It seems that not anything worth while in this world is gained without self-fighting and worry. The great things that are accomplished by men and women are accomplished only through will power, determination and concentration. Determination is different from will power in this respect: one may be determined to do a thing but find that she has not the nervous power to carry out the determination. In other words, the nervous force is really the basis of all will power. So all the factors which go to make for self-control and concentration upon whatever you have decided upon doing, are dependent upon a good and perfectly adjusted nervous system. Without a powerful nervous force we would be nothing but eating and sleeping animals.
The men and women who do not know from any personal feeling that there is a tremendous force in a trained nervous system are those who do nothing for the world’s progress; they only eat, sleep and automatically labor. Many who have plenty of nervous force but do not[77] know what it means, and hence cannot control it and use it for the benefit of man and themselves, are those who throw it away in dissipations, abnormal excitement and riotous living.
To have a highly-sensitive nervous organization is the greatest gift a woman can have; but unless she early knows its value and how to train it, it becomes a curse to her. It will run away with all her impulses—good and bad—and finally separate her from her womanly stability.
We hear a lot about “nervous women and girls;” and that the condition is increasing, due to our rapid way of living and all the pressure of trying to keep up the pace civilization has set. I have lived most of my life among nervous women and girls, and have come to the conclusion that the truth of the matter is, that instead of being due to our rapid pace of living and working, it is really due to the fact that most girls have never been taught to train and control their nervous forces.
These nervous girls and women are mostly those who are not over-nervous, but simply never have developed a nervous force that could keep pace with their physical and emotional activities. It is for this reason that their impulses get the better of them, they crave abnormal excitements, want to be on the go constantly,[78] cannot be contented with simple and honorable home duties and finally merge into a condition where they have to seek the doctor or else go to a sanitarium.
Now just consider for a moment some simple facts. You are taught, early in life, the necessity of exercising in order to develop and be able to control your muscles. You are told to “learn to control your temper,” but unless you are in perfect physical condition, with plenty of reserve nervous force, which is really will force, to use when you need it most, how are you to “control your temper”?
I have tried to tell you how necessary it is that all your organs should be kept in perfect condition by knowing what they are, and what they do and how to help them in doing the right thing. Your teachers are constantly at you to make you train your memory, to keep your mind upon your studies, or else your employer is nagging you to pay more attention to what you are told. And how many of you try to do all this and do not succeed!
“Train every faculty, build up your abilities;” do this or don’t do that; always something is dinned into your ears about what you should do to improve yourself. But the one force, THE power which is at the bottom of every impulse or act, nerve activity, is left unmentioned[79] as a force to be trained first, always and last of all the forces in your body.
“She has such a bad temper” is a remark we hear time after time. “If she would only learn to control her outbreaks; don’t get out of temper,” and similar expressions are only too frequently heard in homes and at school—everywhere. No wonder the helpless girl becomes discouraged and disgusted when she is scolded for petty explosions which she would gladly know how to stop.
A girl without a temper doesn’t amount to much. It is a proper attitude of revolt against personal wrong or injustice. It is the birthright of every normal woman. It belongs to her protective instincts. And what is temper? Just the explosion of a highly nervous temperament. Explosion, mind you, not a decent expression of righteous indignation. The difference is that one is uncontrolled nervous force, the other is the same expression of nervous force held in check, governed by long training and handled for some forthright deeds. It is the preserving of this nervous force so as to be able to utilize it for some valuable work, that makes the difference between wasted energy and useless efforts and applied energy with useful results.
The nervous force in woman, including the brain, is the last to become fully developed,[80] but it should be the first to be considered in your training. It means self-control, and there is no better evidence of good birth, well-poised personality and perfect physical health, than control over one’s impulses and words.
A girl with these qualities will soon get a husband who will be kept as a husband.
