I told her that I thought it was and then asked whether she wished to have the same kind of experiences again this time.
“Of course not, but how can I help it?” she replied. “My sister-in-law is here and what she has done before she will do again, and what am I to do?”
“Quit building in your thought world for a repetition of these experiences and begin to build for what you want instead,” I answered, “for as long as you continue to take the attitude you have always heretofore taken towards these visits of your sister-in-law, and towards what she says and does; as long as you continue to set the causes in motion which will produce these inharmonious and destructive effects, just so long will you continue to be miserable and unhappy every time your visitor comes to see you. YOU, however, can change all of these conditions and effects by changing your attitude towards them, provided you have the real want to do this.”
“Oh, doctor,” she said, “I will do anything in the world that is possible for me to do, in order to get rid of all the misery which these visits have caused me in the past.”
“Then promise me,” I said, “that you will follow my instructions and I will guarantee that by the time the three weeks’ visit is up you will tell me they have been the happiest three weeks of your life.”
“Oh, could I only believe that would be possible, doctor,” she said, “I would be so happy.”
“I do not ask you to believe,” I replied, “but I do ask you to follow my instructions implicitly, for I know what the results will be even though you do not know at the present time.”
I told her the first thing she should do was to forget her own little, petty, personal self with all of its criticisms, condemnations and self-pity; take her hands off her sister-in-law’s life and permit her to enjoy herself as she (the sister-in-law) wanted and that she herself was to turn in and do everything possible to make the visit a most pleasant one and to give her visitor the “time of her life.” She was to remember that her sister-in-law lived in a small town and the visit to New York once a year was a big event in her life; one which she planned for and talked about for months before she came, living in the pleasure of its anticipation and reveling in the joys of it after her return home. The theaters, churches, shops, big department stores, the crowds of people, the illuminations on Broadway were never ending objects of interest to one who only saw them occasionally. That heretofore she (my patient) had only thought of herself, the extra work, care and bother of having some one around who disturbed her home life, and that the time she had spent in entertaining her visitor had been the worst kind of drudgery to her because she had become satiated with these things and only went with her visitor because it was her “duty” to do so. She should plan to go with her visitor wherever the latter wished to go and do the things her visitor wanted to do, not as a “duty” she owed to the sister of her husband, as had been the case heretofore, but do it as a “blessed privilege”; do it because she herself enjoyed giving her visitor a good time; do it because she derived the greatest pleasure in doing it; do it because she got so much fun, pleasure and enjoyment out of seeing her sister-in-law have such a good time that she would rather do it than not.
I told her that when we did anything from the plane of consciousness where it was our “duty” to do it, that it lost its constructive effect, for no matter how pleasant we might seem to be on the outside there was always the inner resentment and resistance in our consciousness because we felt that we just had to do it on account of its being our “duty,” but that when we changed our inner state of consciousness through changing our attitude towards a thing and made it our “blessed privilege” instead of our “duty” to do it, then the whole thing changed and what had been before drudgery and difficult to do, became in fact a joy and pleasure.
Objectively she was not necessarily to do anything different in entertaining her visitor than she had always done before but she was to do it with an entirely different consciousness, a different thought back of it, a different purpose or motive. She was to make it her “blessed privilege” to have her sister-in-law here with her and was to take advantage of the opportunity to give her the very best time possible, and that this change of attitude on her part would work such a transformation in her as to seem miraculous in its results.