Books: Nerves and Common Sense
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Annie Payson Call >> Nerves and Common Sense
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(4) "Do I feel hurried and pushed in my work? Do I realize that no
matter how much of a hurry there may be, I can hurry more
effectively if I drop the strain of the hurry?"
(5) "How much superfluous strain do I use in my work? Do I work with
a feeling of strain? How can I observe better in order to become
conscious of the strain and drop it?"
These are enough questions for one time! If you concentrate on these
questions and on finding the answers, and do it diligently, you will
be surprised to see how the true answers will come to you, and how
much clearer they will become as you put them into daily practice.
CHAPTER XII
_Imaginary Vacations_
ONCE a young woman who had very hard work to do day after day and
who had come to where she was chronically strained and tired, turned
to her mother just as she was starting for work in the morning, and
in a voice tense with fatigue and trouble, said:--
"Mother, I cannot stand it. I cannot stand it. Unless I can get a
vacation long enough at least to catch my breath, I shall break down
altogether."
"Why don't you take a vacation today?" asked her mother. The
daughter got a little irritated and snapped out:---
"Why do you say such a foolish thing as that, Mother? You know as
well as I that I could not leave my work to-day."
"Don't be cross, dear. Stop a minute and let me tell you what I
mean. I have been thinking about it and I know you will appreciate
what I have to say, and I know you can do it. Now listen." Whereupon
the mother went on to explain quite graphically a process of
pretense--good, wholesome pretense.
To any one who has no imagination this would not or could not
appeal.
To the young woman of whom I write it not only appealed heartily,
but she tried it and made it work. It was simply that she should
play that she had commenced her vacation and was going to school to
amuse herself.
As, for instance, she would say to herself, and believe it: "Isn't
it good that I can have a vacation and a rest. What shall I do to
get all I can out of it?
"I think I will go and see what they are doing in the grammar
school. Maybe when I get there it will amuse me to teach some of the
children. It is always interesting to see how children are going to
take what you say to them and to see the different ways in which
they recite their lessons."
By the time she got to school she was very much cheered. Looking up
she said to herself: "This must be the building."
She had been in it every school day for five years past, but through
the process of her little game it looked quite new and strange now.
She went in the door and when the children said "good morning," and
some of them seemed glad to see her, she said to herself: "Why, they
seem to know me; I wonder how that happens?" Occasionally she was so
much amused at her own consistency in keeping up the game that she
nearly laughed outright. She heard each class recite as if she were
teaching for the first time. She looked upon each separate child as
if she had never seen him before and he was interesting to her as a
novel study.
She found the schoolroom more cheerful and was surprised into
perceiving a pleasant sort of silent communication that started up
between her pupils and herself.
When school was over she put on her hat and coat to go home, with
the sense of having done something restful; and when she appeared to
her mother, it was with a smiling, cheerful face, which made her
mother laugh outright; and then they both laughed and went out for a
walk in the fresh air, before coming in to go to bed, and be ready
to begin again the next day.
In the morning the mother felt a little anxious and asked timidly:
"Do you believe you can make it work again today, just as well as
yesterday?"
"Yes, indeed and better," said the daughter. "It is too much fun not
to go on with it."
After breakfast the mother with a little roguish twinkle, said:
"Well, what do you think you will do to amuse yourself to-day,
Alice?"
"Oh! I think--" and then they both laughed and Alice started off on
her second day's "vacation."
By the end of a week she was out of that tired rut and having a very
good time. New ideas had come to her about the school and the
children; in fact, from being dead and heavy in her work, she had
become alive.
When she found the old tired state coming on her again, she and her
mother always "took a vacation," and every time avoided the tired
rut more easily.
If one only has imagination enough, the helpfulness and restfulness
of playing "take a vacation" will tell equally well in any kind of
work.
You can play at dressmaking--play at millinery--play at keeping
shop. You can make a game of any sort of drudgery, and do the work
better for it, as well as keep better rested and more healthy
yourself. But you must be steady and persistent and childlike in the
way you play your game.
