6.
Wasted Energy.
It is hard enough to do duty once, but doubly hard when you anticipate mentally everything you have to do to-morrow. This doing things twice is a habit easily acquired if you don't watch out, and it means wasted energy.
I have just read the experience of a housewife who was resting on a couch and reading. Her eye caught sight of a book lying on the floor across the room.
Instantly her mindometer, if I may coin a word, registered, "When you get up, pick up that book."
She went on reading, but her mind was not on the magazine she held, but on that book on the floor.
So obsessed did she become that she was miserable until she got up and picked up the book.
I was talking with a woman who was resting on her porch. Her day's work was over. She was dressed for the afternoon. Everything in the home was neat, sweet, clean and tidy. All was serene but her face, and that was the window through which I saw worry working overtime.
By strategy I learned the trouble, and here is her story: "To-morrow a lot of fruit will be ready to preserve. I am worrying where I shall put it. My fruit closet is full."