Chapter VII

The Problem of Middle-Aged Men in Business

Men of 40 are prone to lament: “The most stupid blunder business men make today is to refuse to employ men in their forties, fifties and sixties. Why, that is exactly when a man is most valuable to them! He has acquired judgment, is rich in experience and, for obvious reasons, is far more interested in holding down his job to the complete satisfaction of his employer!”

Is this complaint justified? We know that employers frown upon the middle-aged applicants but are they, as a rule, right in doing so? Let us look at the average middle-aged man who seeks a new connection. Not the exceptional middle-aged man, but the average. What has age given him --- and what have the years taken away?

Our middle-aged man has gained a wealth of experience --- but in doing so, he usually has lost his elasticity of mind. He is no longer willing to pioneer. New methods, new paths deter him. He prefers to travel by the compass of precedent. And this indicates that he has gained in judgment --- but what a loss he has suffered in daring! He no longer has the courage to originate, to create or to take what are, to a younger man, perfectly sound and promising business chances. He is steady as a plow horse is steady --- and with as little enthusiasm! And what he has acquired in the way of assurance, he has lost in open mindedness. He is no longer capable of viewing old problems in a new light. The rut has closed in on him. Youthful ambition and energy have been replaced by the timidity and inertia of age --- and he asks little better than to be left alone, to achieve some measure of security for his declining years!

An exaggerated picture? Not at all! Look about you. You will see in every office and shop, the very man I have described. What a pity!

And that shows you, more graphically than almost any other example I could give, why Multiple Mentalism is such a boon to all who expect to earn their bread by the sweat of their brows. If a man is not too firmly caught in the clutches of old Father Time, my exercises restore to his mind the lost elasticity of Youth. His brain regains its nimbleness and agility. Every day means to him a new day and a new start. he is open minded --- no longer trammeled by the shackles of precedent. He is willing and able, now, to approach old problems from new angles. Thanks to his new found ability, which my training has given him, he sees in them factors he had not noticed before. And each heretofore unseen factor suggests its own solution. His mind, constructive now, builds new methods to overcome the obstacle or circumvent the difficulty. What wonder that Multiple Mentalism restores his courage, his enthusiasm and his ambition! And his increased brain power gives new meaning to the word “energy”. He is able to do with ease things that would have exhausted him before he tackled these mental gymnastics. Tasks that once fatigued him, he now takes in his stride.

Such radical changes in a man’s mind and in his outlook are bound to be reflected in his bearing. He walks jauntily, with a new confidence. He approaches prospective employers serenely, radiating Power and Poise. he is welcomed by executives who would have shut their doors to him but a few months before!

Now do you see why my most enthusiastic “boosters” are men in their forties and early fifties? They have good cause for their enthusiasm.

And while we are on the subject of age, let me say that I do not recommend these mental exercises for youths. The youthful mind should be spent in gathering knowledge and experience. After its owner has acquired a foundation of education and experience, Multiple Mentalism should be taken up to develop that mind and to “cash in” the experience and knowledge previously gained. Not knowledge ---but the most effective use of knowledge --- is Power!

Roughly speaking, I set 25 to 50 years as the age limits of those who can profit most by my training. Of course, some boys are men at 22; some men have not shed the final traces of adolescence at 35; some are old at 40; while some are young at 65. So, when I say that men from 25 to 50 years of age form the group that Multiple Mentalism will benefit most, I am being purely arbitrary. In the light of the explanation I have given you, each man must make his own decision.

Exercise VII:

Even before you saw these exercises, your mind was capable of doing more than one thing at a time. It was able to direct your hand to make penciled notes of telephone conversations --- to control your hands, feet, eyes and ears in driving a car while carrying on a conversation --- and many other such simple simultaneous acts. However, it probably could not do two things simultaneously and do them well. Your handwriting or word-choice, or both, suffered when you took notes while conversing on other subjects. Most automobile accidents are caused by inattentiveness --- the driver’s inability to do justice to his driving while carrying on a conversation or listening to the radio. And the effort of trying to do more than one thing at a time wears down the average man --- causes nervousness, stress, heart afflictions, and other so-called “degenerative” ailments.

Now, however, your brain is able to do more things at once than you may have realized. Our 20th President, James A. Garfield, could not only write with either hand with equal ease, but he could also write the two classical languages, Latin and Greek, at the same time, one with his right hand, and the other with his left! Let’s look at how far YOU have come along the road to mental mastery.

