Much unintentional self-suggestion is conveyed in one's habitual method of
expressing his attitude toward annoyances, thus: "That simply drives me
wild." Suppose, now, one should try a little substitution; for example:
That \
drives me wild.
Nothing /
(but that).
I can stand anything
(at all).
(not) (this)
I can sleep in position.
(---) (any)
The quieting effect is immediately perceptible.
Nor is the injurious effect of the explosive habit of speech limited to
the person who indulges it. The other day a lady, apparently in no haste,
sauntered into a station of the "Elevated" ahead of me, holding by the hand
a small boy. The boy was enjoying himself immensely, gazing about him
with the wide-awake, but calmly contemplative air peculiar to childhood.
Suddenly the lady saw that a train was about to leave the station, and was
seized by the not uncommon compulsion to take the last train instead of the
next one. She hurried the boy across the platform only to meet the closed
door of the departing train.
"_Isn't_ that _provoking_!" she exclaimed. And the boy began to whimper.
Although the main object of this book is to call attention to the mental
rather than the physical treatment of these states, I cannot forbear
reminding the reader of certain routine measures which facilitate the
desired improvement in mental attitude.
It is well to start the day with a quick plunge in cold water, that is, in
water of the natural temperature excepting in the cold season, when the
extreme chill may be taken off to advantage. A brisk rub with rough towels
should follow. One should proceed immediately from the warm bed to the
bath, and should not first "cool off." A few setting-up exercises (bending
the trunk forward and back, sidewise, and with a twist) may precede the
bath, and a few simple arm exercises follow it. A few deep breaths will
inevitably accompany these procedures. When one returns to his room he
no longer notices the chill in the air, and he has made a start toward
accustoming himself to, and really enjoying, lower temperatures than he
fancied he could stand at all.
Every healthy adult should walk at least two miles daily in the open. We
have been forced to readjust our ideas as to the distance even an elderly
person can walk without harm since a pedestrian of sixty-nine has, without
apparent injury, covered over one thousand miles, over ordinary roads, at
an average of fifty miles a day.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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