HOW TO GET WILL POWER
But just what must one do to get this power?
I have told you something about the body’s poisons, how they accumulate
in the body and cause illness and nervousness. The first thing to do is
to see that your body is free and kept free from these poisons, for if
not kept free, the nerve cells become affected and then a perfect will
power cannot be developed.
Here are a few practical things to do and not to do to keep the nerve
cells so you can develop them. Sleep always alone. Sleeping with
another person is unsanitary. The skin needs to get rid of its natural
poisons and not take up any from another person. You would not think
of breathing the air coming from another person’s lungs. Well, when
you are under the sheets and blankets with another person, you can
breathe through your skin the poisons coming from this companion. If
you have to sleep in a room with another person, you must have your own
little bed. Sleep with as little covering over you as is possible with
comfort; window, of course, as I have warned you, wide open at the top.
You can become accustomed to lighter clothing by gradual methods of
reducing the number of blankets.
No underclothing of a material to absorb and retain perspiration should
ever be worn. If you keep over your skin any clothing which has become
moist through perspiration it will injure your chances of keeping a
good nervous force. Take off such clothing before it becomes soggy and
cold. Then take a sponge bath and put on dry clothing.
Personally, I believe that porous linen underwear is the best for all
growing girls――yes, and for all women. It allows a free evaporation
of perspiration, and so prevents a more or less sodden garment from
remaining in contact with the skin, which so frequently happens with
those who wear woolen underclothing. There is another harmful effect
that woolen underclothing is apt to have; the beginning of a rheumatic
condition which later on in life becomes a painful chronic rheumatism.
In girls who find that in winter linen underwear is too cold, a thin
silk vest may be worn over the linen. This will be found to constitute
a thoroughly warm, comfortable and safe form of underwear.
Don’t try to keep awake either by mental effort or that injurious
resort of drinking coffee. Sleepiness should not be overcome as a
rule, as it is Nature’s signal to stop work. In fact, Nature has
signals for almost all dangers, and when we can read these signals all
goes well along the road of life.
If efforts are continued in spite of the fatigue, the quality of
the work is poor and the exhaustion to your nervous system will
be difficult to repair. High-school girls and college young women
constantly make this error and then wonder why they become so nervous
at times. All sorts of things are tried to keep awake in order to study
or dance, when if they would go to bed and rest, they could accomplish
far more in half the time in the morning with little or no fatigue.
For remember, I am trying to tell you how to get a grip upon that will
power.
Yet there are times when sleepiness and fatigue must be overcome
without resort to stimulants which will surely weaken any will power
you may have been cultivating. These times are when you have to
watch by the bedside of an ill mother or someone dear to you. When
so situated, go to an open window and take deep breathing exercises.
This will burn up the fatigue poisons in your body, for remember these
poisons are gathering in everyone’s body when real fatigue commences.
Morning is the time for all mental work if you are a high-school girl
or college woman. The afternoon should be devoted to some form of mild
exercise and for “low pressure” work.
Shouting, yelling and all extra efforts of the throat muscles will aid
in exhausting your nervous powers, to say nothing about the unpleasant
and unladylike attitude it places you in before the public. A low,
sweet voice, even under excitement, is a sound pleasing to all men and
a certain mark of good birth.
I need not repeat the facts about the advertised “remedies” for this
trouble or that pain, for I have already warned you to let all drugs
and “cures” alone as you would snakes. But there are some drinks that
you should be warned against. Never take those soda water fountain’s
stuff advertised as “nerve tonics.” Don’t believe the young man or boy
at the fountain when he says that “Dopie” or “Bromo Tonic,” “Phosphate
for your Nerves,” or “Dockine” and other similar rotten stuff will do
you good and that they contain no drugs or injurious materials. Don’t
believe a word of all these misleading statements. The boy or young man
is there to sell, not to understand or care about your condition.
If such stomach wash and nerve destroyers contain no drugs, then what
good are they? If they contain nothing but plain water charged with
carbonic acid gas, then why not take a glass of plain seltzer or
soda water? Supposing, for example, these advertised drinks do not
contain harmful drugs――most of them do, however――they are colored
and sweetened. What are they colored with? What is the chemical that
sweetens them? If you really knew you would be unable to keep them
down, the knowledge of how they are concocted would be revolting to you.
These restrictions do not apply to pure soda water and pure syrups, but
even here you must be careful to drink only those which are pure, and
only the very best drug stores are safe in this matter.
Most of the bottled drinks sold at five cents should be thrown into
the sewers, and how many diseased lips do you think have touched the
glasses passed around at the circus and similar shows? Those glasses
containing dyed water, a little chemical acid and glucose, with
second-hand lemon peel to give the appearance of lemonade, are almost
as dangerous as the fangs of a viper.