Do not stop in the middle and exclaim, "How silly!"--and then slump
into the tired state again.
What I am telling you is nothing more nor less than a good healthy
process of self-hypnotism. Really, it is more the attitude we take
toward our work that tires us than the work itself. If we could only
learn that and realize it as a practical fact, it would save a great
deal of unnecessary suffering and even illness.
We do not need to play vacation all the time, of course. The game
might get stale then and lose its power. If we play it for two or
three days, whenever we get so tired that it seems as if we could
not bear it--play it just long enough to lift ourselves out of the
rut--then we can "go to work again" until we need another vacation.
We need not be afraid nor ashamed to bring back that childlike
tendency--it will be of very great use to our mature minds.
If we try to play the vacation game, it is wiser to say nothing
about it. It is not a game that we can be sure of sharing profitably
either to ourselves or to others.
If you find it works, and give the secret to a friend, tell her to
play it without mentioning it to you, even though she shares your
work and is sitting in the next chair to you.
Another most healthy process of resting while you work is by means
of lowering the pressure.
Suppose you were an engine, whose normal pressure was six hundred
pounds, we will say. Make yourself work at a pressure of only three
hundred pounds.
The human engine works with so much more strain than is necessary
that if a woman gets overtired and tries to lighten her work by
lightening the pressure with which she does it, she will find that
really she has only thrown off the unnecessary strain, and is not
only getting over her fatigue by working restfully, but is doing her
work better, too.
In the process of learning to use less pressure, the work may seem
to be going a little more slowly at first, but we shall find that it
will soon go faster, and better, as time establishes the better
habit.
One thing seems singular; and yet it appeals entirely to our common
sense as we think of it. There never comes a time when we cannot
learn to work more effectively at a lower pressure. We never get to
where we cannot lessen our pressure and thus increase our power.
The very interest of using less pressure adds zest to our work,
however it may have seemed like drudging before, and the possibility
of resting while we work opens to us much that is new and
refreshing, and gives us clearer understanding of how to rest more
completely while we rest.
All kinds of resting, and all kinds of working, can bring more
vitality than most of us know, until we have learned to rest and to
work without strain.
CHAPTER XIII
_The Woman at the Next Desk_
IT may be the woman sewing in the next chair; it may be the woman
standing next at the same counter; it may be the woman next at a
working table, or it may be the woman at the next desk.
Whichever one it is, many a working woman has her life made wretched
by her, and it would be a strange thing for this miserable woman to
hear and a stranger thing--at first--for her to believe that the
woman at the next desk need not trouble her at all.
That, if she only could realize it, the cause of the irritation
which annoyed her every day and dragged her down so that many and
many a night she had been home with a sick headache was entirely and
solely in herself and not at all in the woman who worked next to
her, however disagreeable that woman may have been.
Every morning when she wakes the woman at the next desk rises before
her like a black specter. "Oh, I would not mind the work; I could
work all day happily and quietly and go home at night and rest; the
work would be a joy to me compared to this torture of having to live
all day next to that woman."
It is odd, too, and true, that if the woman at the next desk finds
that she is annoying our friend, unconsciously she seems to ferret
out her most sensitive places and rub them raw with her sharp,
discourteous words.
She seems to shirk her own work purposely and to arrange it so that
the woman next her must do the work in her place. Then, having done
all in her power to give the woman next her harder labor, she snaps
out a little scornful remark about the mistakes that have been made.
If she--the woman at the next desk--comes in in the morning feeling
tired and irritable herself, she vents her irritability on her
companion until she has worked it off and goes home at night feeling
much better herself, while her poor neighbor goes home tired out and
weak.
The woman at the next desk takes pains to let little disagreeable
hints drop about others--if not directly in their hearing at least
in ways which she knows may reach them.
She drops hint to others of what those in higher office have said or
appeared to think, which might frighten "others" quite out of their
wits for fear of their being discharged, and then, where should they
get their bread and butter?
