music. But yousay you cannot play the piano or the fiddle, or even the banjo; thatyou know nothing of music. What does that matter? That you have a genuine taste for music is Now surely your inability to perform "The Maiden's Prayer" on apiano need not prevent you from making yourself familiar with theconstruction of the orchestra to which you listen a couple of nightsa week during a couple of months! As things are, you probably thinkof the orchestra as a heterogeneous mass of instruments producing aconfused agreeable mass of sound. You do not listen for detailsbecause you have never trained your ears to listen to details. If you were asked to name the instruments which play the great themeat the beginning of the C minor symphony you could not name them foryour life's sake. Yet you admire the C minor symphony. It hasthrilled you. It will thrill you again. You have even talked aboutit, in an expansive mood, to that lady--you know whom I mean. And all you can positively state about the C minor symphony is that Now, if you have read, say, Mr. Krehbiel's "How to Listen to Music"(which can be got at any bookseller's for less than the price of astall at the Alhambra, and which contains photographs of all theorchestral instruments and plans of the arrangement of orchestras)you would next go to a promenade concert with an astonishingintensification of interest in it. Instead of a confused mass, theorchestra would appear to you as what it is--a marvellously balancedorganism whose various groups of members each have a different andan indispensable function. You would spy out the instruments, andlisten for their respective sounds. You would know the gulf thatseparates a French horn from an English horn, and you would perceivewhy a player of the hautboy gets higher wages than a fiddler, thoughthe fiddle is the more difficult instrument. You would *live* at apromenade concert, whereas previously you had merely existed therein a state of beatific coma, like a baby gazing at a bright object. The foundations of a genuine, systematic knowledge of music might be "But I hate music!" you say. My dear sir, I respect you. What applies to music applies to the other arts. I might mention "I hate all the arts!" you say. My dear sir, I respect you more and I will deal with your case next, before coming to literature. NOTHING IN LIFE IS HUMDRUM Art is a great thing. But it is not the greatest. The mostimportant of all perceptions is the continual perception of causeand effect--in other words, the perception of the continuousdevelopment of the universe--in still other words, the perception ofthe course of evolution. When one has thoroughly got imbued intoone's head the leading truth that nothing happens without a cause,one grows not only large-minded, but large-hearted. It is hard to have one's watch stolen, but one reflects that thethief of the watch became a thief from causes of heredity andenvironment which are as interesting as they are scientificallycomprehensible; and one buys another watch, if not with joy, at anyrate with a philosophy that makes bitterness impossible. One loses,in the study of cause and effect, that absurd air which so manypeople have of being always shocked and pained by the curiousness oflife. Such people live amid human nature as if human nature were aforeign country full of awful foreign customs. But, having reachedmaturity, one ought surely to be ashamed of being a stranger in astrange land! The study of cause and effect, while it lessens the painfulness oflife, adds to life's picturesqueness. The man to whom evolution isbut a name looks at the sea as a grandiose, monotonous spectacle,which he can witness in August for three shillings third-classreturn. The man who is imbued with the idea of development, ofcontinuous cause and effect, perceives in the sea an element whichin the day-before-yesterday of geology was vapour, which yesterdaywas boiling, and which to-morrow will inevitably be ice. He perceives that a liquid is merely something on its way to be Cause and effect are to be found everywhere. Rents went up inShepherd's Bush. It was painful and shocking that rents should go up in Shepherd's Bush. But to a certain point we are all scientific "Simple!" you say, disdainfully. Everything--the whole complexmovement of the universe--is as simple as that--when you cansufficiently put two and two together. And, my dear sir, perhapsyou happen to be an estate agent's clerk, and you hate the arts, andyou want to foster your immortal soul, and you can't be interestedin your business because it's so humdrum. Nothing is humdrum. The tremendous, changeful picturesqueness of life is marvellouslyshown in an estate agent's office. What! There was a block oftraffic in Oxford Street; to avoid the block people actually beganto travel under the cellars and drains, and the result was a rise ofrents in Shepherd's Bush! And you say that isn't picturesque!Suppose you were to study, in this spirit, the property question inLondon for an hour and a half every other evening. Would it not givezest to your business, and transform your whole life? You would arrive at more difficult problems. And you would be ableto tell us why, as the natural result of cause and effect, thelongest straight street in London is about a yard and a half inlength, while the longest absolutely straight street in Parisextends for miles. I think you will admit that in an estate agent'sclerk I have not chosen an example that specially favours mytheories. You are a bank clerk, and you have not read that breathless romance You are "penned in town," but you love excursions to the country and the observation of wild life--certainly a heart-enlarging diversion. You need not be devoted to the arts, not to literature, in order to The whole field of daily habit and scene is waiting to satisfy that I promised to deal with your case, O man who hates art and