To get self-control you must go at it in the same systematic manner as you do physical exercise. In this latter matter schools and clubs have gymnasiums for you; there are athletic games played under instructors of physical culture who teach you how to exercise along lines which will give you good bodily health; but the apparatus you need first of all, that for building and strengthening the nervous system and the nervous energy which goes into your sex development, are merely mentioned in some homes and schools and in some others never mentioned. You need a perfectly-balanced nervous organization and one under your complete control before you can benefit from any physical exercise.
“But,” you say, “is not physical exercise a means of building up the nervous organization?”
No, only indirectly. This body of ours, the mere bones, muscles and organs, is only the frame of our human machine, just as the steel body and wheels are that of an automobile.[81] No matter how strong that frame is, no matter what fine material has gone into the workmanship, it is absolutely worthless unless the motor which is to drive it is powerful enough to send it along with ease, and moreover be one which can readily and safely always run under control.
The motor that runs our bodies is the nervous system, and if you have a body so highly developed as to fatigue the nervous motor, then a nervous breakdown is certain to occur. If you have a nervous mechanism too strong for the body it will run away with you and then we have another kind of “nervous breakdown”—hysteria, melancholy, insomnia, drug habit or worse.
The nervous affections of girls and women are generally due to one of these causes I have outlined—unevenness in bodily development or nervous development. They should balance each other, work together and both become tired and demand rest at the same time.
The secretions of the skin, kidneys, liver and other internal organs are controlled through the nervous system. So are the functions of the womb, ovaries and even the heart. Why does your heart beat so rapidly after a fright or great excitement? Because your nervous motor is running beyond your control. Why does a girl’s monthly occurrence sometimes stop after[82] a great fright or skip a period or two during some deep grief or emotional experience? Because the nervous organization of the whole body was put to excessive work and then had to stop for a rest. Having become temporarily exhausted the fine little nerve endings in the organs cannot do their allotted work, hence no secretions can push their way out of the closed cells. For these nerve fibers open and close the cells which secrete the materials that should be cast off at regular intervals.
Not being able to do so the girl becomes “tired,” has headaches, feels “all out of sorts.” Then she thinks something is wrong with her, her good mother gives her “tonics” or “blood medicine” and she is told to exercise.
What she needs instead of exercise or medicines is rest; as much rest and food as she can contentedly stand. The only exercise such a condition calls for is deep breathing and this more to furnish fresh blood which the full lungs give, than for the exercise itself. If we could conveniently get fresh air into the lungs by some method other than breathing it, it would be better still, for even the effort of deep breathing calls for some use of the nervous force, and the least possible disturbance of this force, the quicker will the girl or woman recover her full nervous strength.
If you have exercised beyond the power of[83] the nervous system to send full impulses to the skin so that it will pour out its poisons, some of this poison remains in the body and sets up a condition known as auto-intoxication, which only means self-poisoning. All kinds of nervous affections arise from this state.
The same conditions are brought about by the poisons of the liver, if the delicate nerves of this big sewer of the body are too tired to open up all the little ducts and channels and let out the poisons which the liver has taken up from the blood in your body. And so we might go on into more physiology, showing you that much of the nervousness among girls comes from over-exercise, instead of under-exercise. Probably more of the trouble arises from exercising at wrong times; at times when the nervous organization has all it can do to regulate sex growth and development of the girl. At this time to pull out a lot of nervous power to make muscles work and grow big, must result in some nervous organ being deprived of its needed nerve cell assistance.
In these facts lies the cause for so many nervous wrecks in young women and wives. Nature gives the nervous system of all growing girls constant and concentrating work to do. It has to take care of all the new organs of secretions, see that the breasts are fully supplied with cells ready to do their work when motherhood[84] approaches, fit its tiny but powerful nerve endings to the womb and ovaries, develop the brain and instincts along proper and healthful lines, furnish power to the million cells of the scalp and skin, watch that the stomach pours out a proper amount of digestive fluid at a time when the girl has a craving for strange “eatables” such as slate pencils or gum arabic. The hard and enduring efforts of the nervous system to keep the girl well balanced in her thoughts all the time she is undergoing these necessary changes, should never be overlooked.
