upon your personality in all possible ways and be satisfied with nothing short of perfect control.  The absolute mastery of ‘self’ ought to be your aim.  I have given you the real secrets.  You must exercise your own ingenuity and intelligence in utilising them towards your Self-development.  I leave you to finish the fight for yourself.  Get up and start in to work at your task from to-day and not to-morrow.  Back of all efforts, always have this positive incentive and auto-suggestion: 

“THIS IS TO DEVELOP MY WILL-POWER AND NO TEMPORARY PAIN CAN EQUAL THE POWER AND HAPPINESS ARISING OUT OF SELF-CONTROL.”

Get firm control over your emotions.  Use this natural force but be not used by it.  Control over speech will lead to Emotion-control.  Always talk to the point.  Cultivate silence.  Repress volubility.  Be brief in speech and writing.  Keep a cool head.  Be level-headed and concentrative.

GLEANINGS FROM PROFESSOR JAMES ON THE LAW OF HABIT.

An acquired habit, from the physiological point of view, is nothing but a new pathway of discharge formed in the brain, by which certain incoming currents ever often tend to escape.

The great thing is to make our nervous system our ally instead of our enemy.—­Guard against ways that are likely to be disadvantageous to us, as we should guard against the plague.

The more of the details of our daily life we can hand over to the effortless custody of automatism, the more our higher powers of mind will be set free for their own proper work.  There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision and for whom (every act) the time of rising and going to bed, the beginning of every bit of work, are subjects for express volitional deliberation.

Maxim I. In the acquisition of a new thought or the leaving off of an old one we must take care to launch ourselves with as strong and decided initiative as possible.

Maxim II.  Never suffer an exception to occur until the new habit is securely rooted in your life.

Each lapse is like letting fall a ball of string which one is carefully winding up; a single slip means more than a great many turns will wind again.

Continuity of training is the great means of making the nervous system act infallibly right.  It is necessary above all things never to lose a battle.  Every gain on the wrong side undoes the effect of many conquests on the right.

The essential precaution is to so regulate the opposing powers that the one may have a series of uninterrupted success, until repetition has fortified it to such a degree as to enable it to cope with the opposition under any circumstances.

The need of securing success at the outset is imperative.  To be habitually successful is the thing.

Be careful not to give the will such a task as to insure its defeat at the outset, but provided one can stand it, a sharp period of suffering, and then a free time is the best to aim at, whether in giving up the opium habit or in simply changing one’s hours of rising or of work.