The following contains excepts from the book, How to Stop Worrying and Start Living (Dale Carnegie).
At our music school in Odessa, Texas, we recognize the value of having a healthy outlook on life, and we hope to inspire our students to live a life free of stress through cultivating a positive attitude both in their art, as well as in their life, overall.
What Makes You Tired- and What You Can Do About It
So far as the brain is concerned, it can work “as well and as swiftly at the end of eight or even twelve hours of effort as at the beginning”. The brain is utterly tireless. … So what makes you tired?
Psychiatrists declare that most of our fatigue derives from our mental and emotional attitudes. One of
England’s most distinguished psychiatrists, J.A. Hadfield, says in his book The Psychology of Power:
“the greater part of the fatigue from which we suffer is of mental origin; in fact exhaustion of purely physical origin is rare.”
The Metropolitan Life Insurance Company pointed that out in a leaflet on fatigue: “Hard work by itself,” says this great life-insurance company, “seldom causes fatigue which cannot be cured by a good sleep or rest. … Worry, tenseness, and emotional upsets are three of the biggest causes of fatigue. Often they are to blame when physical or mental work seems to be the cause. … Remember that a tense muscle is a working muscle. Ease up! Save energy for important duties.”
Stop now, right where you are, and give yourself a check-up. As you read these lines, are you scowling at the book? Do you feel a strain between the eyes? Are you sitting relaxed in your chair? Or are you hunching up your shoulders? Are the muscles of your face tense? Unless your entire body is as limp and relaxed as an old rag doll, you are at this very moment producing nervous tensions and muscular tensions. You are producing nervous tensions and nervous fatigue!
At our music school in Odessa, Texas, we teach our students aspects of Alexander Technique, which helps them identify muscles that are unnecessary in their performance, and to gain mastery of how they use their bodies in their pursuit of artistic discipline.
Why do we produce these unnecessary tensions in doing mental work? Josselyn says: “I find that the chief obstacle … is the almost universal belief that hard work requires a feeling of effort, else it is not well done.” So we scowl when we concentrate. We hunch up our shoulders. We call on our muscles to make the motion of effort, which in no way assists our brain in its work. Here is an astonishing and tragic truth: millions of people who wouldn’t dream of wasting dollars go right on wasting and squandering their energy with the recklessness of seven drunken sailors in Singapore.
What is the answer to this nervous fatigue? Relax! Relax! Relax! Learn to relax while you are doing
your work! Easy? No. You will probably have to reverse the habits of a lifetime. But it is worth the effort, for it may revolutionize your life!
William James said, in his essay “The Gospel of Relaxation”: “The American over-tension and jerkiness and breathlessness and intensity and agony of expression … are bad habits, nothing more or less.” Tension is a habit. Relaxing is a habit. And bad habits can be broken, good habits formed.
Here are five suggestions that will help you learn to relax:
1. Read one of the best books ever written on this subject: Release from Nervous Tension, by Dr. David Harold Fink.
2. Relax in odd moments. Let your body go limp like an old sock. I keep an old, maroon-coloured sock on my desk as I work-keep it there as a reminder of how limp I ought to be. If you haven’t got a sock, a cat will do. Did you ever pick up a kitten sleeping in the sunshine? If so, both ends sagged like a wet newspaper. Even the yogis in India say that if you want to master the art of relaxation, study the cat. I never saw a tired cat, a cat with a nervous breakdown, or a cat suffering from insomnia, worry, or stomach ulcers. You will probably avoid these disasters if you learn to relax as the cat does.
3. Work, as much as possible, in a comfortable position. Remember that tensions in the body produce aching shoulders and nervous fatigue.
4. Check yourself four or five times a day, and say to yourself: “Am I making my work harder than it actually is? Am I using muscles that have nothing to do with the work I am doing?” This will help you form the habit of relaxing, and as Dr. David Harold Fink says: “Among those who know psychology best, it is habits two to one.”
5. Test yourself again at the end of the day, by asking yourself: “Just how tired am I? If I am tired, it is not because of the mental work I have done but because of the way I have done it.” “I measure my accomplishments,” says Daniel W. Josselyn, “not by how tired I am at the end of the day, but how tired I am not.” He says: “When I feel particularly tired at the end of the day, or when irritability proves that my nerves are tired, I know beyond question that it has been an inefficient day both as to quantity and quality.” If every business man would learn that same lesson, the death rate from “hypertension” diseases would drop overnight.
At our music school in Odessa, Texas we show students that if they have cultivated proper disciplines through good habits of conditioning in their craft, that they can perform for many hours without strain or fatigue.
How to Avoid Fatigue- and Keep Looking Young
Dr. Rose Hilferding, the medical adviser of the class, said that she thought one of the best remedies for lightening worry is “talking your troubles over with someone you trust.
1. Keep a notebook or scrapbook for “inspirational” reading.
2. Don’t dwell too long on the shortcomings of others!
3. Get interested in your neighbours!
4. Make up a schedule for tomorrow’s work before you go to bed tonight.
5. Finally-avoid tension and fatigue.
Four Good Working Habits That Will Help Prevent Fatigue and Worry
Good Working Habit No. 1: Clear Your Desk of All Papers Except Those Relating to the Immediate Problem at Hand.
At our music school in Odessa, Texas, we teach composition students to maintain an organized work-space, which ‘declutters’ the brain and helps to inspire greater creativity.
Charles Evans Hughes, former Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, said: “Men do not die from overwork. They die from dissipation and worry.” Yes, from dissipation of their energies-and worry because they never seem to get their work done.
Good Working Habit No. 2: Do Things in the Order of Their Importance.
Good Working Habit No. 3. When You Face a Problem, Solve It Then and There if You Have the Facts Necessary to Make a Decision. Don’t Keep Putting off Decisions.
Good Working Habit No. 4: Learn to Organize, Deputize, and Supervise.
Staying organized and prioritized in good habits of work and creativity is one of the most helpful things we teach students at our music school in Odessa, Texas.
How to Banish Boredom That Produces Fatigue, Worry, and Resentment
One of the chief causes of fatigue is boredom. We rarely get tired when we are doing something interesting and exciting.
Where your interests are, there is your energy also.
Is giving yourself a pep talk every day silly, superficial, childish? No, on the contrary, it is the very essence of sound psychology. “Our life is what our thoughts make it.” Those words are just as true today as they were eighteen centuries ago when Marcus Aurelius first wrote them in his book of Meditations: “Our life is what our thoughts make it.” By talking to yourself every hour of the day, you can direct yourself to think thoughts of courage and happiness, thoughts of power and peace. By talking to yourself about the things you have to be grateful for, you can fill your mind with thoughts that soar and sing.
How to Keep From Worrying About Insomnia
Dr. Thomas Hyslop, of the Great West Riding Asylum, stressed that point in an address before the British Medical Association. He said: “One of the best sleep-producing agents which my years of practice have revealed to me-is prayer. I say this purely as a medical man. The exercise of prayer, in those who habitually exert it, must be regarded as the most adequate and normal of all the pacifiers of the mind and calmers of the nerves.”
One of the best cures for insomnia is making yourself physically tired by gardening, swimming, tennis, golf, skiing, or by just plain physically exhausting work.
The above are all good exercises to help maintain a positive outlook and balanced life as an artist. Many musicians face extraordinarily high-pressure situations in many different ways and learning how to successfully manage these moments is a priority at our music school in Odessa, Texas.