How to Improve Your Self-Image Christian H. Godefroy HOW TO IMPROVE YOUR SELF-IMAGE Published by Christian H. Godefroy (2001 Christian H. Godefroy.) All rights reserved. This eBook is an abstract of “Be Confident of Yourself Under Any Circumstances”. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author. Manufactured in the United States of America. Page 2 What Kind Of “Personality” Do You Have? How many times have you heard the word personality in the last month? Probably a dozen times, if not more. We say someone has a strong personality, or a likable personality, or that someone is dull, etc. We sometimes even say that someone doesn’t have a personality at all. But what is personality? Personality is a mosaic of characteristics whose continual interplay conditions the various ways in which we behave. Therefore, our personality encompasses all our qualities and all our faults, and it is because of personality that each human being on the face of the earth is unique. How is personality acquired? This is a question which philosophers and men of science have been pondering for centuries. Modern thinking generally maintains that personality is the result of certain hereditary factors, upon which are grafted the exterior influences which we experience, especially during the formative years. Page 3 However, whatever hereditary, cultural or educational baggage you may be carrying around, you should know that you can change your personality, improve it, reinforce it, or round off any rough edges you may have. 6 Characteristics Of A Leader What kind of personality does a leader, someone who exudes charisma, have? It seems that leaders posses 6 fundamental characteristics: 1. Simplicity You should first be aware that people with charisma are usually simple and modest. It’s the people who fail continually who are arrogant towards others. In a group, charismatic persons never try to attract attention by boasting about their talents or qualities, or by making a display of their virtues. 2. The ability to listen to others A few years ago a popular magazine organized a contest. Readers had to concoct bits of philosophical or spiritual wisdom, in 25 words or less. One reader submitted the following gem: “People who talk about themselves are bores, people who talk about others are gossips, but those who talk about you are brilliant conversationalists!” It’s so true. If you want to acquire a magnetic personality, you have to learn to encourage other people to express themselves, and Page 4 to talk about themselves to you. Ask questions about their work, their hobbies, their families and so on. Give them the opportunity to reveal themselves to you. 3. Self confidence and assertiveness Shyness, which we’ll talk about in detail in the chapter devoted to it, is not necessarily a negative quality if it isn’t exaggerated, in which case it’s more like a healthy sense of propriety and reserve. However if your shyness prevents you from communicating with others, from assuming your rightful position in society, from meeting people with whom you believe you have something in common, from doing well on oral exams or showing your best side during job interviews, then you should do something about it. People with charisma are not overly shy, and if they were at one time, they have succeeded in overcoming it. We’ll see how later on. 4. The ability to act decisively This means not procrastinating -not putting off for tomorrow what you can do today. Charismatic people are neither negligent nor lazy. If procrastinating is one of your faults, you must absolutely get rid of it. An entire chapter of this book is devoted to the problem. Be honest: do you admire people who can’t make up their minds, who always seem to be dragging their feet, and who have a pile of things they were supposed to do last week which they still haven’t gotten around to? No, of course not. Page 5 5. Respect your commitments Does this seem obvious? Well, you may be surprised to learn how many people don’t honor their commitments. “Are you talking about minor or major commitments?” you ask. And that’s exactly the point - that’s where you’re going wrong. Because there are no minor commitments! A commitment is always major, whether it’s a promise to play tennis with someone, or to lend a substantial amount of money to a friend in need. You are judged just as severely on your punctuality to a dinner party as you are in repaying your debts. People with charisma are people you can count on. They are like rocks - steady fixed points in an unstable, changing universe. 6. Feeling good about yourself Be careful! Feeling good about yourself doesn’t mean you have to look like Robert Redford or Marilyn Monroe. Physical beauty has nothing to do with a person’s magnetism. Never forget that. President Roosevelt was an invalid; Cicero, according to historical descriptions, was afflicted with a repulsive physique; neither would Joan of Arc or Queen Elizabeth have won any beauty contests. Many of society’s most influential personalities have nothing physically attractive about them. To feel good about yourself, you have to accept your physical qualities and defects, which are irremediable, and make the most of them. You can make this task easier by applying certain techniques which may enhance the way you appear to others. You’ll find some Page 6 ideas on this subject in Lessons 5 and 6. Now that you know what your personality should be like, it’s time to find out