Being Nice Makes Good Business Sense
Several years ago I was getting ready to interview with a law firm in New York. It was my first interview ever as a law student and I was pretty nervous. I was trying to get on an elevator as the door was closing and I saw a woman rushing towards it. I reached quickly for the button to open the elevator and was able to get the door to re-open at the last second. The woman got on and told me which floor to push, and I did this for her as well. The woman was very heavy and was not particularly well-dressed. We were going to a very high floor and there were several stops along the way.
At one of the stops, I started looking over my hair because I could see my reflection in the glass in the elevator. I looked up and saw the woman looking directly at me, and she smirked as if to say I looked ridiculous primping in the elevator.
At that point in my life I lifted weights frequently and spent a lot of time at the gym. I taught myself it was important to stick up for myself at all costs. Normally, what I would have done was turn around and tell the woman to mind her own business. On that occasion, however, my nervousness must have gotten the best of me. I turned around and looked directly at the woman.
”Do I look ok? I am going to an interview and I am a little nervous. I want to do a good job.”
The woman looked absolutely stunned. The way she looked at me had invited me to strike out and attack. Instead, I had done the opposite.
”Yes, you do. Just pull your tie up a little. I am sure you’ll do fine.”
This woman ended up being in charge of the hiring committee at the law firm. She was reputed to be extremely difficult as an interviewer and did not like anyone. In my interview, she was very nice to me. I ended up getting the job at the firm and working in this same law firm over the summer. The woman was nice to me during the summer as well and stood up for me. In fact, she was one of the nicest people in the law firm I can remember.
There is really something to being nice. When you are nice to people, you invite them to be nice in return. However, most often we are less interested in being nice than we are in being thought of as important, powerful, or right.
Given the incredible number of experiences I have had over and over again in my life, I am confident there are various forms of energy we simply do not understand. I firmly believe when you send out negative energy, it comes right back to you. I also believe when you send out positive energy, it comes back to you as well.
One of my favorite books of all time is The Richest Man in Babylon. One of the rules in this book is that when you make money you are supposed to give away 10 percent of it to charity or some other good cause. The idea is when you give away 10 percent of your income, you will realize how much abundance there is and you will become less attached to money.
While the book makes this point, and I believe there is truth to it, there is another important point about giving away money as well. When you help and give to others you create positive energy which is directed back at you. There is nothing more important than having positive energy directed back at you. The more positive energy you have directed at you, the better your life and everything in it is going to be.
The word ”appreciation” is, to me, one of the more interesting words in the English language. What appreciation means essentially is positive energy directed towards something. For example, when a stock appreciates it means people are excited about it and its value rises. When you are appreciated it means people like you and the value you bring them. Anything that appreciates takes on more value than it originally had. Things typically take on more value when others are excited about them for one reason or another.
You want to be appreciated. You need to be appreciated. Being appreciated means others are seeing and recognizing your value. When people see your value, you get more opportunities and your career and your life can only improve.
Think about things you appreciate in your life and the people who appreciate you. You appreciate these people and things because of how they make you feel. When we are babies, the only things we think about are our needs and taking care of those needs, specifically our need for food and comfort. We do not yet have the capacity to appreciate the needs of others. As we grow older we learn how our actions affect others positively or negatively. We learn we can make others happy or sad. We begin to learn how our ability to make others happy has an effect on our own happiness.
The world exists as exchanges of energy. If negative energy goes out then negative energy comes back. If someone robs a liquor store, the police come after the person and incarcerate him or her. If someone makes a large financial donation to a good cause, the newspapers write about this person’s generosity for all to know. There is a constant interplay between positive and negative energy in the world, and you want to be on the receiving end of positive energy. This is really the only decent place to be. When positive energy comes to us, we feel better and the world is a better place to us. This simple rule is so easy to follow.
We exist in a consumer-driven society where so many of our desires are shaped by things outside of us. For example, many people evaluate their happiness based on their material possessions. People strive to earn the money to purchase the best house and car they can. They want nice furniture and watches. They want to travel to the best places. Many people evaluate their own self worth based on their ability to accumulate these possessions. This is the way of the Western world. What this sort of consumer culture does, however, is focus almost exclusively on the act of accumulating various things. It does not emphasize the act of putting out positive energy and instead bases everything on taking in energy. This constant taking in often violates laws of the universe which demand equal exchanges between opposite forms of energy. Instead of being focused on taking things in, we need to be focused on putting out positive energy.
This brings me back to the act of being nice. Several years ago, I was listening to Deepak Chopra speak and he was making a similar point. He said whenever he visits someone’s home, he always brings them a flower. In bringing people a flower, he is trying to set up a dynamic of being nice and sending out positive energy. Sending out positive energy is something that comes back to you every single time.
There is a best selling career book called Nice Girls Don’t Get the Corner Office. The message of this book is if you worry about offending others, are forthright when explaining information, and make sure your decisions are popular, you will never get ahead. The idea behind the book is that in being nice to others you will not be successful. I believe the opposite is true. When you are nice to others you send out the sort of energy which gets you ahead.
Some years ago I was at a seminar and met a woman who had been a partner at a large and important law firm, but had quit after a year. She was now a real estate agent and I got the sense she was struggling a little. She told me about how she had been working with the law firm and did not become partner until she demanded it and turned mean. She told me people had walked all over her in her job until she became mean. When I asked her to give me some examples, she did not have any. She simply said they did not make her partner.
I think the woman ended up getting fired from her job within a year of making partner. She had worked for the firm for almost 10 years, and within a year of deciding the best thing for her to do was to become ”a bitch,” she had lost her job. Being mean simply does not work.
I have seen this happen in my own life and with people who have worked for me as well. Recently, I had someone working for me who was extremely competent in all respects. The person was working very close with me and I was extremely impressed. For some reason, however, this person could not get along with others outside my office. One day, she called and screamed at a co-worker for no apparent reason. She also refused to follow instructions. Somehow, she’d come to believe it was good to be mean to others, to attack others savagely, and to not follow orders. The person was quickly let go despite her competence in other areas.
Who knows how this person rationalized losing her job to herself? If she had just been nice to others she would still be happily employed. Instead, this person ended up losing her job and poisoning the people around her who were working for her in the process. When someone sends out negative energy, it does a lot of damage.
You need to be nice to others. This is the most important thing you can do in your job. Let the negative energy of others flow right through you and be nice in response. The way to get ahead is to be liked, not feared and hated.
We want to work with people who are nice. Companies need people who are nice. It is important to be nice. I want to be very clear that by being nice I am not talking about being a doormat. When you are nice and place the needs of others on the same level as your own, you are simply being smart. Being nice is the smartest thing you can possibly do in your career.
The Most Important Thing You Can Have Is Faith
Several years ago I was practicing law, and over Christmas I went home to Michigan from Los Angeles for a one week vacation. At the time, I was also a law professor and I had brought a stack of papers to grade with me. For several days I read paper after paper. After about a day, it occurred to me I was unhappy with my life. I was unhappy with my job. I did not like where my life was headed and what my career was like. At the time I was making a very good living and doing everything I thought I should be doing. But I was not happy.
For the next few nights I had a lot of difficulty sleeping. Then I made a decision. What was making me unhappy was not just my job but the practice of law. I did not want to be an attorney anymore. I simply did not want to do this.
I had gotten married just a few months before. I had also bought a house around the same time with a pretty decent-sized mortgage. By all appearances, my life was on the right track for someone in his late 20s. I had done everything I thought was right up until that point in my life. But my job did not make me happy. I did not like the constant confrontation. I did not like where I worked at the time. I did not feel my talents were being utilized as much as they could be. I knew this was simply something I did not want to do any longer.
I went back to work on January 3rd and gave my two weeks notice. I knew this was not what I wanted and I simply needed to have faith that everything would work out. I had no savings to speak of and my wife was not earning very much money. I needed to trust that everything would work out – although at the time I had no idea what was going to happen. I knew deep down, however, that if I was happy I would do much better in my life than if I wasn’t.
Your ultimate resource in your job search and in your life is faith. Faith is the most important thing in the world. Faith is what enables you to move forward and find a new job, to get into a new relationship, to move to a new city, to start a new life, and to take chances. Similarly, a lack of faith causes people to feel trapped in bad relationships and never leave them, work in jobs they hate, and stay in circumstances which do not make them happy. The most important and forward-looking thing you can do is have faith.
Similarly, the worst thing you can do is spend time around people who shake the faith you have in yourself. When we are driving, we have faith the cars across the median will not cross over and hit us. We have faith when we are walking down the street we will not get shot. We have faith when we get home at night, our spouse will still be there. We have faith our children will always love us. When you get on an airplane, you generally have faith the plane will take off and land safely. You should. Statistically, you are 10 times more likely to get hit by lightning than die in an airplane crash. Nevertheless, after September 11 numerous people became afraid of flying. The goal of the terrorists was to shake our faith in our daily lives and, for many, it worked. Is there anyone around you who shakes your faith?
Faith gives people the will to live even when it looks like there is no reason to go on. I remember when I was a young boy my stepfather had to undergo a surgery that lasted almost 36 hours to remove all sorts of cancer from his body. The surgeons said before they took him there was a 99 percent chance he would die in surgery. Before he went into surgery, he told my mother he would be fine and not to worry. When he came out of surgery, the surgeons said the only thing that kept him alive was his faith and without it he never would have survived. I have heard others tell stories about faith like this before. Faith is something that is real and makes a giant difference in peoples lives. It can change your life, too.
Faith is the key that opens the doors of possibility. If you had faith that you could do anything, what would you do? Would you walk right up and talk to your dream mate? Would you embark on a new career? What would you do if you knew you could not fail? If you knew you could not fail, you could do anything in the world. I once saw the most ridiculous thing and it stuck with me. For years I used to go by a certain man’s house in Detroit to seal his asphalt. The man was a printer who did the same job day after day, and he did not seem particularly enthusiastic about it. After six or so years of working for him, I went by his doorway and saw him wearing a Hawaiian shirt and sunglasses – not the sort of blue-collar outfit he usually wore.
“What are you doing?” I asked him.
“I sold my printing business, sold my house, and bought a deli in the Bahamas. I’m leaving tomorrow,” he told me.
Now that’s faith – taking control of your life, following your heart, and doing what you want to do.
It is far better to make mistakes and fail than it is to not try something. You are almost always better off taking steps in the direction of the life you want than not taking any steps at all. You will always be better off from having learned lessons and exercised your faith.
The most important characteristic of any leader is faith, specifically faith that they can bring the people they are leading the result they are seeking. The greatest business minds have mastered the art of having faith. For example, when Bill Gates was at Harvard, he decided he no longer wanted to go to school. He was more interested in computers. Having faith and nothing more, he dropped out of school, found someone who had invented a computer but had no operating system for it, and purchased the rights to the DOS program. He knew making a computer work would create profound results, and he had faith in the future. He ended up becoming one of the richest men in the world and changing the world through his contributions.
When Sam Walton opened his first Wal-Mart, it was a disaster. One of the first days he was open, he had a watermelon sale and stacked hundreds of watermelons in front of the store. It was so hot, however, that all of the watermelons were exploding, and when people pulled up to the store it looked like there had been a mass murder. Nonetheless, Walton had faith in his idea and pursued it.
It is not just businesses which require faith, however. It is you. You need to have faith in who you can become. You need to have faith that you will get the job you want and live the life you want. You need to have faith in your future. There is something remarkable about the power of faith: the power of faith changes everything. Faith is not logical. You cannot live your life with logic alone. Faith is what drives people to do things when they have no idea what the end result will be. When you have faith you act because you know the universe will take care of you. You do not act because you are certain of the result.
There are lots of people who live their lives certain of the results they will achieve. Not much ever happens with these sorts of people. They never even come close to reaching their full potential. You can live your life with certainty but, if you do, you will never know how fulfilled you can possibly be and how much you can achieve.
The present is not the future. Faith is what gives us a future that is different from the present we have today. Step into the future and decide what you want from it. Once you have decided what you want from the future, it is important you have faith and set about going after your dreams. You need to put yourself on the line. You need to see a better tomorrow.
After quitting my job, I still did not know what I was going to do. My law firm told me to stick around for three months and look for another job because they did not think it sounded rational for me to just leave. So this is what I did. I went out and interviewed with other law firms, but I did not take any jobs because I was not interested in practicing law. I spoke with recruiters while I was looking for a job, and the more I spoke with them, the more their jobs looked interesting to me. What ended up happening, of course, was that I chose to start recruiting.
I remember about three months after I began recruiting a few of my wife’s friends were at the house. At the time, my wife had started to think I was insane. I had left a job paying over $150,000 a year and was now running a recruiting business out of our family room. The problem was the business was not doing all that well. In fact, I had scarcely gotten any candidates interviews and had been at it for three months. In addition, I had hardly any money left. I had taken out a home equity loan during my final weeks of practicing law and this money was almost gone. I had long ago maxed out my credit cards. My wife’s family used to call her and she would walk out to the front lawn to talk on the phone. We had only been married a few months at that point, and I think she thought she must have made a real mistake. In all fairness, she had signed up to be married to a lawyer, and that was not what was going on at the moment.
In a manner that implied some concern, a couple of my wife’s friends walked up to my desk and asked me how I was doing. I started telling them about how I had recently gotten a new candidate and how wonderful the candidate was. I told them I was in the middle of putting together a long letter about the candidate and the more I learned about the candidate, the more impressed I was. The funniest thing happened after I told them about the candidate. I was sitting there with probably 10 Diet Coke cans spread across my desk and piles of paper on the floor. I had not shaved in a couple of days, and I was very involved in the work I was doing. I remember I looked away for a second and, when I looked back, one of my wife’s friends was looking at the other friend with his finger pointed at his head moving it around in circles like I was crazy. I must have looked crazy. Everyone thought I was crazy for pursuing my dream like this. But I had faith.
The entire basis of Christianity, Islam, and most major religions of the world is faith. The greatest accomplishments in the world are achieved when people have faith. When you have faith in yourself and faith in an idea, anything at all is possible.
One of the most exciting places in the world is Disneyland. There is an institute there where employees can take classes and learn about the founding of the company. The story of the founding of Disneyland is one of the greatest stories of the power of faith there is. According to one account:
With Disneyland, Walt Disney envisioned a place where parents and children could go to enjoy themselves and see fantasy become real. Disappointed with the quality of amusement parks he visited with his children, Disney wanted his park to be clean, well-organized, and family-friendly. He first planned to build the park on a lot in Burbank, but he soon realized that he needed more space, so he bought an orange grove in Anaheim, California.
No one thought his idea would work. He was advised by other amusement park officers the park was doomed to failure. He could not convince financiers to invest in the park because his dreams offered “too little collateral.” Even his brother, who handled the studio’s finances, refused to spend company funds on the project.
In spite of the opposition, Disney refused to give up. He cashed in his life insurance policy and sold his family home to raise the $11 million required for the park’s construction. When more money was needed, he signed a contract with the American Broadcasting Company to air a weekly show in exchange for ABC’s investment in the park. He bet every penny on the success of the park and remained determined to make it a reality. Driven by his zeal, construction of the park began July 21, 1954, and it opened almost exactly a year later, on July 17, 1955.
It appeared the doomsayers had been right. Opening day was a disaster. Worse, there was national TV coverage. Tickets were counterfeited, resulting in 28,000 guests instead of the 11,000 invited. Rides broke under the stress of operation. Plumbers were on strike, so bathrooms and drinking fountains were not working. The asphalt roads, having been poured the night before, were still soft and trapped ladies’ high-heeled shoes.
Disney was not swayed by the park’s disastrous opening. He fixed the problems and continued to plan and build better attractions. He continuously found new ideas that kept people coming back for more. After 10 years, more than 50 million people had visited Disneyland, and today it remains a national attraction. More than that, as historian Larry Schweikart has observed, “Disneyland set the standard by which future parks were judged.” Against all odds, Walt Disney had built an amusement park that had become an amazing success. (Source: http://www.mackinac.org/article.aspx?ID=7164)
When you have faith in yourself the impossible can happen. Disney, for example, has left behind a huge and lasting legacy with Disneyland and his company. He put his faith and mind behind the power of an idea and stuck with it. Faith is what changes the world, and faith can change your life as well. The more you believe in something and the more faith you have in it, the more your mind will attract similar thoughts. These similar thoughts will build upon each other, get stronger and stronger, and get you closer to what you are seeking. This is the power of faith.
Your life and your future begin with thoughts. Faith is the most important thing you can have. When you have faith you can do absolutely anything. Regardless of what is going on in your career, or your life, you need to have faith.
