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 much more than an hour and a half in which to do the work of an hour and a half.  Remember the chance of accidents.  Remember human nature.  And give yourself, say, from 9 to 11.30 for your task of ninety minutes.

VII

CONTROLLING THE MIND

People say:  “One can’t help one’s thoughts.”  But one can.  The control of the thinking machine is perfectly possible.  And since nothing whatever happens to us outside our own brain; since nothing hurts us or gives us pleasure except within the brain, the supreme importance of being able to control what goes on in that mysterious brain is patent.  This idea is one of the oldest platitudes, but it is a platitude whose profound truth and urgency most people live and die without realising.  People complain of the lack of power to concentrate, not witting that they may acquire the power, if they choose.

And without the power to concentrate—­that is to say, without the power to dictate to the brain its task and to ensure obedience—­true life is impossible.  Mind control is the first element of a full existence.

Hence, it seems to me, the first business of the day should be to put the mind through its paces.  You look after your body, inside and out; you run grave danger in hacking hairs off your skin; you employ a whole army of individuals, from the milkman to the pig-killer, to enable you to bribe your stomach into decent behaviour.  Why not devote a little attention to the far more delicate machinery of the mind, especially as you will require no extraneous aid?  It is for this portion of the art and craft of living that I have reserved the time from the moment of quitting your door to the moment of arriving at your office.