An actor or lecturer after months of continuous work may find the brain and body growing tired and dull.  He may feel when going before his audience that he has not an idea nor the wit to express it were someone else to furnish it.  Yet by an effort of the will he can quickly overcome the condition and change from stupidity to mental alertness and intensity of thought.  The self is never tired.  It is only the physical body that grows weary.  It is true that it has its limitations and must not be overtaxed and driven beyond endurance as a tired horse is sometimes cruelly urged forward with whip and spur.  Judgment must always be used in determining one’s capacity for work.  But that which is to be done should never be done draggingly, with the inertia of the physical body marring the work.  We should be fully awake instead of “dead” while we “are walking about.”  If a person resolves to be the master of the body he may soon acquire the power to arouse it to activity and alertness during all his waking hours, very much as one may acquire the habit of keen observation and be conscious of what is occurring in his vicinity instead of being carelessly unconscious of the major portion of what is going on immediately about him.

This matter of giving attention to the things that may properly engage the mind, and of using the will to arouse and control it, is of very great importance.  Is it not what we call “paying attention” that makes the connection between the ego and the objective world?  Giving attention is a process of consciousness.  The person who fails in attention misses the purpose of life and throws away valuable time and opportunity.  To give attention is to be alive and awake and in a condition to make the most of limited physical life.  Yet many people cannot give sustained attention to an ordinary conversation nor direct the mind with sufficient precision to state a simple fact without wandering aimlessly about in the effort, bringing in various incidental matters until the original subject, instead of being made clear, is obscured in a maze of unimportant details or lost sight of altogether.

Such habits of mind should be put resolutely aside by one who would hasten self-development.  The attention should be fixed deliberately upon the subject in hand, whatever it may be, and nothing should be permitted to break the connection between that and the mind.  Whether it is a conversation or a book, or a manual task, or a problem being silently worked out intellectually, it should have undivided attention until the mind is ready for something else.