Chapter 8

_The Tired Emphasis_

"I AM so tired, so tired--I go to bed tired, I get up tired, and I am tired all the time."

How many women--how many hundred women, how many thousand women--say that to themselves and to others constantly.

It is perfectly true; they are tired all the time; they do go to bed tired and get up tired and stay tired all day.

If, however, they could only know how very much they increase their fatigue by their constant mental emphasis of it, and if at the same time they could turn their wills in the direction of decreasing the fatigue, instead of emphasizing it, a very large percentage of the tired feeling could be done away with altogether.

Many women would gladly make more of an effort in the direction of rest if they knew how, and I propose in this article to give a prescription for the cure of the tired emphasis which, if followed, will bring happy results.

When you go to bed at night, no matter how tired you feel, instead of thinking how tired you are, think how good it is that you can go to bed to get rested.

It will probably seem absurd to you at first. You may say to yourself: "How ridiculous, going to bed to get rested, when I have only one short night to rest in, and one or two weeks in bed would not rest me thoroughly."

The answer to that is that if you have only one night in which to rest, you want to make the most of that night, and if you carry the tired emphasis to bed with you you are really holding on to the tired.

This is as practically true as if you stepped into a bog and then sat in it and looked forlorn and said. "What a terrible thing it is that I should be in a bog like this; just think of having to sit in a black, muddy bog all the time," and staying there you made no effort whatever to get out of it, even though there was dry land right in front of you.

Again you may answer: "But in my tired bog there is no dry land in front of me, none at all."

I say to that, there is much more dry land than you think--if you will open your eyes--and to open your eyes you must make an effort.

No one knows, who has not tried, what a good strong effort will do in the right direction, when we have been living and slipping back in the wrong direction.

The results of such efforts seem at times wonderful to those who have learned the right direction for the first time.

To get rid of the tired emphasis when we have been fixed in it, a very strong effort is necessary at first, and gradually it gets easier, and easier, until we have cast off the tired emphasis entirely and have the habit of looking toward rest.

We must say to ourselves with decision in so many words, and must think the meaning of the words and insist upon it: "I am very tired. Yes, of course, I am very tired, but I am going to bed to get rested."

There are a hundred little individual ways that we can talk to ourselves, and turn ourselves toward rest, at the end of the day when the time comes to rest.

One way to begin, which is necessary to most of us, is to stop resisting the tired. Every complaint of fatigue, whether it is merely in our own minds, or is made to others, is full of resistance, and resistance to any sort of fatigue emphasizes it proportionately.

That is why it is good to say to ourselves: "Yes, I am tired; I am awfully tired. I am willing to be tired."

When we have used our wills to drop the nervous and muscular contractions that the fatigue has caused, we can add with more emphasis and more meaning, "and I am going to bed to get rested."

Some one could say just here: "That is all very well for an ordinarily tired person, but it would never do me any good. I am too tired even to try it."

The answer to that is, the more tired you are, the more you need to try it, and the more interesting the experiment will be.

Also the very effort of your brain needed to cast off the tired emphasis will be new to you, and thought in a new direction is always restful in itself. Having learned to cast off the tired emphasis when we go to bed at night, we can gradually learn to cast it off before we go to meals, and at odd opportunities throughout the day.

The more tired we are, the more we need to minimize our fatigue by the intelligent use of our own wills.

Who cares for a game that is simple and easy? Who cares for a game when you beat as a matter of course, and without any effort on your part at all?

Whoever cares for games at all cares most for good, stiff ones, where, when you have beaten, you can feel that you have really accomplished something; and when you have not beaten, you have at least learned points that will enable you to beat the next time, or the next to the next time--or sometime. And everyone who really loves a game wants to stick to it until he has conquered and is proficient.

Why not wake up, and realize that same interest and courage in this biggest game of all--this game of life?

We must play it!

Few of us are cowards enough to put ourselves out of it. Unless we play it and obey the rules we do not really play at all.

Many of us do not know the rules, but it is our place to look about and find them out.

Many more of us think that we can play the game better if we make up rules of our own, and leave out whatever regular rules we do know, that do not suit our convenience.

But that never works.

It only sometimes seems to work; and although plain common sense shows us over and over that the game played according to our own ideas amounts to nothing, it is strange to see how many work and push to play the game in their own way instead of in the game's way.

It is strange to see how many shove blindly in this direction, and that direction, to cut their way through a jungle, when there is the path just by them, if they will take it.

Most of us do not know our own power because we would rather stay in a ditch and complain.

Strength begets strength, and we can only find our greater power, by using intelligently, and steadily, the power we have.