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Show LET'S TALK ABOUT yoUL BY CHARLES B. ROTH - GIVE YOURSELF TO A CHAIR A friend of the late William James, greatest psychologist of his day, asked the noted man If he would mind giving a few rules for the improvement of personality. "One rule I will give you," responded re-sponded Dr. James, "a simple rule but so important. The rule is this: Learn to give yourself up to a chair at least once each day." Mystified, the inquirer asked what Dr. James meant when he said "give yourself up to a chair." "Practice conscious relaxation," he was told. "Relax every day. Relaxation, particularly the ease and restfulness associated with utter relaxation, is one of the best aids I know in developing a charming personality." How often one sees these futile run-arounds, men and women who are busy from morning till night, who never relax, who dash from one thing to another, who fidget and fume, who talk rapidly, who bum up energy and tire themselves and everyone else out by their fruitless display of waste motion. And how rarely one finds the composed, relaxed re-laxed personality of power. Dr. James' advice was, of course, purely physical all you had to do was to give yourself up to the chair, relax utterly, let your body sag where It would. But there is always al-ways a subtle and marked relationship relation-ship between mind and body. And the purpose of his counsel was tc let your mental moods take theii tone from your physical department, "What mental mood can you ex pect if you are always physlcallj tense?" hp inquired. |