what it really is like! Because it’s only by knowing exactly who you are that you can try to change yourself and become the person you want to be. How To Know Yourself Better Learning to know yourself calls for one essential quality: self honesty. You’ll start by playing your own confessor and writing a list of your positive and negative characteristics. Then you’ll take a short test to determine if your relations with others leave something to be desired. Charismatic people are neither introverted or extroverted. They have found a way to balance these two extremes in their relations with others. A piece of advice: If you really think you can’t be honest with yourself, if you’re convinced that you’re bound to leave out certain aspects of your personality that you’d rather not face up to, even if they’re not especially negative, then we suggest having a sample of your handwriting analysed by a graphologist. A graphologist’s report will spell out your positive and negative traits in black and white. You may be unpleasantly surprised, but if so you should remember that we’re all capable of changing. If you’re not sure of yourself or of your own judgment, but you don’t want to consult a graphologist, than ask someone close to you Page 7 to for help, someone you like but who also has a clear understanding of who you are. But don’t go asking your boyfriend or girlfriend, whom you’ve only known for six months, to start listing all your faults. Don’t ask you parents either. It’s rare that a mother or father can judge their offspring objectively. Turn to a childhood friend or an old friend of the family, a brother or sister, someone you’ve worked with for a number of years, an old professor whom you got along well with, or a therapist whom you’ve consulted at some point in your life. Your Qualities And Faults 1. Start by listing your qualities. What ten qualities -or more -do you think you possess? Take some time to think about it, and then list a minimum of ten responses in the space provided. Page 8 2. Now list the characteristics which you consider to be your major faults. Don’t forget - be honest! Note: You may find the same characteristic in both lists, since a given quality, exaggerated to one extreme or another, can have both a positive and negative aspect. Let’s look at an example: You’re used to helping people out. You’re therefore a helpful person, and that is an enviable quality. But what if you’re so helpful it makes you incapable of saying no! You let people walk all over you, as the saying goes. And that is a fault that can eventually ruin your life. Another example: you’re frank and direct with people. That’s all very well. But maybe your frankness is a result of insensitivity -you may be ignoring the way you make other people feel, forgetting the old adage, “Not all truths are worth telling.” Charismatic people are not hypocrites, far from it! However they instinctively know when to remain silent, in order not to hurt someone needlessly. Above all, don’t get down on yourself when you read your list of Page 9 faults - we’ve all got them! Transform Your Weaknesses Into Strengths Remember that nothing’s perfect, and that perfection, if it did exist, would be singularly boring. You should also know that you can transform your weak points into strengths. Charismatic people are human beings just like you. They’re far from perfect. Very often their charisma depends on what we would consider to be a defect: ambition pushed to its extreme (Napoleon); courage to the point of audacity (Alexander the Great); stubbornness (Joan of Arc), etc. What you consider a major fault in your own character may be the dominating quality in someone else whom you admire! Test: You And Others Now complete this short test to find out how you are going to direct your efforts to change your relations with other people. 1. In a group: . a) You often lead the conversation . b) You prefer listening to others 2. Which pastime do you prefer? . a) Dancing . b)Reading 3. Do you prefer to spend an evening in the company of: . a) One person . b) A group of friends Page 10 4. Where would you choose to go on vacation? . a) Acapulco . b) A desert 5. If someone says something that hurts you: . a) You close up like a clam . b) You exhibit your pain, disappointment or anger immediately 6. When you have to make a decision: . a) You trust your intuition and decide quickly . b) You procrastinate 7. Your relation to money can be described as follows: . a) You never know how much you have in your pocket . b) You always check your bills to make sure there hasn’t been a mistake 8. Do you get the impression that other people extend invitations: . a) Out of politeness . b) To make their parties more interesting 9. Whenever some happy occasion occurs in your life: . a) You immediately tell everyone about it . b) You say nothing because you think it doesn’t concern or interest anyone but yourself 10. To be happy you need: . a) A lot of people around you . b) Your books and records Page 11 RESULTS Question Answer Points A B 1 3 1 2 3 1 3 1 3 4 3 1 5 1 3 6 3 1 7 3 1 8 1 3 9 3 3 10 3 1 If you scored between 10 and 15 points: you are an introvert You are rarely comfortable in a group, and you don’t like meeting people. Social events seem superficial and a waste of time to you. You’re probably very shy, preferring intellectual or physical activities which require no contact with other people. Obviously you won’t be able to influence people by running away from them. 16 to 20 points: you have a balanced personality You’re well on your way towards | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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