No girl between fourteen and twenty years of age should ever train for physical contests or any form of athletic competition. A girl should train for her future work—motherhood—and for this wonderful and glorious contest for bringing onto the earth the best possible men and women, she must have the highest form of nervous development, with all that this implies.
The best way to help all this effort of Nature to give you a nervous system which will stay by you when the worries and trials of life come, is never to over-exercise at any time, and not to exercise at all for a few days before and a few days after your periods. This is the time when your body needs all the reserve power for one purpose.
How can I tell when I need rest instead of exercise?
[85]
The best sign is when you think that you ought to exercise but don’t feel like making the effort. Many, many a girl has become a nervous wreck because someone forced her to exercise when she needed to be quiet and at rest.
Never exercise unless the anticipation of the play or game is a pleasure to you. When you get into that state of mind such as, “Oh, I don’t feel like making the effort; I’d rather sit here and read, or talk”—if you feel like that, if you have to make up your mind that you must exercise, but it is difficult to find any pleasure in the thing you are thinking of doing; don’t try to do it.
If you make determined efforts to do any physical work that is distasteful to you, if you work by the clock, then you are injuring yourself every minute you are at it. You are drawing upon your nervous capital, not upon the interest. This is the secret of all exercise, brain or muscle: work must be done upon saved-up interest, not upon the capital. If you use the capital, it only means for the body what it would mean for the purse—bankruptcy—sure and certain failure.
Any physical effort which leaves you feeling worse than when you started, is injuring you. This does not mean a good physically tired feeling, one in which your cheeks are aglow,[86] when you feel elated at what you have done, when a cold shower bath feels good instead of making you shiver and covered with “gooseflesh,” but that feeling of complete exhaustion, pale cheeks, a feeling of shivering if cold baths are mentioned and a longing for something to drink that will brace you up. When this latter state is yours, you have over-exercised or else exercised at a time when your nervous motor needed a rest, not disturbance.
You sometimes hear it said, “Why, she is the last girl in the world I thought would ever get nervous troubles. She is the best girl on the team—Oh! you ought to see her muscles.”
Yes, but you should also see those worn-out nerve cells.
Misdirected ambition, a forgetfulness that she had only a certain amount of nervous power, an excitement which blinded her to her real condition; these were the factors which made her drive her motor far beyond its powers. Finally there was no more nervous energy to move her over-developed muscles without fatigue, and fatigue has its own poisons which penetrate the whole body and then comes a collapse. This was the cause for this “strong girl’s” nervous breakdown.
No girl is strong, or ever will be as a woman, whose body and muscles have been developed at the expense of her nervous system. The[87] really strong girl is one who has power saved up, and when a time of great stress or work comes, has this extra power to put out and not become a nervous bankrupt.
Exercise, like your daily work, should always be a pleasure instead of boresome labor. Only by doing things in this state of mind can you ever be successful.
The drilling, training and developing of the will—powers of self-control—must be a constant part of a girl’s self-education. It is all very well to tell a girl to “use will power,” but before she is blamed for the lack of control, it would be only just to her to find out just how much of this power she has to use.
Will power depends upon a perfect nervous system. The reason one cannot call to a will power to stop an evil or disagreeable habit, is because the habit has temporarily destroyed, or rather put to sleep, the power to will. If there has not been, in the beginning, a well-drilled self-control—or will power—how can you expect a girl who flies off into an unreasonable temper, to immediately control this temper and keep it under control?
The will power is the rudder of life; the steering control over our human ship as it voyages on the seas of life. Now if a ship should go to sea without a rudder, you know just what would happen to it. If it goes on a[88] voyage with a weak rudder, or one which has been damaged and not repaired, the best sailor in the world cannot keep it off the rocks when a storm comes.
It is just so with our brains and bodies; they must be controlled by a strong and well-attached rudder, the will power. With such a power one can accomplish wonders; in fact, everything that seems marvelous to us in man’s work has been due to perfect steering of right impulses into new harbors where an unsteady human ship would be wrecked in trying to pass the hidden rocks and roaring reefs.