Chapter I gave you a thorough knowledge of the alphabet, backwards, and enabled you to break the alphabet into two distinct parts. You have known one of these parts since you finished your first grade in school, but the other was a new part with the letters in a new sequence. And then you mastered the mental trick of carrying the first half of the alphabet in its proper sequence, while mingling the second half with it, in reverse order. Simple? Yes, but it takes two simultaneous mental operations!

Chapters II and III further increased the ability you gained in Chapter I. You became capable of the same mental gymnastics in more complex form ---thinking of three-letter and four-letter words in two ways --- spelled forward and in reverse.

A military man would say that you had consolidated your gains, in Chapter IV, where you kept two unrelated words in mind and pictured their letters arranged alternately, one set of letters with the other, at one and the same time.

Then came your first hurdle, Chapter V. When you had topped it, you were possessed of still another accomplishment. Your brain could do three things at once: (1) carry two words in mind; (2) carry one of them spelled backwards; and (3) combine the letters of both into one sequence, spelling one of the words in normal order and the other backwards. Chapter VI increased the complexity of these same mental tasks.

In Exercise VII, you will again increase your mental capacity, to which science knows no limit. Your mind will do four things concurrently --- not merely for the sake of doing four things but so that, when the demands of life force it upon you, you will be able to carry on four separate lines of thought without undue nervous strain. However, the nervous strain to which the untrained mind is subjected and the physical contortions in which many of us indulge when trying to think beyond our present ability to do so, do cause fatigue. Hence, the more you can do with your mind, the less effort and the more pleasure (as well as profit!) there is in living.

Write 6 six-letter words in a vertical column, just as you did in Exercise VI, except: Write only the 1st, 2nd and 3rd words forwards. Write the other three backwards. To illustrate:

WONDER

THGIRB (BRIGHT)

HEALTH

ERUTAN (NATURE) Memorize the list, then throw it away!

ASSERT

SUINEG (GENIUS)

Now, working in your mind alone, without reference to any written list, assemble the letters of your six words as you did in Exercise VI, but putting the letters of words #4, #5 and #6 in backwards. Also, instead of taking the words in the order in which you have listed them, take word #1, then word #6, then #2, followed by #5, and ending with the words numbered 3 and 4. The above list would work out this way:

W S H E A T O U E R S H N I A U S G D N L T E I E E T A R R G H N T B

To help make this clearer, I have underscored the initial letters of each of the 6 words used, when spelled properly.

Stop a moment and realize what this gymnastic means. It involves your (1) memorizing 6 words; (2) carrying three of them, spelled properly, in your mind; (3) carrying three of them spelled backward; and (4) writing 36 letters in an entirely new and unfamiliar sequence. If you find it quite difficult to do this at first, you can readily understand why!

I’ll tell you a way to cheat the difficulty of this exercise. If you write a letter, then skip five spaces and write the next that appears in the word you are spelling, then jump five more spaces to the next letter, etc., you can write the line quite easily --- BUT YOU WILL BE CHEATING YOURSELF and you will be setting yourself a long way back. So, forget the short cuts and, for your own sake, play the game! Keep all 6 words before your mind’s eye, in the 1-6, 2-5, 3-4 order explained to you, and write the 36 letters in sequence illustrated above.

I have not sprung this bit of advice on you so far, because it has not been necessary, but I say now: Spend at least an hour a day on this lesson for a full week, even if you think you have mastered it long before the week is up. More than with any of the others, this exercise requires frequent repetition in order to train your brain as it should be trained --- to accomplish what has seemed the Impossible in your life until now. Remember, we are building up your brain to take the hill of $uccess “in high gear”.

Multiple Mentalism Brain Stimulator: Recollection Drill

Given below are five subdivisions or classifications. Under each heading, write names of appropriate subjects. One such name, with letters jumbled, appears under each classification. When you come to it, write it correctly in the space below it, then continue writing more names, as before. Under “FLOWERS”, for example, you might write “daisy, “rhododendron”, etc., until you encounter the jumbled flower. Write it correctly, then continue your list. So with all five subdivisions. This will stimulate your recall and recognition.

KITCHEN FLOWERS UTENSILS ANIMALS PRESIDENTS STATES

HRAHMYCENMSUT

OLNCRDEA

HOSERNRICO

ABRVENU

EWXECMOIN