VIII. Controlling One’s Thoughts

VIII

CONTROLLING ONE’S THOUGHTS

AFTER this ethical interlude on life’s ideals, perhaps we had better take our bearing again. We have seen that whatever our ideals, whatever our resolutions, we should, before adopting those resolutions, calmly and coldly count the price of carrying them out. That was our first rule of will-power.

Now the second rule follows naturally from the first. Once you have made your decision, having coldly decided that that is what you want and that you are willing to pay the price, your decision is forever beyond dispute. You should never ask yourself again whether the other course is possible; whether it is really worth while staying home to study for a specified number of evenings each week; whether a man who has resolved to stop drinking can really do so suddenly without blowing to pieces; whether smoking is really as harmful as you had thought it was; whether a man in a moderate position, without so many responsibilities and burdens on his shoulders, doesn’t really get just as much enjoyment out of life as the Success. Those questions are forever closed; you have asked them before and have decided them. You will know that thoughts determine action, and to control your actions you will begin by controlling your thought. You will vivify all the advantages that will come from carrying out your resolution. You will paint them in glowing colors. You will dwell on them constantly. The disadvantages you will ignore. They are disadvantages only to fools; a wise man does not think them so.

Here I need to give a warning. Concentrate on the positive side; avoid the negative. That is, dwell on the benefits of carrying your resolve out, not on the evils of failing. If you would fight a craving for morphine, do not let your imagination revel in the picture of the ashen-faced, palsied, loathsome and pitiable creature you would be as a morphine fiend. Picture the upstanding, energetic, healthy-complexioned, respect-compelling man you are going to be if you refuse it.

A morbid, terrible picture is a mind-filling picture; it exerts a strange fascination. If a thought once sufficiently fills the mind, be it ever so terrible, unreasonable or self-destructive, it will be acted upon. I need merely cite the familiar experience of dizziness when looking over a precipice or a high building, or even a low building if there be no rail around. The height from sea-level has nothing to do with it; and the height of the potential fall is less important than the actual danger of falling. You grow dizzy because you think of what would happen to you if you lost your balance and fell, or even if you were to throw yourself off. The higher the roof or precipice the more fascinating does this idea become; hence the greater the dizziness. It is the very terror of the thought, the reality of the fear that you are going to act upon it, that makes you dizzy. If you could get completely rid of the idea, you would completely lose the dizziness. I knew a man living in Buffalo who did not dare to visit Niagara Falls, lest he should throw himself into the magnificent rapids just above them. There are doubtless many like him.

Fill the mind with the positive idea of your resolve, and you will carry it out.

Some readers will have recognized an affinity between this rule and the doctrine known as “suggestion.” Little is yet known of suggestion, but enough is known for scientific men to become assured that it is no more superstition; practicing physicians recognize its great value. One writer, T. Sharper Knowlson, convinced of the theory, has made some pointed remarks on the subject:

We have not to aim at a strong will, and wait until it “comes.” Act as if it had already come. . . . The man who feels he cannot pass a public house without an irresistible temptation to enter and drink to excess, must tell himself he can, and proceed to walk past the place of temptation.

He suggests a method for combating insomnia. One should say to oneself, “I sleep, I sleep,” repeating these words until a state of drowsiness is induced. “It is wrong to say, “I shall sleep,’ because that implies desire, and hence a possibility of non-fulfillment. Suggestion works by affirmation, not by promise.”

My next piece of advice is this: Never defy temptation—evade it.

You may look upon this advice as inconsistent with the above quotation. You may dismiss it as unworthy. I maintain that it is prudent. For urging it I have the strongest psychologic grounds.

In one of his studies in pessimism, Schopenhauer makes a remark to the effect that man has thousands of desires, and as at any moment not more than a few of them are fulfilled, man’s existence must necessarily always be miserable. Schopenhauer could only arrive at a conclusion so opposed to common sense because his psychology was defective. Desires are not ever-present. Desires are like thoughts—they are thoughts—that come and go. They are aroused by association and suggestion, and less apt to appear when there is no association or suggestion to call them up.

I walk along the street. I am, so far as I am consciously aware, content; which is the same thing as being so. But I pass a fruit-stand; I espy some delicious peaches, and there is immediately aroused the desire for peaches. The absence of the fruit then produces in me a maw, which must be filled. When I watch an exhibition tennis match, my desire to become a marvelous player is intense. When I go to a skating rink, I attach great value to the personal achievement of expert skating. When I read a book on the history of metaphysics, I desire to become a great philosopher. When I listen to speeches in the midst of a presidential campaign, I fancy that the one thing worthwhile is to become an eminent statesman. Between campaigns, this ambition falls into the background. If I have not been skating for a long time, my desire for preeminence in it fades.

The moral of all this, on its positive side, is to cultivate most your desires for the activities which will best forward your final purposes—those purposes which you have calmly, deliberately and fully reasoned out. On the negative side, the moral is to avoid all associations, suggestions, lines of thought, which arouse desires that interfere with your final purposes, that is to say, desires that you have resolved against.

The drunkard often has little difficulty in keeping straight until he sees liquor; even then he is better able to resist than after he has scented or tasted liquor. If you have resolved forever to cease drinking, do not, to show the strength of your determination, as people do in motion picture dramas, put the red glass to your lips and then set it down. Putting the glass to your lips is liable to be your undoing. Do not raise the glass. DO not order the drink. Do not enter the saloon. If the saloon is directly in line on your way home, and habit has dictated your entrance, walk a block out of the way if necessary.

Mr. Knowlson says that you should tell yourself you can walk past, and then do it. That is all very well for the later stages, but I fancy you will find that suggestion and self-faith have their greatest value when not over strained. You cannot lift a 500-pound weight at arm’s length by telling yourself you can. But by gradual exercises, adding a little bit each week, a man may develop a physique which may enable him to accomplish marvels he never dreamed of before. And the will is just like that. It must be developed slowly.

This is not my discovery. Bacon discovered it some three centuries ago, and though his language is somewhat antiquated, his wisdom is as wise today as on the day it was written:

He that seeketh victory over his nature, let him not set himself too great nor too small tasks; for the first will make him dejected by often failings, and the second will make him a small proceeder, though by often prevailings. And, as the first, let him practice with helps, as swimmers do with bladders, or rushes; but after a time let him practice with disadvantages as dancers do with thick shoes; for it breeds great perfection if the practice be harder than the use.

Therefore it is better to walk around the block a while, if you must, before going past. Then you may have faith; and your faith will be strengthened by the modest record of avoidance behind you.

This alcoholic illustration, as I have indicated before, may be legally obsolete; but it is sufficient to indicate to a reader fertile in ideas the application of the principle to any other instance.