To teach a child obedience you tell it to do something, and you see that
that something is done. The same with the brain. Here is the foundation
of an efficient life and the antidote for the tendency to make a fool of
oneself. It is marvellously simple. Say to your brain: 'From 9 o'clock
to 9.30 this morning you must dwell without ceasing on a particular
topic which I will give you.' Now, it doesn't matter what this topic
is--the point is to control and invigorate the brain by exercise--but
you may just as well give it a useful topic to think over as a futile
one. You might give it this: 'My brain is my servant. I am not the
play-thing of my brain.' Let it concentrate on these statements for
thirty minutes. 'What?' you cry. 'Is this the way to an efficient life?
Why, there's nothing in it!' Simple as it may appear, this _is_ the way,
and it is the only way. As for there being nothing in it, try it. I
guarantee that you will fail to keep your brain concentrated on the
given idea for thirty seconds--let alone thirty minutes. You will find
your brain conducting itself in a manner which would be comic were it
not tragic. Your first experiments will result in disheartening failure,
for to exact from the brain, at will and by will, concentration on a
given idea for even so short a period as half an hour is an exceedingly
difficult feat--and a fatiguing! It needs perseverance. It needs a
terrible obstinacy on the part of the will. That brain of yours will be
hopping about all over the place, and every time it hops you must bring
it back by force to its original position. You must absolutely compel it
to ignore every idea except the one which you have selected for its
attention. You cannot hope to triumph all at once. But you can hope to
triumph. There is no royal road to the control of the brain. There is no
patent dodge about it, and no complicated function which a plain person
may not comprehend. It is simply a question of: 'I will, _I_ will, and I
_will_.' (Italics here are indispensable.)