“MANAGING YOURSELF”

Wairarapa Times-Age, 5 August 1938, Page 10

“MANAGING YOURSELF”

GETTING THE SECOND WIND. We are all familiar with the phenomenon of the second wind, .writes Mr Milton Wright, in his book, “Manag- . ing Yourself.” You are working at something—never mind at what task —and you begin to feel tired. You keep on and it makes you still more tired. Still you keep on. and then the transformation comes. Maybe gradually, maybe suddenly, your fatigue is gone. You find yourself working more smoothly, more easily, more quickly and more effectively than when you began to work. The task becomes a pleasure. You do not tire so quickly. It is a characteristic of this second level of energy that it is more abundant than the first superficial level of energy on which you started out. When you do reach the end of your second wind, you may still keep on. There is yet a third level of energy that is longer and more abundant still. There is even a fourth level. Why, then, should you be so weak as to give up at the first sign of feeling tired? It is quite unnecessary. You need have no fear that pushing on past the first level of fatigue and into the second or third energy level is a dangerous thing to do. These deeper wells of energy are not merely reservoirs to be used for emergencies only. To bore into them is not to approach exhaustion, to draw on resources which cannot be replaced. These energies are repaired, restored and refreshed by precisely the same means as are the more superficial energies to whose sagging you were going to succumb at the first sign of fatigue. As William James has put it: — “It is evident that our organism has stored up reserves of energy that are ordinarily not called upon, but that may be called upon; deeper and deeper strata of combustible or explosive material, discontinuously arranged, but ready for use by anyone who probes so deep, and repairing themselves by rest as well as do the superficial strata. Most of us continue living unnecessarily near the surface.” \