Don’t dress in a loud and gaudy manner unless you wish to attract the
men of loud and loose principles. The personal appearance of a girl
makes a great difference in the manner she will be received. To dress
in good taste and with every appearance of neatness and modesty, is
essential for the girl who seeks employment or respectful attentions.
Good taste in dressing simply means that a man can say that the girl
was well dressed, but to save his life he could not tell just what
she had on for clothes or hat. The dressing of the feet is, perhaps,
the first thing a refined and cultivated man looks at. To be well and
sensibly shod is always a hall mark of good birth and cultivation. The
girl who wears thin shoes on a wet and cold day, the young woman who
displays high-heeled shoes and thin silk stockings on a winter’s day,
may attract attention, but not respect. A man well knows that if a girl
wears a fur coat and low shoes on the street, she will, as a wife, be
continually complaining of her indisposition, pains and altogether make
his home a place to flee.
No man wants a nervous and complaining woman around his house, and a
girl who thinks she is attractive on the street is not the girl who
will be attractive in a home. That is, one who dresses her feet for the
street in the manner they should be dressed for the house or ballroom
proclaims herself a careless girl and one who is not liable to take
care of her health.
You have heard much about psychotherapy, suggestion and a lot about
certain Movements in church circles. These all proclaim an infallible
remedy for “Nerves.” There is a lot of nonsense written about this
mental method of healing the nervous and soul-sick person, and, on
the other hand, there has been a lot of scoffing at it. There is more
in the drilling of our inner selves than the old-time physician has
been willing to admit; he has so long been accustomed to consider
woman a physical being of bones, flesh and whims, that her real inner
self has been sadly neglected. The consequence has been that a number
of well-meaning and progressive men have taken up the treatment of
troubles without understanding just what relation the gross bodily
organs and nerve cells bear to this inner self which we all possess. I
shall not bother you with any digression, but get at once to what you
can do for yourselves in this matter.
Start early to get inside of yourself; to get at that self which so
bothers you at times; the thing which makes you “feel out of sorts,”
that “getting mad with yourself;” the feeling that you have not said
or done just what you would like to have said or done, but which some
uncontrollable impulse, at the moment, made you say and do. This is
the inner self, but it belongs to all the other parts of your body; is
really the best part of you and will be able to put out the best in you
when you have it under full control.
Take a half hour at the time when you can be alone and see into
yourself. Search well your heart and learn just what you said or did
that you regret. Then find out what caused you to be disagreeable,
what has put you out with your better self. Write these thoughts and
desires down where you can privately refer to them daily. Take the
first mistake and stick to the memory of it so that, when the impulse
comes to repeat it, you can check yourself. Drilling yourself this
way, you will soon learn to conquer this one fault. Then start in the
same way at another fault and conquer that. Don’t try to exercise all
the powers of resistance at once, for if you do, there are bound to
be failures and too many of these make for discouragement, and then
follows recklessness. You would not try to develop a weak back by going
from an apparatus meant to develop the thighs to another one for the
chest, and then back again for a few moments to that for strengthening
the back muscles. No, you stick to the work which develops the back
until you have made some decided progress. The inner self, the will,
the good girl in you, should be developed in the same way.
You want to go to a dance or perhaps the theater, “all the other girls
are going,” but your mother has good and sufficient reasons for not
allowing you to go. Now, instead of arguing, complaining and going off
to your room in a huff, saying unkind words to your good mother, words
which tear and gnaw at her heart, speak to that inner self; call it
out; go to your room and peer straight into the trouble with YOU, not
that wrong idea that the fault is with your mother.
Think deeply of this fact; she is your mother, nothing that would
add to your pleasure or advantage would she deprive you of――not for
an instant. But as your mother she knows what is best for you; she
may know something about the other girls, about the kind of youths
going with them, she may know something about your health that is not
advisable to tell you just at the moment. In your room think all these
matters over; throw out that unreasonable and false self, and when you
have done so, go to your mother, ask her forgiveness and also beg her
to tell you her reasons.
Now that your inner self is in control, your mother will tell you
confidentially her reasons, and when they are clear to you, the
happiness which follows is far beyond any mere physical pleasure you
can ever obtain. After a few times of this self-drilling, the obedience
to your mother will be a second nature.
Still more fights with your inner self will have to follow, but one by
one, you can conquer the enemy. Never become discouraged if you fail,
just keep on trying and in the end you will win over all evil and wrong
impulses.
A girl who disobeys her mother or father is the girl who as a wife will
be divorced.
The girl who wants to “be a good Indian” will, when a woman, be a
repulsive savage.
The girl who deceives her mother will deceive her husband.
All men know this fact.
Remember that marriage does not make a happy woman, but a woman has it
in her power to make marriage a happiness.
The most reasonable woman will have hours of being unreasonable, but
these are the hours you should be unreasonable with yourself while
searching for reasons.