After four months of recruiting, I still had not made a single placement. My credit cards were maxed out, my home equity loan was maxed out, and my wife was beyond freaked out. One Monday morning, I answered the phone and it was a law firm. They told me they were making an offer to one of my candidates. The next day the same thing happened and on Thursday and Friday it happened again.
In less than one week I had made four placements and the business was up and running. It was one of the most wonderful weeks of my life and really taught me the power of faith. When you believe in yourself and what you can do, anything is possible. You need to start believing in what you can do right now.
Never Focus on the Money: Focus on Your Higher Purpose and Contribution
People fail far too often in the working world because they focus too much on the money they earn at their jobs. The money you are paid is generally commensurate with your contribution to something more important, more meaningful, and much larger than yourself. When you focus on what you are doing for the world and the value of this contribution, you become energized. Being energized by your work brings more and better work your way, and ultimately leads to greater earnings. The money is a byproduct of your contribution to your job. You will be paid in any organization at a rate matching your contribution to the bigger picture.
What is your particular contribution to the bigger picture? Every job makes a contribution to a bigger picture.
I started delivering papers when I was 10 years old. By the time I was 13, I was getting up at 5 a.m. every morning to deliver over 175 papers in a prestigious suburb of Detroit. High-ranking auto executives lived in most of the houses. When I delivered these papers, I found myself energized by the thought I was providing them information they would be using to help run companies that supported the American economy, provided millions of jobs and gave people access to transportation. In a small way, I realized in this job I was fulfilling a larger purpose.
Some years later, I took a second job washing dishes in a cafeteria. I motivated myself in this job by thinking if not for my work, hundreds of people each night might go hungry. I was also providing people enjoyment when they sat down for dinner, and I was helping families spend more time together, and I was making the world a happier place. This motivated me to do good work, and it made me happy.
Whatever you do, there is a higher purpose to your work, and your job is fulfilling a role that is changing the world and making a contribution. Money is just money. When you focus on the money, you lose track of the importance of the contribution you make. My career advice is to find the importance in your contribution, and use this to inspire your job performance.
Don’t focus on money if you want to do well in your job. In the same way a person must focus on his or her relationship in order to have a successful one, a person must focus on his or her work in order to be successful at it. Focus on your job and your performance–nothing else. If you can do this, the money will follow.
It is easy for me to spot people whose eyes are on the money and not the job. They are in every profession and they never have long-term success. Having a larger purpose is incredibly important, and money is not a larger purpose.
The issue I see with people who always focus on the money is that they are constantly interrupting their work to consider if they are getting the short end of the stick. They are extremely concerned about their compensation relative to others. They wonder whether or not their efforts are being adequately compensated every step of the way. They are overly concerned about the accuracy of each paycheck. Their focus on their work is perpetually distracted by an interest in the money, rather than the job.
If you were an employer, who would you want to have working for you? Someone who is committed and enthusiastic about the job? Or someone who appears to be doing the work just for the money?
Several years ago, I was speaking with a young CIA agent and he told me about a meeting he was getting ready to have with a senior agent. The senior agent told him the person they were going to speak with was very dishonest, untrustworthy, and an all-around bad person. However, the agents would be nice, and treat the target nicely. They would only accomplish their assignment if the target were to see them this way. The senior agent said something to the younger agent he thought so profound he remembered it throughout his career:
“Don’t ever think something or else you will show it.”
Basically, the second you start thinking something, you will begin telegraphing your thoughts. People will begin to pick up on it through nonverbal signals, facial expressions, and body language.
Have you ever had the experience of being able to tell something about someone without speaking to the person? You just get a feeling about something. Who knows how we pick up on it, but we do.
When you are focused on the money, your put your purpose in the job on the back burner in favor of your obsession with how much you are going to make. People easily pick up on this – employers, clients, and others. This is one of the worst things you can do in any job.
At the risk of becoming a little too metaphysical, I would like to share a quick side story with you. I was at a dinner once discussing this exact topic of people picking up clues about others through nonverbal communication. The person I was talking with had a background in engineering and the study of energy, and he too was interested in this subject. He told me there is a gland at the very top of the brain – the pituitary gland – that for some strange reason has almost the exact same cellular structure as our eyes. He told me he believes people pick up on information using this. He also observed when a child is born and his or her skull is not yet fused, with only skin separating this gland from the outside world, this gland is pointed outward. He believed this has something to do with how humans pick up signals from the world around them when they are babies.
This may seem like bizarre thinking, but I do believe when people are more concerned with their salary than their work, the people around them pick up on it. You should push any concerns you have about your compensation out of your mind, and focus on your work and your work’s greater purpose. The greater purpose of your work is something that deserves your attention. Regardless of what type of work you do, it has a greater purpose. People will pick up on your passion and will want to work with you.
Every single person I’ve ever known in our company who is outstanding at what he or she does has always focused on the greater purpose of his or her work. Every single attorney I know who is outstanding at his or her job has always focused on the work and not the reward. Get into what you do and realize your higher purpose.
People Around You Can Shape What Happens to You: Avoid the Negative Affirmations of Others
What You Will Learn
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Although there is a great deal of historical debate about the specifics, legend has it Hermes Trismegistus – one of the most important sorcerers of ancient Greece – had a tablet in his tomb with the greatest secret in all of history written on it. When the tomb was opened centuries later, it was said people waited with a sense of wonder for the wisdom of the tablet to be revealed. The secret written on the tablet was:
As within, so without;
As above, so below.
This statement has been made in one form or another by others, such as Buddha, Isaiah, Jesus, and Moses. countless books and studies have been devoted to the meaning of this statement. If you take the time to understand it, I believe it will be among the most important you ever read. As I see it, this is the significance of this statement:
Whatever we believe inside of us becomes expressed in the world around us. Your belief about what is true is reflected by the world around you, its conditions, events, and circumstances. Simply put, if you believe you are successful, the world around you will manifest in that way. You will find yourself surrounded by the accoutrements of what success means to you, whether they include a certain type of car, home, mate, or even a jet. If you believe you are a failure, the world around you will manifest that as well. This will show in the form of recurring failures, whether in the form of financial losses, divorce, substance abuse, or poverty.
Whatever exists in your mind is also what will exist in your environment, circumstances, and physical surroundings. Your mind creates its own environment.
As humans, we have the ability to imagine things that do not exist, and to create the world around us the way we want. We have the ability to attract the people and experiences we want. Similarly, we have the ability to repel circumstances we don’t want. No other animal in the world has this ability. It is an ability you, too, can use.
In respect to how we influence ourselves, it is important to understand the people around us also have the ability to influence us in a way that has a great impact on who we become.
I am about to share some extremely important advice I believe could permanently alter the course of your life and you can use to change the lives of others. The best teachers and coaches practice this idea with their students and many times it separates the successful from the unsuccessful.
Several years ago, I was a reporter for my college newspaper, the Chicago Maroon. I was assigned a story about a high school senior who’d recently won the most prestigious science prize for high school seniors in the country, the Westinghouse Science Prize. The student’s teacher taught at a private high school on the University of Chicago campus. As I interviewed the teacher, I discovered several of his students had won this prize. In fact, despite the fact only one of these prizes was given out nationally each year, three or four of his students had won over the last several years. After speaking with the teacher at length, I realized this was no coincidence. I believe the students’ success had a lot to do with the suggestions he gave them about what they could achieve. I remember probing specifically about why so many of this man’s students had won the award. Essentially, he said the following:
“Every few years, I have an exceptional student, and I start telling him over and over he is going to win the award. When I do this, most times the student ends up winning.”
I had a teacher like this in high school as well. After we had discussed colleges, and after I had decided where I thought I would like to go, he told me, “Then that is where you will go.” Incredibly, out of all the schools I applied to, this is where I ended up going.
Great teachers, great parents, and great coaches make people believe in themselves. They also make them take on the characteristics of what they want to achieve before they even achieve it. How is this relevant to your job search?
When I was recruiting, I had an uncanny ability to get people jobs in the firms I believed were their best fits. Keep in mind I was not the one getting my candidates jobs, they were. When each person began his or her job search, I would say something like, “I am confident you are going to get a job at this particular firm.” I would keep repeating this over and over again. Despite the fact (1) the firm might have been out of the candidate’s league in terms of their qualifications, (2) the person might have been looking at 20+ law firms in their search, and (3) I might never have had a candidate interview at that particular firm before, when I did this, my candidates often got jobs at these “target firms.” What was happening here? Why was this occurring?
When people start believing they are capable of achieving something, they begin to take on the form of what they believe.
When someone believes they are going to get a job in a certain place, and really feels it deep down, things start to fall into place. I am not sure why this is. Nevertheless, I have seen it over and over again in my work as a recruiter.
Another thing I have learned as a recruiter is the importance of sharing positive news with people, not bad news. Building up job seekers and not sharing negative information about rejections works wonders. In fact, it is largely this skill that separates good recruiters from average ones. When I work with someone, I make sure to share inspirational and motivational information because I know negative energy and information will bring the person down. This is a basic yet essential skill I learned long ago, and it works.
Remember: you control your own mind. You control what you allow in and what happens within your own mind. If you let negative information in, there is a good chance the world around you will also become negative. If you choose to let positive information in, there is a good chance your world will become positive.
Your job situation, financial condition, health, social status, and friends are all a reflection of how you feel about yourself. This is the real meaning of what is “within” and what is “without” in your life. This is why it is extremely important you control your thinking in your life.
As a recruiter I have dealt with individuals who were fired from their previous jobs. People who are fired are often difficult to work with because future employers view them suspiciously. Basically, most employers feel these candidates are likely to cause problems in their next job. While it does not always come up in interviews, if someone is not currently working, a future employer is likely to wonder why.
I always tell my candidates to write down and memorize words like the following: “I was not fired from my job. I was a huge asset to my last firm. I am going to do even better in my next job than I did in my last. My last employer loved me!” Writing down and memorizing words like these can be a real asset. In fact, when people write things like this down, the subject of their having been fired almost never comes up in interviews.
This brings me to a very important point about your job search and your current job. In every company’s social network there are people that send out negative information about you, your employer, and others. When this happens, you need to understand this will influence you in a certain way. Choose not to believe this negative information, and avoid it because it can do severe damage to you and your future. Parents, friends, and others do this to us all the time.
If someone tells you you’re not capable of getting a certain type of job or doing a certain thing you want to do, tell him he is wrong. In my case, I am often forced to cut off contact with people who do this to me. People who do this to you do not have your best interest at heart. Usually they are trying to maintain some sort of control over you – or the relationship they have with you.
Protect your mind and fill it with positive thoughts about yourself. In order to reach your full potential, there is really no other way.
The Power of the Positive
What You Will Learn
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I believe that one of the most powerful things in the universe is the mind. Through our minds we can change the world. Skyscrapers, rocket ships, submarines–everything that exists has been conceived in the minds of men and women. If you think about this, you will quickly realize the power of thought and how profound it is to your life. If you can conceive of something it is quite possible that you can achieve it.
I would like to tell you a couple of stories about the power of the mind. Much of this is personal and related to human interaction, but when it comes right down to it I believe that it can apply directly to you and your job search. I also believe it may be some of the best career advice you ever receive.
Throughout my life I have been an observer in many respects more than a participant. I enjoy observing people and how they interact. I enjoy learning what types of people seem consistently happy and what distinguishes these people from those who are not happy. I have friends I have kept in contact with for 25 years or more, and some of these people are extraordinarily happy, while others are not. For our purposes today, I would like to focus on the happy ones. The happy people are those who have been consistently healthy, consistently employed, and have had lives that most of us would envy.I remember first speaking with one of my oldest and dearest friends over 20 years ago. I noticed the strangest thing every time I would speak with him. If I brought up a piece of negative news, or criticized something while talking to him, he would immediately end the conversation. If we were on the telephone he would say he had to go. If we were speaking in person he would walk away. This was how he acted; however, he was very polite about it. He did the same thing in large social situations. If we were in a group of people speaking and negative news came up, he would excuse himself and do something else.
Throughout the years I have seen many people like this. These are people who simply do not want any part in any negativity. They do not want to hear negative news about other people, and they are not at all interested in negative news of any kind. It does nothing for them, and they have no desire to participate.
There is something special about these sorts of people. I have known some of them to be smart and others not so smart. I have seen people like this who are driven and not driven. But one thing I know is this: These people are always well liked, wherever they go. They rarely lose jobs and they are almost always successful. The thing about these sorts of people is that they do not allow negative thoughts to enter their mind. They are, almost universally, only concerned with positive thoughts and spreading goodwill. As a consequence, people really like being around these people. Employers are no exception.
For some of high school I lived in Bangkok, Thailand, and attended an international school where the students were from pretty much every country–Sweden, Israel, Japan, Taiwan, you name it. At the end of ninth grade, students had to decide whether they would enroll in something called the International Baccalaureate Program (IB), or stay in the school’s regular course of study. The IB program was much more difficult, and fewer than 10 percent of students enrolled in it.
One day I was speaking with one of the smartest girls in my history class, and I asked her if she was going to enroll in the program. She was from Sweden. “No, of course I am not,” she said. “That program is only for people who are going to get into good schools when they graduate.” I kept asking different people this question and, one after another, very intelligent people (people I believed were much more intelligent than I was) all told me that they simply were not intellectually equipped for those higher level classes. The significance of this was profound. In many European countries the students not enrolled in the IB program were basically setting themselves up for attending trade schools (rather than universities), and working in mediocre professions. Choosing this “regular” course of study did not have this serious of an impact in the United States, but it certainly did over there.
Many were staying away from the IB program, despite their intelligence, because somewhere along the line they had come to believe they were not intelligent enough to handle that course of study. They were, in effect, allowing their own negativity to make their decision for them.
It should also be noted that the converse was also true. Many students were selecting themselves for the IB course of study, who did not seem qualified. These students were allowing their positivity to influence them. These were the sorts of students who always believed they would find a way. And these were the same sorts of students who were not interested in negative conversations.
A couple of years later I was attending a private high school in Michigan and I had a teacher who I also picked as my advisor. This teacher was really exceptional, and most of the students he advised ended up going to very good colleges. I noticed that he too was always extremely positive. He spoke to the students closest to him in terms that only allowed success. For example, he would tell a student that he was confident he or she would get As in every course for the next semester, as if he already knew this would occur. The student might be only a B student, and would therefore look at the teacher incredulously. Nevertheless, the student would end up getting As the next semester.
Nothing has more power than telling someone “I see you doing this,” or “You are this kind of person, and you can do this.” There is a special kind of energy involved when this happens. You can literally change the course of people’s lives based on the sorts of expectations you set for them–whether those expectations are positive or negative. Do you ever have people around you who are setting low expectations for you? How do you perform when this occurs?
Our capacity to achieve starts within our minds, our conception of self. We have to think positively of ourselves in order to do well. We also cannot let negative thoughts enter our minds. This may be easier said than done, but I have known numerous people who are able to do this consistently. It works, and it is an incredibly powerful thing when it is done correctly.
All this brings me back to you and your job search. Regardless of whether the market is thriving or in a meltdown, you are employable. You are the type of person who always manages to find an opportunity. You are very good at your job and people can see this. You are perfect for every job you are applying for.
You need to keep thoughts like this going through your head at all times. These are the only thoughts you can afford when you are searching for a job. No other thought matters. If people around you are saying negative things about the market, do not listen to them. Walk away, or hang up, and avoid them. Negative information does you absolutely no good. Negative energy depresses. You need to be up.
The happiest people and the most successful people think positive thoughts. You need to believe religiously in your abilities, your strengths, and the strength of the market. Like attracts like. Positive attracts positive. I want you to succeed and be all you are capable of being. Do not listen to negative news about the market. Do not surround yourself with negative people at the office. You need to be in a positive space. This is where the jobs, money, and happiness are.
You deserve it all.
Being Able to Start from Scratch is a Gift
What You Will Learn
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One of the hardest things for any of us to do is to relearn something and become infinitely better at it the next time around. Few of us ever allow ourselves to do this because we are in a comfort zone, which often does not allow us to move, improve and change. People are motivated primarily by two things, pain and pleasure. The desire to avoid pain is very strong and keeps most of us from going outside this comfort zone.
When I was around 14 years old, I was exceptionally good at tennis. I was on the tennis team at a private school my parents managed to send me to, and I always played singles. A few of my peers at the time were even ranked in the state, and traveled around during their summers, playing competitive tennis. I never lost against any of these ranked players. The thing about my tennis game, however, was that I picked up my game in parks and other locations around Detroit with various kids; I never had any lessons. I also played a lot of tennis with my father on the weekends. I was wandering around the streets with an old wooden tennis racquet, and just happened to be good at the game.
