How to Add Ten Years to your Life and to Double Its Satisfactions by S. S. Curry (motivational books to read txt) π
May we not, accordingly, discover that from a psychological as well as a physiological point of view, for reasons of health and development, morning is the most significant and important time of the day!
No human being at the first moment of awakening is gloomy or angry. Everyone awakes in peace with all the world. It is a time of freedom. A moment later memory may bring to the mind some scene or picture that leads to good or bad thought, followed by emotion. This first moment of consciousness is the critical and golden moment of human life. How often has it been said to a child: "You must have gotten out of the wrong side of bed this morning."
Even animals and birds feel the significance of morning. Who has not, at early dawn, heard a robin or some other bird begin to sing--"at first alone," as Thomas Hardy
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The affirmation of confidence, love, trust, and peace should follow as well as precede the evening exercises. We should make the going to sleep a sacred part of our lives. In giving up our consciousness we should be sure to surrender it to the positive forces of the universe. This is not an idle dream, nor a mere mystical fancy. Even from a psychological point of view the emotion with which we go to sleep is apt to remain with us and get in its good or evil work in the unconscious, involuntary metabolism that takes place in all the cells. We must lie down to rest in peace.
"Dr. Thomas Hyslop, of the West Riding Asylum in England," according to Professor James in "Memories and Portraits," "said last year to the British Medical Association that the best sleep-producing agent which his practice had revealed to him, was prayer. I say this," he added [I am sorry to say here that I must quote from memory], "purely as a medical man. The exercise of prayer, in those who habitually exert it, must be regarded by us doctors as the most adequate and normal of all pacifiers of the mind and calmers of the nerves.
"But in few of us are functions not tied up by the exercise of other functions. Relatively few medical and scientific men, I fancy, can pray. Few can carry on any living commerce with God. Yet many of us are well aware of how much freer and abler our lives would be, were such important forms of energizing not sealed up by the critical atmosphere in which we have been reared. There are in everyone potential forms of activity that actually are shunted out from use. Part of the imperfect vitality under which we labor can thus be easily explained."
Have a few simple sentences full of thanksgiving, of peace and rest. The best are found in the Bible. The words to Moses, "My presence shall go with thee and I will give thee rest," may be given and repeated many times with a realization of their deep meaning and a personal application to the individual.
Not only repeat phrases, lines, and verses, full of beautiful thought, but change these into your own words. Learn to articulate your own convictions and apply them to your own needs,βeven paraphrase, for example, such a phrase as "He restoreth my soul" in the twenty-third Psalm. For the word "soul" we can substitute anything according to the specific needs of the hour. We should, however, use nothing that is not in accordance with universal love and the highest spiritual ideals of man and of our conceptions of the universe. We must always remember that truth is universal.
We can change "soul" also to "health," "strength" or "life," to "joy," to "success," to "confidence," to the body or any part of the body which may seem to be afflicted.
There are in this Psalm other good affirmations on going to sleep. Take individual clauses and repeat them many times, such as "I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me."
One of the best affirmations is found in the first of the twenty-seventh Psalm. "The Lord is my light and my salvation. Whom shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life. Of whom [or of what] shall I be afraid? One thing have I asked of the Lord, that will I seek after, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord [in a consciousness of His presence] all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to enquire in his temple [to commune with Him in the sacred temple of my own soul].
"Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on Thee."
Everyone should find his own, should find it in his experience, find it by personal investigation and study of the Bible and through spiritual realization.
We should live in peace with all men, be able to rejoice evermore, "to pray without ceasing"; that is, we should always be in an attitude to receive that which is good and never admit that which is negative;βhate, antagonism or fear,βbut we should welcome love and that which we know expresses the "Infinite Presence." Antagonism, hate, discords prevent us from living our hundred years. "Certain classes of men shall not live out half their days."
The last moment before going to sleep should be one of peaceful rest. Say "Not my will but Thine" and give up everything to the Infinite and Eternal.
My own best help is thanksgiving and praise. When I cannot give up the thoughts and conflicts of the day, I can bring my whole being into reposeful rhythm best by expressing thanks that I can be awake and that I have shared in the life of a day. I praise the Infinite Presence that I can know beauty when I see it, that I can understand truth and know that two times three are not seven and that I can participate in the goodness of the universe. Then, before I know it, I have laid aside the conflicts of the day and have passed into peaceful and harmonious rest.
This method of thanksgiving especially applies to those times when I wake up in the middle of the night.
Returning to Pippa, we find her retirement to her own room and her method of going to sleep no less suggestive as an example than her awakening.
She met the first wakening moment with joy and praise as she resolutely put aside the dark thought of her life and went singing all through the day with the same spirit of thanksgiving and love for all mankind.
