ths only quiet and gentle, and take long, full breaths
whenever you are out-of-doors and before going to sleep at night.

Of course, a strained way of working is only one cause of nervous
fatigue; there are others, and even more important ones, that need to
be understood in order that we may be freed from the bondage of nervous
strain which keeps so many of us from our best use and happiness.

Many people are in bondage because of doing wrong, but many more
because of doing right in the wrong way. Real freedom is only found
through obedience to law, and when, because of daily strain, a man
finds himself getting overtired and irritable, the temptation is to
think it easier to go on working in the wrong way than to make the
effort to learn how to work in the right way. At first the effort seems
only to result in extra strain, but, if persisted in quietly, it soon
becomes apparent that it is leading to less and less strain, and
finally to restful work.

There are laws for rest, laws for work, and laws for play, which, if we
find and follow them, lead us to quiet, useful lines of life, which
would be impossible without them. They are the laws of our own being,
and should carry us as naturally as the instincts of the animals carry
them, and so enable us to do right in the right way, and make us so
sure of the manner in which we do our work that we can give all our
attention to the work itself; and when we have the right habit of
working, the work itself must necessarily gain, because we can put the
best of ourselves into it.

It is helpful to think of the instincts of the beasts, how true and
orderly they are, on their own plane, and how they are only perverted
when the animals have come under the influence of man. Imagine Baloo,
the bear in Mr. Kipling's "Jungle Book," being asked how he managed to
keep so well and rested. He would look a little surprised and say:
"Why, I follow the laws of my being. How could I do differently?" Now
that is just the difference between man and beast. Man can do
differently. And man has done differently now for so many generations
that not one in ten thousand really recognizes what the laws of his
being are, except in ways so gross that it seems as if we had sunken to
the necessity of being guided by a crowbar, instead of steadily
following the delicate instinct which is ours by right, and so
voluntarily accepting the guidance of the Power who made us, which is
the only possible way to fr