In contrast to the way I played tennis, my opponents on the tennis court at the private school had the best equipment. They dressed like professional tennis players and most of them had been taking lessons at private country clubs and other special places, the likes of which I had not seen since the age of 4 or 5. These kids had all grown up playing tennis and learned how to play tennis the right way.
I worked hard to win the games that I won. I did not have the proper tennis strokes, and only made my first serve in around 10% of the time. When it went in, however, scarcely anyone ever could return it.
One summer, my father was going to work in Saudi Arabia for the summer, and he picked me up one evening (my parents were divorced) and drove me over to a local country club. Once we were there, he spoke with one of the tennis pros and then proceeded to write him a check for $1,000, for him to give me a series of private lessons over the summer. This was a nice, surprise gesture on my father’s part. I am sure he did this because he realized that I had a lot of potential in the game of tennis and that, if I were going to get good at the sport, I would need to drastically change my game.
I had my first tennis lesson of the summer and was extremely discouraged. Before the lesson started the instructor hit the ball with me for several minutes. He then had me approach the net and told me something I will never forget:
“You are at a crossroads right now. With your athletic ability you could probably become a professional tennis player. You could even become a household name. But your game is not sustainable, and you are going to fall apart if you continue to play like this. You need to relearn everything, and it is not going to be easy.”
The tennis pro told me that I needed to relearn everything I was doing. I needed to hold the tennis racquet differently. I needed to stand differently. I needed to hit the ball differently. I needed to serve differently. Everything needed to change.
I started doing what the pro recommended and it was as if my entire game had fallen apart. I was playing like a 5 year-old with no coordination. Nothing I hit went in. Nothing I hit had any power. The game did not seem fun anymore.
One of the things he taught me was to not hit the ball hard anymore. Instead, I was expected to hit the ball high and long so it would bounce over my young opponents’ heads. This was about the only shot I learned.
I ended up getting extremely discouraged. I did not want to have to relearn all of my strokes. I was emasculated because I was being told I could no longer hit the ball hard, and everything I had formerly loved the game of tennis, I could no longer do. All of the passion that I formerly put into hitting the ball was suddenly ineffective under this new way of playing tennis.
I stopped looking forward to the lessons. Eventually, I stopped going to the lessons completely, despite the fact that the tennis pro would call me on the phone to schedule time with me.
I did not want to play anymore. I simply did not want to change my game.
I never really played a lot of tennis again after that summer. I played in a tournament at a public tennis club that winter and won first prize. However, when I started playing against the seniors and others on the high school tennis team, I realized that they were going to be better than me. This frightened me away from trying out for the team, even though I am confident that I would have made the team, even as a freshman in high school.
The realization that I needed to completely change how I played took my heart out of the game. To this day I do not play tennis. This is because I was confronted with the fact that I could become really, really good at something, but that in order to get there I would have needed to change completely.
The idea of changing completely how we do something is more intimidating and difficult than it sounds. It is almost impossible for many people to do this.
One of the more remarkable things to me is seeing people who have managed to lose a lot of weight and keep it off. All throughout the Midwest where I grew up, there are countless people who are a hundred pounds or more overweight. Many of these people are my own relatives. Year after year, these people continue to get larger and larger. They suffer from all sorts of health problems related to their obesity and they visit doctors who treat these health problems, but not the obesity. These people die early and do not live the lives they are capable of, due to their weight issues.
Why do these people continue to gain weight and put themselves through this?
I am going to go out on a limb here: it is because they do not want to change. They need to eat differently. That is it 95% of the time. If you eat less, or eat foods that will not cause you to get fat (for example, low carbohydrate foods), you will not gain as much weight. This is a plain and simple fact. However, these people are generally more comfortable eating a lot of food and not changing their diets. I understand this because I am no different from these people. This concept is no different from me not wanting to change my tennis game. I was afraid of changing because I would have had to give something up in the process–a part of who I was, and what I believed.
Growing up, I saw many people struggle with alcohol and drugs. I have never used drugs at all in my life, but I saw numerous people start using them. Once people start using drugs, they rarely stop, at least in my experience. I am not saying this does not happen; however, it is generally rare. Why? Because not using these substances, once someone becomes addicted, forces the person to give up his or her way of coping and dealing with the world. Once the person stops using, he or she is forced to deal with the world in an entirely new way.
The person who is overweight faces the same problem. They use food for coping and dealing with the world, and if they are forced to adopt new eating patterns, they will no longer have this ability to cope.
You may be in a position at the moment in which you are eager to change, to become something better and something different. You may want a new job, or a new career. You may be faced with being unemployed and not knowing what to do if you are looking for a job. What all of this is forcing you to do, right now, is to confront the fact that you may need to change–and you may need to do this right away. I am not talking about a small change–I am talking about a fundamental change that requires you to do absolutely everything differently and alter your entire approach to life and the world. Imagine if you had to learn to ride a bike again from scratch without any understanding of the way things could be.
I remember when I was on the tennis court and the instructor was trying to show me how to hold the racquet differently and how to approach the game in a new way. I was hitting the ball all over the place and making one mistake after another. I could no longer control the ball. I could no longer hit the ball as hard. The way I had to keep my feet was very difficult compared to the way I had kept them before. My grip was different. All of this was extremely uncomfortable. What I realized was that when I would hit the ball using the new methods suggested to me by the pro, the results were better and more controlled. I did not do this often, but I knew that over time I would be able to hit the ball correctly–if I did not give up. I knew that I ultimately would become a much better player; it was just going to take some time.
There are areas of your life and career that could benefit from starting from ground zero and completely rebuilding yourself. You have so much potential inside of you, and you could do such great things if you would take just a few things you are doing well, and allow yourself to rebuild your skills in the correct manner, without employing the bad habits, and without doing things an improper way. You will find you can do much better.
If I had the time in my schedule (and I need to make the time), I would go see a professional coach once a week to help me work on my weaknesses and rebuild. I currently do this for other people, and should be having the same done for me. The reason it is important for people to see coaches, psychologists and others is due to the fact that these people can help us reframe our model of the world and show us where we are weak. Once we see where we are weak, then we can work towards making new progress and completely rebuilding ourselves.
In the early 1980s, my father purchased a computer that he used to write novels. I would use the computer during the evenings, when he was not occupying it, to write papers for school. One of the most maddening things that happened with the particular computer that he had purchased for word processing was that it always had the habit of crashing, and I would end up losing all of my files and all of the work that I had done. This could be avoided by pressing the F9 key while I was writing the paper, but I always forgot to do this and ended up losing an incredible number of papers over the years.
What I noticed over the years was that when I lost a paper and ended up rewriting it from scratch, the new paper was always better than the paper I had written before. The new paper would always better explain the points it needed to make, be shorter in the right places and longer in the right places. It would be a much better piece of work overall. The reason was that the new paper would force me to rethink something from the beginning and make the point in a much more effective way.
It is this way with your life and career as well. The most beneficial and helpful thing that can happen to many people is to lose a job. When you lose a job, you are put into a position in which you need to rethink everything and test every assumption. Some people lose jobs in industries in which they are unlikely to ever find a job doing the same thing again. These experiences can change the world as you know it. They also force you to rethink old assumptions.
I read an article yesterday about someone who got a job in an automotive plant at the age of 18 years old, making $60,000 a year. This person is now in his 30s and has lost his job at the auto factory. He knows that he will likely never get a job like this in an automotive factory ever again. Because he was making so much money at such a young age, he never saw the need to go to college or to do anything like this to improve himself. He knew that, even with a college degree, the odds of him getting as good of a job back then were incredibly slim. So he stayed working at the auto plant and has been there until recently, when he lost his job. Now he is going back to college. Going back to college in his 30s is now forcing him to rebuild his model of the world and start from scratch. How exciting this is! He may have the skills of a brilliant mathematician or something else inside of him. There may be so much more that he can do and contribute to the world now that he is being forced to recalibrate and reevaluate his role in the world. This is an amazing thing. This young man’s destiny is about to be reshaped for the future, and his career will never be the same. If he is smart, he will rebuild what he is and what he is doing, and will become an even better and more productive person going forward.
I could have been a professional tennis player, perhaps, had I been willing to change my model of tennis.
People can only reach their full potential when they are willing to forget what they know and to start from scratch. If you are ever forced to start from scratch, it is often the greatest gift you can receive because what lies at the other side is a better you.
Carpenters, Fancy French Restaurants, Backstage, and Your Career
What You Will Learn
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One of my favorite stories is about a man who has a creak in his house. For years he has tried one way or another to fix the creak, but every single time he walks through the old house it still makes that annoying squeaky sound. No one has ever been able to fix the problem, and the man does not know exactly what he should do. He has been living with the creak for years and it just seems to get louder and louder. He has been told the only way to get rid of the creak is to rip out the old wood floor and replace it. Since that will cost tens of thousands of dollars, the man is not sure if that would be wise.
One day, the man decides he simply cannot take the creaking in the floor anymore. He calls a carpenter into his house to give him an estimate for replacing the floor. Before the carpenter starts to write up the estimate, the man explains to the carpenter that the only reason he wants to replace the old wood floor is because of the annoying creaking sound it makes every time anyone walks on it.
The carpenter, probably well into his 70s, nods when the man tells him this. Then he walks around the house for a minute or two, pulls out his hammer, and bangs it in the middle of one of the wood planks in the floor.
“There. The creak is fixed,” he tells the man. “Now you do not need a new floor.” The carpenter then pulls out of piece of paper, looks down and starts writing.
The homeowner walks around a bit and, to his astonishment, there really is no more creaking. In fact, he is surprised by how the house feels so much different without the persistent creaking every time he moves through his house.
“Thank you!” the man tells the carpenter.
The carpenter hands him a bill. To the man’s astonishment, the bill is for $225.00.
“That’s way too much money,” the man says. “It did not take you more than a minute to fix the floor.”
“You’re correct,” the carpenter says. “I charged you $25 for the time I spent coming out here and doing the work. I charged you $200 for the 50 years of experience I have in knowing precisely where to hit the floor.”
When the man heard this, he promptly paid the carpenter and the carpenter was on his way.
This is one of my favorite stories, because it is so instructive about developing depth and skill in everything we do. Many people read a story like this and their immediate thought is something like: “I can charge $225 to do the same work the carpenter does.” This could not be further from the truth. There is a difference between being able to provide an incredible experience to people and not being able to do this. The incredible experience is built upon a series of incredible things that occur behind-the-scenes. The more of these things that are occurring behind-the-scenes, the better the ultimate product will be. In the case of the carpenter, what happened was that his 50+ years of experience, training, learning, intuition and more–all enabled him to hit the hammer in the right place.
Several years ago my wife and I were in Switzerland, touring around the country. In the guidebook we were reading, we learned about a small French restaurant with only around 15 small tables or so, in the Alps, which was supposed to be one of the best French restaurants in Europe. It had apparently won all sorts of accolades, including several Michelin stars.
We went to the restaurant and had dinner and, sure enough, it was absolutely spectacular–among the best meals I had ever had. There were not very large portions, and there did not seem to be a ton of activity going on in the place. For example, I believe I had a very small cut of beef, which had a little bit of sauce on it. It was not very substantial, but it was very, very good. I had a salad and it was just greens dressing lightly–and it was also surprisingly tasty. None of the food was that complex, but everything was quite fantastic. The bread tasted light, buttery and warm. Even the table water was good, served at just the right chilled temperature. There was someone playing the piano, and the music was not too soft or too loud.
I went into the restroom at one point during the meal, and noticed that the restroom was immaculate. There was a fresh fluffy towel for me to dry my hands. The second I left the restroom, I noticed that someone in a very low-key manner immediately went and replaced the hand towel with a new one. I could see they did this every time someone went to the water closet. If my water glass were ever becoming empty, someone would promptly refill it, without me even noticing. We were never left sitting for very long without another course coming out. The service was exceptional, but one barely noticed the people working there at all.
The point about this restaurant is that everything there was done perfectly, but nothing seemed exceptionally complex. You could make the food at home, I suppose, if you wanted to, but it would not turn out the same. An average waiter could wait on you without drawing attention to himself, but not quite as well as these people.
Since we were eating at one of the top 10 or so ranked restaurants in the world, my wife wanted to take a lot of time to eat and enjoy the atmosphere. We were among the last two or three people in the restaurant, and after our meal my wife wanted to take a walk around the grounds of the restaurant. Since we were in the Swiss Alps the surroundings were quite beautiful, and the walk was lovely.
After we returned to board the chauffeured car that had been provided by the restaurant, we drove around the back of the restaurant. We could see inside the restaurant and it must have been midnight or later. While we had been dining in the restaurant, we probably had not seen more than 25 people; however, in the back of the restaurant we could see that there were probably at least 50 or 60 people.
- We saw a group of chefs all dressed in full chef regalia, who seemed to be having a conference.
- We saw numerous other people moving around, performing all sorts of tasks.
- The people we saw all appeared to be very busy.
- We saw white boards that had all sorts of notes scribbled on them, and it looked like a huge backstage sort of production, in which those in charge were writing on the white boards, while others watched and listened.
- We saw various chefs working at a cutting board, and another chef walking around, supervising their work.
We were spying, in effect, since no one in the restaurant could see us. What I was witnessing looked like the most professional and hardcore cooking operation I had ever seen. I had worked in restaurants before, and this was like nothing I had ever seen. The most interesting part of the evening for me was not the meal, but seeing all of the activities that went on behind-the-scenes at the restaurant. What I realized right then was that the real strength of the restaurant came from all those things that my wife and I had not seen while we were eating our meal. It was the incredible number of people and their level of organization that made the restaurant the success it was. I could tell that the restaurant probably had more procedures in place than most other companies. There was quality control and group decision- making, and all sorts of high level management techniques that were being done incredibly well.
Most successful people and businesses always have a very strong operation behind-the-scenes. It is not what people see when they look at a storefront that matters, it is the “substance” of what is going behind-the-scenes. It is like this with you and your profession as well. The ultimate product that you produce will be more a product of what you do “behind-the-scenes” than of the actual service that you provide.
One of the most interesting ongoing debates is the one about pay caps for certain executives and so forth. It is very common for politicians to do things like declare that bankers should not make more than $500,000 a year, for example, because they might have taken federal funds. There may be good arguments for this sort of thing, but when it comes right down to it, the banker does not get paid $1,000,000 a year for no reason: He typically earns this amount of money because of the results he is able to achieve, which in most cases is the product of his experience and all of the things he is able to make happen behind-the-scenes. It is behind-the-scenes that most of the work occurs. Most people are paid for what they do behind-the-scenes, not simply for showing up for work.
If you look at professional tennis players who earn millions of dollars per year, for example, while they certainly will have a lot of skills, there is a lot that has gone into making them great at what they do. In most cases, they have probably been training at the game since they were 10 years old, and they have practiced an incredible amount and dedicated their life to tennis. When I was growing up, there was a guy at my racquet club who became a professional tennis player. He was near my age. He played 5+ hours a day every day from the time he was seven years old or so. When he got older, he practiced almost exclusively with professionals, who he needed to pay to practice with him. It takes a lot of work and sacrifice to become truly excellent.
- It is like this with golfers.
- It is like this with lawyers.
- It is like this with doctors.
- It is like this with carpenters.
In fact, anyone who is decent at anything has practiced an incredible amount to develop their skills to an extraordinary degree, since before you ever meet them. The more behind-the-scenes work that occurs, the better the final product will be. The more behind-the-scenes work you do, the better you will be at anything. All of the experience, education and knowledge that make you great at your profession–constitute the sort of work I am referring to.
When people hire you, or go to a restaurant, they are only in it for what they see. They are only there because of the front stage, which represents the experience they believe they are going to have. However, you can never have a good front stage without a good backstage to back it up.
The legal recruiting business is fascinating to me because most recruiters I have known in the past do not understand the importance of “backstage” to their careers. Essentially, all legal recruiting involves is soliciting a candidate for a job, and then sending the candidate to the job opportunity. You can make over a million dollars a year doing this every year or, you can do okay for a time–and then fail at it. Most people fail at it, and it is mostly because of their lack of understanding of the importance of a solid backstage.
Most careers work like this. The best legal recruiters spend the majority of their free time reading about topics that are relevant to them becoming better legal recruiters, whether this means reading articles about helping people, sales, or improving the quality of their written work. When the recruiters then speak with candidates, they spend a lot of time on the phone with them, and get to understand them. The more that recruiters works on all of this substance, the better they ultimately do. They develop in-depth relationships with candidates and law firms. They take incredible amounts of time to understand everyone they are dealing with. They do in-depth profiles of their candidates, who are then tailored appropriately to different firms.
