We spend a third of our lives sleeping-yet nobody knows what sleep really is. We know it
is a habit and a state of rest in which nature knits up the ravelled sleeve of care, but we
don't know how many hours of sleep each individual requires. We don't even know if we
have to sleep at all!
Fantastic? Well, during the First World War, Paul Kern, a Hungarian soldier, was shot
through the frontal lobe of his brain. He recovered from the wound, but curiously
enough, couldn't fall asleep. No matter what the doctors did-and they tried all kinds of
sedatives and narcotics, even hypnotism-Paul Kern couldn't be put to sleep or even
made to feel drowsy.
The doctors said he wouldn't live long. But he fooled them. He got a job, and went on
living in the best of health for years. He would lie down and close his eyes and rest, but
he got no sleep whatever. His case was a medical mystery that upset many of our
beliefs about sleep.
Some people require far more sleep than others. Toscanini needs only five hours a night,
but Calvin Coolidge needed more than twice that much. Coolidge slept eleven hours out
of every twenty-four. In other words, Toscanini has been sleeping away approximately
one-fifth of his life, while Coolidge slept away almost half of his life.
Worrying about insomnia will hurt you far more than insomnia. For example, one of my
students-Ira Sandner, of 173 Overpeck Avenue, Ridgefield Park, New Jersey-was driven
nearly to suicide by chronic insomnia.
"I actually thought I was going insane," Ira Sandner told me. "The trouble was, in the
beginning, that I was too sound a sleeper. I wouldn't wake up when the alarm clock
went off, and the result was that I was getting to work late in the morning. I worried
about it-and, in fact, my boss warned me that I would have to get to work on time. I
knew that if I kept on oversleeping, I would lose my job.
"I told my friends about it, and one of them suggested I concentrate hard on the alarm
clock before I went to sleep. That started the insomnia! The tick-tick-tick of that
blasted alarm clock became an obsession. It kept me awake, tossing, all night long!
When morning came, I was almost ill. I was ill from fatigue and worry. This kept on for
eight weeks. I can't put into words the tortures I suffered. I was convinced I was going
insane. Sometimes I paced the floor for hours at a time, and I honestly considered
jumping out of the window and ending the whole thing!
"At last I went to a doctor I had known all my life. He said: 'Ira, I can't help you. No one
can help you, because you have brought this thing on yourself. Go to bed at night, and if
you can't fall asleep, forget all about it. Just say to yourself: "I don't care a hang if I
don't go to sleep. It's all right with me if I lie awake till morning." Keep your eyes closed
and say: "As long as I just lie still and don't worry about it, I'll be getting rest, anyway." '
"I did that," says Sandner, "and in two weeks' time I was dropping off to sleep. In less
than one month, I was sleeping eight hours, and my nerves were back to normal."
It wasn't insomnia that was killing Ira Sandner; it was his worry about it.
Dr. Nathaniel Kleitman, professor at the University of Chicago, has done more research
work on sleep than has any other living man. He is the world's expert on sleep. He
declares that he has never known anyone to die from insomnia. To be sure, a man might
worry about insomnia until he lowered his vitality and was swept away by germs. But it
was the worry that did the damage, not the insomnia itself.
Dr. Kleitman also says that the people who worry about insomnia usually sleep far more
than they realise. The man who swears "I never slept a wink last night" may have slept
for hours without knowing it. For example, one of the most profound thinkers of the
nineteenth century, Herbert Spencer, was an old bachelor, lived in a boarding house,
and bored everyone with his talk about his insomnia. He even put "stoppings" in his ears
to keep out the noise and quiet his nerves. Sometimes he took opium to induce sleep.
One night he and Professor Sayce of Oxford shared the same room at a hotel. The next
morning Spencer declared he hadn't slept a wink all night. In reality, it was Professor
Sayce who hadn't slept a wink. He had been kept awake all night by Spencer's snoring.
The first requisite for a good night's sleep is a feeling of security. We need to feel that
some power greater than ourselves will take care of us until morning. 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."
"Let God-and let go."
Jeanette MacDonald told me that when she was depressed and worried and had
difficulty in going to sleep, she could always get "a feeling of security" by repeating
Psalm XXII: "The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in
green pastures. He leadeth me beside the still waters. ..."
