ng to sit in a black,
muddy bog all the time," and staying there you made no effort whatever
to get out of it, even though there was dry land right in front of you.

Again you may answer: "But in my tired bog there is no dry land in
front of me, none at all."

I say to that, there is much more dry land than you think--if you will
open your eyes--and to open your eyes you must make an effort.

No one knows, who has not tried, what a good strong effort will do in
the right direction, when we have been living and slipping back in the
wrong direction.

The results of such efforts seem at times wonderful to those who have
learned the right direction for the first time.

To get rid of the tired emphasis when we have been fixed in it, a very
strong effort is necessary at first, and gradually it gets easier, and
easier, until we have cast off the tired emphasis entirely and have the
habit of looking toward rest.

We must say to ourselves with decision in so many words, and must think
the meaning of the words and insist upon it: "I am very tired. Yes, of
course, I am very tired, but I am going to bed to get rested."

There are a hundred little individual ways that we can talk to
ourselves, and turn ourselves toward rest, at the end of the day when
the time comes to rest.

One way to begin, which is necessary to most of us, is to stop
resisting the tired. Every complaint of fatigue, whether it is merely
in our own minds, or is made to others, is full of resistance, and
resistance to any sort of fatigue emphasizes it proportionately.

That is why it is good to say to ourselves: "Yes, I am tired; I am
awfully tired. I am willing to be tired."

When we have used our wills to drop the nervous and muscular
contractions that the fatigue has caused, we can add with more emphasis
and more meaning, "and I am going to bed to get rested."

Some one could say just here: "That is all very well for an ordinarily
tired person, but it would never do me any good. I am too tired even to
try it."

The answer to that is, the more tired you are, the more you need to try
it, and the more interesting the experiment will be.

Also the very effort of your brain needed to cast off the tired
emphasis will be new to you, and thought in a new direction is always
restful in itself. Having learned to cast off the tired emphasis when
we go to bed at night, we can gradually learn to cast it off before we
go to meals, and at odd opportunities thro