PRACTICAL PSYCHOLOGY CLUB

Evening Star, Issue 22448, 19 September 1936, Page 15

PRACTICAL PSYCHOLOGY CLUB

1 Live and Grow Young ’ was the topic for discussion last Thursday evening at the Dunedin Practical Psychology Club. The mental ideal, it was stated, determined what would be built into the life, whether it would bo youthful or aging conditions. Every person had the inherent capacity for prolonging his life and increasing his potential longevity, but he must first understand the mental principle. Perfect health, vigour, and robustness were impossible to one whose mind was a slave to the conviction that he was on the decline, ■ that- ho was going downhill physically, and that his powers were gradually lessening through age. Most people did not realise that their mental attitude was a positive energy which was constantly creating results. Any mental attitude which was adverse to the spirit of youth tended to produce hardening old age conditions. If man lived in mental youth, if he pictured the processes of rejuvenation,, of self-renewal, which were always going on in every cell of the body, the oldage, pictures could ( ,not be reproduced in it.

Whv should man, the grandest creation 6t God, begin to decline just as he was really beginning, to get ready to live? There was no analogy in the animal or vegetable kingdom to show that anything that took so Jong to mature should decline so quickly. Animals generally lived four to six time* the length of their maturing period, and man ought to be in the prime of Ins power and at the very zenith of his vigour at 75. Various aids to the preservation of mental and physical youthfuiness _ were discussed, among these being new inter; ests and hobbies, sufficient periods for exercise, rest and relaxation, fresh air, sunshine, and correct diet, simple Hying and' high, thinking, the cultivation of controlled emotions, enthusiasm, a spirit of cheerfulness, and a sense of humour. Age began when growth stopped. The unused faculties of the brain and other parts of the body rued much more rapid! v than those that wore exercised. To freshen and rejuvenate the mind man must hold the right thought, vigorously, resolutely, perpetually, but it required constant watching and invincible determination, jnst as It did to make a fortune or to achieve anything else worth whije. ;