To obviate that difficulty, we must be content to change our habit more slowly.  Suppose we come home Saturday night all tired out; go to bed and go to sleep, and wake Sunday almost more tired than when we went to bed.  On Sunday we do not have to go to work.

Let us take a little time for the sole purpose of thinking our work over, and trying to find where the unnecessary strain is.

“But,” I hear some one say, “I am too tired to think.”  Now it is a scientific fact that when our brains are all tired out in one direction, if we use our wills to start them working in another direction, they will get rested.

“But,” again I hear, “if I think about my work, why isn’t that using my brain in the same direction?” Because in thinking to apply new principles to work, of which you have never thought before, you are thinking in a new direction.

Not only that, but in applying new and true principles to your work you are bringing new life into the work itself.

On this Sunday morning, when you take an hour to devote yourself to the study of how you can work without getting overtired ask yourself the following questions:—­

(1) “What do I resist in or about my work?” Find out each thing that you do resist, and drop the contractions that come in your body, with the intention of dropping the resistances in your mind.

(2) “Do I drop my work at meals and eat quietly?”

(3) “Do I take every opportunity that I can to get fresh air, and take good, full breaths of it?”

(4) “Do I feel hurried and pushed in my work?  Do I realize that no matter how much of a hurry there may be, I can hurry more effectively if I drop the strain of the hurry?”

(5) “How much superfluous strain do I use in my work?  Do I work with a feeling of strain?  How can I observe better in order to become conscious of the strain and drop it?”

These are enough questions for one time!  If you concentrate on these questions and on finding the answers, and do it diligently, you will be surprised to see how the true answers will come to you, and how much clearer they will become as you put them into daily practice.

CHAPTER XII

Imaginary Vacations

ONCE a young woman who had very hard work to do day after day and who had come to where she was chronically strained and tired, turned to her mother just as she was starting for work in the morning, and in a voice tense with fatigue and trouble, said:—­

“Mother, I cannot stand it.  I cannot stand it.  Unless I can get a vacation long enough at least to catch my breath, I shall break down altogether.”

“Why don’t you take a vacation today?” asked her mother.  The daughter got a little irritated and snapped out:—–­

“Why do you say such a foolish thing as that, Mother?  You know as well as I that I could not leave my work to-day.”