How to Live on Twenty-Four Hours a Day
Page: 19

minutes morning and evening, and yet you are not astonished when
your physical health and strength are beneficially affected every hour
of the day, and your whole physical outlook changed. Why should
you be astonished that an average of over an hour a day given to the
mind should permanently and completely enliven the whole activity
of the mind?

More time might assuredly be given to the cultivation of one's self.
And in proportion as the time was longer the results would be greater.
But I prefer to begin with what looks like a trifling effort.

It is not really a trifling effort, as those will discover who have yet
to essay it. To "clear" even seven hours and a half from the jungle is
passably difficult. For some sacrifice has to be made. One may have
spent one's time badly, but one did spend it; one did do something
with it, however ill-advised that something may have been. To do
something else means a change of habits.

And habits are the very dickens to change! Further, any change, even
a change for the better, is always accompanied by drawbacks and
discomforts. If you imagine that you will be able to devote seven
hours and a half a week to serious, continuous effort, and still live
your old life, you are mistaken. I repeat that some sacrifice, and an
immense deal of volition, will be necessary. And it is because I know
the difficulty, it is because I know the almost disastrous effect of failure
in such an enterprise, that I earnestly advise a very humble beginning.
You must safeguard your self-respect. Self-respect is at the root of all
purposefulness, and a failure in an enterprise deliberately planned deals
a desperate wound at one's self-respect. Hence I iterate and reiterate:
Start quietly, unostentatiously.


When you have conscientiously given seven hours and a half a week
to the cultivation of your vitality for three months--then you may
begin to sing louder and tell yourself what wondrous things you are
capable of doing.

Before coming to the method of using the indicated hours, I have one
final suggestion to make. That is, as regards the evenings, to allow