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Applied Psychology
INITIATIVE
PSYCHIC ENERGY
_Being the Sixth of a Series of
Twelve Volumes on the Applications
of Psychology to the Problems of
Personal and Business
Efficiency_
BY
WARREN HILTON, A.B., L.L.B.
FOUNDER OF THE SOCIETY OF APPLIED PSYCHOLOGY
ISSUED UNDER THE AUSPICES OF
THE LITERARY DIGEST
FOR
_The Society of Applied Psychology_
NEW YORK AND LONDON
1920
COPYRIGHT 1914
BY THE APPLIED PSYCHOLOGY PRESS
SAN FRANCISCO
CONTENTS
Chapter
I. MENTAL SECOND WIND
STICKING TO THE JOB
THE LAGGING BRAIN
RESERVE SUPPLIES OF POWER
"BLUE" MONDAYS
HOW TO STRIKE ONE'S STRIDE
THE SPUR OF DESIRE
HOW TO RELEASE STORED-UP ENERGIES
THE LAWYER WHO "OVERWORKS"
EXCITEMENT AND THE HERO
ENDURING POWER OF MIND
II. RESERVES OF POWER
MAN'S POTENTIAL AND KINETIC ENERGIES
HOLDING THE TOP PACE
GENIUS AND THE MASTER MAN
MENTAL EFFECTS OF CITY LIFE
NEW-FOUND ENERGIES EXPLAINED
QUICKENED MENTALITY
FAST LIVING AND LONG LIVING
PROFESSOR PATRICK'S EXPERIMENTS
RATIO BETWEEN REPAIR AND DEMAND
PYGMIES AND GIANTS
TRANSFORMING INERTNESS INTO ALERTNESS
HOW THE MIND ACCUMULATES ENERGY
THE THRESHOLD OF INHIBITION
HIDDEN STRENGTH
GIVING A MAN SCOPE
III. THE INITIATIVE ENERGY OF SUCCESS
SOURCES OF PERSISTENCE
IMPORTANCE OF THE MENTAL SETTING
IDEAS ALL MEN RESPOND TO
HOW TO EXALT THE PERSONALITY
"GOOD STARTERS" AND "STRONG FINISHERS"
STEPS IN SELF-DEVELOPMENT
SAVING A THOUSAND A YEAR
LOOKING FOR A "SOFT SNAP"
DRAWING POWER FROM ON HIGH
THE MAN WHO LASTS
IV. HOW TO AVOID WASTES THAT DRAIN THE ENERGY OF SUCCESS
SPEEDING THE BULLET WITHOUT AIMING
WHY MOST MEN FAIL
THE SUCCESSFUL PROMOTER
THE HUMAN DYNAMO
COOL BRAINS AND HOT BOXES
MARVELOUS INCREASED EFFICIENCY HANDLING "PIG"
"OVERLOADED" HUMAN ENGINES
SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT OF SELF
PHYSIOLOGICAL CAUSES OF WASTE
TESTS FOR SENSORY DEFECTS
MENTAL FRICTION AND INNER WHIRLWINDS
PROMINENT TRAITS OF GREAT ACHIEVERS
WHY A MAN BREAKS DOWN
HOW TO ECONOMIZE EFFORT
HOW YOUR MENTAL CAPITAL IS DISSIPATED
CONQUERING INDECISION
WHY "CHRISTIAN SCIENCE" WORKS
HOW TO RELEASE PENT-UP POWER
PROPER RATIO BETWEEN WORK AND REST
DETERMINING YOUR NORM OF EFFICIENCY
V. THE SECRET OF MENTAL EFFICIENCY
WHERE ENERGY IS STORED
BODILY EFFECTS OF IDEAS
IMPULSES AND INHIBITIONS
TRAINING FOR MENTAL "TEAM-WORK"
RUST AND THE "DAILY GRIND"
IDEAS THAT HARMONIZE
FIVE RULES FOR CONSERVING ENERGY
BUSINESS LUCK AND "BLUE-SKY" THEORIES
DEVICES FOR COMMERCIAL EFFICIENCY
CHAPTER I
MENTAL SECOND WIND
[Sidenote: _Sticking to the Job_]
Are you an unusually persevering and persistent person? Or, like most
of us, do you sometimes find it difficult to stick to the job until it
is done? What is your usual experience in this respect?
Is it not this, that you work steadily along until of a sudden you
become conscious of a feeling of weariness, crying "Enough!" for the
time being, and that you then yield to the impulse to stop?
[Sidenote: _The Lagging Brain_]
Assuming that this is what generally happens, does this feeling of
fatigue, this impulse to rest, mean that your mental energy is
exhausted?
Suppose that by a determined effort of the will you force your lagging
brain to take up the thread of work. _There will invariably come a new
supply of energy, a "second wind," enabling you to forge ahead with a
freshness and vigor that is surprising after the previous lassitude._
Nor is this all. The same process may be repeated a second time and a
third time, each new effort of the will being followed by a renewal of
energy.
[Sidenote: _Reserve Supplies of Power_]
Many a man will tell you that he does his best work in the wee watches
of the morning, after tedious hours of persevering but fruitless
effort. Instead of being exhausted by its long hours of persistent
endeavor, the mind seems now to rise to the acme of its power, to
achieve its supreme accomplishments. Difficulties melt into thin air,
profound problems find easy solution. Flights of genius manifest
themselves. Yet long before midnight such a one had perhaps felt
himself yield to fatigue and had tied a wet towel around his head or
had taken stimulants to keep himself awake.
The existence of this reserve supply of energy is manifested in
physical as well as mental effort.
Men who work with their heads and men who work with their hands,
scholars and Marathon runners, must alike testify to the existence of
_reserve supplies of power not ordinarily drawn upon_.
