, when we find
our minds resisting that which is disagreeable in another, we give our
attention at once to finding the resultant contraction in our bodies,
and then concentrate our wills on loosening out of the contraction, we
cannot help getting an immediate result.

Even though it is a small result at the beginning, if we persist,
results will grow until we, literally, find ourselves free from the
woman at the next desk.

This woman says a disagreeable thing; we contract to it mind and body.
We drop the contraction from our bodies, with the desire to drop it
from our minds, for loosening the physical tension reacts upon the
mental strain and relieves it.

We can say to ourselves quite cheerfully: "I wish she would go ahead
and say another disagreeable thing; I should like to try the experiment
again." She gives you an early opportunity and you try the experiment
again, and again, and then again, until finally your brain gets the
habit of trying the experiment without any voluntary effort on your
part.

That habit being established, _you are free from the woman at the next
desk._ She cannot irritate you nor wear upon you, no matter how she
tries, no matter what she says, or what she does.

There is, however, this trouble about dropping the contraction. We are
apt to have a feeling of what we might call "righteous indignation" at
annoyances which are put upon us for no reason; that, so-called,
"righteous indignation" takes the form of resistance and makes physical
contractions.

It is useless to drop the physical contraction if the indignation is
going to rise and tighten us all up again. If we drop the physical and
mental contractions we must have something good to fill the open
channels that have been made. Therefore let us give our best attention
to our work, and if opportunity offers, do a kindness to the woman at
the next desk.

Finally, when she finds that her ways do not annoy, she will stop them.
She will probably, for a time at first, try harder to be disagreeable,
and then after recovering from several surprises at not being able to
annoy, she will quiet down and grow less disagreeable.

If we realize the effect of successive and continued resistance upon
ourselves and realize at the same time that we can drop or hold those
resistances as we choose to work to get free from them, or suffer and
hold them, then we can appreciate the truth that if the woman at the
next desk continues to annoy us, it is