Archive for Positive Thinking Lessons
Thought and Purpose – Lesson 4
Posted by: | CommentsIn this study my personal notes are in the quotes throughout the passage.
Until thought is linked with purpose there is no intelligent accomplishment. With the majority the bark of thought is allowed to “drift” upon the ocean of life. Aimlessness is a vice, and such drifting must not continue for him who would steer clear of catastrophe and destruction.
They who have no central purpose in their life fall an easy prey to petty worries, fears, troubles, and self-pityings, all of which are indications of weakness, which lead, just as surely as deliberately planned sins (though by a different route), to failure, unhappiness, and loss, for weakness cannot persist in a power evolving universe.
A man should conceive of a legitimate purpose in his heart, and set out to accomplish it. He should make this purpose the centralizing point of his thoughts. It may take the form of a spiritual ideal, or it may be a worldly object, according to his nature at the time being; but whichever it is, he should steadily focus his thought-forces upon the object, which he has set before him. He should make this purpose his supreme duty, and should devote himself to its attainment, not allowing his thoughts to wander away into ephemeral fancies, longings, and imaginings. This is the royal road to self-control and true concentration of thought. Even if he fails again and again to accomplish his purpose (as he necessarily must until weakness is overcome), the strength of character gained will be the measure of his true success, and this will form a new starting-point for future power and triumph.
Those who are not prepared for the apprehension of a great purpose should fix the thoughts upon the faultless performance of their duty, no matter how insignificant their task may appear. Only in this way can the thoughts be gathered and focused, and resolution and energy be developed, which being done, there is nothing which may not be accomplished.
The weakest soul, knowing its own weakness, and believing this truth that strength can only be developed by effort and practice, will, thus believing, at once begin to exert itself, and, adding effort to effort, patience to patience, and strength to strength, will never cease to develop, and will at last grow divinely strong. As the physically weak man can make himself strong by careful and patient training, so the man of weak thoughts can make them strong by exercising himself in right thinking.
This isn’t about how deep you think it is about thinking on the right things. Deep thoughts come from thinking on the right things. You don’t suddenly become a deep thinker. You can suddenly begin to think on the right things and your thoughts will become deep. What you may even discover is that the the deeper your thoughts the simpler your life and your communications to others.
To put away aimlessness and weakness, and to begin to think with purpose, is to enter the ranks of those strong ones who only recognize failure as one of the pathways to attainment; who make all conditions serve them, and who think strongly, attempt fearlessly, and accomplish masterfully.
This is the key to understanding everything this book is about…“to think with purpose.” Look carefully at the advantages. You will recognize that failure is one of the pathways to attainment. You will make the conditions of your life serve you. You will then think strongly no matter how weakening the situation may appear to others. You will attempt fearlessly no matter how uncertain the future may appear to you. You will accomplish masterfully regardless of the difficulties of the task at hand.
Having conceived of his purpose, a man should mentally mark out a straight pathway to its achievement, looking neither to the right nor the left. Doubts and fears should be rigorously excluded; they are disintegrating elements, which break up the straight line of effort, rendering it crooked, ineffectual, useless. Thoughts of doubt and fear never accomplished anything, and never can. They always lead to failure. Purpose, energy, power to do, and all strong thoughts cease when doubt and fear creep in.
“For God has not given to us the spirit of fear, but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.” Fear never comes from God. Doubt never comes from God. Those are the devil’s delights. Faith can never be mixed with doubt. Faith is the result of a sound mind and a purposeful thought.
The will to do springs from the knowledge that we can do. Doubt and fear are the great enemies of knowledge, and he who encourages them, who does not slay them, thwarts himself at every step.
He who has conquered doubt and fear has conquered failure. His every thought is allied with power, and all difficulties are bravely met and wisely overcome. His purposes are seasonably planted, and they bloom and bring forth fruit, which does not fall prematurely to the ground.
Thought allied fearlessly to purpose becomes creative force: he who knows this is ready to become something higher and stronger than a mere bundle of wavering thoughts and fluctuating sensations; he who does this has become the conscious and intelligent wielder of his mental powers.
That last paragraph is the essence of what I teach in the book Power Thinking! For to know must be harnessed to the will to do or knowledge is powerless. Knowledge by itself is not power. Without the will to do, without the commitment to the attending activities required by the knowledge gained, power cannot exist. Only potential power exists without the commitment to do. Real power, realized power, life changing power comes from the commitment to exercise all that knowledge reveals.