In contrast, most recruiters are doing their job simply because they fell into it somehow. They do not care about developing themselves into being excellent recruiters, nor do they have a strong interest in improving their strategies. They do not take a lot of time to understand their candidates. They believe that the job simply involves finding a candidate and sending them to a law firm. These typical recruiters almost always fail. They may do okay in a good economy, but in a poor economy they will often fail.
The recruiters who do all the backstage work, and who stay on top of this work, rarely–if ever, fail. In fact, they thrive no matter what happens with the economy.
It takes more than going through the motions of recruiting–or of any profession, for that matter–in order to do well. The substance that goes into an opportunity placement is what changes everything. The substance is what makes everything work. It is as simple as this.
I really hope that you understand the significance of this, because it can mean the difference between great success and failure. You need to be invested in the backstage of everything you are doing and, if you are, then you will experience the success you deserve. Nothing is more important than what you do behind-the-scenes, and the substance that goes into your job.
Only with a good backstage can you achieve you full potential in anything.
Look for the Cause
What You Will Learn
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Everything that occurs in our world and to us has a cause. The cause may not be immediately obvious, but it is always there waiting to be found. The result of anything you see always contains its cause, and everything that happens is the result of either good or bad seeds that have been planted at some point in time:
- If some people are living in poverty and alone, spend some time with them and you will understand why they are in their situation. They are most likely in the position they are in not just (1) due to bad things that have happed to them, which were caused by other people (i.e., bad seeds), but (2) due to bad things that they themselves have done (i.e., planting of bad seeds), which have come back to haunt them. The condition they are living in is the growth that has occurred due to the bad seeds they have planted.
- If some people are living in opulence and are surrounded by people who love them, spend some time with them and you will understand why. They are most likely in the position they are in not just (1) due to good things that have happened to them, which were caused by other people (i.e., good seeds), but (2) due to good things they themselves have done (i.e., planting of good seeds) which have grown the persons rich and full lives. The condition they are living in is the growth that has occurred due to the good seeds they have planted.
- If some people have good careers and are happy in what they do, spend some time with them and you will understand why. They are most likely in the position they are in (1) due to good things that have happened to them caused by other people, (such as getting accepted into good schools, gaining immense favor and support of friends and family) and (2) due to good things they have done, such as working hard and making valuable contributions to their work and to others. These people’s lives are a reflection of the good seeds they have planted.
- If some people are unhappy and having bad careers, spend some time with them and you will understand why. They are most likely in the position they are in (1) due to bad things that have happened to them caused by other people, (such as not getting accepted into good schools, not gaining the favor of friends and family) and (2) due to the bad things they have done such as slacking off and making poor, half-hearted contributions to their work and to others, that is not part of their lives. These persons’ lives are a reflection of the good seeds they have planted.
Each outcome has its own unique cause. A person becomes President of the United States because of something he or she did or caused. Likewise someone becomes incarcerated because of something he or she did or caused. Just as every creation that ever comes to fruition was once merely an idea, each type of person that you see in the world–a happy person, an angry person, a powerful person, or a weak person–has a unique cause, a seed that has brought the person into his or her state of being.
It follows that if everything we see has a cause, it might be more valuable to study and understand the cause more than the effect. Once you understand the cause you have the ammunition to make better decisions in your career and your life. There are far fewer things more important than being able to understand why something is the way it is. If someone you work with is very successful you should seek to understand the cause. If someone you work with is unsuccessful you should also seek to understand the cause. The more you understand the causes of things, the more you can make causes work for you and avoid causes that will work against you.
Everyone knows that if you walk into a bank and rob it, the effect of this may be escaping with some money; however, the effect is more likely to be getting hauled off to jail. This is one obvious reason why robbing banks is not that popular. More popular ways of getting ahead involve things such as going to college and working hard at our jobs. Most of society seeks out causes that are positive and more likely to give us better long term results. By and large we avoid things that are likely to cause negative results, and we gravitate towards what is likely to cause positive results–both for us and those around us.
If you look at a chair, the cause of its existence is generally the person who built it. If you wanted more chairs like this chair, the best thing to do would be to find the person who made the chair. If you find the person who made this chair, or the factory that made the chair, you will have discovered the cause.
If you look at a young child of age two or three, who appears incredibly happy and is always laughing and playing, you could study this child as well and find a cause. The cause of the child’s happiness might be a parent; it might be both parents; it might be the way the child naturally sees the world; it might be that the child has never been seriously disciplined. Its disposition might very well be genetic, and the result of its parents’ having similar genetics. There are countless potential explanations for why the child might be happy but there is likely also a cause that can be traced and quantified.
Similarly, if you look at a child who is incredibly unhappy all the time there is generally a cause for this as well. It may be how the child naturally sees the world, the discipline the child has received, the lack of care it has received from parents and relatives. It might very well be genetic. The more you study this child the more you will realize what it is specifically that has made him or her unhappy. There is always a cause.
One of the types of shows I have always enjoyed watching are shows like Forensic Files, Intervention, Power Privilege and Justice and other similar programming that provides in-depth psychological profiles of people who commit various despicable acts. One of the reasons I enjoy these shows so much is that there are often interviews with the families of the person who has committed the crime, which usually has involved murder, prostitution and/or drugs. The more serious the offense, the more interesting to me these interviews seem to be. In watching these shows, in most cases I am always more interested in watching and learning about the parents than the person who committed the crime.
One of the consistent themes I have noticed in these shows is that the mothers of the murderers, drug addicts and so forth are typically very cold. The mothers have typically had a lot of issues themselves and the thing I notice is that they are almost always very detached and unemotional in their speech. The fathers also seem sort of weak in many respects. You do not get a sense that they are all that loving, or willing to take the time to understand their kids.
I am making some gross generalizations; however, I have watched hundreds of these shows throughout the years and this same pattern just seems to repeat itself over and over again. In my opinion, for many of the people out there who are creating mayhem in the world and who are having severe problems, there is always a cause, and the cause is, in most cases, the peoples’ parents.
A few years ago I was complaining to one of my parents about something or another that happened when I was growing up, and my parent said something that was quite memorable: “Grow up and forget about it!”
I thought about this statement a lot at the time because it did seem to resonate with some truth. I had no business being upset about something that happened, or did not happen some 20+ years ago; incidentally I cannot even to this day remember what I was complaining about at the time. Nevertheless, whatever had occurred in the past had apparently planted a seed within me that was still festering in the present.
Another more extreme example: if a man is beaten up by thugs he is going to be a different person in the future in some ways than if he had never been attacked. The attack puts a seed in him. Going to war and being in combat plants seeds in men too. If a woman wins a beauty contest at a young age, this plants another type of seed. If a person goes to college and does horribly this is yet another seed. If a person gets fired from a job, if a person is raised a devout follower of organized religion these too are seeds, life- shaping causes that help form a person and his future.
Once you understand these seeds, you will generally understand their various outcomes, and will quickly come to understand the person.
The problem with understanding the cause for peoples’ situations is often that the causes are hidden. For example, when looking at a giant acorn tree, most people see only the tree. They do not think of the fact that the acorn tree came from the acorn nuts that are now growing out of it. The cause of the acorn tree is the seeds. But what most people see is the tree–not the cause of the tree, which is the seed.
The message I am getting at is very significant and it could change your life. You have many seeds that have been planted within you throughout the years. These seeds have been planted by your parents, your friends, your schools, and by chance events that have occurred. Some of these seeds are good seeds, which can result in positive outcomes, and other seeds are bad seeds, which can result in negative outcomes. The issue is that you probably are not aware of which seeds are which. You are living your life under the constant influence of seeds that were planted long ago within you–and you do not understand or know what they are.
In order for you to make the most of your life and career, it is crucial that you do your best to be influenced by the good seeds, and learn to avoid the bad seeds. When someone goes and spends years on a therapist couch, what they are essentially doing is learning about the bad seeds that have been planted in them, and coming to terms with them, in order to move on in their life. Most of us suppress and do not come to terms with the bad seeds that are influencing our lives; however, by learning to understand them, we are in a much better position to deal with them.
Conversely, there are an incredible number of good seeds out there that have a profound influence on us. These good seeds are the things that make us happy, the people that support us and help us grow, the circumstances that enable us to be better people, the positive things that have helped us get to where we are today and to be the people we are today. Good seeds are something incredibly valuable and we need to make a conscious habit of moving towards good seeds and reinforcing the good seeds in our lives.
I urge you to look at other people that have achieved the levels of success you too desire, and look for the good seeds that have brought them to where they are today. The more you look for the good seeds within people, the more you can use these same tools to move towards where you want to be. You need to adopt good seeds in your own life and bring good seeds into your life to the maximum extent possible.
Seeds do not grow instantly. Seeds take time to grow and they grow based on how they are nourished and the environment they are in. Every single day of your life you are planting seeds. You may be planting seeds that cause good things to happen in the future, or you may be planting seeds that cause bad things to happen in the future, or perhaps nothing at all. This is how it works: the more positive seeds you plant, the better your life will become. It may not all happen instantly, but it will happen.
Advertising is an example of planting seeds. An advertiser goes out and plants ideas in the public’s mind about buying its product or service, with the objective of creating instantly and over time, a harvest of revenue. Businesses plant seeds just as individuals do.
We are addicted to selfish behavior. It is easier to hate than it is to love. We are quick to argue and slow to apologize. Many people drive hard bargains. It is easier for some people to lie than to tell the truth. It is easier for some people to break promises than to do what they say they will do. Selfish behavior is an example of planting a bad seed. It may not happen instantly, but every bad seed you plant will come back to you in some way, making your life more difficult.
If you are not climbing you are falling back. The lower you descend, the more you suffer from depression and turmoil. The further you are from doing good, the unhappier you are likely to be. This can express itself in various forms of illness, financial hardship, social problems, marital problems, fear, anxiety and more. All of these are the result of planting bad seeds.
Reject the selfish impulses that pop into your mind–do not plant bad seeds.
Choose to interact with people who truly enhance your life–plant good seeds.
Choose to interact with people in ways that truly enhance their lives–plant good seeds.
Surround Yourself with Positive People
What You Will Learn
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A few years ago I made friends with a guy I met at a self improvement seminar. It was his second time attending the seminar; apparently he had gotten incredible results the first time around.
According to the guy, he had lost 50 pounds, had given up drinking and drugs, was cured of his ADD, stopped working 14 hours a day every day of the week, started exercising daily, dramatically improved his marriage and family life and started a successful new career–all after attending the seminar. He credited this massive and profound life turnaround to going to the seminar. In fact, he had gone from a relatively depressed and financially non-notable life before attending the seminar, to a new life making over $2,000,000 a year, working only a few days a week. He had even turned somewhat religious and started playing the guitar for children at services once a week.
As I learned, the big take away this man had gotten from the seminar was that it had enabled him to make such a significant life shift. I was pretty amazed. In all honesty, to me the seminar we attended had not been all that special. It was all about getting in touch with your feelings; however, it was certainly not the sort of thing that would have led me to make massive changes in my life.
I was intrigued by all of this because this guy was not anything like the sort of person he described himself to have been before he attended his first seminar. It was hard to imagine. For example, the friend I knew was on a calorie-restricted diet and generally seemed to be a happy person in all respects. He seemed very well balanced. Since he was so successful, I was interested in learning his success secrets so that I could share them with other people.
“What has made you so happy and successful? What was it you got out of the seminar that made everything change for you?” I asked him one evening.
We were in New York in the basement of the Time Warner Building, in a small Whole Foods shop that sold gifts made from hemp. It was a Thursday evening and my friend was chatting with the cashier in the store while he looked for presents for his kids. Everywhere this guy went people seemed to pick up his happy energy and return his smile. We might be walking through a hotel and he would stop and start chatting with a complete stranger about this or that. He was always chatting with strangers in hotels and different places. People just gravitated towards this guy, and he was genuinely happy to see just about anyone.
“The only thing I do differently now that I did not do before when I was so unhappy is make sure I associate with positive people. That’s it. Just associate with positive people.”
At the time I did not think much of it, but I have come to realize more and more that associating with positive people is among the most important things we can do in our lives. As long as you share in the energy of positive actions and thoughts, and surround yourself with people who have a positive energy, there are few limits to what you can accomplish in your life. Your attitude–how you feel about your life is among the most important concepts governing your existence on this earth. The more positive your attitude is, the better off you will be in your career and in your life.
When you surround yourself with people who are happy, driven and well balanced, you too are more likely to become happy, driven and well balanced. In addition, these people will not drain energy from you and you will feel better when you are around them.
I remember the time when I had my first legal job and working over the summer for the United States Department of Justice in Washington, D.C. I was enjoying the job a great deal and having a wonderful summer. I had friends in Washington, D.C. at the time and my friends were all pretty positive and nice people who were excited about the future. I had been working there a few weeks when one day I decided to make a telephone call to a friend in another city. I had this acquaintance who was always very down and complaining about one thing or another. The person would use drugs often and always seemed to be going through one personal crisis or another. I never realized really how toxic this person was; however, when I called back home everything hit me:
- The person spoke in depressed tones.
- Everything that came out of the person’s mouth was about something negative.
- The person did not make me feel good, and acted like I was a loser for spending my summer working.
- The person told me bad news about various other people.
I could go into further detail but, it should suffice to say, I had not realized how negative this person was, or made me feel, until I put down the phone. When I put down the phone, all the enthusiasm I had for my work–as good as I felt about myself, my job and everything else in the world that I was excited about, seemed to suddenly fade into the background. I felt a deep sense of lack and sadness deep in my soul. It was a feeling I will never forget because it was like running into a brick wall. It took me hours to overcome it and to feel better about myself. The entire experience was depressing in a monumental sort of way.
The reason this experience was so depressing, I think, was because it contrasted with how I had been feeling at the present time and over the previous few weeks. I had been away from this person for some time and had never realized before how negatively he had been affecting me day-to-day. My conversation with the person was really no different from the conversations I had with him in the past–it was only the contrast that made it so glaringly different this time. A short time later I decided that it was not in my best interest to remain friends with this person, and I am sure I was better off for it.
I am sure you have had similar experiences as well:
- You may be feeling very good and then encounter a very depressed person, and suddenly you too become depressed.
- You may be feeling very bad and then encounter someone who is very happy, and suddenly you too become happy.
Moods are quite contagious and they can often instantly affect us in a positive or a negative way.
When I was in my first year of high school I was a competitive tennis player. I would play tennis against pros and other very good players. While I was nowhere near as good a tennis player as a professional, I would always make for a challenging match against my opponent, and we would have long volleys and somewhat competitive games. I always felt I was playing much better tennis when I played with the best players than when I would play against average or poor players. When I played against average or poor players I would find myself moving more slowly, hitting more balls out of bounds, missing more serves and not having as much fun. The poor players I played against often destabilized my game. I would hit ridiculous and stupid shots where the ball would fly from the tennis court into the road and hit cars, for example. It was embarrassing.
The company you keep can either make you rise, or bring you down. One of my favorite quotes is from John Steinbeck who wrote: “A sad soul can kill you far quicker than a germ.”
Do you associate with people who improve your game? Or do you surround yourself with people who destabilize your career and life?
Who you call your friends and acquaintances tells a lot about who you are. In order to be happy and successful it is important to surround yourself with other people who are happy and successful. You need to be very careful in terms of who you let into your sphere of influence. Positive energy spreads quickly–just as negative energy does.
One of the greatest characteristics I have found in the best legal recruiters I have worked with is the ability to be continually positive. Over the years I have hired and worked with a large number of legal recruiters in our company and one of my greatest concerns has always been making sure I have positive people working for us. I would rather have 10 positive recruiters working in our company than 100 negative recruiters–even if the total financial cost were the same. Negative people infect others and bring an entire group down.
One of my favorite movies is 300, which is about a group of 300 Spartans who fight against thousands of Persians. The Spartans have an incredible positive spirit that empowers them to do well. 300 is a great movie because it shows what a small group with the right mindset can do against a much larger force. I believe the Spartans’ strength in the film comes from their ability to remain positive.
Have you ever attended a meeting in which there is someone throwing out a long diatribe of doubts and fears about this or that? People like this typically drag down the whole group, and make things extremely difficult for everyone. It is hard for groups of people to get motivated when there is even one extremely negative person in their midst.
You life is valuable and your time is as well. It is challenging enough to remain positive and continually enjoy our lives, while feeling good about yourself. The last thing you need in your career is to deal with another person’s constant negativity.
