[Sidenote:  Developing Determination]

Hence the training of your muscles for building the habit of determination within you should be concentrated on exercise in changing swiftly from comparative laxity to muscular tension.  That is, in order to accustom your mind to hardening with determined thoughts whenever determination is needed, you should train your muscles to harden in coordination, and thus to support your mental determination by the complementary physical suggestion of the same quality.

You do not need to use determination all the time; so it will be sufficient if your muscles are taught to be quickly responsive to determination of mind on any occasion. (You know it helps you to carry out a resolution if you stiffen your body at the moment you make up your mind to do a thing, but continued stiffness of the body in determination would be a strain likely to weaken your power of action unless backed by a tremendous, stored-up reserve strength of muscles.) Begin your practice for the development of determination, then, by training your muscles to tauten the instant you think determinedly.  Your brain-mind center of determination will also be strengthened by the exercise that builds up the supporting habit of muscle action in coordination.  Millions of men have failed in life because their determined thoughts were not reenforced by stiffened backbones.

[Sidenote:  Discrimination Between Determination and Persistence]

Now let us discriminate between muscle training to develop the characteristic of persistence and the training already described for the building of determination.  In order to strengthen your persistence, you must transmit through the distinct brain center of persistence to the corresponding mind center, the impression of muscles permanently developed in firmness, not just capable of temporary hardening on occasion.

The characteristically persistent man has gradually developed his lax-muscled, sagging, baby chin into a jaw that is habitually firm, whether or not he happens to be determined to do anything at a given moment.  His muscles do not sag utterly, even when he is asleep.  He probably wakes up in the morning with his teeth clenched.  So, whenever his coordinated brain-mind center perceives that the quality of persistence is required, and starts to apply it, the mental impulse to persist is backed by a permanent firm muscle structure that can stand up as long as the mind needs the physical support.

[Sidenote:  A Slump in Determination]

In contrast, the man who is only characteristically determined, but who lacks persistence in his determination, has developed just the habit of hardening his muscles for the time he is determined on doing a particular thing.  That does not exercise his muscles sufficiently to make them firm all the time, whether under tension or not.  Consequently his determination is likely to slump if his resolution is subjected to a long strain.  He does not possess muscular structure sufficiently strong to support persistence in his determination.