[Sidenote: _"Blue" Mondays_]
If we do not always or habitually utilize this reserve power, it is
simply because we have accustomed ourselves to yield at once to the
first strong feeling of fatigue.
Evidence of this same fact appears in our feelings on different days.
How often does a man get up from his breakfast-table after a long
night's rest, when he should be feeling fresh and invigorated, and say
to himself, "I don't feel like working today." And it may take him
until afternoon to get into his workaday stride, if, indeed, he
reaches it at all.
[Sidenote: _How to Strike One's Stride_]
You cannot yourself be immune from the feeling on certain days that
you are not at your best. Somehow or other, your wits seem befogged.
You hesitate to undertake important interviews. Your interest lags.
And though crises arise in your business, you feel weighted down and
unable to meet them with that shrewd discernment and decisiveness of
action of which you know yourself capable.
But you realize, in your inmost self, that _if you continue to exert
the will and persistently hold yourself to the business in hand,
sooner or later you will warm to the work, enthusiasm will come, the
clouds will be dispelled, the husks will fly. Yet you have had no
rest; on the contrary, you have, by continued conscious effort,
consumed more and more of your vital energy_.
[Sidenote: _The Spur of Desire_]
Obviously it was not rest that you needed.
What you required was the impulse of some _strong desire_ that should
carry you over the threshold of that first inertia into the wide field
of reserve energy so rarely called upon and so rich in power.
Under the lashings of necessity, or the spur of love or ambition, men
accomplish feats of mental and physical endurance of which they would
have supposed themselves incapable. Here is what a certain lawyer says
of his early struggles:
[Sidenote: _How to Release Stored-Up Energies_]
"When I was twenty-three years old, married, and with a family to
support, I entered the law course of a great university. Of the many
students in my class, seven, including me, were making a living while
studying law.
"By special arrangement, I was relieved from attendance at lectures
and simply required to pass examinations on the various subjects, and
was thus enabled to retain my place as principal of a large public
school. During the third and last year of my law course, I was
principal of a public day school of two thousand children and an
alternate night school with an enrolment of seven hundred and fifty,
and I worked at the law three nights in the week and all day Sunday.
[Sidenote: _The Lawyer Who "Overworks"_]
"After eight months of this, the final examinations came around. They
consumed a full week--from nine in the morning until five or six at
night. I had no opportunity for review, so I rented a room near the
law school to save the time going and coming and reviewed each night
the subjects of examination for the following day.
"I did not sleep more than two hours any night in that week. On
Thursday, while bolting a bit of luncheon, a fishbone stuck in my
throat. Fearful of losing the result of my year's effort, I returned
to my work, suffering much pain, and kept at it until Saturday night,
when the examinations were concluded. The next day the surgeon who
removed the fishbone said there was no reason why I should not have
had 'a bad case of gangrene.'
"When I look back on that year's work I don't see how I stood it. I
don't see how I kept myself at it, day in, day out, month after month
without rest, recreation or relief. I am sure I could never go through
it again, even if I had the courage to undertake it.
"I ranked second in a class of one hundred and eighty in my law
examinations, won the second prize for the best graduating thesis,
received a complimentary vote for class oratorship, and much to my
surprise was soon after offered an assistant superintendency of the
public schools by the school board, who knew nothing of my studies and
thought my work as a teacher worthy of promotion.
"It was not only the hardest year's work but the best year's work I
ever did. _It exemplifies my invariable experience that the more we
want to do the more we can do and the better we can do it._"
[Sidenote: _Excitement and the Hero_]
The following is an extract from a letter quoted by Professor James as
written by Colonel Baird-Smith after the siege of Delhi in 1857, to
the success of which he largely contributed:
"My poor wife had some reason to think that war and disease, between
them, had left very little of a husband to take under nursing when she
got him again. An attack of scurvy had filled my mouth with sores,
shaken every joint in my body and covered me all over with scars and
livid spots, so that I was unlovely to look upon. A smart knock on the
ankle joint from the splinter of a shell that burst in my face, in
itself a mere bagatelle of a wound, had been of necessity neglected
under the pressing and insistent calls upon me, and had grown worse
and worse until the whole foot below the ankle became a black mass and
seemed to threaten mortification. I insisted, however, on being
allowed to use it until the place was taken, mortification or no; and
though the pain was sometimes horrible I carried my point and kept up
to the last.
"On the day after the assault I had an unlucky fall on some bad
ground, and it was an open question for a day or two whether I hadn't
broken my arm at the elbow. Fortunately it turned out to be only a
severe sprain, but I am still conscious of the wrench it gave me. To
crown the whole pleasant catalogue, I was worn to a shadow by a
constant diarrhoea and consumed as much opium as would have done
credit to my father-in-law (Thomas De Quincey).
"However, thank God, I have a good share of Tapleyism in me and come
out strong under difficulties. I think I may confidently say that no
man ever saw me out of heart or ever heard a complaining word from me
even when our prospects were gloomiest. We were sadly crippled by
cholera, and it was almost appalling to me to find that out of
twenty-seven officers I could only muster fifteen for the operations
of the attack. However, it was done,--and after it was done came the
collapse.
[Sidenote: _Enduring Power of Mind_]
"Don't be horrified when I tell you that for the whole of the actual
siege, and in truth for some little time before, I almost lived on
brandy. Appetite for food I had none, but I forced myself to eat just
sufficient to sustain life, and I had an incessant craving for brandy,
as the strongest stimulant I could get. Strange to say, I was quite
unconscious of its affecting me in the slightest degree.
"_The excitement of the work was so great that no lesser one seemed to
have any chance against it, and I certainly never found my intellect
clearer or my nerves stronger in my life._"
Such is the profound resourcefulness and enduring power of the human
mind.