Your career and life will change for the better when you learn to surround yourself with positive people–and keep the negative ones away.
The Secret of the Ages
Robert Collier’s book, The Secret of the Ages, is one of the true classics of self improvement literature. The book has been referenced and the inspiration for many other self improvement works such as The Secret.
Collier writes about the incredible power that we all have available to us to achieve anything we want. While the historical background of the New Thought Movement and other influences on writers such as Napolean Hill and others is a subject in itself, it is important to understand that The Secret of the Ages is among the first books to really push forward the idea of thoughts being things, the subconscious mind’s ability to completely influence our outcomes and the power of our mind to achieve incredible change.
The Secret of the Ages is a very important self-improvement book and one I am sure you will enjoy. It is powerful, significant and meaningful and it should open up to you an understanding of what is possible in your life and career.
The Secret of the Ages
Robert Collier
Contents
VOLUME ONE
I
The World’s Greatest Discovery
In the Beginning
The Purpose of Existence
The “Open Sesame!” of Life
II
The Genie-of-Your-Mind
The Conscious Mind
The Subconscious Mind
The Universal Mind
VOLUME TWO
III
The Primal Cause
Matter – Dream or Reality?
The Philosopher’s Charm
The Kingdom of Heaven
“To Him That Hath”-
“To the Manner Born”
IV
Desire – The First Law of Gain
The Magic Secret
“The Soul’s Sincere Desire”
VOLUME THREE
V
Aladdin & Company
VI
See Yourself Doing It
VII
“As a Man Thinketh”
VIII
The Law of Supply
The World Belongs to You
“Wanted”
VOLUME FOUR
IX
The Formula of Success
The Talisman of Napoleon
“It Couldn’t Be Done”
X
“This Freedom”
The Only Power
XI
The Law of Attraction
A Blank Check
XII
The Three Requisites
XIII
That Old Witch-Bad Luck
He Whom a Dream Hath Possessed
The Bars of Fate
Exercise
VOLUME FIVE
XIV
Your Needs Are Met
The Ark of the Covenant
The Science of Thought
XV
The Master of Your Fate
The Acre of Diamonds
XVI
Unappropriated Millions
XVII
The Secret of Power
XVIII
This One Thing I Do
VOLUME SIX
XIX
The Master Mind
XX
What Do You Lack?
XXI
The Sculptor and the Clay
XXII
Why Grow Old?
The Fountain of Youth
VOLUME SEVEN
XXIII
The Medicine Delusion
XXIV
The Gift of the Magic
“Suffer Little Children to Come Unto Me”
L’Envoi
“A fire-mist and a planet,
A crystal and a cell,
A jellyfish and a saurian,
A cave where the cave men dwell;
Then a sense of law and order,
A face upturned from the clod;
Some call it Evolution,
And others call it God.”
-Reprinted from The New England Journal.
Foreword
If you had more money than time, more millions than you knew how to spend, what would be your pet philanthropy? Libraries? Hospitals? Churches? Homes for the Blind, Crippled or Aged? Mine would be “Homes”-but not for the aged or infirm. For young married couples!
I have often thought that, if ever I got into the “Philanthropic Billionaire” class, I’d like to start an Endowment Fund for helping young married couples over the rough spots in those first and second years of married life-especially the second year, when the real troubles come. Take a boy and a girl and a cozy little nest-add a cunning, healthy baby-and there’s nothing happier on God’s green footstool. But instead of a healthy babe, fill in a fretful, sickly baby-a wan, tired, worn-out little mother-a worried, dejected, heartsick father-and, there’s nothing more pitiful.
A nurse for a month, a few weeks at the shore or mountains, a “lift” on that heavy doctor’s bill–any one of these things would spell H-E-A-V-E-N to that tiny family. But do they get it? Not often! And the reason? Because they are not poor enough for charity. They are not rich enough to afford it themselves. They belong to that great “Middle Class” which has to bear the burdens of both the poor and the rich- and take what is left for itself.
It is to them that I should like to dedicate this book. If I cannot endow libraries or colleges for them, perhaps I can point the way to get all good gifts for them.
For men and women like them do not need “charity” – or even sympathy. What they do need is inspiration-and opportunity-the kind of inspiration that makes a man go out and create his own opportunity. And that, after all, is the greatest good one can do anyone. Few people appreciate free gifts. They are like the man whom admiring townsfolk presented with a watch. He looked it over critically for a minute. Then-”Where’s the chain?” he asked.
But a way to win for themselves the full measure of success they’ve dreamed of but almost stopped hoping for-that is something every young couple would welcome with open arms. And it is something that, if I can do it justice, will make the “Eternal Triangle” as rare as it is today common, for it will enable husband and wife to work together-not merely for domestic happiness, but for business success as well.
ROBERT COLLIER.
The Secret of the Ages
In Seven Volumes
VOLUME ONE
I
The World’s Greatest Discovery
“You can do as much as you think you can,
But you’ll never accomplish more;
If you’re afraid of yourself, young man,
There’s little for you in store.
For failure comes from the inside first,
It’s there if we only knew it,
And you can win, though you face the worst,
If you feel that you’re going to do it.”
-EDGAR A. GUEST.*
What, in your opinion, is the most significant discovery of this modern age?
The finding of dinosaur eggs on the plains of Mongolia, laid-so scientists assert-some 10,000,000 years ago?
The unearthing of the Tomb of Tutankh-Amen, with its matchless specimens of a bygone civilization?
The radioactive time clock by which Professor Lane of Tufts College estimates the age of the earth at 1,250,000,000 years?
Wireless? The Aeroplane? Man-made thunderbolts?
No-not any of these. The really significant thing about them is that from all this vast research, from the study of all these bygone ages, men are for the first time beginning to get an understanding of that “Life Principle” which-somehow, some way-was brought to this earth thousands or millions of years ago. They are beginning to get an inkling of the infinite power it puts in their hands-to glimpse the untold possibilities it opens up.
This is the greatest discovery of modern times-that every man can call upon this “Life Principle” at will, that it is as much the servant of his mind as was ever Aladdin’s fabled “genie-of-the-lamp” of old; that he has but to understand it and work in harmony with it to get from it anything he may need- health or happiness, riches or success.
To realize the truth of this, you have but to go back for a moment to the beginning of things.
* From “A Heap o’ Livin’.” The Reilly & Lee Co.
In the Beginning
It matters not whether you believe that mankind dates back to the primitive ape-man of 500,000 years ago, or sprang full-grown from the mind of the creator. In either event, there had to be a first cause-a creator. Some power had to bring to this earth the first germ of life, and the creation is no less wonderful if it started with the lowliest form of plant life and worked up through countless ages into the highest product of today’s civilization, than if the whole were created in six days.
In the beginning, this earth was just a fire mist-six thousand or a billion years ago-what does it matter which?
The one thing that does matter is that some time, some way, there came to this planet the germ of life-the life principle that animates all nature-plant, animal, and man. If we accept the scientists’ version of it, the first form in which life appeared upon earth was the humble algae-a jelly-like mass that floated upon the waters. This, according to the scientists, was the beginning, the dawn of life upon the earth.
Next came the first bit of animal life- the lowly amoeba, a sort of jelly fish, consisting of a single cell, without vertebrae, and with very little else to distinguish it from the water round about. But it had life-the first bit of animal life-and from that life, according to the scientists, we could trace everything we have and are today.
All the millions of forms and shapes and varieties of plants and animals that have since appeared are but different manifestations of life–formed to meet differing conditions. For millions of years this “Life Germ” was threatened by every kind of danger-from floods, from earthquakes, from droughts, from desert heat, from glacial cold, from volcanic eruptions-but to it each new danger was merely an incentive to finding a new resource, to putting forth Life in some new shape.
To meet one set of needs, it formed the dinosaur-to meet another, the butterfly. Long before it worked up to man, we see its unlimited resourcefulness shown in a thousand ways. To escape danger in the water, it sought land. Pursued on land, it took to the air. To breathe in the sea, it developed gills. Stranded on land, it perfected lungs. To meet one kind of danger it grew a shell. For another, a sting. To protect itself from glacial cold, it grew fur, in temperate climates, hair. Subject to alternate heat and cold, it produced feathers. But ever, from the beginning, it showed its power to meet every changing condition, to answer every creature need.
Had it been possible to kill this “Life Idea,” it would have perished ages ago, when fire and flood, drought and famine followed each other in quick succession. But obstacles, misfortunes, cataclysms, were to it merely new opportunities to assert its power. In fact, it required obstacles to awaken it, to show its energy and resource.
The great reptiles, the monster beasts of antiquity passed on. But the “Life Principle” stayed, changing as each age changed, always developing, and always improving.
Whatever power it was that brought this “Life Idea” to the earth, it came endowed with unlimited resource, unlimited energy, unlimited LIFE! No other force can defeat it. No obstacle can hold it back. All through the history of life and mankind you can see its directing intelligence-call it nature, call it providence, call it what you will-rising to meet every need of life.
The Purpose of Existence
No one can follow it down through the ages without realizing that the whole purpose of existence is GROWTH. Life is dynamic-not static. It is ever moving forward-not standing still. The one unpardonable sin of nature is to stand still, to stagnate. The Giganotosaurus, that was over a hundred feet long and as big as a house; the Tyrannosaurus, that had the strength of a locomotive and was the last word in frightfulness; the Pterodactyl or Flying Dragon-all the giant monsters of Prehistoric Ages-are gone. They ceased to serve a useful purpose. They did not know how to meet the changing conditions. They stood still-stagnated-while the life around them passed them by.
Egypt and Persia, Greece and Rome, all the great Empires of antiquity, perished when they ceased to grow. China built a wall about her and stood still for a thousand years. Today she is the football of the powers. In all nature, to cease to grow is to perish.
It is for men and women who are not ready to stand still, who refuse to cease to grow, that this book is written. It will give you a clearer understanding of your own potentialities, show you how to work with and take advantage of the infinite energy all about you.
The terror of the man at the crossways, not knowing which road to take, will be no terror to you. Your future is of your own making. For the only law of infinite energy is the law of supply. The “Life Principle” is your principle. To survive, to win through, and to triumphantly surmount all obstacles has been its everyday practice since the beginning of time. It is no less resourceful now than ever it was. You have but to supply the urge, to work in harmony with it, to get from it anything you may need.
For if this “Life Principle” is so strong in the lowest forms of animal life that it can develop a shell or a poison to meet a need; if it can teach the bird to circle and dart, to balance and fly; if it can grow a new limb on a spider to replace a lost one, how much more can it do for you- a reasoning, rational being, with a mind able to work with this “Life Principle,” with an energy and an initiative to urge it on!
The evidence of this is all about you. Take up some violent form of exercise- rowing, tennis, and swimming, riding. In the beginning your muscles are weak, easily tired. But keep on for a few days. The “Life Principle” promptly strengthens them, toughens them, to meet their new need. Do rough manual labor-and what happens? The skin of your hands becomes tender, blisters, and hurts. Keep it up, and does the skin all wear off? On the contrary, the “Life Principle” provides extra thicknesses, extra toughness- calluses, we call them-to meet your need.
All through your daily life you will find this “Life Principle” steadily at work. Embrace it, work with it, take it to yourself, and there is nothing you cannot do. The mere fact that you have obstacles to overcome is in your favor, for when there is nothing to be done, when things run along too smoothly; this “Life Principle” seems to sleep. It is when you need it, when you call upon it ur-gently, that it is most on the job.
It differs from “Luck” in this, that fortune is a fickle jade that smiles most often on those who need her least. Stake your last penny on the turn of a card- have nothing between you and ruin but the spin of a wheel or the speed of a horse-and its a thousand to one “Luck” will desert you! But it is just the opposite with the “Life Principle.” As long as things run smoothly, as long as life flows along like a song, this “Life Principle” seems to slumber, secure in the knowledge that your affairs can take care of themselves.
But let things start going wrong, let ruin and disgrace stare you in the face- then is the time this “Life Principle” will assert itself if you but give it a chance.
The “Open, Sesame!” of Life
There is a Napoleonic feeling of power that insures success in the knowledge that this invincible “Life Principle” is behind your every act. Knowing that you have working with you a force, which never yet has failed in anything it has undertaken, you can go ahead in the confident knowledge that it will not fail in your case, either. The ingenuity, which overcame every obstacle in making you what you are, is not likely to fall short when you have immediate need for it. It is the reserve strength of the athlete, the “second wind” of the runner, the power that, in moments of great stress or excite-ment, you unconsciously call upon to do the deeds which you ever after look upon as superhuman.
But they are in no wise superhuman. They are merely beyond the capacity of your conscious self. Ally your conscious self with that sleeping giant within you, rouse him daily to the task, and those “superhuman” deeds will become your ordinary, everyday accomplishments.
W. L. Cain, of Oakland, Oregon, writes: “I know that there is such a power, for I once saw two boys, 16 and 18 years of age, lift a great log off their brother, who had been caught under it. The next day, the same two boys, with another man and me, tried to lift the end of the log, but could not even budge it.”
How was it that the two boys could do at need what the four were unable to do later on, when the need had passed? Because they never stopped to question whether or not it could be done. They saw only the urgent need. They concentrated all their thought, all their energy on that one thing-never doubting, never fearing-and the genie which is in all of us waiting only for such a call, answered their summons and gave them the strength-not of two men, but of ten! It matters not whether you are banker or lawyer, businessman or clerk. Whether you are the custodian of millions, or have to struggle for your daily bread. This “Life Principle” makes no distinction between rich and poor, high and low. The greater your need, the more readily will it respond to your call. Wherever there is an unusual task, wherever there is poverty or hardship or sickness or despair, there is this servant of your mind, ready and willing to help, asking only that you call upon him.
And not only is it ready and willing, but it is always ABLE to help. Its ingenuity and resource are without limit. It is Mind. It is thought. It is the Telepathy that carries messages without the spoken or written word. It is the Sixth Sense that warns you of unseen dangers. No matter how stupendous and complicated, nor how simple your problem may be-the solution of it is somewhere in Mind, in Thought. And since the solution does exist, this Mental Giant can find it for you. It can KNOW, and it can DO, every right thing. Whatever it is necessary for you to know, whatever it is necessary for you to do, you can know and you can do if you will but seek the help of this genie-of-your-mind and work with it in the right way.
II
The Genie-of-Your-Mind
“It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishment the scroll,
I am the Master of my Fate;
I am the Captain of my Soul.”
-HENLEY.
First came the Stone Age, when life was for the strong of arm or the fleet of foot. Then there was the Iron Age-and while life was more precious, still the strong lorded it over the weak. Later came the Golden Age, and riches took the place of strength-but the poor found little choice between the slave drivers’ whips of olden days and the grim weapons of poverty and starvation.
Now we are entering a new age-the Mental Age-when every man can be his own master, when poverty and circumstance no longer hold power and the lowliest creature in the land can win a place side by side with the highest.
To those who do not know the resources of mind these will sound like rash statements; but science proves beyond question that in the wellsprings of every man’s mind are unplumbed depths-undiscovered deposits of energy, wisdom and ability. Sound these depths-bring these treasures to the surface-and you gain an astounding wealth of new power.
From the rude catamaran of the savages to the giant liners of today, carrying their thousands from continent to continent is but a step in the development of Mind. From the lowly cave man, cow-ering in his burrow in fear of lightning or fire or water, to the engineer of today, making servants of all the forces of Nature, is but a measure of difference in mental development.
Man, without reasoning mind, would be as the monkeys are-prey of any creature fast enough and strong enough to pull him to pieces. At the mercy of wind and weather. A poor timid creature, living for the moment only, fearful of every shadow.
Through his superior mind, he learned to make fire to keep himself warm; weapons with which to defend himself from the savage creatures round about; habitations to protect himself from the elements. Through mind he conquered the forces of Nature.
Through mind he has made machinery do the work of millions of horses and billions of hands. What he will do next, no man knows, for man is just beginning to awaken to his own powers. He is just getting an inkling of the unfathomed riches buried deep in his own mind. Like the gold seekers of ‘49, he has panned the surface gravel for the gold swept down by the streams. Now he is starting to dig deeper to the pure vein beneath.
We bemoan the loss of our forests. We worry over our dwindling resources of coal and oil. We decry the waste in our factories. But the greatest waste of all, we pay no attention to-the waste of our own potential mind power. Professor Wm. James, the world-famous Harvard psychologist, estimated that the average man uses only 10% of his mental power. He has unlimited power-yet he uses but a tithe of it. Unlimited wealth all about him-and he doesn’t know how to take hold of it. With God-like powers slumbering within him, he is content to continue in his daily grind – eating, sleeping, working-plodding through an existence little more eventful than the animals, while all of Nature, all of life, calls upon him to awaken, to bestir himself.
