The answer to that is that if you have only one night in which to
rest, you want to make the most of that night, and if you carry the
tired emphasis to bed with you you are really holding on to the
tired.
This is as practically true as if you stepped into a bog and then
sat in it and looked forlorn and said. "What a terrible thing it is
that I should be in a bog like this; just think of having to sit in
a black, muddy bog all the time," and staying there you made no
effort whatever to get out of it, even though there was dry land
right in front of you.
Again you may answer: "But in my tired bog there is no dry land in
front of me, none at all."
I say to that, there is much more dry land than you think--if you
will open your eyes--and to open your eyes you must make an effort.
No one knows, who has not tried, what a good strong effort will do
in the right direction, when we have been living and slipping back
in the wrong direction.
The results of such efforts seem at times wonderful to those who
have learned the right direction for the first time.
To get rid of the tired emphasis when we have been fixed in it, a
very strong effort is necessary at first, and gradually it gets
easier, and easier, until we have cast off the tired emphasis
entirely and have the habit of looking toward rest.
We must say to ourselves with decision in so many words, and must
think the meaning of the words and insist upon it: "I am very tired.
Yes, of course, I am very tired, but I am going to bed to get
rested."
There are a hundred little individual ways that we can talk to
ourselves, and turn ourselves toward rest, at the end of the day
when the time comes to rest.
One way to begin, which is necessary to most of us, is to stop
resisting the tired. Every complaint of fatigue, whether it is
merely in our own minds, or is made to others, is full of
resistance, and resistance to any sort of fatigue emphasizes it
proportionately.
That is why it is good to say to ourselves: "Yes, I am tired; I am
awfully tired. I am willing to be tired."
When we have used our wills to drop the nervous and muscular
contractions that the fatigue has caused, we can add with more
emphasis and more meaning, "and I am going to bed to get rested."
Some one could say just here: "That is all very well for an
ordinarily tired person, but it would never do me any good. I am too
tired even to try it."
The answer to that is, the more tired you are, the more you need to
try it, and the more interesting the experiment will be.
Also the very effort of your brain needed to cast off the tired
emphasis will be new to you, and thought in a new direction is
always restful in itself. Having learned to cast off the tired
emphasis when we go to bed at night, we can gradually learn to cast
it off before we go to meals, and at odd opportunities throughout
the day.
The more tired we are, the more we need to minimize our fatigue by
the intelligent use of our own wills.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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