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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.
CHAPTER II
RESERVES OF POWER
[Sidenote: _Man's Potential and Kinetic Energies_]
Stored-up energy not in use has been given a name by scientific men.
They call it _potential energy_. In this way it is distinguished from
_kinetic_ or circulating energy by which is meant energy that is at
work. For example, a ton of coal in the bin contains a certain amount
of potential energy, which is capable of being converted into kinetic
energy by combustion.
[Sidenote: _Holding the Top Pace_]
You have a vast amount of potential energy over and above what you
actually use. You have formed the habit of giving up trying a thing as
soon as you have spent the usual amount of effort on it, and this
without regard to whether or not you have accomplished anything.
While we all have the power of sustained mental activity, not one in
ten thousand of us holds to the top pace.
Worse still, even such mental energy as we do consume is dispersed and
scattered over a multitude of trivial interests instead of being
focused upon some one possessing aim.
_We intend to show you how you can lose yourself in your work with an
absorbing passion and how you can at any time make special requisition
upon your hidden stores of potential energy and draw new supplies of
power that will sweep you on to your goal._
[Sidenote: _Genius and the Master Man_]
More than anything else, it is the ability to do this that lifts the
great men of the race above the common run of mortals.
It is this that distinguishes genius from mediocrity. The master man
transforms his vast stores of reserve or potential energy into
circulating or kinetic energy. His work glows with living fire.
Yet, for every such man there are a multitude of others, equally
gifted in some respect, but wanting that mysterious "Open Sesame"
which would discover their hidden mental riches, arouse them from
their accustomed inferiority to their best selves, and transform
potentiality into accomplishment. So it comes about that most of us
are gems that shine but to illumine the "dark unfathomed caves of
ocean," flowers born to "blush unseen."
[Sidenote: _Mental Effect of City Life_]
Take an illustration of the way in which this reserve or potential
energy is transformed into circulating or kinetic energy. Suppose that
you are a countryman and come to live in a large city. The speed with
which we do things, our habits of quick decision, the whirlwind of
activities of the busy man in town, appal you. You cannot see how we
live through it. A day in the business district fills you with terror.
The tumult and danger make it seem "like a permanent earthquake."
But settle down to work here. And in a year you will have "caught the
pulse beat," you will "vibrate to the city's rhythm," and if you only
"make good" in your work, you will enjoy the strain and hurry, you
will keep pace with the best of us, and you will get more out of
yourself in a day in the city than you ever did in a week on the farm.
_This change in degree of mental activity does not necessarily mean
that you are making more of a success of life._
Your activities may be ill-directed. Your new-found powers may be
misspent and dissipated.
But you are mentally more alert Your mental forces have been
stimulated by the stirring environment.
[Sidenote: _New-Found Energies Explained_]
And, mark this particularly, _a number of mental pictures will pass
across the screen of your consciousness today in the same time that
one mental image formerly required._
_Now, you have learned that with every idea catalogued in memory,
there is wrapped up and stowed away an associated "feeling tone" and
an associated impulse to some particular muscular action._
Assuming this, you must at once see that here is an explanation of
your new-found energy.
Your quickened step, your new-found decisiveness of action, your more
observant eye, your clear-cut speech instead of the former drawling
utterance, your livelier manner, your freshened enthusiasm and
enjoyment of life--all of these are but manifestations of a quickened
intelligence.
[Sidenote: _Quickened Mentality_]
_They are the working out through the motor paths of mental impulses
to muscular action._
And these impulses to muscular action come thronging into
consciousness _because the livelier environment brings about a more
rapid reproduction of memory pictures_.
And here comes a particularly striking fact. One would naturally
suppose that the more energy a man consumed, and the faster he lived,
the more quickly his vitality would be exhausted and the shorter his
life would be.
As a matter of fact, by the divine beneficence of Providence, _your
organism is so ordered as to adapt itself within certain wide limits
to the demands made upon it_.
[Sidenote: _Fast Living and Long Living_]
You may call into play all the stored-up resources of your being and
still not stake everything upon a single throw. For the supply of
mental energy is as inexhaustible as the reservoir of all past
experience, while the supply of physical energy involved in brain and
nerve activity is, like the immortal liver of Prometheus, renewed as
fast as depleted.
Two sets of facts that have been established by elaborate scientific
experiment will convince you of the truth of these propositions.
[Sidenote: _Professor Patrick's Experiments_]
Professor Patrick, of the State University of Iowa, conducted some of
these experiments. He caused three young men to remain awake for four
successive days and nights. They were then allowed to go to sleep, the
purpose of the experiment being to determine just how much time Nature
required to recuperate from the long vigil. They were allowed to sleep
themselves out, and all woke up thoroughly rested. _Yet the one who
slept the longest slept only one-third longer than his customary
night's sleep._
You have doubtless had the same experience yourself many times. It all
goes to show that if we are awake four times as long as usual, we do
not make up for it by sleeping four times as _long_, but four times as
_soundly_, as customary. The hard-working mechanic requires no more
hours of sleep than the corner loafer, the active man of affairs no
more than the dawdler.