Now she comes back to her room weary and discouraged, as we nearly all do. She knows nothing of what her songs have accomplished, nothing of the wonderful influence that has been exercised. In her disheartened moment she sees the sunset in the dark cloud and thinking over the day she would like to know what she really has done.
Yet she checks herself and returns to her morning hymn and keeps her faith and trust. "Results belong to the Master, Thou hast no need to measure them." She becomes very humble, willing, and submissive to the hard task of the morrow. Little she dreams of the revelation that will come of the secrets of her own life and family.
"We know not what we shall be." Each of us at the close of life lies down without realizing our relation to the Infinite, without realizing that we are children and heirs. Blessed is he who feels that his hymn is also "True in some sense or other," that life is true and that each one performs some work and it is not for us to say whether it is great or small. They who wrought but one hour received the same wages as they who wrought the whole day.
Deeply symbolical, allegorical, and typical in the poetic sense of human life is Pippa's closing thought as she lies down to sleep.
How could that red sun drop in that black cloud?
Ah, Pippa, morning's rule is moved away,
Dispensed with, never more to be allowed!
Day's turn is over, now arrives the night's.
Oh, lark, be day's apostle
To mavis, merle and throstle,
Bid them their betters jostle
From day and its delights!
But at night, brother howlet, over the woods,
Toll the world to thy chantry;
Sing to the bats' sleek sisterhoods
Full complines with gallantry;
Then, owls and bats,
Cowls and twats,
Monks and nuns, in a cloister's moods,
Adjourn to the oak-stump pantry!
How near I ever might approach all these
I only fancied being, this long day:
βApproach, I mean, so as to touch them, so
As to ... in some way ... move themβif you please,
Do good or evil to them some slight way.
For instance, if I wind
Silk to-morrow, my silk may bind
And border Ottima's cloak's hem.
Ah, me, and my important part with them,
This morning's hymn half promised when I rose!
True in some sense or other, I suppose.
No doubt, some way or other, hymns say right.
With God, whose puppets, best and worst:
Are we; there is no last nor first." [She sleeps]
The Morning League of the School of Expression
is a band of the students, graduates and friends of the School of Expression who are trying to keep their faces toward the morning.
If you wish to join, when you wake GET UP OUT OF THE RIGHT SIDE OF THE BED, that is, stretch, expand, breathe deeply and laugh. Fill with joyous thoughts and their active expressions the first minutes of the day.
Note the effect, and consider yourself initiated.
Try as far as possible EVERY DAY to realize the League's
1. SMILE whenever tempted to frown; look for and enjoy the best around you.
2. THINK, feel or realize something in the direction of your ideals and, in some way, unite your ideals with your every-day work and play.
3. SEE, hear or read, i. e., receive an impression from something beautiful in nature, art, music, poetry, literature or the lives of your fellow-men.
4. EXPRESS the best that is in you and awaken others to express the best in them.
5. SERVE some fellow being by listening, by kind look, tone, word or deed.
6. SHARE in some of the great movements for the betterment of the race.
That is, use your principles of expression to help in such movements as:
1. Expression in Life (text book, "The Smile"); 2. Expression and Health (text book, "How to Add Ten Years to Your Life"); 3. Expression and Education in the Nursery; Mothers' Clubs; 4. Voice in the Home; 5. Reading in the Public Schools; 6. Speaking in High Schools and Colleges; 7. Speaking Clubs; 8. Browning Clubs (text book, "Browning and the Dramatic Monologue"); 9. Dramatic Clubs; 10. Religious Societies; 11. Boy Scouts; 12. Campfire Girls; 13. Peace Movements; 14. Women's Clubs; and Suffrage Organizations; 15. Reforms; 16. Teachers' Clubs; 17. School of Expression Summer Terms; 18. Preparation for the School of Expression; 19. Home Studies; 20. Advanced Steps of the School of Expression.
Send your name and address with ten nominations for members with $1.50 for the two League text books, "The Smile" and "How to Add Ten Years to Your Life," and you will be recorded a member. One set of books will do for a family, other books at teachers' or introductory prices. There are no fees. The entire net returns from the League books will be devoted to the endowment of the School of Expression, the Home of the League.
Write frankly and freely asking any counsel, and making any suggestions to the President of the League.
Dr. S. S. CURRY, 307 Pierce Bldg.
Copley Square, Boston, Mass.
Text-booksβ"The Smile" and "How to Add Ten Years to Your Life"
After a week's exercise for a few minutes either on waking up or on retiring, write out a report of your experiences or answer the following questions. It is not necessary to repeat the questions, simply use figures. These questions follow the first series, published at the close of "The Smile."
22.
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