All this and more that is frightful and disagreeable and mean may
the woman at the next desk do; or she may be just plain, every-day
_ugly._
Every one knows the trying phases of her own working neighbor. But
with all this, and with worse possibilities of harassment than I
have even touched upon, the woman at the next desk is powerless, so
far as I am concerned, if I choose to make her so.
The reason she troubles me is because I resist her. If she hurts my
feelings, that is the same thing. I resist her, and the resistance,
instead of making me angry, makes me sore in my nerves and makes me
want to cry. The way to get independent of her is not to resist her,
and the way to learn not to resist her is to make a daily and hourly
study of dropping all resistances to her.
This study has another advantage, too; if we once get well started
on it, it becomes so interesting that the concentration on this new
interest brings new life in itself.
Resistance in the mind brings contraction in the body. If, when we
find our minds resisting that which is disagreeable in another, we
give our attention at once to finding the resultant contraction in
our bodies, and then concentrate our wills on loosening out of the
contraction, we cannot help getting an immediate result.
Even though it is a small result at the beginning, if we persist,
results will grow until we, literally, find ourselves free from the
woman at the next desk.
This woman says a disagreeable thing; we contract to it mind and
body. We drop the contraction from our bodies, with the desire to
drop it from our minds, for loosening the physical tension reacts
upon the mental strain and relieves it.
We can say to ourselves quite cheerfully: "I wish she would go ahead
and say another disagreeable thing; I should like to try the
experiment again." She gives you an early opportunity and you try
the experiment again, and again, and then again, until finally your
brain gets the habit of trying the experiment without any voluntary
effort on your part.
That habit being established, _you are free from the woman at the
next desk._ She cannot irritate you nor wear upon you, no matter how
she tries, no matter what she says, or what she does.
There is, however, this trouble about dropping the contraction. We
are apt to have a feeling of what we might call "righteous
indignation" at annoyances which are put upon us for no reason;
that, so-called, "righteous indignation" takes the form of
resistance and makes physical contractions.
It is useless to drop the physical contraction if the indignation is
going to rise and tighten us all up again. If we drop the physical
and mental contractions we must have something good to fill the open
channels that have been made. Therefore let us give our best
attention to our work, and if opportunity offers, do a kindness to
the woman at the next desk.
Finally, when she finds that her ways do not annoy, she will stop
them. She will probably, for a time at first, try harder to be
disagreeable, and then after recovering from several surprises at
not being able to annoy, she will quiet down and grow less
disagreeable.
If we realize the effect of successive and continued resistance upon
ourselves and realize at the same time that we can drop or hold
those resistances as we choose to work to get free from them, or
suffer and hold them, then we can appreciate the truth that if the
woman at the next desk continues to annoy us, it is our fault
entirely, and not hers.
CHAPTER XIV
_Telephones and Telephoning_
MOST men--and women--use more nervous force in speaking through the
telephone than would be needed to keep them strong and healthy for
years.
It is good to note that the more we keep in harmony with natural
laws the more quiet we are forced to be.
Nature knows no strain. True science knows no strain. Therefore _a
strained high-pitched voice does not carry over the telephone wire
as well as a low one._
If every woman using the telephone would remember this fact the good
accomplished would be thricefold. She would save her own nervous
energy. She would save the ears of the woman at the other end of the
wire. She would make herself heard.
Patience, gentleness, firmness--a quiet concentration--all tell
immeasurably over the telephone wire.
Impatience, rudeness, indecision, and diffuseness blur communication
by telephone even more than they do when one is face to face with
the person talking.
It is as if the wire itself resented these inhuman phases of
humanity and spit back at the person who insulted it by trying to
transmit over it such unintelligent bosh.
There are people who feel that if they do not get an immediate
answer at the telephone they have a right to demand and get good
service by means of an angry telephonic sputter.
The result of this attempt to scold the telephone girl is often an
impulsive, angry response on her part--which she may be sorry for
later on--and if the service is more prompt for that time it reacts
later to what appears to be the same deficiency.
