But just what must one do to get this power?
I have told you something about the body’s poisons, how they accumulate in the body and cause illness and nervousness. The first thing to do is to see that your body is free and kept free from these poisons, for if not kept free, the nerve cells become affected and then a perfect will power cannot be developed.
Here are a few practical things to do and not to do to keep the nerve cells so you can develop them. Sleep always alone. Sleeping with another person is unsanitary. The skin needs to get rid of its natural poisons and not take up any from another person. You would not think of breathing the air coming from another person’s lungs. Well, when you are under the sheets and blankets with another person, you can breathe through your skin the poisons coming from this companion. If you have to sleep in a room with another person, you must have your own little bed. Sleep with as little covering over you as is possible with[90] comfort; window, of course, as I have warned you, wide open at the top. You can become accustomed to lighter clothing by gradual methods of reducing the number of blankets.
No underclothing of a material to absorb and retain perspiration should ever be worn. If you keep over your skin any clothing which has become moist through perspiration it will injure your chances of keeping a good nervous force. Take off such clothing before it becomes soggy and cold. Then take a sponge bath and put on dry clothing.
Personally, I believe that porous linen underwear is the best for all growing girls—yes, and for all women. It allows a free evaporation of perspiration, and so prevents a more or less sodden garment from remaining in contact with the skin, which so frequently happens with those who wear woolen underclothing. There is another harmful effect that woolen underclothing is apt to have; the beginning of a rheumatic condition which later on in life becomes a painful chronic rheumatism.
In girls who find that in winter linen underwear is too cold, a thin silk vest may be worn over the linen. This will be found to constitute a thoroughly warm, comfortable and safe form of underwear.
Don’t try to keep awake either by mental effort or that injurious resort of drinking coffee.[91] Sleepiness should not be overcome as a rule, as it is Nature’s signal to stop work. In fact, Nature has signals for almost all dangers, and when we can read these signals all goes well along the road of life.
If efforts are continued in spite of the fatigue, the quality of the work is poor and the exhaustion to your nervous system will be difficult to repair. High-school girls and college young women constantly make this error and then wonder why they become so nervous at times. All sorts of things are tried to keep awake in order to study or dance, when if they would go to bed and rest, they could accomplish far more in half the time in the morning with little or no fatigue. For remember, I am trying to tell you how to get a grip upon that will power.
Yet there are times when sleepiness and fatigue must be overcome without resort to stimulants which will surely weaken any will power you may have been cultivating. These times are when you have to watch by the bedside of an ill mother or someone dear to you. When so situated, go to an open window and take deep breathing exercises. This will burn up the fatigue poisons in your body, for remember these poisons are gathering in everyone’s body when real fatigue commences.
Morning is the time for all mental work if[92] you are a high-school girl or college woman. The afternoon should be devoted to some form of mild exercise and for “low pressure” work.
Shouting, yelling and all extra efforts of the throat muscles will aid in exhausting your nervous powers, to say nothing about the unpleasant and unladylike attitude it places you in before the public. A low, sweet voice, even under excitement, is a sound pleasing to all men and a certain mark of good birth.
I need not repeat the facts about the advertised “remedies” for this trouble or that pain, for I have already warned you to let all drugs and “cures” alone as you would snakes. But there are some drinks that you should be warned against. Never take those soda water fountain’s stuff advertised as “nerve tonics.” Don’t believe the young man or boy at the fountain when he says that “Dopie” or “Bromo Tonic,” “Phosphate for your Nerves,” or “Dockine” and other similar rotten stuff will do you good and that they contain no drugs or injurious materials. Don’t believe a word of all these misleading statements. The boy or young man is there to sell, not to understand or care about your condition.
If such stomach wash and nerve destroyers contain no drugs, then what good are they? If they contain nothing but plain water charged with carbonic acid gas, then why not take a[93] glass of plain seltzer or soda water? Supposing, for example, these advertised drinks do not contain harmful drugs—most of them do, however—they are colored and sweetened. What are they colored with? What is the chemical that sweetens them? If you really knew you would be unable to keep them down, the knowledge of how they are concocted would be revolting to you.
These restrictions do not apply to pure soda water and pure syrups, but even here you must be careful to drink only those which are pure, and only the very best drug stores are safe in this matter.
Most of the bottled drinks sold at five cents should be thrown into the sewers, and how many diseased lips do you think have touched the glasses passed around at the circus and similar shows? Those glasses containing dyed water, a little chemical acid and glucose, with second-hand lemon peel to give the appearance of lemonade, are almost as dangerous as the fangs of a viper.