The power to be what you want to be, to get what you desire, to accomplish whatever you are striving for, abides within you. It rests with you only to bring it forth and put it to work. Of course you must know how to do that, but before you can learn how to use it, you must realize that you possess this power. So our first objective is to get acquainted with this power.
For Psychologists and Metaphysicians the world over, are agreed in this-that Mind is all that counts. You can be whatever you make up your mind to be. You need not be sick. You need not be unhappy. You need not be poor. You need not be unsuccessful. You are not a mere clod. You are not a beast of burden, doomed to spend your days in unremitting labor in return for food and housing. You are one of the Lords of the Earth, with unlimited potentialities. Within you is a power, which, properly grasped and directed, can lift you out of the rut of mediocrity and place you among the Elect of the earth-the lawyers, the writers, the statesmen, the big business men-the DOERS and the THINKERS. It rests with you only to learn to use this power, which is yours-this Mind that can do all things.
Your body is for all practical purposes merely a machine, which the mind uses. This mind is usually thought of as con-sciousness; but the conscious part of your mind is in fact the very smallest part of it. Ninety per cent of your mental life is subconscious, so when you make active use of only the conscious part of your mind you are using but a fraction of your real ability; you are running on low gear. And the reason why more people do not achieve success in life is because so many of them are content to run on low gear all their lives – on SURFACE ENERGY. If these same people would only throw into the fight the resistless force of their subconscious minds they would be amazed at their undreamed of capacity for winning success.
Conscious and subconscious are, of course, integral parts of the one mind. But for convenience sake let us divide your mind into three parts-the conscious mind, the subconscious mind, and the Infinite, Subliminal or Universal Mind.
The Conscious Mind
When you say, “I see-I hear-I smell-I touch,” it is your conscious mind that is saying this, for it is the force governing the five physical senses. It is the phase of mind with which you feel and reason-the phase of mind with which everyone is familiar. It is the mind with which you do business. It controls, to a great extent, all your voluntary muscles. It discriminates between right and wrong, wise and foolish. It is the generalissimo, in charge of all your mental forces. It can plan ahead-and get things done as it plans. Or it can drift along haphazardly, a creature of impulse, at the mercy of events-a mere bit of flotsam in the current of life.
For it is only through your conscious mind that you can reach the subconscious and the Universal Mind. Your conscious mind is the porter at the door, the watchman at the gate. It is to the conscious mind that the subconscious looks for all its impressions. It is on it that the subconscious mind must depend for the teamwork necessary to get successful results. You wouldn’t expect much from an army, no matter how fine its soldiers, whose general never planned ahead, who distrusted his own ability and that of his men, and who spent all his time worrying about the enemy instead of planning how he might conquer them. You wouldn’t look for good scores from a ball team whose pitcher was at odds with the catcher. In the same way, you can’t expect results from the subconscious when your conscious mind is full of fear or worry, or when it does not know what it wants.
The one most important province of your conscious mind is to center your thoughts on the thing you want, and to shut the door on every suggestion of fear or worry or disease.
If you once gain the ability to do that, nothing else is impossible to you.
For the subconscious mind does not reason inductively. It takes the thoughts you send in to it and works them out to their logical conclusion. Send to it thoughts of health and strength, and it will work out health and strength in your body. Let suggestions of disease, fear of sickness or accident, penetrate to it, either through your own thoughts or the talk of those around you, and you are very likely to see the manifestation of disease working out in yourself.
Your mind is master of your body. It directs and controls every function of your body. Your body is in effect a little universe in itself, and mind is its radiating center-the sun that gives light and life to all your system, and around which the whole revolves. And your conscious thought is master of this sun center. As Emile Coué puts it-”The conscious can put the subconscious mind over the hurdles.”
The Subconscious Mind
Can you tell me how much water, how much salt, how much of each different element there should be in your blood to maintain its proper specific gravity if you are leading an ordinary sedentary life? How much and how quickly these proportions must be changed if you play a fast game of tennis, or run for your car, or chop wood, or indulge in any other violent exercise?
Do you know how much water you should drink to neutralize the excess salt in salt fish? How much you lose through perspiration? Do you know how much water, how much salt, how much of each different element in your food should be absorbed into your blood each day to maintain perfect health? No? Well, it need not worry you. Neither does any one else. Not even the greatest physicists and chemists and math-ematicians. But your subconscious mind knows.
And it doesn’t have to stop to figure it out. It does it almost automatically. It is one of those “Lightning Calculators.” And this is but one of thousands of such jobs it performs every hour of the day. The greatest mathematicians in the land, the most renowned chemists, could never do in a year’s time the abstruse problems, which your subconscious mind, solves every minute.
And it doesn’t matter whether you’ve ever studied mathematics or chemistry or any other of the sciences. From the moment of your birth your subconscious mind solves all these problems for you. While you are struggling along with the three R’s, it is doing problems that would leave your teachers aghast. It supervises all the intricate processes of digestion, of assimilation, of elimination, and all the glandular secretions that would tax the knowledge of all the chemists and all the laboratories in the land. It planned and built your body from infancy on up. It repairs it. It operates it. It has almost unlimited power, not merely for putting you and keeping you in perfect health but for acquiring all the good things of life. Ignorance of this power is the sole reason for all
the failures in this world. If you would intelligently turn over to this wonderful power all your business and personal affairs in the same way that you turn over to it the mechanism of your body, no goal would be too great for you to strive for.
Dr. Geo. C. Pitzer sums up the power of the subconscious mind very well in the following:
“The subconscious mind is a distinct entity. It occupies the whole human body, and, when not opposed in any way, it has absolute control over all the functions, conditions, and sensations of the body. While the objective (conscious) mind has control over all of our voluntary functions and motions, the subconscious mind controls all of the silent, in-voluntary, and vegetative functions. Nutrition, waste, all secretions and excretions, the action of the heart in the circulation of the blood, the lungs in respiration or breathing, and all cell life, cell changes and development, are positively under the complete control of the subconscious mind. This was the only mind animal had before the evolution of the brain; and it could not, nor can it yet, reason inductively, but its power of deductive reasoning is perfect. And more, it can see without the use of physical eyes. It perceives by intuition. It has the power to communicate with others without the aid of ordinary physical means. It can read the thoughts of others. It receives intelligence and transmits it to people at a distance. Distance offers no resistance against the successful missions of the subconscious mind. It never dies. We call this the ‘soul mind.’ It is the living soul.”
In “Practical Psychology and Sex Life,” by David Bush, Dr. Winbigler is quoted as going even further. To quote him:
“It is this mind that carries on the work of assimilation and upbuilding whilst we sleep . . .
It reveals to us things that the conscious mind has no conception of until the consummations have occurred.
It can communicate with other minds without the ordinary physical means.
It gets glimpses of things that ordinary sight does not behold.
It makes God’s presence an actual, realizable fact, and keeps the personality in peace and quietness.
It warns of approaching danger.
It approves or disapproves of a course of conduct and conversation.
It carries out all the best things, which are given to it, providing the conscious mind does not intercept and change the course of its manifestation.
It heals the body and keeps it in health, if it is at all encouraged.”
It is, in short, the most powerful force in life, and when properly directed, the most beneficent. But, like a live electric wire, its destructive force is equally great. It can be either your servant or your master. It can bring to you evil or good.
The Rev. William T. Walsh, in a new book just published, explains the idea very clearly:
“The subconscious part in us is called the subjective mind, because it does not decide and command. It is a subject rather than a ruler. Its nature is to do what it is told, or what really in your heart of hearts you desire.
“The subconscious mind directs all the vital processes of your body. You do not think consciously about breathing. Every time you take a breath you do not have to reason, decide, command. The subconscious mind sees to that. You have not been at all conscious that you have been breathing while you have been reading this page. So it is with the mind and the circulation of blood. The heart is a muscle like the muscle of your arm. It has no power to move itself or to direct its action. Only mind, only something that can think, can direct our muscles, including the heart. You are not conscious that you are commanding your heart to beat. The subconscious mind attends to that. And so it is with the assimilation of food, the building and repairing of the body. In fact, all the vital processes are looked after by the subconscious mind.”
“Man lives and moves and has his being” in this great subconscious mind. It supplies the “intuition” that so often carries a woman straight to a point that may require hours of cumbersome reasoning for a man to reach. Even in ordinary, every-day affairs, you often draw upon its wonderful wisdom. But you do it in an accidental sort of way without realizing what you are doing.
Consider the case of “Blind Tom.” Probably you’ve heard or read of him. You know that he could listen to a piece of music for the first time and go immediately to a piano and reproduce it. People call that abnormal. But as a matter of fact he was in this respect more normal than any of us. We are abnormal because we cannot do it.
Or consider the case of these “lightning calculators” of whom one reads now and then. It may be a boy seven or eight years old; but you can ask him to divide 7,649.437 by 326.2568 and he’ll give you the result in less time than it would take you to put the numbers down on a piece of paper. You call him phenomenal. Yet you ought to be able to do the same yourself. Your subconscious mind can.
Dr. Hudson, in his book “The Law of Psychic Phenomena,” tells of numerous such prodigies. Here are just a few instances:
“Of mathematical prodigies there has been upwards of a score whose calculations have surpassed, in rapidity and accuracy, those of the greatest educated mathematicians. These prodigies have done their greatest feats while but children from three to ten years old. In no case had these boys any idea how they performed their calculations, and some of them would converse upon other subjects while doing the sum. Two of these boys became men of eminence, while some of them showed but a low degree of objective intelligence.
Whateley spoke of his own gift in the following terms:
“There was certainly something peculiar in my calculating faculty. It began to show itself at between five and six, and lasted about three years. I soon got to do the most difficult sums, always in my head, for I knew nothing of figures beyond numeration. I did these sums much quicker than anyone could upon paper, and I never remember committing the smallest error. When I went to school, at which time the passion wore off, I was a perfect dunce at ciphering, and have continued so ever since.” “Professor Safford became an astronomer. At the age of ten he worked correctly a multiplication sum whose answer consisted of thirty-six figures. Later in life he could perform no such feats.”
“Benjamin Hall Blyth, at the age of six, asked his father at what hour he was born. He was told that he was born at four o’clock. Looking at the clock to see the present time, he informed his father of the number of seconds he had lived. His father made the calculation and said to Benjamin, ‘You are wrong 172,000 seconds.’ The boy answered, ‘Oh, papa, you have left out two days for the leap years 1820 and 1824,’ which was the case.”
“Then there is the celebrated case of Zerah Colburn, of whom Dr. Schofield writes:
“‘Zerah Colburn could instantaneously tell the square root of 106,929 as 327, and the cube root of 268,336,125 as 645. Before the question of the number of minutes in forty-eight years could be written he said 25,228,810. He immediately gave the factors of 247,483 as 941 and 263, which are the only two; and being asked then for those of 36,083, answered none; it is a prime number. He could not tell how the answer came into his mind. He could not, on paper, do simple multiplication or division.’”
The time will come when, as H. G. Wells envisioned in his “Men Like Gods,” schools and teachers will no longer be necessary except to show us how to get in touch with the infinite knowledge our subconscious minds possess from infancy.
“The smartest man in the world,” says Dr. Frank Crane in a recent article in Liberty “is the Man Inside. By the Man Inside I mean that Other Man within each one of us that does most of the things we give ourselves credit for doing. You may refer to him as Nature or the Subconscious Self or think of him merely as a Force or a Natural Law, or, if you are religiously inclined, you may use the term God.
“I say he is the smartest man in the world. I know he is infinitely more clever and resourceful than I am or than any other man is that I ever heard of. When I cut my finger it is he that calls up the little phagocytes to come and kill the septic germs that might get into the wound and cause blood poisoning. It is he that coagulates the blood, stops the gash, and weaves the new skin.
“I could not do that. I do not even know how he does it. He even does it for babies that know nothing at all; in fact, does it better for them than for me.
“No living man knows enough to make toenails grow, but the Man Inside thinks nothing of growing nails and teeth and thousands of hairs all over my body; long hairs on my head and little fuzzy ones over the rest of the surface of the skin.
“When I practice on the piano I am simply getting the business of piano playing over from my conscious mind to my subconscious mind: in other words, I am handing the business over to the Man Inside.
“Most of our happiness, as well as our struggles and misery, come from this Man Inside. If we train him in ways of contentment, adjustment, and decision he will go ahead of us like a well trained servant and do for us easily most of the difficult tasks we have to perform.”
Dr. Jung, celebrated Viennese specialist, claims that the subconscious mind contains not only all the knowledge that it has gathered during the life of the individual, but that in addition it ontains all the wisdom of past ages. That by drawing upon its wisdom and power the individual may possess any good thing of life, from health and happiness to riches and success.
You see, the subconscious mind is the connecting link between the Creator and us, between Universal Mind and our conscious mind. It is the means by which we can appropriate to ourselves all the good gifts, all the riches and abundance that Universal Mind has created in such profusion.
Berthelot, the great French founder of modern synthetic chemistry, once stated in a letter to a close friend that the final experiments which led to his most wonderful discoveries had never been the result of carefully followed and reasoned trains of thought, but that, on the contrary, “they came of themselves, so to speak, from the clear sky.”
Charles M. Barrows, in “Suggestion Instead of Medicine,” tells us that:
“If man requires another than his ordinary consciousness to take care of him while asleep, not less useful is this same psychical provision when he is awake. Many persons are able to obtain knowledge, which does not come to them through their senses, in the usual way, but arrives in the mind by direct communication from another conscious intelligence, which apparently knows more of what concerns their welfare than their ordinary reason does. I have known a number of persons who, like myself, could tell the contents of letters in their mail before opening them. Several years ago a friend of mine came to Boston for the first time, arriving at what was then the Providence railroad station in Park Square. He wished to walk to the Lowell station on the opposite side of the city. Being utterly ignorant of the streets as well as the general direction to take, he confidently set forth without asking the way, and reached his destination by the most direct path. In doing this he trusted solely to ‘instinctive guidance,’ as he called it, and not to any hints or clews obtained through the senses.”
The geniuses of literature, of art, commerce, government, politics and invention are, according to the scientists, but ordinary men like you and me who have learned somehow, some way, to draw upon their subconscious minds.
Sir Isaac Newton is reported to have acquired his marvelous knowledge of mathematics and physics with no conscious effort. Mozart said of his beautiful symphonies “they just came to him.” Descartes had no ordinary regular education. To quote Dr. Hudson:
“This is a power which transcends reason, and is independent of induction. Instances of its development might be multiplied indefinitely. Enough is known to warrant the conclusion that when the soul is released from its objective environment it will
be enabled to perceive all the laws of its being, to ‘see God as He is,’ by the perception of the laws which He has instituted. It is the knowledge of this power which demonstrates our true relationship to God, which confers the warranty of our right to the title of ‘sons of God,’ and confirms our inheritance of our rightful share of his attributes and powers-our heir ship of God, our joint heir ship with Jesus Christ.”
Our subconscious minds are vast magnets, with the power to draw from Universal Mind unlimited knowledge, unlimited power, unlimited riches.
“Considered from the standpoint of its activities,” says Warren Hilton in “Applied Psychology,” “the subconscious is that department of mind, which on the one hand directs the vital operations of the body, and on the other conserves, subject to the call of interest and attention, all ideas and complexes not at the moment active in consciousness.
“Observe, then, the possibility that lies before you. On the one hand, if you can control your mind in its subconscious activities, you can regulate the operation of your bodily functions, and can thus assure yourself of bodily efficiency and free yourself of functional disease. On the other hand, if you can determine just what ideas shall be brought forth from sub consciousness into consciousness, you can thus select the materials out of which will be woven your conscious judgments, your decisions and your emotional attitudes.
“To achieve control of your mind is, then, to attain (a) health, (b) success, and (c) happiness.”
Few understand or appreciate, however, that the vast storehouse of knowledge and power of the subconscious mind can be drawn upon at will. Now and then through intense concentration or very active desire we do accidentally penetrate to the realm of the subconscious and register our thought upon it. Such thoughts are almost invariably realized. The trouble is that as often as not it is our negative thoughts-our fears-that penetrate. And these are realized just as surely as the positive thoughts. What you must manage to do is learn to communicate only such thoughts as you wish to see realized to your subconscious mind, for it is exceedingly amenable to suggestion. You have heard of the man who was always bragging of his fine health and upon whom some of his friends decided to play a trick. The first one he met one morning commented upon how badly he looked and asked if he weren’t feeling well. Then all the others as they saw him made similar remarks. By noontime the man had come to believe them, and before the end of the day he was really ill.
