Living Without Chaos

The Folly of Overworking

Something else about having a clear goal…your aim can be clear, definite and intense, but too much for you. Your aim and the time you have available have to be in synch.

To have no aim is to drift; to have too many aims is to dissipate energy.

The law of Interest is too clear to be misunderstood. The more the interest, the more the attention. The more the attention, the deeper the interest. And as attention in the form of concentration means all the difference between great results and none at all, the value of interest is fully demonstrated. Interest begets Purpose, and Purpose begets Concentration.

Interest and Memory

(c). The pursuit of a Purpose develops Recollective Ability.

Look back in your life and ask yourself: What are the thoughts and things that I remember most vividly? You will find they are the thoughts and things happy or unhappy that were emotionally experienced.

Memory and Emotion

We once interviewed a man of twenty-five who complained of weak memory for business matters, such as posting letters, telephone messages, dates, and orders: but we found he knew practically everything about baseball; dates of matches, names of teams, and professionals, the exact results of play. About these matters he was a walking encyclopedia. His heart was in baseball, not in business; and where your heart is there is your memory also.

Interest and Ideation

(d) There is an increase in the fertility of Ideas

If you study the records of genius, in almost every case you will find that the originalities and discoveries of great men have been due to this impulse, feeling, emotion (call it what you will) that passes easily from a state of interest into a plan of action. Let one instance suffice. Finsen, the celebrated lightcure specialist, saw a cat reclining lazily, on a roof, in the genial sunshine. The shadow from a neighboring building reached the cat and it moved into the sunshine again. It repeated the process several times. Finsen became interested and his interest deepened and widened with attention to the subject. He knew the cat must have received some benefit from the light and heat, but how and why? At last he felt himself on the track of a great discovery, and eventually his new ideas found expression in the famous Finsen cure. You will perhaps say: Is not this a case where attention developed interest rather than the other way about? No; Finsen became interested in the movements of the cat, and this interest caused a concentration on the why and wherefore of the whole affair. We shall later on deal with the interest that springs out of attention.

Genius and Concentration

Attention, reflection, energy, mental-industry – use any term you will – prepares the conditions of originality. The new idea is the offspring of the subconscious sphere of intellect. That is why the new idea “comes”;   it makes its appearance suddenly, when, perhaps, the mind is engaged on something quite different. Still, the value of attention is not diminished: rather it is increased.

The Growth of Ideas

15. With your powers of interest working at a high but not abnormal pressure, your ideas will grow in number and quality, because you will always be inquiring into the origins and relationships of your business, profession, or calling, as well as into those that are external to it.

Stimulus

Why are you sometimes minus ideas? There are two reasons. A stagnant period, long or short, nearly always follows a creative period; a season of mental plenty is succeeded by one of comparative poverty.

That is intellectual rhythm. But the more serious reason is this: that the fires of interest have died down. You have lost force. Attention, generally, is slacker. Concentration weakens. Results are fewer.

The cure is obvious; increase the stimulus and ideas will come. The law of stimulus has been formulated in the following words: “The efficiency of a feeling, as a motive power, is determined by its intensity and duration.”

Your interest must be permanent and it must be strong; otherwise you gain nothing; you are a changeable person, one week enthusiastic about this or that, and the next week as cold as ice. Your interest, though permanent, is lukewarm – there is no steam behind it, no force – what the man in the street describes as “no ginger.”

Interest and Self-Confidence

(e) Interest-power, when expressed in action, is one of the bases of complete self-confidence.

Self-confidence is nothing more than trust in your own strength, or powers; relying on the correctness of your own judgment, or the competence of your own powers.

How Temperament Affects Us

Temperament, therefore, often stands in the way of a certain kind of progress, especially in circumstances where competition rules.       It often happens that the cleverest men are in the second and third positions and the average men in the first. But these average men are superior in one particular: they are of an energetic and self-confident disposition.   

As to whether you should follow your temperament, or adjust it to your needs – that is a question which no one can decide yourself.

The Place of Knowledge in Self-Confidence

Now your interest may be, probably is, much less ambitious than the abolition of a great evil; but if it is intense, it will surely find opportunities of expression; and even if your temperament is an obstacle, changes will occur tending to reduce the opposition, perhaps to banish it altogether. In this way self-confidence is developed. You know your subject, or you are getting to know it; and the natural desire to hold back is giving way to experience. Let there be no mistake. If you really resolve to master a timid disposition, you can. How is it to be done? By arousing some Feeling in the form of Desire, and by expressing it in. some definite aim.

Interest and Will-Power

There is a final benefit to be considered.

(f) Interest increases Will-Power.

The thing you want to do with all your heart, because you believe it is a good thing, advantageous to you and to others, is the thing about which you will have no difficulty as to action. Your enthusiasm carries you through. If you find you have to work early and late for a month, you will do it.

This fact is one of the simplicities of mental life, but its importance is not often realized. Those men who find themselves languid, indifferent, lazy or unresponsive are usually men without an interest, therefore without a purpose; without concentration and without will. So if you one day feel that your Will is weak, despite good health and the absence of anxiety, just go back to your real purpose in living; examine it to see whether it still retains its original compelling force. Are you as eager as you were? Or has life lost its vim? In most instances it will be found that weak Will is due to loss of impetus or stimulus; desire has decreased; concentration is not so strong. All these things are organically connected, and although there are other factors which cannot be ignored, the chief factor is Interest.