How then shall we live? Recognize that whatever you know…you must be committed to do.
A Message to Garcia – A Great Inspirational Story
Posted by: | CommentsI love this story! It is perhaps the greatest inspirational story of all time. Read it carefully, Read it often. Give it to ever young person you know.
HORSE SENSE
If you work for a man, in Heaven’s name work for him. If he pays wages that supply you your bread and butter, work for him, speak well of him, think well of him, and stand by him, and stand by the institution he represents. I think if I worked for a man, I would work for him.
I would not work for him a part of his time, but all of his time. I would give an undivided service or none. If put to the pinch, an ounce of loyalty is worth a pound of cleverness. If you must vilify, condemn, and eternally disparage, why, resign your position, and when you are outside, damn to your heart’s content. But, I pray you, so long as you are a part of an institution, do not condemn it. Not that you will injure the institution–not that–but when you disparage the concern of which you are a part, you disparage yourself. And don’t forget–”I forgot” won’t do in business.
This literary trifle, “A Message to Garcia,” was written one evening after supper, in a single hour. It was on the Twenty-second of February, Eighteen Hundred Ninety-nine, Washington’s Birthday, and we were just going to press with the March “Philistine.” The thing leaped hot from my heart, written after a trying day, when I had been endeavoring to train some rather delinquent villagers to abjure the comatose state and get radio-active.
Over forty million copies of “A Message to Garcia” have been printed. This is said to be a larger circulation than any other literary venture has ever attained during the lifetime of the author, in all history–thanks to a series of lucky accidents!–E.H.
A MESSAGE TO GARCIA
As the cold of snow in the time of harvest, so is a faithful messenger to them that send him: for he refresheth the soul of his masters.–Proverbs 25:13
In all this Cuban business there is one man stands out on the horizon of my memory like Mars at perihelion. When war broke out between Spain and the United States, it was very necessary to communicate quickly with the leader of the Insurgents.
Garcia was somewhere in the mountain fastnesses of Cuba–no one knew where. No mail or telegraph message could reach him. The President must secure his co-operation, and quickly. What to do!
Some one said to the President, “There is a fellow by the name of Rowan he will find Garcia for you, if anybody can.”
Rowan was sent for and was given a letter to be delivered to Garcia.
How “the fellow by the name of Rowan” took the letter, sealed it up in an oilskin pouch, strapped it over his heart, in four days landed by night off the coast of Cuba from an open boat, disappeared into the jungle, and in three weeks came out on the other side of the Island, having traversed a hostile country on foot, and delivered his letter to Garcia–are things I have no special desire now to tell in detail.
The point that I wish to make is this: McKinley gave Rowan a letter to be delivered to Garcia; Rowan took the letter and did not ask, “Where is he at?” By the Eternal! there is a man whose form should be cast in deathless bronze and the statue placed in every college of the land.
It is not book-learning young men need, nor instruction about this and that, but a stiffening of the vertebrae which will cause them to be loyal to a trust, to act promptly, concentrate their energies: do the thing–“Carry a message to Garcia.”
General Garcia is dead now, but there are other Garcias.
No man who has endeavored to carry out an enterprise where many hands were needed, but has been well-nigh appalled at times by the imbecility of the average man–the inability or unwillingness to concentrate on a thing and do it.
Slipshod assistance, foolish inattention, dowdy indifference, and half-hearted work seem the rule; and no man succeeds, unless by hook or crook or threat he forces or bribes other men to assist him; or mayhap, God in His goodness performs a miracle, and sends him an Angel of Light for an assistant. You, reader, put this matter to a test: You are sitting now in your office–six clerks are within call. Summon any one and make this request: “Please look in the encyclopedia and make a brief memorandum for me concerning the life of Correggio.”
Will the clerk quietly say, “Yes, sir,” and go do the task? On your life he will not. He will look at you out of a fishy eye and ask one or more of the following questions: Who was he? Which encyclopedia? Where is the encyclopedia? Was I hired for that? Don’t you mean Bismarck? What’s the matter with Charlie doing it? Is he dead? Is there any hurry? Shall I bring you the book and let you look it up yourself? What do you want to know for? I wasn’t hired for that anyway!
And I will lay you ten to one that after you have answered the questions, and explained how to find the information, and why you want it, the clerk will go off and get one of the other clerks to help him try to find Garcia–and then come back and tell you there is no such man. Of course I may lose my bet, but according to the Law of Average I will not.