No one was ever kept steadily up to time by angry scolding. It is
against reason.
To a demanding woman who is strained and tired herself, a wait of
ten seconds seems ten minutes. I have heard such a woman ring the
telephone bell almost without ceasing for fifteen minutes. I could
hear her strain and anger reflected in the ringing of the bell. When
finally she "got her party" the strain in her high-pitched voice
made it impossible for her to be clearly understood. Then she got
angry again because "Central" had not "given her a better
connection," and finally came away from the telephone nearly in a
state of nervous collapse and insisted that the telephone would
finally end her life. I do not think she once suspected that the
whole state of fatigue which had almost brought an illness upon her
was absolutely and entirely her own fault.
The telephone has no more to do with it than the floor has to do
with a child's falling and bumping his head.
The worst of this story is that if any one had told this woman that
her tired state was all unnecessary, it would have roused more
strain and anger, more fatigue, and more consequent illness.
Women must begin to find out their own deficiencies before they are
ready to accept suggestions which can lead to greater freedom and
more common sense.
Another place where science and inhuman humanity do not blend is in
the angry moving up and down of the telephone hook.
When the hook is moved quickly and without pause it does not give
time for the light before the telephone girl to flash, therefore she
cannot be reminded that any one is waiting at the other end.
When the hook is removed with even regularity and a quiet pause
between each motion then she can see the light and accelerate her
action in getting "the other party."
I have seen a man get so impatient at not having an immediate answer
that he rattled the hook up and down so fast and so vehemently as to
nearly break it. There is something tremendously funny about this.
The man is in a great hurry to speak to some one at the other end of
the telephone, and yet he takes every means to prevent the operator
from knowing what he wants by rattling his hook. In addition to this
his angry movement of the hook is fast tending to break the
telephone, so that he cannot use it at all. So do we interfere with
gaining what we need by wanting it overmuch!
I do not know that there has yet been formed a telephone etiquette;
but for the use of those who are not well bred by habit it would be
useful to put such laws on the first page of the telephone book. A
lack of consideration for others is often too evident in telephonic
communication.
A woman will ask her maid to get the number of a friend's house for
her and ask the friend to come to the telephone, and then keep her
friend waiting while she has time to be called by the maid and to
come to the telephone herself. This method of wasting other people's
time is not confined to women alone. Men are equal offenders, and
often greater ones, for the man at the other end is apt to be more
immediately busy than a woman under such circumstances.
To sum up: The telephone may be the means of increasing our
consideration for others; our quiet, decisive way of getting good
service; our patience, and, through the low voice placed close to
the transmitter, it may relieve us from nervous strain; for nerves
always relax with the voice.
Or the telephone may be the means of making us more selfish and
self-centered, more undecided and diffuse, more impatient, more
strained and nervous.
In fact, the telephones may help us toward health or illness. We
might even say the telephone may lead us toward heaven or toward
hell. We have our choice of roads in the way we use it.
It is a blessed convenience and if it proves a curse--we bring the
curse upon our own heads.
I speak of course only of the public who use the telephone. Those
who serve the public in the use of the telephone must have many
trials to meet, and, I dare say, are not always courteous and
patient. But certainly there can be no case of lagging or
discourtesy on the part of a telephone operator that is not promptly
rectified by a quiet, decided appeal to the "desk."
It is invariably the nervous strain and the anger that makes the
trouble.
There may be one of these days a school for the better use of the
telephone; but such a school never need be established if every
intelligent man and woman will be his and her own school in
appreciating and acting upon the power gained if they compel
themselves to go with science--and never allow themselves to go
against it.
CHAPTER XV
_Don't Talk_
THERE is more nervous energy wasted, more nervous strain generated,
more real physical harm done by superfluous talking than any one
knows, or than any one could possibly believe who had not studied
it. I am not considering the harm done by what people say. We all
know the disastrous effects that follow a careless or malicious use
of the tongue. That is another question. I simply write of the
physical power used up and wasted by mere superfluous words, by
using one hundred words where ten will do--or one thousand words
where none at all were needed.
