But the reader will say, “How can I make myself willing when I am not willing?”

The answer is that if you know that your unwillingness to lose the train is preventing you from catching it, you certainly will see the efficacy of being willing, and you will do all in your power toward yielding to common sense.  Unwillingness is resistance,—­resistance in the mind contracts the muscles, and such contraction prevents our using the muscles freely and easily.  Therefore let us be willing.

Of course there, is. a lazy, selfish indifference to catching a train, or accomplishing anything else, which leaves the tendency to hurry out of some temperaments altogether, but with that kind of a person we are not dealing now.  And such indifference is the absolute opposite of the wholesome indifference in which there is no touch of laziness or selfishness.

If we want to avoid hurry we must get the habit of hurry out of our brains, and cut ourselves off, patiently and kindly, from the atmosphere of hurry about us.  The habit gets so strong a hold of the nerves, and is impressed upon them so forcibly as a steady tendency, that it can be detected by a close observer even in a person who is lying on a lounge in the full belief that he is resting.  It shows itself especially in the breathing.  A wise athlete has said that our normal breathing should consist of six breaths to one minute.  If the reader will try this rate of breathing, the slowness of it will surprise him.  Six breaths to one minute seem to make the breathing unnecessarily slow, and just double that seems about the right number for ordinary people; and the habit of breathing at this slower rate is a great help, from a physical standpoint, toward erasing the tendency to hurry.

One of the most restful exercises any one can take is to lie at full length on a bed or lounge and to inhale and exhale, at a perfectly even, slow rate, for half an hour.  It makes the exercise more restful if another person counts for the breathing, say, ten slowly and quickly to inhale, and ten to exhale, with a little pause to give time for a quiet change from one breath to another.

Resistance, which is the mental source of hurry, is equally at the root of that most harmful emotion—­the habit of worrying.  And the same truths which must be learned and practised to free ourselves of the one habit are applicable to the other.

Take the simple example of a child who worries over his lessons.  Children illustrate the principle especially well, because they are so responsive that, if you meet them quietly with the truth in difficulties of this kind they recognize its value and apply it very quickly, and it takes them, comparatively, a very little time to get free.

If you think of telling a child that the moment he finds himself worrying about his lesson he should close his book and say: 

“I do not care whether I get this lesson or not.”