Business men often give as an excuse for always grinding at their work and for too seldom taking vacations that they haven’t time, but when they do have a little leisure they will surely take “a day or two off.”
Is there any shorter-sighted policy than for one to overwork and strain, to plod away for months and years with dull mental tools, and to plead as an excuse that he can’t afford to take time to sharpen them, thus putting himself in a state of physical and mental fitness?
What a strange thing that a long-headed, shrewd business man cannot see the deteriorated product of his exhausted mind; cannot see that the everlasting grinding of work out of tired brains and dull, jaded faculties is very poor business!
One of the greatest dangers in our strenuous American life is the temptation to overstrain under high pressure. Men are continually overdrawing their physical bank accounts by using up their reserve capital, and before they realize it they become physically bankrupt.
As a very noted medical authority said recently: “While we do know a great deal more about hygiene and have been able to conquer many diseases, especially infectious diseases, which formerly, through our ignorance, carried away vast multitudes of human beings every year, yet the increased cost of living, the greater struggle for existence, our more exciting, more strenuous, nerve-racking life have increased our vitality tension, nerve tension, and brain tension. As a consequence, our worries, anxieties, and cares are greatly augmented. The wear and tear of life is greater than formerly because we are living a more complex life and are getting farther and farther away from the simple things of other days.”
Anything which tends to lower our vitality or sap our energy cuts down, by so much, our efficiency and possibilities.
Perfect health is a great discoverer of ability. It brings out resourcefulness, inventiveness, and initiative, which would be covered up and buried by poor health. Physical and mental fitness means new hope, new life, new power. There is a vast amount of ability lost to the world through poor health, through not keeping in condition to give out the best that is enfolded in us.
There are many people of a high order of ability who do very ordinary work in life and whose careers are most disappointing, simply because they do not keep themselves in physical and mental condition to do their best.
I know men in middle life who are just where they were when they left school or college. They have not advanced a particle; some have even retrograded, and they cannot understand why they do not get on, why they are not more successful. But every one who knows them sees the great handicaps of indifference to their health, neglect of their physical needs, dissipation, irregular living, slipshod, slovenly habits, and other unfortunate things which are keeping them down—handicaps with which even intellectual giants could not drag along and make much progress.
In every walk of life we see people plodding along in mediocrity, capable of great things, but doing little things, because they have not vitality enough to push their way and overcome the obstacles in their path. They have not kept themselves fit.
Most of us are our own worst enemies. We expect a great deal of ourselves, yet we do not put ourselves in a condition to achieve. We are either too indulgent to our bodies, or we are not indulgent enough. We pamper them or we neglect them, and it would be hard to tell which mode of treatment produces the worst results.
How humiliating to feel ambition throbbing within us to do a great thing, to feel conscious of ability to accomplish it, yet to be prevented by lack of physical stamina, staying power, vitality! What a deplorable thing to come within sight of one’s goal and suffer the pangs of thwarted ambition because of poor health!
There are tens of thousands of people who are almost successful, who have almost done the things they started out to do, but who cannot get any farther because their health has broken down; or, it may be, because of some physical weakness or diseased organs, due often to eating wrong things through ignorance, when scientific food and scientific living would not only have carried them to the goal, but would also have brought them there in superb condition.
It is no less sad to see people reach their goals in an exhausted, played-out condition, with health ruined; so that, although they have achieved their ambition, the power of enjoyment is gone.
No one can amount to much in this world until he has had an understanding with himself that he is going to stand for something, that he is going to make a man of himself; until he resolves not to be satisfied with a half-life or a cheap success, for he is going to play the part of a man, going to make good, no matter what the cost in effort, no matter what the sacrifice of ease and pleasure. But he must never forget that the basis of all achievement is health; that, even if he reaches the goal of his ambition and leaves his health on the way, he is not a real success.
The first requisite of success and happiness for every human being is to be a first-class animal. One can accomplish wonderful things with no other capital than robust health and determination to make something of oneself; but, no matter how much ambition one has, if he ruins his health by neglect, or by vicious habits; if he devitalizes himself by an abnormal or irregular life, he should know that his only chance of accomplishing anything very important will soon be gone. Unless one keeps himself at the top of his condition, the best that is in him will not respond to his efforts. He must be satisfied with even second or third best results if his physical condition is run down, if his vitality is lowered by violating the laws of existence or by irregularities of living.
A stream cannot rise higher than its fountain head. If one’s physical condition is low, if he is devitalized, his ambition suffers, his ideals are lowered, his energies lag, and his work is poor. As a general rule, our physical condition is reflected in everything we do. If the mind is cloudy or suffering or affected by weakness or disease, the condition is reflected in the work. Everything in a man corresponds with his physical condition. All of his defects or weaknesses of this kind will reappear in whatever he does, and his mental condition will always harmonize with his physical state.
Yet how often we see young people starting out in life with great ambitions to make places for themselves in the world and to do things worth while, but all the time really ruining their possibilities of great accomplishment by ignoring the laws of health, in all sorts of ways lowering their physical status, enfeebling themselves so that they do not have sufficient power to attain their ideals. The very thing that they are most dependent upon for attaining their object, strong and vigorous vitality, they sacrifice.
Keeping fit for our work is the most superb thing that we can do, because upon it depends our efficiency, happiness, and usefulness. Few people fully realize this. They do not appreciate the tremendous influence of health upon ambition. When you are strong and vigorous, and have a robust appetite, you feel equal to almost any undertaking. Obstacles do not seem very forbidding; your courage is as vigorous as your health. But when your vitality drops, your courage drops with it. Things which did not worry you a little while ago, when you were strong and vigorous, now look formidable. They loom up like mountains of difficulty.
There is a vast difference between going to your work in the morning in superb condition, so that you are full of enthusiasm, buoyancy of spirit, eagerness, and zest, approaching it with a great love for your work, with your heart in it, ambitious to excel in it and to make every minute count, and going to it with low vitality, with the brain weary, jaded from bad habits and lack of sleep, with the brain badly nourished with improper food, or with the digestion entirely upset by overeating or eating rich and indigestible foods.
The great thing in life is efficiency. If you would be efficient you must keep fit by cutting away all of your health-sappers, getting rid of everything which hampers you and holds you back, everything which wastes your vitality and cuts down your working capital.
Most people do not realize how many little leaks are constantly draining off their life forces and cutting down by so much their power to keep fit.
Thousands use up more of their brain power and nervous energy in impatience, in hurrying and in worrying, than they expend in actual work.
Victims of the hurry habit, of the hurry thought, are ineffective, never fit, never at their