Don’t dress in a loud and gaudy manner unless you wish to attract the men of loud and loose principles. The personal appearance of a girl makes a great difference in the manner she will be received. To dress in good taste and with every appearance of neatness and modesty, is essential for the girl who seeks[94] employment or respectful attentions. Good taste in dressing simply means that a man can say that the girl was well dressed, but to save his life he could not tell just what she had on for clothes or hat. The dressing of the feet is, perhaps, the first thing a refined and cultivated man looks at. To be well and sensibly shod is always a hall mark of good birth and cultivation. The girl who wears thin shoes on a wet and cold day, the young woman who displays high-heeled shoes and thin silk stockings on a winter’s day, may attract attention, but not respect. A man well knows that if a girl wears a fur coat and low shoes on the street, she will, as a wife, be continually complaining of her indisposition, pains and altogether make his home a place to flee.
No man wants a nervous and complaining woman around his house, and a girl who thinks she is attractive on the street is not the girl who will be attractive in a home. That is, one who dresses her feet for the street in the manner they should be dressed for the house or ballroom proclaims herself a careless girl and one who is not liable to take care of her health.
You have heard much about psychotherapy, suggestion and a lot about certain Movements in church circles. These all proclaim an infallible remedy for “Nerves.” There is a lot of nonsense written about this mental method[95] of healing the nervous and soul-sick person, and, on the other hand, there has been a lot of scoffing at it. There is more in the drilling of our inner selves than the old-time physician has been willing to admit; he has so long been accustomed to consider woman a physical being of bones, flesh and whims, that her real inner self has been sadly neglected. The consequence has been that a number of well-meaning and progressive men have taken up the treatment of troubles without understanding just what relation the gross bodily organs and nerve cells bear to this inner self which we all possess. I shall not bother you with any digression, but get at once to what you can do for yourselves in this matter.
Start early to get inside of yourself; to get at that self which so bothers you at times; the thing which makes you “feel out of sorts,” that “getting mad with yourself;” the feeling that you have not said or done just what you would like to have said or done, but which some uncontrollable impulse, at the moment, made you say and do. This is the inner self, but it belongs to all the other parts of your body; is really the best part of you and will be able to put out the best in you when you have it under full control.
Take a half hour at the time when you can be alone and see into yourself. Search well[96] your heart and learn just what you said or did that you regret. Then find out what caused you to be disagreeable, what has put you out with your better self. Write these thoughts and desires down where you can privately refer to them daily. Take the first mistake and stick to the memory of it so that, when the impulse comes to repeat it, you can check yourself. Drilling yourself this way, you will soon learn to conquer this one fault. Then start in the same way at another fault and conquer that. Don’t try to exercise all the powers of resistance at once, for if you do, there are bound to be failures and too many of these make for discouragement, and then follows recklessness. You would not try to develop a weak back by going from an apparatus meant to develop the thighs to another one for the chest, and then back again for a few moments to that for strengthening the back muscles. No, you stick to the work which develops the back until you have made some decided progress. The inner self, the will, the good girl in you, should be developed in the same way.
You want to go to a dance or perhaps the theater, “all the other girls are going,” but your mother has good and sufficient reasons for not allowing you to go. Now, instead of arguing, complaining and going off to your room in a huff, saying unkind words to your good[97] mother, words which tear and gnaw at her heart, speak to that inner self; call it out; go to your room and peer straight into the trouble with YOU, not that wrong idea that the fault is with your mother.
Think deeply of this fact; she is your mother, nothing that would add to your pleasure or advantage would she deprive you of—not for an instant. But as your mother she knows what is best for you; she may know something about the other girls, about the kind of youths going with them, she may know something about your health that is not advisable to tell you just at the moment. In your room think all these matters over; throw out that unreasonable and false self, and when you have done so, go to your mother, ask her forgiveness and also beg her to tell you her reasons.
Now that your inner self is in control, your mother will tell you confidentially her reasons, and when they are clear to you, the happiness which follows is far beyond any mere physical pleasure you can ever obtain. After a few times of this self-drilling, the obedience to your mother will be a second nature.
Still more fights with your inner self will have to follow, but one by one, you can conquer the enemy. Never become discouraged if you fail, just keep on trying and in the end you will win over all evil and wrong impulses.
[98]
A girl who disobeys her mother or father is the girl who as a wife will be divorced.
The girl who wants to “be a good Indian” will, when a woman, be a repulsive savage.
The girl who deceives her mother will deceive her husband.
All men know this fact.
Remember that marriage does not make a happy woman, but a woman has it in her power to make marriage a happiness.
The most reasonable woman will have hours of being unreasonable, but these are the hours you should be unreasonable with yourself while searching for reasons.