Stratford Central Secondary School - Collegian Yearbook (Stratford, Ontario Canada)

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COLLEGIAN, 1930 the.fl.rst place we should measure our ability to serve our fellows in the position under consideration. We were placed on this earth to help lighten the burdens of others. Let us carefully consider this. I should place your cwn desires next. It is of paramount importance that the work benagreeable. Otherwise we should never succeed. Then comes one's abilities. It would of course be foolish for one who could not enunciate clearly to enter law. Many would place abilities before de- sires. I do not agree with them because if you want a thing badly enough you will work hard until you get it. Even in the case cited above, by hard work one could probably overcome that impediment. As a fourth requirement I would place honesty. If a job is of such a nature that it requires that you give up your honesty, shun it as you would the plague. Lincoln said, If you cannot be an honest lawyer, be honest without being a lawyer. The last consideration is that necessary evil, money. Unfortunately most of us can not forget the remuneration in any career we undertake. We should early in life formulate cur ideals. Ideals are the winning-post towards which the race of success is run. It is the race which is the valuable part of life, not the winning of the race. Care should be taken in selecting our ideals that they do not turn to ashes in our mouths when we reach them. Therefore ideals should be noble. I have said success is the attaining to some degree the ideals one sets before one. Ideals which can be completely attained in this life are not very good. Our ideals should be so lofty that while we advance to- wards them. we shall never reach them. As Browning so inimitably says, Ah, but a m-an's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a Heaven for ? I come now to a very important factor in success. I refer to habit, that property in the human mind analogous to the facility with which paper bends along a previous fold compared to the bending of a new fold. Habits either are your best friends or worst enemies. It is habit that gives one student ninety per cent. while another gets forty per cent. Williams James says, Habit is the enormous fly-wheel of society, its most precious conservative agent. It dooms us all to fight out the battle of life upon the lines of our nature or our early choice. It is well for the world that in most of us by the age of thirty, the character has set like plaster and will never soften again. We see then that habits are highly important. How can they be changed if it is necessary? William James lays dowln three maxims which I shall quote verbatim. CID IN THE ACQUISITION OF A NIEW HABIT OR THE LEAVING OFF OF AN OLD ONE, WE MU-ST TAKE CARE TO LAUNCH. OVURSELVES WITH AS STRONG AND DE- CIDEID INITIATIVE AS POSSIBLE. That is, bring all the com- ponents of environment into line behind the habit. For example, in making a habit of early rising get an alarm clock that will not let you sleep and openly boast to everyone that you are going to arise regularly at six o'clock. Thus we make sleep impossible and use our pride to get us out of bed. The second maxim. is H125 NEVER SUFFEQR. AIN EX'C'EP'TION TO OCCUR UNTIL THE N-EW HABIT IS SE'OUlRElLY ROOTED IN YOUR LIFE. To understand the importance of this let us consider it fronT the psychological standpoint. Habits are regarded as paths of discharge along the nerves. Every time we perform one specific action it becomes easier and more natural for the impulse to discharge -131

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COLLEGIAN, 1930 itself along those lines. Each individual neurone becomes a better vehicle for that impulse every time we perform that deed. Think of the effect one exception has on these paths of discharge. Everything is disarranged. It is like a man magnetizing a piece of steel. As long as he rubs it in one direction with one pole he m-agnetizes the steel. But let him change the direction of the magnet or the pole and the steel loses its magnetism. The last maxim Prof. James gives is this. Q35 SEIZE THE VERY FIRST OPPORTUNITY TO ACT ON EVERY RESOLUTION YOU MAKE, AND ON EVERY EMOTIONAL PROMPTING YOU MAY EXPERIENCE IN THE DIRECTION OF THE HABITS YOU DESIRE TO GAIN. He adds, It is not in the moment of their form- ing but in the moment of their producing MOTOR EFFECTS that re- solves and aspirations communicate the new 'set' to the brain. Rip Van Winkle is a classic example of the fault which the father of psy- chology warns us from in the above. We all know how Rip kept saying that he was going to stop drinking but that he would not count this one. How many times have we said similarly foolish things? To these maxims we might venture to add two others. C45 DO NOT TRY TO BREAK HABITS ONE AT A TIME. MAKE ONE BIG BREAK. It would seem on first thought that this would be the wrong way. In most things it is better to do one thing at a time. I do not think this applies to habits. When you are going to break a habit try to make a change in the old routine. For instance, if the habit you want to acquire is concentration, get up in the morning and take a bath and make yourself stand particularly erect, walk sharply, etc., etc. You will find that this will help you to concentrate. C55 DO NOT ATTEMPT TO GET RID OF AN OLD HABIT WITHOUT ACQUIRIN G A NEW GOOD HABIT IN ITS PL-ACE. For instance, if you decide to conquer the habit of reading too much fiction, do not just stop reading novels, but start reading fascinating books of the more serious kind. flncidentally, I do not think that you can simply stop reading too much fiction unless you cut it out entirely. Novel- reading is a hard habit to break. There can be no half-way measures. It might also be well to observe that in starting to read educational books it is folly to start with anything but the most easily read book of this type.D Perhaps undue stress seems to have been laid on habits, but let me assure you, gentle reader, that this is not so. For habits will be your greatest aid or greatest impediment. And RIGHT NOIW you are determining what they will be. Now that we have seen the importance of them let us consider what habits are particularly useful. One habit which I think is of great importance is that of constantly asking questions. Every time we look at something different we should ask ourselves, Why? What does this mean? Thus we become truly educated. Another important habit is that of observation. This is rarely acquired to its fullest extent. Consider this: if your best friend suddenly disappeared, how accurately could you describe him. One of the most valuable assets we can have is the ability to do one thing at a time and to stay Wlith it until it is fin- ished. Make it a habit, too, to see the other man's viewpoint. And so we could go on for pages with habits of tidiness, cleanliness, accuracy promptness, dependability, which We should have. ' One habit which We should get rid of with all speed is that of -14-