Applied Psychology

There never has been a moment in all your life when sense-impressions were not pouring in upon you from every side, tending to disturb and annoy you and interfere with your concentration and progress. You can change the setting of your mental stage from portentous gloom to sun-lit assurance. You can concentrate your thought upon the useful, the helpful and the cheerful, ignore the useless and annoying, and make your life a life of hope and joy, of promise and fulfillment.

Many a man will tell you that he does his best work in the wee watches of the morning, after tedious hours of persevering but fruitless effort. Instead of being exhausted by its long hours of persistent endeavor, the mind seems now to rise to the acme of its power, to achieve its supreme accomplishments. Difficulties melt into thin air, profound problems find easy solution. Flights of genius manifest themselves. Yet long before midnight such a one had perhaps felt himself yield to fatigue and had tied a wet towel around his head or had taken stimulants to keep himself awake.

If ideas of health and triumphant achievement are brought into consciousness, we at the same time experience a state of energy, a feeling of courage and capability and joy and a stimulation of all the bodily processes. If, on the other hand, ideas of disease and death and failure are brought into consciousness, we at the same time experience feelings of sorrow and mental suffering and a state of lethargy, a feeling of inertia, impotence and fatigue.

Creative Imagination is more than mere memory. It takes the elements of the past as reproduced by memory and rearranges them. It forms new combinations out of the material of the past. It forms new combinations of ideas, emotions and their accompanying impulses to muscular activity, the elements of mental complexes. It recombines these elements into new and original mental pictures, the creations of the inventive mind.

Individual mental efficiency is an absolute prerequisite to any notable personal achievement or any great individual success. Your mental energies are the forces with which you must wage your battles in this world. Are you fully equipped to take a valiant part in the work of the coming years?

The purpose of this book is to make clear certain mental principles and processes, namely, those of Retention, Association and Recall. Incidentally, as with every book in this Course, it contains some facts and instructions of immediate practical utility. But primarily it is intended only to help prepare your mind to understand a scientific system for success-achievement.