But if you are not religious, and have to do things the hard way, then learn to relax by
physical measures. Dr. David Harold Fink, who wrote Release from Nervous Tension, says
that the best way to do this is to talk to your body. According to Dr. Fink, words are the
key to all kinds of hypnosis; and when you consistently can't sleep, it is because you
have talked yourself into a case of insomnia. The way to undo this is to dehypnotise
yourself-and you can do it by saying to the muscles of your body: "Let go, let go-loosen
up and relax." We already know that the mind and nerves can't relax while the muscles
are tense-so if we want to go to sleep, we start with the muscles. Dr. Fink recommendsand
it works out in practice-that we put a pillow under the knees to ease the tension on
the legs, and that we tuck small pillows under the arms for the very same reason. Then,
by telling the jaw to relax, the eyes, the arms, and the legs, we finally drop off to sleep
before we know what has hit us. I've tried it-I know. If you have trouble sleeping, get
hold of Dr. Fink's book, Release from Nervous Tension, which I have mentioned earlier It
is the only book I know of that is both lively reading and a cure for insomnia.
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. That is what
Theodore Dreiser did. When he was a struggling young author, he was worried about
insomnia, so he got a job working as a section hand on the New York Central Railway;
and after a day of driving spikes and shoveling gravel, he was so exhausted that he could
hardly stay awake long enough to eat.
If we get tired enough, nature will force us to sleep even while we are walking. To
illustrate, when I was thirteen years old, my father shipped a car-load of fat hogs to
Saint Joe, Missouri. Since he got two free railroad passes, he took me along with him.
Up until that time, I had never been in a town of more than four thousand. When I
landed in Saint Joe-a city of sixty thousand-I was agog with excitement. I saw
skyscrapers six storeys high and-wonder of wonders-I saw a street-car. I can close my
eyes now and still see and hear that street-car. After the most thrilling and exciting day
of my life, Father and I took a train back to Ravenwood, Missouri. Arriving there at two
o'clock in the morning, we had to walk four miles home to the farm. And here is the
point of the story: I was so exhausted that I slept and dreamed as I walked. I have often
slept while riding horseback. And I am alive to tell it!
When men are completely exhausted they sleep right through the thunder and horror
and danger of war. Dr. Foster Kennedy, the famous neurologist, tells me that during the
retreat of the Fifth British Army in 1918, he saw soldiers so exhausted that they fell on
the ground where they were and fell into a sleep as sound as a coma. They didn't even
wake up when he raised their eyelids with his fingers. And he says he noticed that
invariably the pupils of the eyes were rolled upward in the sockets. "After that," says Dr.
Kennedy, "when I had trouble sleeping, I would practice rolling up my eyeballs into this
position, and I found that in a few seconds I would begin to yawn and feel sleepy. It was
an automatic reflex over which I had no control."
No man ever committed suicide by refusing to sleep and no one ever will. Nature would
force a man to sleep in spite of all his will power. Nature will let us go without food or
water far longer than she will let us go without sleep.
Speaking of suicide reminds me of a case that Dr. Henry C. Link describes in his book,
The Rediscovery of Man. Dr. Link is vice-president of The Psychological Corporation and
he interviews many people who are worried and depressed. In his chapter "On
Overcoming Fears and Worries", he tells about a patient who wanted to commit suicide.
Dr. Link knew arguing would only make the matter worse, so he said to this man: "If you
are going to commit suicide anyway, you might at least do it in a heroic fashion. Run
around the block until you drop dead."
He tried it, not once but several times, and each time felt better, in his mind if not in
his muscles. By the third night he had achieved what Dr. Link intended in the first placehe
was so physically tired (and physically relaxed) that he slept like a log. Later he
joined an athletic club and began to compete in competitive sports. Soon he was feeling
so good he wanted to live for ever!
So, to keep from worrying about insomnia, here are five rules:
1. If yon can't sleep, do what Samuel Untermyer did. Get up and work or read until you
do feel sleepy.
2. Remember that no one was ever killed by lack of sleep. Worrying about insomnia
usually causes far more damage than sleeplessness.