Now, if you are wise, you will not bother to explain to your “assistant” that Correggio is indexed under the C’s, not in the K’s, but you will smile very sweetly and say, “Never mind,” and go look it up yourself.
And this incapacity for independent action, this moral stupidity, this infirmity of the will, this unwillingness to cheerfully catch hold and lift–these are the things that put pure Socialism so far into the future. If men will not act for themselves, what will they do when the benefit of their effort is for all? A first mate with knotted club seems necessary; and the dread of getting “the bounce” Saturday night holds many a worker to his place.
Advertise for a stenographer, and nine out of ten who apply can neither spell nor punctuate–and do not think it necessary to.
Can such a one write a letter to Garcia?
“You see that bookkeeper,” said a foreman to me in a large factory.
“Yes; what about him?”
“Well, he’s a fine accountant, but if I’d send him up-town on an errand, he might accomplish the errand all right, and on the other hand, might stop at four saloons on the way, and when he got to Main Street would forget what he had been sent for.”
Can such a man be entrusted to carry a message to Garcia?
We have recently been hearing much maudlin sympathy expressed for the “downtrodden denizens of the sweat-shop” and the “homeless wanderer searching for honest employment,” and with it all often go many hard words for the men in power.
Nothing is said about the employer who grows old before his time in a vain attempt to get frowzy ne’er-do-wells to do intelligent work; and his long, patient striving with “help” that does nothing but loaf when his back is turned. In every store and factory there is a constant weeding-out process going on. The employer is continually sending away “help” that have shown their incapacity to further the interests of the business, and others are being taken on.
No matter how good times are, this sorting continues: only if times are hard and work is scarce, the sorting is done finer–but out and forever out the incompetent and unworthy go. It is the survival of the fittest. Self-interest prompts every employer to keep the best–those who can carry a message to Garcia.
I know one man of really brilliant parts who has not the ability to manage a business of his own, and yet who is absolutely worthless to any one else, because he carries with him constantly the insane suspicion that his employer is oppressing, or intending to oppress, him. He cannot give orders; and he will not receive them. Should a message be given him to take to Garcia, his answer would probably be, “Take it yourself!”
Tonight this man walks the streets looking for work, the wind whistling through his threadbare coat. No one who knows him dare employ him, for he is a regular firebrand of discontent. He is impervious to reason, and the only thing that can impress him is the toe of a thick-soled Number Nine boot.
Of course I know that one so morally deformed is no less to be pitied than a physical cripple; but in our pitying let us drop a tear, too, for the men who are striving to carry on a great enterprise, whose working hours are not limited by the whistle, and whose hair is fast turning white through the struggle to hold in line dowdy indifference, slipshod imbecility, and the heartless ingratitude which, but for their enterprise, would be both hungry and homeless.
Have I put the matter too strongly? Possibly I have; but when all the world has gone a-slumming I wish to speak a word of sympathy for the man who succeeds–the man who, against great odds, has directed the efforts of others, and having succeeded, finds there’s nothing in it: nothing but bare board and clothes. I have carried a dinner-pail and worked for day’s wages, and I have also been an employer of labor, and I know there is something to be said on both sides. There is no excellence, per se, in poverty; rags are no recommendation; and all employers are not rapacious and high-handed, any more than all poor men are virtuous.
My heart goes out to the man who does his work when the “boss” is away, as well as when he is at home. And the man who, when given a letter for Garcia, quietly takes the missive, without asking any idiotic questions, and with no lurking intention of chucking it into the nearest sewer, or of doing aught else but deliver it, never gets “laid off,” nor has to go on a strike for higher wages. Civilization is one long, anxious search for just such individuals. Anything such a man asks shall be granted. His kind is so rare that no employer can afford to let him go. He is wanted in every city, town and village–in every office, shop, store and factory.
The world cries out for such: he is needed, and needed badly–the man who can carry
A MESSAGE TO GARCIA.
Inspirational Thoughts on “As A Man Thinketh”
Posted by: | CommentsToday’s inspirational thought focuses on the role your thinking plays in shaping your circumstances.
“You are the embodiment of the information you choose to accept and act upon. To change your circumstances you need to change your thinking and subsequent actions.”
Proverbs 23:7 states: “For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he:”. Could God have made it more clear? What you think. What you tell yourself. What you choose to dwell on when you are driving down the road. What you say to you when you get finished with an appointment that didn’t go as expected. All of those things are making you into the person you are becoming.