I once had been listening to a friend chatter, chatter, chatter to
no end for an hour or more, when the idea occurred to me to tell her
of an experiment I had tried by which my voice came more easily.
When I could get an opportunity to speak, I asked her if she had
ever tried taking a long breath and speaking as she let the breath
out. I had to insist a little to keep her mind on the suggestion at
all, but finally succeeded. She took a long breath and then stopped.
There was perhaps for half a minute a blessed silence, and then what
was my surprise to hear her remark: "I--I--can't think of anything
to say." "Try it again," I told her. She took another long breath,
and again gave up because she could not think of anything to say.
She did not like that little game very much, and thought she would
not make another effort, and in about three minutes she began the
chatter, and went on talking until some necessary interruption
parted us.
This woman's talking was nothing more nor less than a nervous habit.
Her thought and her words were not practically connected at all. She
never said what she thought for she never thought. She never said
anything in answer to what was said to her, for she never listened.
Nervous talkers never do listen. That is one of their most striking
characteristics.
I knew of two well-known men--both great talkers--who were invited
to dine. Their host thought, as each man talked a great deal and--,
as he thought--talked very well, if they could meet their
interchange of ideas would be most delightful. Several days later he
met one of his guests in the street and asked how he liked the
friend whom he had met for the first time at his house.
"Very pleasant, very pleasant," the man said, "but he talks too
much."
Not long after this the other guest accosted him unexpectedly in the
street "For Heaven's sake, don't ask me to dine with that Smith
again--why, I could not get a word in edgewise."
Now, if only for selfish reasons a man might realize that he needs
to absorb as well as give out, and so could make himself listen in
order to be sure that his neighbor did not get ahead of him. But a
conceited man, a self-centered man or a great talker will seldom or
never listen.
That being the case, what can you expect of a woman who is a nervous
talker? The more tired such a woman is the more she talks; the more
ill she is the more she talks. As the habit of nervous talking grows
upon a woman it weakens her mind. Indeed, nervous talking is a
steadily weakening process.
Some women talk to forget. If they only knew it was slow mental
suicide and led to worse than death they would be quick to avoid
such false protection. If we have anything we want to forget we can
only forget it by facing it until we have solved the problem that it
places before us, and then working on, according to our best light:
We can never really cover a thing up in our minds by talking
constantly about something else.
Many women think they are going to persuade you of their point of
view by talking. A woman comes to you with her head full of an idea
and finds you do not agree with her. She will talk, talk, talk until
you are blind and sick and heartily wish you were deaf, in order to
prove to you that she is right and you are wrong.
She talks until you do not care whether you are right or wrong. You
only care for the blessed relief of silence, and when she has left
you, she has done all she could in that space of time to injure her
point of view. She has simply buried anything good that she might
have had to say in a cloud of dusty talk.
It is funny to hear such a woman say after a long interview, "Well,
at any rate, I gave him a good talking to. I guess he will go home
and think about it."
Think about it, madam? He will go home with an impression of rattle
and chatter and push that will make him dread the sight of your
face; and still more dread the sound of your voice, lest he be
subjected to further interviews. Women sit at work together. One
woman talks, talks, talks until her companions are so worn with the
constant chatter that they have neither head nor nerve enough to do
their work well. If they know how to let the chatter go on and turn
their attention away from it, so that it makes no impression, they
are fortunate indeed, and the practice is most useful to them. But
that does not relieve the strain of the nervous talker herself; she
is wearing herself out from day to day, and ruining her mind as well
as hurting the nerves and dispositions of those about her who do not
know how to protect themselves from her nervous talk.
Nervous talking is a disease.
Now the question is how to cure it. It can be cured, but the first
necessity is for a woman to know she has the disease. For, unlike
other diseases, the cure does not need a physician, but must be made
by the patient herself.
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