That was a rather glaring example. But similar things are going on every day with all of us. We eat something that someone else tells us isn’t good for us and in a little while we think we feel a pain. Before we know it we have indigestion, when the chances are that if we knew nothing about the supposed indigestible properties of the food we could eat it the rest of our days and never feel any ill effects.
Let some new disease be discovered and the symptoms described in the daily paper. Hundreds will come down with it at once. They are like the man who read a medical encyclopedia and ended up by concluding he had everything but “housemaid’s knee.” Patent medicine advertisers realize this power of suggestion and cash in upon it. Read one of their ads. If you don’t think you have everything the matter with you that their nostrums are supposed to cure, you are the exception and not the rule.
That is the negative side of it. Emile Coué based his system on the positive side-which you suggest to your subconscious mind that whatever ills it thinks you have are getting better. And it is good psychology at that. Properly carried out it will work wonders. But there arc better methods. And I hope to be able to show them to you before we reach the end of this book.
Suffice it now to say that your subconscious mind is exceedingly wise and powerful. That it knows many things that is not in books. When properly used it has infallible judgment, un-failing power. It never sleeps never tires.
Your conscious mind may slumber. It may be rendered impotent by anesthetics or a sudden blow. But your subconscious mind works on, keeping your heart and lungs, your arteries and glands ever on the job.
Under ordinary conditions, it attends faithfully to its duties, and leaves your conscious mind to direct the outer life of the body. But let the conscious mind meet some situation with which it is unable to cope, and, if it will only call upon the subconscious, that powerful Genie will respond immediately to its need.
You have heard of people who had been through great danger tell how, when death stared them in the face and there seemed nothing they could do, things went black before them and, when they came to, the danger was past. In the moment of need, their subconscious mind pushed the conscious out of the way, the while it met and overcame the danger. Impelled by the subconscious mind, their bodies could do things absolutely impossible to their ordinary conscious selves.
For the power of the subconscious mind is unlimited. Whatever it is necessary for you to do in any right cause, it can give you the strength and the ability to do. Whatever of good you may desire, it can bring to you. “The Kingdom of Heaven is within you.”
The Universal Mind
Have you ever dug up a potato vine and seen the potatoes clustering underneath? How much of intelligence do you suppose one of these potatoes has? Do you think it knows anything about chemistry or geology? Can it figure out how to gather carbon gas from the atmosphere, water and all the necessary kinds of nutriment from the earth round about to manufacture into sugar and starch and alcohol? No chemist can do it. How do you suppose the potato knows? Of course it doesn’t. It has no sense. Yet it does all these things. It builds the starch into cells, the cells into roots and vines and leaves-and into more potatoes.
“Just old Mother Nature,” you’ll say. But old Mother Nature must have a remarkable intelligence if she can figure out all these things that no human scientist has ever been able to figure. There must be an all-pervading Intelligence behind Mother Nature-the Intelligence that first brought life to this planet-the Intelligence that evolved every form of plant and animal-that holds the winds in its grasp-that is all-wise, all-powerful. The potato is but one small manifestation of this Intelligence. The various forms of plant life, of animals, of man-all are mere cogs in the great scheme of things.
But with this difference-that man is an active part of this Universal Mind. That he partakes of its creative wisdom and power and that by working in harmony with Universal Mind he can do anything have anything, be anything.
There is within you-within everyone- this mighty resistless force with which you can perform undertakings that will dazzle your reason, stagger your imagination. There constantly resides within you a Mind that is all-wise, all-powerful, a Mind that is entirely apart from the mind which you consciously use in your everyday affairs yet which is one with it.
Your subconscious mind partakes of this wisdom and power, and it is through your subconscious mind that you can draw upon it in the attainment of anything you may desire. When you can intelligently reach your subconscious mind, you can be in communication with the Universal Mind.
Remember this: the Universal Mind is omnipotent. And since the subconscious mind is part of the Universal Mind, there is no limit to the things, which it can do when it is given the power to act. Given any desire that is in harmony with the Universal Mind and you have but to hold that desire in your thought to attract from the invisible domain the things you need to satisfy it.
For mind does its building solely by the power of thought. Its creations take form according to its thought. Its first requisite is a mental image, and your desire held with unswerving purpose will form that mental image.
An understanding of this principle explains the power of prayer. The results of prayer are not brought about by some special dispensation of Providence. God is not a finite being to be cajoled or flattered into doing, as you desire. But when you pray earnestly you form a mental image of the thing that you desire and you hold it strongly in your thought. Then the Universal Intelligence, which is your intelligence-Omnipotent Mind-, begins to work with and for you, and this is what brings about the manifestation that you desire.
The Universal Mind is all around you. It is as all pervading as the air you breathe. It encompasses you with as little trouble as the water in the sea encompasses the fish. Yet it is just as thoroughly conscious of you as the water would be, were it intelligent, of every creature within it. “Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? And one of them shall not fall on the ground with-out your Father. But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear ye not, therefore, ye are of more value than many sparrows.”
It seems hard to believe that a Mind busied with the immensities of the universe can consider such trivial affairs as our own when we are but one of the billions of forms of life which come into existence. Yet consider again the fish in the sea. It is no trouble for the sea to encompass them. It is no more trouble for the Universal Mind to encompass us. Its power, its thought, is as much at our disposal as the sunshine and the wind and the rain. Few of us take advantage to the full of these great forces. Fewer still take advantage of the power of the Universal Mind. If you have any lack, if you are prey to poverty or disease, it is because you do not believe or do not understand the power that is yours. It is not a question of the Universal giving to you. It offers everything to everyone- there is no partiality. “Ho, everyone that thirsteth, come ye to the waters.” You have only to take. “Whosoever will let him take of the water of life freely.”
“With all thy getting, get understanding,” said Solomon. And if you will but get understanding, everything else will be added unto you.
To bring you to a realization of your indwelling and unused power, to teach you simple, direct methods of drawing upon it, is the beginning and the end of this course.
The Secret of the Ages
In Seven Volumes
VOLUME TWO
“And the earth was
Without form and void;
And darkness was upon
The face of the deep.
And the Spirit of God moved
Upon the face of the waters.”
GENESIS 1:2.
III
The Primal Cause
This city, with all its houses, palaces, steam engines, cathedrals and huge, immeasurable traffic and tumult, what is it but a Thought, but millions of Thoughts made into one-a huge immeasurable Spirit of a Thought, embodied in brick, in iron, smoke, dust, Palaces, Parliaments, coaches, docks and the rest of it! Not a brick was made but some man had to think of the making of that brick.
__CARLYLE.
For thousands of years the riddle of the universe has been the question of causation. Did the egg come first, or the chicken? “The globe,” says an Eastern proverb, “rests upon the howdah of an elephant. The elephant stands upon a tortoise, swimming in a sea of milk.” But then what?
And what is life? As the Persian poet puts it-
“What without asking, hither hurried whence,
And without asking whither hurried hence?”
It has been said that every man, consciously or unconsciously, is either a materialist or an idealist. Certainly throughout the ages the schools of philosophy as well as individuals have argued and quarreled, but always human thought through one or the other of these channels “has rolled down the hill of speculation into the ocean of doubt.”
The materialist, roughly speaking, declares that nothing exists but matter and the forces inherent therein.
The idealist declares that all is mind or energy, and that matter is necessarily unreal.
The time has come when people have become dissatisfied with these unceasing theories, which get them nowhere. And today, as the appreciation of a Primal Cause becomes more clearly defined, the spiritual instinct asserts itself determinedly.
“Give me a base of support,” said Archimedes, “and with a lever I will move the world.”
And the base of support is that all started with mind. In the beginning was nothing-a fire mist. Before anything could come of it there had to be an idea, a model on which to build. Universal Mind supplied that idea, that model. Therefore the primal cause is mind. Everything must start with an idea. Every event, every condition, every thing is first an idea in the mind of someone.
Before you start to build a house, you draw up a plan of it. You make an exact blueprint of that plan, and your house takes shape in accordance with your blueprint. Every material object takes form in the same way. Mind draws the plan. Thought forms the blueprint, well drawn or badly done, as your thoughts are clear or vague. It all goes back to the one cause. The creative principle of the universe is mind, and thought is the eternal energy.
But just as the effect you get from electricity depends upon the mechanism to which the power is attached, so the effects you get from mind depend upon the way you use it. We are all of us dynamos. The power is there-unlimited power. But we’ve got to connect it up to something-set it some task- give it work to do-else are we no better off than the animals.
The “Seven Wonders of the World” was built by men with few of the opportunities or facilities that are available to you. They conceived these gigantic projects first in their own minds, pictured them so vividly that their subconscious minds came to their aid and enabled them to overcome obstacles that most of us would regard as insurmountable. Imagine building the Pyramids of Gizeh, enormous stone upon enormous stone, with nothing but bare hands. Imagine the labor, the sweat, the heartbreaking toil of erecting the Colossus of Rhodes, between whose legs a ship could pass! Yet men built these wonders, in a day when tools were of the crudest and machinery was undreamed of, by using the unlimited power of Mind.
Mind is creative, but it must have a model on which to work. It must have thoughts to supply the power.
There are in Universal Mind ideas for millions of wonders far greater than the “Seven Wonders of the World.” And those ideas are just as available to you as they were to the artisans of old, as they were to Michael Angelo when he built St. Peter’s in Rome, as they were to the architect who conceived the Woolworth Building, or the engineer who planned the Hell Gate Bridge.
Every condition, every experience of life is the result of our mental attitude. We can do only what we think we can do. We can be only what we think we can be. We can have only what we think we can have. What we do, what we are, what we have, all depend upon what we think. We can never express anything that we do not first have in mind. The secret of all power, all success, all riches, is in first thinking powerful thoughts, successful thoughts, and thoughts of wealth, of supply. We must build them in our own mind first.
William James, the famous psychologist, said that the greatest discovery in a hundred years was the discovery of the power of the sub-conscious mind. It is the greatest discovery of all time. It is the discovery that man has within himself the power to control his surroundings that he is not at the mercy of chance or luck that he is the arbiter of his own fortunes that he can carve out his own destiny. He is the master of all the forces round about him. As James Allen puts it:
“Dream lofty dreams, and as you dream, so shall you become. Your vision is the promise of what you shall one day be; your Ideal is the prophecy of what you shall at last unveil.”
For matter is in the ultimate but a product of thought. Even the most material scientists admit that matter is not what it appears to be. According to physics, matter (be it the human body or a log of wood-it makes no difference which) is made up of an aggregation of distinct minute particles called atoms. Considered individually, these atoms are so small that they can be seen only with the aid of a powerful microscope, if at all.
MATTER-Dream or Reality?
Until recently these atoms were supposed to be the ultimate theory regarding matter. We ourselves -and all the material world around us-were supposed to consist of these infinitesimal particles of matter, so small that they could not be seen or weighed or smelled or touched individually-but still particles of matter and indestructible.
Now, however, these atoms have been further analyzed, and physics tells us that they are not indestructible at all- that they are mere positive and negative buttons of force or energy called protons and electrons, without hardness, without density, without solidity, without even positive actuality. In short, they are vortices in the ether-whirling bits of energy-dynamic, never static, pulsating with life, but the life is spiritual! As one eminent British scientist put it- “Science now explains matter by explaining it away!”
And that, mind you, is what the solid table in front of you is made of, is what your house, your body, the whole world is made of-whirling bits of energy!
To quote the New York Herald-Tribune of March 11, 1926: “We used to believe that the universe was composed of an unknown number of different kinds of matter, one kind for each chemical element. The discovery of a new element had all the interest of the unexpected. It might turn out to be anything, to have any imaginable set of properties.
“That romantic prospect no longer exists. We know now that instead of many ultimate kinds of matter there are only two kinds. Both of these are really kinds of electricity. One is negative electricity, being, in fact, the tiny particle called the electron, familiar to radio fans as one of the particles vast swarms of which operate radio vacuum tubes. The other kind of electricity is positive electricity. Its ultimate particles are called protons. From these protons and electrons all of the chemical elements are built up. Iron and lead and oxygen and gold and all the others differ from one another merely in the number and arrangement of the electrons and protons, which they contain. That is the modern idea of the nature of matter. Matter is really nothing but electricity.”
Can you wonder then that scientists believe the time will come when mankind through mind can control all this energy, can be absolute master of the winds and the waves, can literally follow the Master’s precept-”If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you.”
For Modern Science is coming more and more to the belief that what we call matter is a force subject wholly to the control of mind.
How tenuous matter really is, is perhaps best illustrated by the fact that a single violin string, tuned to the proper pitch, could start a vibration that would shake down the Brooklyn Bridge! Oceans and mountains, rocks and iron, all can be reduced to a point little short of the purely spiritual. Your body is 85 per cent water, 15 per cent ash and phosphorus! And they in turn can be dissipated into gas and vapor. Where do we go from there?
Is not the answer that, to a great degree at least, and perhaps altogether, this world round about us is one of our mind’s own creating? And that we can put into it, and get from it, pretty much what we wish? You see this illustrated every day. A panorama is spread before you. To you it is a beautiful picture; to another it appears a mere collection of rocks and trees. A girl comes out to meet you. To you she is the embodiment of loveliness; to another all that grace and beauty may look drab and homely. A moonlit garden, with its fragrant odors and dew-drenched grass, may mean all that is charming to you, while to another it brings only thoughts of asthma or fever or rheumatism. A color may be green to you that to another is red. A prospect may be inviting for you that to another is rugged and hard.
To quote “Applied Psychology,” by Warren Hilton:
“The same stimulus acting on different organs of sense will produce different sensations. A blow upon the eye will cause you to ‘see stars’; a similar blow upon the ear will cause you to hear an explosive sound. In other words, the vibratory effect of a touch on eye or ear is the same as that of light or sound vibrations.
“The notion you may form of any object in the outer world depends solely upon what part of your brain happens to be connected with that particular nerve-end that receives an impression from the object.
“You see the sun without being able to hear it because the only nerve-ends tuned to vibrate in harmony with the ether-waves set in action by the sun are nerve-ends that are connected with the brain center devoted to sight. ‘If,’ says Professor James, ‘we could splice the outer extremities of our optic nerves to our ears, and those of our auditory nerves to our eyes, we should hear the lightning and see the thunder, see the symphony and hear the conductor’s movements.’
“In other words, the kind of impressions we receive from the world about us, the sort of mental pictures we form concerning it, in fact, the character of the outer world, the nature of the en-vironment in which our lives are cast- all these things depend for each one of us simply upon how he happens to be put together, upon his individual mental make-up.”
In short, it all comes back to the old fable of the three blind men and the elephant. To the one who caught hold of his leg, the elephant was like a tree.
To the one who felt of his side, the elephant was like a wall. To the one who seized his tail, the elephant was like a rope. The world is to each one of us the world of his individual perceptions.
You are like a radio receiving station. Every moment thousands of impressions are reaching you. You can tune in on whatever ones you like-on joy or sorrow, on success or failure, on optimism or fear. You can select the particular impressions that will best serve you, you can hear only what you want to hear, you can shut out all disagreeable thoughts and sounds and experiences, or you can tune in on discouragement and failure and despair.
Yours is the choice. You have within you a force against which the whole world is powerless. By using it, you can make what you will of life and of your surroundings.
“But,” you will say, “objects themselves do not change. It is merely the difference in the way you look at them.” Perhaps. But to a great extent, at least, we find what we look for, just as, when we turn the dial on the radio, we tune in on whatever kind of entertainment or instruction we may wish to hear. And who can say that it is not our thoughts that put it there? Who, for the matter of that, can prove that our surroundings in waking hours are not as much the creature of our minds as are our dreams? You’ve had dreams many a time where every object seemed just as real as when you were awake. You’ve felt of the objects, you’ve pinched yourself, yet still you were convinced that you were actually living those dreams. May not your waking existence be largely the creation of your own mind, just as your dream pictures are? Many scientists believe that it is, and that in proportion as you try to put into your surroundings the good things you desire, rather than the evil ones you fear, you will find those good things. Certain it is that you can do this with your own body. Just as certain that many people are doing it with the good things of life. They have risen above the conception of life in which matter is the master.
Just as the most powerful forces in nature are the invisible ones-heat, light, air, electricity-so the most powerful forces of man are his invisible forces, his thought forces. And just as elec-tricity can fuse stone and iron, so can your thought forces control your body, so can they make or mar your destiny.
