戴尔·卡耐基/Dale Carnegie
Jeanette MacDonald told me that when she was depressed and worried and had difficulty in going to sleep, she could always get"a feeling of security"by repeating Psalm XXII："The Lord is my Shepherd；I shall not want. He makes me to lie down in green pastures.He leadeth me beside the still waters."
But if you are not religious, and have to do things the hard way, then learn to relax by physical measures. Dr.David Harold Fink, who wrote Release from Nervous Tension, says that the best way to do this is to talk to your body.According to Dr.Fink, words are the key to all kinds of hypnosis；and when you consistently can't sleep, it is because you have talked yourself into a case of insomnia.The way to undo this is to dehypnotize yourself-and you can do it by saying to the muscles of your body："Let go, let go-loosen up and relax."We already know that the mind and nerves can't relax while the muscles are tense-so if we want to go to sleep, we start with the muscles.Dr.Fink recommends-and it works out in practice-that we put a pillow under the knees to ease the tension on the legs, and that we tuck small pillows under the arms for the very same reason.Then, by telling the jaw to relax, the eyes, the arms, and the legs, we finally drop off to sleep before we know what has hit us.I've tried it-I know.If you have trouble sleeping, get hold of Dr.Fink's book, Release from Nervous Tension, which I have mentioned earlier.It is the only book I know of that is both lively reading and a cure for insomnia5.
One of the best cures for insomnia is making yourself physically tired by gardening, swimming, tennis, golf, skiing, or by just plain physically exhausting work. That is what Theodore Dreiser did.When he was a struggling young author, he was worried about insomnia, so he got a job working as a section hand on the New York Central Railway；and after a day of driving spikes and shoveling gravel, he was so exhausted that he could hardly stay awake long enough to eat.