How much better to take complete control of your thoughts rather than have them ultimately control you.
I have spent some time this week preparing a series on the book “As A Man Thinketh”.
The Introduction can be found.
The First Chapter can be found.
The Second Chapter can be found.
The Third Chapter can be found.
Next week I will post another chapter. I will continue weekly posts until I have completed the book. Please feel free to use the studies any way that can help you to become more successful.
To Your Success,
Eric W. Mulford
Effect of Thought on Health and the Body – Lesson 3
Posted by: | CommentsThis is a fascinating study provided by James Allen on the Effect of Thought on Health and the Body. Maybe controversial in the light of modern medicine, but at the same time may explain many things that defy explanation. This is not about “thinking your body into good health”. It is instead a careful analysis on thoughts and their effect on desires and how that relates to the health of the body. Thoughts lead to desires and the desires are manifested in the health of the body.
The body is the servant of the mind. It obeys the operations of the mind, whether they be deliberately chosen or automatically expressed. At the bidding of unlawful thoughts the body sinks rapidly into disease and decay; at the command of glad and beautiful thoughts it becomes clothed with youthfulness and beauty. Disease and health, like circumstances, are rooted in thought. Sickly thoughts will express themselves through a sickly body. Thoughts of fear have been known to kill a man as speedily as a bullet, and they are continually killing thousands of people just as surely though less rapidly. The people who live in fear of disease are the people who get it. Anxiety quickly demoralizes the whole body, and lays it open to the entrance of disease; while impure thoughts, even if not physically indulged, will soon shatter the nervous system.
Strong, pure, and happy thoughts build up the body in vigor and grace. The body is a delicate and plastic instrument, which responds readily to the thoughts by which it is impressed, and habits of thought will produce their own effects, good or bad, upon it.
Men will continue to have impure and poisoned blood, so long as they propagate unclean thoughts. Out of a clean heart comes a clean life and a clean body. Out of a defiled mind proceeds a defiled life and a corrupt body. Thought is the fount of action, life, and manifestation; make the fountain pure, and all will be pure. Change of diet will not help a man who will not change his thoughts. When a man makes his thoughts pure, he no longer desires impure food.
Clean thoughts make clean habits. The so-called saint who does not wash his body is not a saint. He who has strengthened and purified his thoughts does not need to consider the malevolent microbe.
The reason is simple “clean thoughts make clean habits”. A man who thinks clean thoughts cannot ignore the uncleanness of his own body. Character in thought will lead to character in habits.
If you would protect your body, guard your mind. If you would renew your body, beautify your mind. Thoughts of malice, envy, disappointment, despondency, rob the body of its health and grace. A sour face does not come by chance; it is made by sour thoughts. Wrinkles that mar are drawn by folly, passion, and pride. I know a woman of ninety-six who has the bright, innocent face of a girl. I know a man well under middle age whose face is drawn into inharmonious contours. The one is the result of a sweet and sunny disposition; the other is the outcome of passion and discontent.
As you cannot have a sweet and wholesome abode unless you admit the air and sunshine freely into your rooms, so a strong body and a bright, happy, or serene countenance can only result from the free admittance into the mind of thoughts of joy and goodwill and serenity.
On the faces of the aged there are wrinkles made by sympathy, others by strong and pure thought, and others are carved by passion: who cannot distinguish them? With those who have lived righteously, age is calm, peaceful, and softly mellowed, like the setting sun. I have recently seen a philosopher on his deathbed. He was not old except in years. He died as sweetly and peacefully as he had lived.
I began to observe this when I was a very young pastor in an inner city church. The life that people had lead in their younger years was clearly seen by physical manifestation in their older age.
There is no physician like cheerful thought for dissipating the ills of the body; there is no comforter to compare with goodwill for dispersing the shadows of grief and sorrow. To live continually in thoughts of ill will, cynicism, suspicion, and envy, is to be confined in a self made prison-hole. But to think well of all, to be cheerful with all, to patiently learn to find the good in all–such unselfish thoughts are the very portals of heaven; and to dwell day by day in thoughts of peace toward every creature will bring abounding peace to their possessor.
What kind of person do you desire to be in your old age? For some that may seem far off, but the tracks are being laid today. How you think could shorten your years, mar your countenance, disease your body, and poison your good health. You are what you think! What steps will you take this week to begin to change your thinking so that body may respond with good health?
Twitter
LinkedIn
Delicious
Facebook
Email
Google