[Sidenote: _Ratio Between Repair and Demand_]
_The time of tissue repair is about the same with all men under all
conditions. It is the rate of repair that varies with the demand that
has been put upon the body._
Again, look at the same subject from the standpoint of food supply. On
what you now eat and drink you have a certain average weight. Eat,
digest and assimilate a larger quantity of food and your weight will
increase. This increase will be greatest at the start and will
gradually slow up until you shall have reached the point beyond which
you can gain no more. Given the same hygienic conditions that you have
been accustomed to, you will maintain yourself at the increased weight
on the increased supply of food.
[Sidenote: _Pygmies and Giants_]
Now, all this involves clearly enough a greatly increased rate of
activity on the part of the bodily organs of assimilation and repair.
It is a situation on all fours with that of the countryman whose rate
of brain activity has been stimulated by an increased mental demand.
No man will maintain that better, more nourishing and more liberal
food rations, transformed into increased bodily tissue, with a
consequent greater weight and greater muscular strength, would result
in a loss of vitality or the shortening of a man's life.
[Sidenote: _Transforming Inertness into Alertness_]
Pygmies cannot become giants physically or intellectually. But as the
puny youth can by systematic exercise broaden his frame and develop
his muscles into at least a semblance of the athlete, and can then
through his healthier appetite _and his faster rate of repair_
maintain himself without effort at the new standard; _so can the
mentally inert call forth their reserves of energy and maintain a
higher standard of activity and fruitfulness_.
Few men live on the plane of their highest efficiency. Few search the
recesses of the well-springs of power. The lives of most of us are
passed among the shallows of the mind without thought of the
possibilities that lurk within the deeper pools.
[Sidenote: _How the Mind Accumulates Energy_]
This accumulation of potential subconscious reserve energy is a result
of the evolution of man and the growing complexity of his life.
No man could, if he would, respond to all the impulses to muscular
action aroused in him by sense-impressions. It would be still less
possible for him to respond to every impulse to muscular action
awakened from the past with the remembered thought with which it is
associated.
Desire, interest, attention and the selective will must pick and
choose among these multitudinous tendencies to action.
Here, then, is another fact that has immediate bearing upon your
ability to carry out any ambition you may have. Your every action is
the net result of selection among a number of impulses and inhibitory
forces or tendencies.
[Sidenote: _The Threshold of Inhibition_]
As a general thing, consciousness is made up of a number of
conflicting ideas, each with its associated feeling and its impulse to
action. Just what you do in any particular case depends upon what
mental picture is strongest, is most vivid in consciousness, and thus
able to overcome all contrary tendencies.
As life becomes more and more complex, the number and variety of our
sensory experiences increase correspondingly. And so it comes about,
that _we have untold millions of sensory experiences, carrying with
them the impulses to muscular response, none of which, on account of
the multiplicity of conflicting ideas, is ever allowed to find release
and actually take form in muscular activity_.
[Sidenote: _Hidden Strength_]
The consequence is that only an exceedingly small proportion of the
mental energy that is developed within us is ever actually displayed.
_The rest is somehow and somewhere locked up behind the inhibitory
threshold._ It is stored away in _subconsciousness_ with the sensory
experiences of the past with which it is associated.
[Sidenote: _Giving a Man Scope_]
Quoting Mr. Waldo P. Warren: "Much of the strength within men is
hidden, awaiting an occasion to reveal it. The head of a department in
a great manufacturing concern severed his connection with the firm,
his work falling upon a young man of twenty-five years. The young man
rose to the occasion, and in a very short time was conceded to be the
stronger executive of the two. He had been with the concern for
several years, and was regarded as a bright fellow, but his marked
success was a surprise to all who knew him--even to himself.
"The fact is, the young man had that ability all the time and didn't
know it; and his employers didn't know it. He might have been doing
greater things all along if there had been the occasion to reveal his
strength.
"Do you employers and superior officers in business realize how much
of this hidden strength there is in your men? Perhaps a word from you,
giving certain men more scope, would liberate that ability for the
development of both your business and your men.
"Do you workers know your own strength? Are you working up to your
capacity? Or are you accepting the limits which the circumstances
place about you?"
CHAPTER III
THE INITIATIVE ENERGY OF SUCCESS
[Sidenote: _Sources of Persistence_]
In such instances as we have recounted, men have found that persistent
effort along certain lines has had the effect of making presently
available what would otherwise be simply unused storage batteries of
reserve power. What was the source and inspiration for this persistent
effort?
You will say that it was ambition or patriotism or some similar
semi-emotional influence. And so it was. But what is ambition, what is
patriotism, _what is any desire but a picturing to the mind's eye of
the things desired, an awakening of a mental image_ of the result to
be attained, the reward that is to follow certain efforts? And these
mental pictures coming into consciousness have brought with them their
associated emotions and their associated impulses to muscular action,
impulses appropriate to the picture _and automatically tending to work
its realization_.
These impulses constitute the whole of man's achieving power. They are
the Initiative Energy of all Success.
[Sidenote: _Importance of the Mental Setting_]
When you are afflicted with doubt and fear, timidity and lack of
confidence, this means that your mental inhibitions are too numerous,
too high or too strong. Remove them and access is had to the latent
energy of accumulated and creative thought complexes. You will then
become buoyant, cheerful, overflowing with enthusiasm, and ready for a
fresh, definite, active part in life.
_Ideas, then, when latent, may be considered as possessing an
energizing influence_.