A SUPREME DAILY-LIFE METHOD

A SUPREME DAILY-LIFE METHOD
A CENTRAL PLAN:= Do your mental work in the morning, your manual work in the
afternoon. Do not dictate letters in the afternoon; from ten to twelve in the morning is
best. The brain is usually at low ebb at three o’clock in the afternoon. Do not have your
desk so that you have to look side-wise at persons approaching you. It blunts your
personality. By no means have people enter behind you, it is the most negative
psychic influence possible. Let your position in your office be such that when anyone
approaches your eyes will fall upon them as near a straight level as possible. Plan
your workroom for efficiency. No matter how small, how large, or if it be but a bench.
Put your character stamp on the plan of the work you do. Go to that work as a King
goes to his throne. Centralize your work. Plan it. Work your plan.
=HAVE A SYSTEM OF ORDER=: Set your mind in order first. If you are living as I
have taught in the lessons that have gone before, then your mind will assume a
supreme command of order almost at once. Classify what you do. Keep matters
separate. Do the big things first. As you classify, drop the non-essentials. Weed out
the useless. Never spend a minute of your morning hours winding up a string or
folding a piece of wrapping paper. Do that when your brain tide has ebbed out in the
afternoon, or not at all. Don’t hunt for a pin, or sharpen a pencil, or manicure your nails
after you reach your work of the day. Classify your movements, eliminate the useless.
Energize your movements. Move with enthusiasm. Put elastic cheer into your step.
Wear rubber heels of quiet manners. Simplify your work. Keep it straight, after a little it
will keep you straight. Don’t fall over your work, nor step on it, or sit on it. Simplify by
stopping the waste of words, waste of material, waste of time. Jollify your work. Put
fun into each day’s round of toil. Be original in plans and ideas.
=CULTIVATE YOUR EFFICIENCY=: To all the above add mental energy. Develop
insight, grow new business brain cells. Do not overload your stomach with food, nor
your body with clothing. Study directness. Master application. At Niagara Falls I saw
two giant dynamos generating twenty-five thousand horse power, their efficiency was
kept in perfect balance by a little automatic nickle gate. Your efficiency is kept in
balance by little, invisible and automatic thought neurons. A clear brain is the test of
efficiency. Plans, orders, system, application, give efficiency. Efficiency is positive
thinking. Freedom-thinking, above fear-thinking. Get out and keep out of negative
thinking. Just as soon as you drop negative thinking your mind will begin to rise to a
new brilliance of expression. One big element in efficiency is silence. It is the strongest
thing to be silent. Noise is emptiness, weakness, inefficiency. Silence is the law of
greatness; noise the breaking of the law.
=DEVELOP YOUR POWER TO REST:= That person is wise who knows how
to rest. It is a powerful thing to rest successfully. Over-fed persons, or animals, do not
rest, they are stupefied. Rest is filling your capacities with energy. “Sleep knits up the
ravelled sleeve of care,” or it should. Rest is relaxing the nerves and muscles. Rest is
reconstructing broken down cellular tissues. Rest is restringing the harp of the senses,
retuning the rhythmic harmonies of the spirit. Rest lets down the tension. When you sit
down, let what you sit on hold you. When you lie down, do not try to hold yourself on
the bed. Rest is the opposite of labor. Rest is recreation. Rest with sleep is a divine
restorative. When you cannot rest, or sleep, you are expending energy without
production. Try this little code for rest and sleep: “My mind is empty, my soul is at rest.”
Repeat it with your eyes closed and your body relaxed. Say it just as you would
imagine the swing of the pendulum of an old fashion hall clock. I never knew it to fail of
inducing sleep. Never rest or sleep with light falling on your eyes. Shut out the world
and noise.
=GROW THE FRUITS OF THE SPIRIT:= Love, Joy, Peace, Gentleness, Goodness,
Faith, Meekness, Temperance, against such there is no law. Do not sit down and wish
for them, nor wait for someone to bring them to you, even God will not bring them to
you. Grow them. Cultivate them. Produce them. No power on this earth can defeat
you, make you fail, or over-throw you if you fill your Spirit with them. As you work, use
them. Take them with you to the store, the factory, the shop, the mill, to your bench.
Take them with you to the office, the counting-room, the court-room, and to your
throne-room. Take them with you to the battle field, to the halls of justice, to the senate
chamber, to the presidential chair. Take them with you thru the streets, along the
highways, and over the unbeaten paths of your life. Take them with you down the
rivers, and out into the storm driven sea. Chain them to the wheel of your ship, sail on
thru the starless night alone. Trust them, for they are the initiative of the Supreme in
you.
=TRAIN YOUR VOICE:= Take your snarling, growling, snapping, whining voice away
into the jungle and leave it to the wild beasts. Take your sobbing, sniveling, trembling,
dolorous, sanctimonious voice down into some dismal swamp and bury it. Train your
voice as you would tune a harp. Your voice is an index of character. Keep it on the
level. Let it “speak as one having authority.” Charm it with modulation. Make it ripple
with music. Allow no thrust of anger to ruffle it. Intensify it with determination.
Strengthen it with courage. Give it dominion and power. When other voices are hot
and spuming around you, keep your voice cool. Never allow your voice to become
dull, dubious, uncertain, shrinking, or hollow. Voice tones that are round, rhythmic, full
measured. Have a serene and reposeful voice. Look at what you speak. Reflect your
soul in your voice. Let the manner of your voice be calm, smooth, collected, but
energized with positive forces. Have a cheerful voice, a voice that makes one think of
sunshine and smiles.
=HOW TO LOVE RELATIVES:= To love your relatives be away from home
all you can. To have them love you keep about three hundred miles between you and
them. Thousands of homes and lives are wrecked by two families of the same family
trying to live under the same roof. Noah would have foundered with the Ark ten days
after the flood started if he had taken more than two out of any one family with him.
Cain would never have killed Abel if Adam hadn’t made the fool blunder of trying to
keep his two sons everlastingly with him. Of course there was some excuse in the fact
that in those days New York and Paris were not brilliantly attractive cities. If there is
any one thing outside a church row, that tickles the devil into a frenzy of laughter it is
when a young married couple go home to live with the family. There is about as much
real life joy and harmony in it as there would be in a jungle picnic of monkeys and
parrots. There is just one place where large families can dwell together peaceably—
the grave-yard. It is contrary to natural law that families of grown ups, should live together.