3. Try prayer-or repeat Psalm XXIII, as Jeanette MacDonald does.
4. Relax your body. Read the book "Release from Nervous Tension."
5. Exercise. Get yourself so physically tired you can't stay awake.
~~~~
Part Seven In A Nutshell -Six Ways To Prevent Fatigue And Worry And Keep Your Energy
And Spirits High
RULE 1: Rest before you get tired. RULE 2: Learn to relax at your work.
RULE 3: If you are a housewife, protect your health and appearance by relaxing at home
RULE 4: Apply these four good working habits
a. Clear your desk of all papers except those relating to the immediate problem at
hand.
b. Do things in the order of their importance.
c. When you face a problem, solve it then and there if you have the facts necessary to
make a decision.
d. Learn to organise, deputise, and supervise.
RULE 5: To prevent worry and fatigue, put enthusiasm into your work.
RULE 6: Remember, no one was ever killed by lack of sleep. It is worrying about
insomnia that does the damage-not the insomnia
Part Eight -How To Find The Kind Of Work In Which You May Be Happy And Successful
Chapter 29: The Major Decision Of Tour Life
(This chapter is addressed to young men and women who haven't yet found the work
they want to do. If you are in that category, reading this chapter may have a profound
effect upon the remainder of your life.)
If you are under eighteen, you will probably soon be called upon to make the two most
important decisions of your life-decisions that will profoundly alter all the days of your
years: decisions that may have far-reaching effects upon your happiness, your income,
your health; decisions that may make or break you.
What are these two tremendous decisions?
First: How are you going to make a living? Are you going to be a farmer, a mail carrier, a
chemist, a forest ranger, a stenographer, a horse dealer, a college professor, or are you
going to run a hamburger stand ?
Second: Whom are you going to select to be the father or mother of your children?
Both of those great decisions are frequently gambles. "Every boy," says Harry Emerson
Fosdick in his book, The Power to See It Through, "every boy is a gambler when he
chooses a vocation. He must stake his life on it."
How can you reduce the gamble in selecting a vocation? Read on; we will tell you as
best we can. First, try, if possible, to find work that you enjoy. I once asked David M.
Goodrich, Chairman of the Board, B. F. Goodrich Company-tyre manufacturers-what he
considered the first requisite of success in business, and he replied: "Having a good time
at your work. If you enjoy what you are doing," he said, "you may work long hours, but it
won't seem like work at all. It will seem like play."
Edison was a good example of that. Edison-the unschooled newsboy who grew up to
transform the industrial life of America-Edison, the man who often ate and slept in his
laboratory and toiled there for eighteen hours a day. But it wasn't toil to him. "I never
did a day's work in my life," he exclaimed. "It was all fun."
No wonder he succeeded!
I once heard Charles Schwab say much the same thing. He said: "A man can succeed at
almost anything for which he has unlimited enthusiasm."
But how can you have enthusiasm for a job when you haven't the foggiest idea of what
you want to do? "The greatest tragedy I know of," said Mrs. Edna Kerr, who once hired
thousands of employees for the Dupont Company, and is now assistant director of
industrial relations for the American Home Products Company-"The greatest tragedy I
know of," she told me, "is that so many young people never discover what they really
want to do. I think no one else is so much to be pitied as the person who gets nothing at
all out of his work but his pay." Mrs. Kerr reports that even college graduates come to
her and say: "I have a B.A. degree from Dartmouth [or an M.A. from Cornell]. Have you
some kind of work I can do for your firm?" They don't know themselves what they are
able to do, or even what they would like to do. Is it any wonder that so many men and
women who start out in life with competent minds and rosy dreams end up at forty in
utter frustration and even with a nervous breakdown? In fact, finding the right
occupation is important even for your health. When Dr. Raymond Pearl, of Johns
Hopkins, made a study, together with some insurance companies, to discover the factors
that make for a long life, he placed "the right occupation" high on the list. He might
have said, with Thomas Carlyle: "Blessed is the man who has found his work. Let him ask
no other blessedness."
