If any should doubt what we have said as to the close connection between the body and the mind, let them try an experiment which was advocated many years ago by a celebrated psychologist. It consists in reading a comic book with the features contracted into a stern frown, and following this up by reading a pathetic one with the face relaxed into a broad grin. The result will convince them as to the truth of our previous statements.
Anticipation.
Sometimes a man is worried to death on account of some event he is anticipating, a reply to some letter he has sent, or the news of some appointment he is in for. Often under such circumstances he will pace up and down like a caged beast, until the nervous tension almost makes him ill. Try as he may, he cannot sit still. But he can do something equally efficacious, he can engage in some other occupation, keeping his hands and mind employed, instead of glancing continually at the clock or looking for the postman.
Beset by work.
And sometimes people are beset by business until they scarcely know where to turn. Then it may be that they become so agitated that they can do nothing to further the matter in hand. A man once consulted a doctor as to an experience that had befallen him on the previous evening. “At teatime,” he said, “I found myself becoming anxious and worried as to the amount of work in front of me. And the harder I tried to get on with it the more obstinately my brain refused to act, and by bedtime I had got everything into a hopeless muddle.”
The doctor told him that curiously enough he himself had had a similar experience the same evening, and just about the same time.
“And what did you do?” the patient inquired, and was much astonished when the medical man replied, “Went out, had a couple of games of billiards, then came back and finished it all comfortably in a couple of hours.”
When a man finds that his work is worrying him unduly, or when he is so overwhelmed by it that he cannot keep his mental equilibrium, the best thing he can do is to stop it for a time and have a rest or a change of some sort, even if it is only for a few minutes. It will facilitate the work in the long run, and will save the nervous system from an amount of wear and tear which may take days or weeks to put right again.
Unpunctuality and untidiness are responsible for a great amount of unnecessary worry. The man who is habitually late in the mornings is apt to find his work accumulate to such an extent that by the time he ought to be finishing his day’s work he feels it has become a heavy burden upon his shoulders. And people who keep their desks in an untidy condition lose a vast amount of time, and harass themselves by having to search for things they should have been able to put their fingers on at once.
Stimulants.