The following excerpt seems appropriate for my current state of mind. It’s been a rough week at work (yes, I have a day job), so I sought out some advice to help keep me in line and feeling good about things. It’s from Margery Wilson’s “complete book of charm” titled The Woman You Want to Be. Margery sure has helped me reorganize and unify my own energies.
1942: Unify Your Energy
Lillian Russell was very clever at arranging her life so that she had a minimum of harassing confusion and discord. When asked how she could keep her face so smooth in spite of all the problems of her life that she was unable to push aside she replied, ‘I have learned to draw down a blind that shuts out distracting sights and sounds, and I have put a sign on my mental door that reads ~ “Only the serene and the lovely can enter here.” A thousand voices call me away from my resolve but I have trained myself not to hear them. I hold myself together, not by straining against the winds of life, but by always sitting calmly in the center of the storm where there is no wind.’ In this way she gathered and held her forces.
You and I are very complex people. We share the heritage of the race in tangled backgrounds, transplanted emotions, and the battle of the higher and lower tendencies. The pressure of the demands made upon us by ourselves, life and other people tends to add to our confusion. And it is this inner and outer chaos that scatters our forces and weakens our personalities.
DON’T THROW YOURSELF AWAY. We are diffused. Part of our energy is going off in one direction and other desires or inner conflicts are wrenching parts of it away on other lines. Not that I am interested in having you save your energy! But I do want you to get it all together ~ see what it is composed of ~ and then use it for some fine purpose or accomplishment.
Those of us who are unnoticed, ineffective ~ and even those of us who should accomplish a great deal more than we do ~ fall below par because we permit the strength of our personalities to ‘leak away’ in unguarded waste!
You will stop these leaks and direct your unified energies into charming expression that is telling and effective.
Source: Wilson, Margery. The Woman You Want to Be. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Co., 1942.
~ pp. 30-31 ~