I recently spent an evening with Paul W. Boynton, employment supervisor for the
Socony-Vacuum Oil Company. During the last twenty years he has interviewed more than
seventy-five thousand people looking for jobs, and he has written a book entitled 6
Ways to Get a Job. I asked him: "What is the greatest mistake young people make today
in looking for work?" "They don't know what they want to do," he said. "It is perfectly
appalling to realise that a man will give more thought to buying a suit of clothes that
will wear out in a few years than he will give to choosing the career on which his whole
future depends-on which his whole future happiness and peace of mind are based!"
And so what? What can you do about it? You can take advantage of a new profession
called vocational guidance. It may help you-or harm you-depending on the ability and
character of the counselor you consult. This new profession isn't even within gunshot of
perfection yet. It hasn't even reached the Model T stage. But it has a great future. How
can you make use of this science? By finding out where, in your community, you can get
vocational tests and vocational advice.
Such advice can only take the form of suggestions. You have to make the decisions.
Remember that these counselors are far from infallible. They don't always agree with
one another. They sometimes make ridiculous mistakes. For example, a vocationalguidance
counselor advised one of my students to become a writer solely because she
had a large vocabulary. How absurd! It isn't as simple as that. Good writing is the kind
that transfers your thoughts and emotions to the reader-and to do that, you don't need
a large vocabulary, but you do need ideas, experience, convictions, examples and
excitement. The vocational counselor who advised this girl with a large vocabulary to
become an author succeeded in doing only one thing: he turned an erstwhile happy
stenographer into a frustrated, would-be novelist.
The point I am trying to make is that vocational-guidance experts, even as you and I,
are not infallible. Perhaps you had better consult several of them-and then interpret
their findings in the sunlight of common sense.
You may think it strange that I am including a chapter like this in a book devoted to
worry. But it isn't strange at all, when you understand how many of our worries, regrets,
and frustrations are spawned by work we despise. Ask your father about it-or your
neighbour or your boss. No less an intellectual giant than John Stuart Mill declared that
industrial misfits are "among the heaviest losses of society". Yes, and among the
unhappiest people on this earth are those same "industrial misfits" who hate their daily
work!
Do you know the kind of man who "cracked up" in the Army? The man who was
misplaced! I'm not talking about battle casualties, but about the men who cracked up in
ordinary service. Dr. William Menninger, one of our greatest living psychiatrists, was in
charge of the Army's neuro-psychiatric division during the war, and he says: "We learned
much in the Army as to the importance of selection and of placement, of putting the
right man in the right job. ... A conviction of the importance of the job at hand was
extremely important. Where a man had no interest, where he felt he was misplaced,
where he thought he was not appreciated, where he believed his talents were being
misused, invariably we found a potential if not an actual psychiatric casualty."
Yes-and for the same reasons, a man may "crack up" in industry. If he despises his
business, he can crack it up, too.
Take, for example, the case of Phil Johnson. Phil Johnson's father owned a laundry, so
he gave his son a job, hoping the boy would work into the business. But Phil hated the
laundry, so he dawdled, loafed, did what he had to do and not a lick more. Some days
he was "absent". His father was so hurt to think he had a shiftless, ambitionless son that
he was actually ashamed before his employees.
One day Phil Johnson told his father he wanted to be a mechanic-work in a machine
shop. What? Go back to overalls? The old man was shocked. But Phil had his way. He
worked in greasy dungarees. He did much harder work than was required at the laundry.
He worked longer hours, and he whistled at his job! He took up engineering, learned
about engines, puttered with machines-and when Philip Johnson died, in 1944, he was
president of the Boeing Aircraft Company, and was making the Flying Fortresses that
helped to win the war! If he had stuck with the laundry, what would have happened to
him and the laundry-especially after his father's death? My guess is he would have ruined
the business-cracked it up and run it into the ground.
Even at the risk of starting family rows, I would like to say to young people: Don't feel
compelled to enter a business or trade just because your family wants you to do it!
Don't enter a career unless you want to do it! However, consider carefully the advice of
your parents. They have probably lived twice as long as you have. They have gained the
kind of wisdom that comes only from much experience and the passing of many years.
But, in the last analysis, you are the one who has to make the final decision. You are
the one who is going to be either happy or miserable at your work.
