If you, my friend, are so fortunate as to find out that your illness is more a habit of illness than illness itself, do not expect to break the habit at once.  Go about it slowly and with common sense.  A habit can be broken sooner than it can be formed, but even then it cannot be broken immediately.  First recognize that your uncomfortable feelings whether of eyes, nose, stomach, back of neck, top of head, or whatever it may be, are mere habits, and then go about gradually but steadily ignoring them.  When once you find that your own healthy self can assert itself and realize that you are stronger than your habits, these habits of illness will weaken and finally disappear altogether.

The moment an illness gets hold of one, the illness has the floor, so to speak, and the temptation is to consider it the master of the situation—­and yielding to this temptation is the most effectual way of beginning to establish the habits which the illness has started, and makes it more difficult to know when one is well.  On the other hand it is clearly possible to yield completely to an illness and let Nature take its course, and at the same time to take a mental attitude of wholesomeness toward it which will deprive the illness of much of its power.  Nature always tends toward health; so we have the working of natural law entirely on our side.  If the attitude of a man’s mind is healthy, when he gets well he is well.  He is not bothered long with the habits of his illness, for he has never allowed them to gain any hold upon him.  He has neutralized the effect of the wouldbe habits in the beginning so that they could not get a firm hold.  We can counteract bad habits with good ones any time that we want to if we only go to work in the right way and are intelligently persistent.

It would be funny if it were not sad to hear a man say, “Well, you know I had such and such an illness years ago and I never really recovered from the effects of it,” and to know at the same time that he had kept himself in the effects of it, or rather the habits of his nerves had kept him there, and he had been either ignorant or unwilling to use his will to throw off those habits and gain the habits of health which were ready and waiting.

People who cheerfully turn their hearts and minds toward health have so much, so very much, in their favor.

Of course, there are laws of health to be learned and carefully followed in the work of throwing off habits of illness.  We must rest; take food that is nourishing, exercise, plenty of sleep and fresh air—­yet always with the sense that the illness is only something to get rid of, and our own healthy attitude toward the illness is of the greatest importance.

Sometimes a man can go right ahead with his work, allow an illness to run its course, and get well without interrupting his work in the least, because of his strong aim toward health which keeps his illness subordinate.  But this is not often the case.  An illness, even though it be treated as subordinate, must be respected more or less according to its nature.  But when that is done normally no bad habits will be left behind.