Now, having said this, let me give you the following suggestions-some of them warningsabout
choosing your work:
1. Read and study the following five suggestions about selecting a vocational-guidance
counselor. These suggestions are right from the horse's mouth. They were made by one
of America's leading vocational-guidance experts, Professor Harry Dexter Kitson of
Columbia University.
a. "Don't go to anyone who tells you that he has a magic system that will indicate your
'vocational aptitude'. In this group are phrenologists, astrologers, 'character analysts',
handwriting experts. Their 'systems' do not work."
b. "Don't go to anyone who tells you that he can give you a test that will indicate what
occupation you should choose. Such a person violates the principle that a vocational
counselor must take into account the physical, social, and economic conditions
surrounding the counselee; and he should render his service in the light of the
occupational opportunities open to the counselee."
c. "Seek a vocational counselor who has an adequate library of information about
occupations and uses it in the counseling process."
d. "A thorough vocational-guidance service generally requires more than one interview."
e. "Never accept vocational guidance by mail."
2. Keep out of business and professions that are already jam-packed and overflowing!
There are many thousands of different ways of making a living. But do young people
know this? Not unless they hire a swami to gaze into a crystal ball. The result? In one
school, two-thirds of the boys confined their choices to five occupations-five out of
twenty thousand-and four-fifths of the girls did the same. Small wonder that a few
business and professions are overcrowded-small wonder that insecurity, worry, and
"anxiety neuroses" are rampant at times among the white-collar fraternity I Beware of
trying to elbow your way into such overcrowded fields as law, journalism, radio, motion
pictures, and the "glamour occupations".
3. Stay out of activities where the chances are only one out of ten of your being able to
make a living. As an example, take selling life insurance. Each year countless thousands
of men-frequently unemployed men-start out trying to sell life insurance without
bothering to find out in advance what is likely to happen to them! Here is approximately
what does happen, according to Franklin L. Bettger, Real Estate Trust Building,
Philadelphia. For twenty years Mr. Bettger was one of the outstandingly successful
insurance salesmen in America. He declares that ninety per cent of the men who start
selling life insurance get so heartsick and discouraged that they give it up within a year.
Out of the ten who remain, one man will sell ninety per cent of the insurance sold by
the group of ten; and the other nine will sell only ten per cent. To put it another way: if
you start selling life insurance, the chances are nine to one that you will fail and quit
within twelve months, and the chances are only one in a hundred that you will make ten
thousand a year out of it. Even if you remain at it, the chances are only one out of ten
that you will be able to do anything more than barely scratch out a living.
4. Spend weeks-even months, if necessary-finding out all you can about an occupation
before deciding to devote your life to it! How? By interviewing men and women who
have already spent ten, twenty, or forty years in that occupation.
These interviews may have a profound effect on your future. I know that from my own
experience. When I was in my early twenties, I sought the vocational advice of two
older men. As I look back now, I can see that those two interviews were turning points
in my career. In fact, it would be difficult for me even to imagine what my life would
have been like had I not had those two interviews.
How can you get these vocational-guidance interviews? To illustrate, let's suppose that
you are thinking about studying to be an architect. Before you make your decision, you
ought to spend weeks interviewing the architects in your city and in adjoining cities.
You can get their names and addresses out of a classified telephone directory. You can
call at their offices either with or without an appointment. If you wish to make an
appointment, write them something like this:
Won't you please do me a little favour? I want your advice. I am eighteen years old, and
I am thinking about studying to be an architect. Before I make up my mind, I would like
to ask your advice.
If you are too busy to see me at your office, I would be most grateful if you would grant
me the privilege of seeing you for half an hour at your home.
Here is a list of questions I would like to ask you:
a. If you had your life to live over, would you become an architect again?
b. After you have sized me up, I want to ask you whether you think I have what it takes
to succeed as an architect.
c. Is the profession of architecture overcrowded?
d. If I studied architecture for four years, would it be difficult for me to get a job? What
kind of job would I have to take at first?
e. If I had average ability, how much could I hope to earn during the first five years?
f. What are the advantages and disadvantages of being an architect?
g. If I were your son, would you advise me to become an architect?
If you are timid, and hesitate to face a "big shot" alone, here are two suggestions that
will help.