The Philosopher’s Charm
There was once a shrewd necromancer who told a king that he had discovered a way to make gold out of sand. Naturally the king was interested and offered him great rewards for his secret. The necromancer explained his process. It seemed quite easy, except for one thing. Not once during the operation must the king think of the word Abracadabra. If he did, the charm was broken and the gold would not come. The king tried and tried to follow the directions, but he could not keep that word Abracadabra out of his mind. And he never made the gold.
Dr. Winbigler puts the same idea in another way: “Inspiration, genius, power, are often interfered with by the conscious mind’s interposing, by man’s failing to recognize his power, afraid to assist himself, lacking the faith in himself necessary to stimulate the subconscious so as to arouse the genius asleep in each.”
From childhood on we are assured on every hand-by scientists, by philosophers, by our religious teachers, that “ours is the earth and the fullness thereof.” Beginning with the first chapter of Genesis, we are told that “God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth-and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.” All through the Old and the New Testament, we are repeatedly adjured to use these God-given powers. “He that be-lieveth on me,” said Jesus, “the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do.” “If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you.” “For verily I say unto you, that whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass; he shall have whatsoever he saith.” “The kingdom of God is within you.”
We hear all this; perhaps we even think we believe, but always, when the time comes to use these God-given talents, there is the “doubt in our heart.”
Baudouin expressed it clearly: “To be ambitious for wealth and yet always expecting to be poor; to be always doubting your ability to get what you long for, is like trying to reach east by traveling west. There is no philosophy, which will help a man to succeed when he always doubts his ability to do so, and thus attracting failure.
“You will go in the direction in which you face . . .
“There is a saying that every time the sheep bleats, it loses a mouthful of hay. Every time you allow yourself to complain of your lot, to say, ‘I am poor; I can never do what others do; I shall never be rich; I have not the ability that others have; I am a failure; luck is against me;’ you are laying up so much trouble for yourself.
“No matter how hard you may work for success, if your thought is saturated with the fear of failure, it will kill your efforts, neutralize your endeavors, and make success impossible.”
And that is responsible for all our failures. We are like the old lady who decided she wanted the hill behind her house removed. So she got down on her knees and prayed the good Lord to remove it. The next morning she got up and hurried to the window. The hill was still in its same old place. “I knew it!” she snapped. “I gave Him his chance. But I knew all the time there was nothing to this prayer business.”
Neither is there, as it is ordinarily done. Prayer is not a mere asking of favors. Prayer is not a paean of praise. Rather prayer is a realization of the God-power within you-of your right of dominion over your own body, your environment, your business, your health, your prosperity. It is an understanding that you are “heir of God and co-heir with Christ.” And that as such, no evil has power over you, whereas you have all power for good. And “good” means not merely holiness. Good means happiness-the happiness of everyday people. Good means everything that is good in this world of ours-comforts and pleasures and prosperity for us, health and happiness for those dependent upon us. There are no limits to “Good” except those we put upon it ourselves.
What was it made Napoleon the greatest conqueror of his day? Primarily his magnificent faith in Napoleon. He had a sublime
belief in his destiny, an absolute confidence that the obstacle was not made which Napoleon could not find a way through, or over, or around. It was only when he lost that confidence, when he hesitated and vacillated for weeks between retreat and advance, that winter caught him in Moscow and ended his dreams of world empire. Fate gave him every chance first. The winter snows were a full month late in coming. But Napoleon hesitated-and was lost. It was not the snows that defeated him. It was not the Russians. It was his loss of faith in himself.
The Kingdom of Heaven
“The Kingdom of Heaven is within you.” Heaven is not some far-away state-the reward of years of tribulation here. Heaven is right here-here and now! When Christ said that Heaven was within us, He meant just what He said-that the power for happiness, for good, for everything we need of life, is within each one of us.
That most of us fail to realize this Heaven-that many are sickly and suffering, that more are ground down by poverty and worry-is no fault of His. He gave us the power to overcome these evils; He stands ready and waiting to help us use it. If we fail to find the way, the fault is ours. To enjoy the Heaven that is within us, to begin here and now to live the life eternal, takes only a fuller understanding of the Power-that- is-within-us.
Even now, with the limited knowledge at our command, we can control circumstances to the point of making the world without an expression of our own world within, where the real thoughts, the real power, resides. Through this world within you can find the solution of every problem, the cause for every effect. Discover it-and all power, all possession is within your control.
For the world without is but a reflection of that world within. Your thought creates the conditions your mind images. Keep before your mind’s eye the image of all you want to be and you will see it reflected in the world without. Think abundance, feel abundance, BELIEVE abundance, and you will find that as you think and feel and believe, abundance will manifest itself in your daily life. But let fear and worry be your mental companions, thoughts of poverty and limitation dwell in your mind, and worry and fear, limitation and poverty will be your constant companions day and night.
Your mental concept is all that matters. Its relation to matter is that of idea and form. There has got to be an idea before it can take form. As Dr. Terry Walter says:
“The impressions that enter the subconscious form indelible pictures, which are never forgotten, and whose power can change
the body, mind, manner, and morals; can, in fact, revolutionize a personality.
“All during our waking hours the conscious mind, through the five senses, acts as constant feeder to the subconscious; the senses are the temporal source of supply for the content of the soul mind; therefore it is most important that we know and realize definitely and explicitly that every time we think a thought or feel an emotion, we are adding to the content of this powerful mind, good or bad, as the case may be. Life will be richer or poorer for the thoughts and deeds of today.”
Your thoughts supply you with limitless energy, which will take whatever form your mind demands. The thoughts are the mold, which crystallizes this energy into good, or ill according to the form you impress upon it. You are free to choose which. But whichever you choose, the result is sure. Thoughts of wealth, of power, of success, can bring only results commensurate with your idea of them. Thoughts of poverty and lack can bring only limitation and trouble.
“A radical doctrine,” you’ll say, and think me wildly optimistic. Because the world has been taught for so long to think that some must be rich and some poor, that trials and tribulations are our lot. That this is at best a vale of tears.
The history of the race shows that what is considered to be the learning of one age is ignorance to the next age.
Dr. Edwin E. Slosson, Editor of Science Service, speaking of the popular tendency to fight against new ideas merely because they were new, said: “All through the history of science, we find that new ideas have to force their way into the common mind in disguise, as though they were burglars instead of benefactors of the race.”
And Emerson wrote: “The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs.”
In the ages to come man will look back upon the poverty and wretchedness of so many millions today, and think how foolish we were not to take advantage of the abundance all about us. Look at Nature; how profuse she is in everything. Do you suppose the Mind that imaged that profuseness ever intended you to be limited, to have to scrimp and save in order to eke out a bare existence? There are hundreds of millions of stars in the heavens. Do you suppose the Mind, which could bring into being worlds without number in such prodigality intended to stint you of the few things necessary to your happiness?
What is money but a mere idea of mind, a token of exchange? The paper money you have in your pockets is supposed to represent so much gold or silver currency. There are billions upon billions of this paper money in circulation, yet all the gold in the world amounts to only about $8,000,000,000. Wealth is in ideas, not in money or property. You can control those ideas through mind.
Reduced to the ultimate-to the atom or to the electron-everything in this world is an idea of mind. All of it has been brought together through mind. If we can change the things we want back into mental images, we can multiply them as often as we like, possessing all that we like.
“To Him That Hath”-
Take as an example the science of numbers. Suppose all numbers were of metal-that it was against the law to write figures for ourselves. Every time you wanted to do a sum in arithmetic you’d have to provide yourself with a supply of numbers, arrange them in their proper order, work out your problems with them. If your problems were too abstruse you might run out of numbers, have to borrow some from your neighbor or from the bank.
“How ridiculous,” you say. “Figures are not things; they are mere ideas, and we can add them or divide them or multiply them or subtract them as often as we like. Anybody can have all the figures he wants.”
To be sure he can. And when you get to look upon money in the same way, you will have all the money you want.
“To him that hath shall be given, and from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath.” To him that hath the right idea everything shall be given, and from him who hath not that right idea shall be taken away everything he hath.
Thought externalizes itself. What we are depends entirely upon the images we hold before our mind’s eye. Every time we think, we start a chain of causes, which will create conditions similar to the thoughts, which originated it. Every thought we hold in our consciousness for any length of time becomes impressed upon our subconscious mind and creates a pattern, which the mind weaves into our life or environment.
All power is from within and is therefore under our own control. When you can direct your thought processes, you can consciously apply them to any condition, for all that comes to us from the world without is what we’ve already imaged in the world within.
Do you want more money? Sit you down now quietly and realize that money is merely an idea. That your mind is possessed of unlimited ideas. That being part of Universal Mind, there is no such thing as limitation or lack. That somewhere, somehow, the
ideas that shall bring you all the money you need for any right purpose are available for you. That you have but to put it up to your subconscious mind to find these ideas.
Realize that-believe it-and your need will be met. “What things so ever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive it and ye shall have it.” Don’t forget that “believe that ye receive it.” This it is that images the thing you want on your subconscious mind. And this it is that brings it to you. Once you can image the belief clearly on your subconscious mind, “whatsoever it is that ye ask for . . . ye shall have it.”
For the source of all good, of everything you wish for, is the Universal Mind, and you can reach it only through the subconscious.
And Universal Mind will be to you whatever you believe it to be-the kind and loving Father whom Jesus pictured, always looking out for the well-being of his children-or the dread Judge that so many dogmatists would have us think.
When a man realizes that his mind is part of Universal Mind, when he realizes that he has only to take any right aspiration to this Universal Mind to see it realized, he loses all sense of worry and fear. He learns to dominate instead of to cringe. He rises to meet every situation, secure in the knowledge that everything necessary to the solution of any problem is in Mind, and that he has but to take his problem to Universal Mind to have it correctly answered.
For if you take a drop of water from the ocean, you know that it has the same properties as all the rest of the water in the ocean, the same percentage of sodium chloride. The only difference between it and the ocean is in volume. If you take a spark of electricity, you know that it has the same properties as the thunderbolt, the same power that moves trains or runs giant machines in factories. Again the only difference is in volume. It is the same with your mind and Universal Mind. The only difference between them is in volume. Your mind has the same properties as the Universal Mind, the same creative genius, the same power over all the earth, the same access to all knowledge. Know this, believe it, use it, and “yours is the earth and the fullness thereof.” In the exact proportion that you believe yourself to be part of Universal Mind, sharing in its all-power, in that proportion can you demonstrate the mastery over your own body and over the world about you?
All growth, all supply is from the world-within. If you would have power, if you would have wealth, you have but to image it on this world within, on your subconscious mind, through belief and understanding.
If you would remove discord, you have but to remove the wrong images-images of ill health, of worry and trouble from within. The trouble with most of us is that we live entirely in the world without. We have no knowledge of that inner world which is responsible for all the conditions we meet and all the experiences we have. We have no conception of “the Father that is within us.”
The inner world promises us life and health, prosperity and happiness-dominion over all the earth. It promises peace and perfection for its entire offspring. It gives you the right way and the adequate way to accomplish any normal purpose. Business, labor, professions, exist primarily in thought. And the outcome of your labors in them is regulated by thought. Consider the difference, then, in this outcome if you have at your command only the limited capacity of your conscious mind, compared with the boundless energy of the subconscious and the Universal Mind. “Thought, not money, is the real business capital,” says Harvey S. Firestone, “and if you know absolutely that what you are doing is right, then you are bound to accomplish it in due season.
Thought is a dynamic energy with the power to bring its object out from the invisible substance all about us. Matter is inert, unintelligent. Thought can shape and control. Every form in which matter is today is but the expression of some thought, some desire, and some idea.
You have a mind. You can originate thought. And thoughts are creative. Therefore you can create for yourself that which you desire. Once you realize this you are taking a long step toward success in whatever undertaking you have in mind.
More than half the prophecies in the Scriptures refer to the time when man shall possess the earth, when tears and sorrow shall be unknown, and peace and plenty shall be everywhere. That time will come. It is nearer than most people think possible. You are helping it along. Every man who is honestly trying to use the power of mind in the right way is doing his part in the great cause. For it is only through Mind that peace and plenty can be gained. The earth is laden with treasures as yet undiscovered. But they are every one of them known to Universal Mind, for it was Universal Mind that first imaged them there. And as part of Universal Mind, they can be known to you.
How else did the Prophets of old foretell, thousands of years ago, the aeroplane, the cannon, the radio? What was the genius that enabled Ezekiel to argue from his potter’s wheel, his water wheel and the stroke of the lightning to an airplane, with its wheels within wheels, driven by electricity and guided by man? How are we to explain the descriptions of artillery in the Apocalypse and the astonishing declaration in the Gospels that the utterances of the chamber would be broadcast from the housetops?
“To the Manner Born”
Few of us have any idea of our mental powers. The old idea was that man must take this world as he found it. He’d been born into a certain position in life, and to try to rise above his fellows was not only the height of bad taste, but sacrilegious as well. An all-wise Providence had decreed by birth the position a child should occupy in the web of organized society. For him to be discontented with his lot, for him to attempt to raise himself to a higher level, was tantamount to tempting Providence. The gates of Hell yawned wide for such scatterbrains, who were lucky if in this life they incurred nothing worse than the ribald scorn of their associates.
That is the system that produced aristocracy and feudalism. That is the system that feudalism and aristocracy strove to perpetuate.
The new idea-the basis of all democracies-is that man is not bound by any system, that he need not accept the world as he finds it. He can remake the world to his own ideas. It is merely the raw material. He can make what he wills of it.
It is this new idea that is responsible for all our inventions, all our progress. Man is satisfied with nothing. He is constantly remaking his world. And now more than ever will this be true, for psychology teaches us that each one has within himself the power to become what he wills.
Learn to control your thought. Learn to image upon your mind only the things you want to see reflected there.
You will never improve yourself by dwelling upon the drawbacks of your neighbors. You will never attain perfect health and strength by thinking of weak-ness or disease. No man ever made a perfect score by watching his rival’s target. You have got to think strength, think health, think riches. To paraphrase Pascal- “Our achievements today are but the sum of our thoughts of yesterday.”
For thought is energy. Mental images are concentrated energy. And energy concentrated on any definite purpose becomes power. To those who perceive the nature and transcendency of force, all physical power sinks into insignificance.
What is imagination but a form of thought? Yet it is the instrument by which all the inventors and discoverers have opened the way to new worlds. Those who grasp this force, be their state ever so humble, their natural gifts ever so insignificant, becomes our leading men. They are our governors and supreme lawgivers, the guides of the drifting host, which follows them as by an irrevocable decree. To quote Glenn Clark in the Atlantic Monthly, “Whatever we have of civilization is their work, theirs alone. If progress was made they made it. If spiritual facts were discerned, they discerned them. If justice and order were put in place of insolence and chaos, they wrought the change. Never is progress achieved by the masses. Creation ever remains the task of the individual.”
Our railroads, our telephones, our automobiles, our libraries, our newspapers, our thousands of other conveniences, comforts and necessities are due to the creative genius of but two per cent of our population.
And the same two per cent own a great percentage of the wealth of the country. The question arises, who are they? What are they? The sons of the rich? College men? No-few of them had any early advantages. Many of them have never seen the inside of a college. It was grim necessity that drove them, and somehow, some way, they found a method of drawing upon their Genie-of -the-Mind, and through that inner force they have reached success.
You don’t need to stumble and grope. You can call upon your inner forces at will. There are three steps necessary:
First, to realize that you have the power; Second, to know what you want.
Third, to center your thought upon it with singleness of purpose.
To accomplish these steps takes only a fuller understanding of the Power- that-is-within-you.
But what is this power? Where should you go to locate it? Is it a thing, a place, an object? Has it bounds, form or material shape? No! Then how shall you go about finding it? If you have begun to realize that there is a power within you, if you have begun to arouse in your conscious mind the ambition and desire to use this power- you have started in the pathway of wisdom. If you are willing to go forward, to endure the mental discipline of mastering this method, nothing in the world can hinder you or keep you from overcoming every obstacle.
Begin at once, today, to use what you have learned. All growth comes from practice. All the forces of life are active-peace-joy-power. The unused talent decays. Open the door-
“Behold I stand at the door and knock; if ANY MAN hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him and he with me.”
So let us make use of this dynamo, which is you. What is going to start it working? Your Faith, the faith that is begotten of understanding. Faith is the impulsion, the propulsion of this power within. Faith is the confidence, the assurance, the enforcing truth, the knowing that the right idea of life will bring you into the reality of existence and the manifestation of the All power.
All cause is in Mind-and Mind is everywhere. All the knowledge there is, all the wisdom there is, all the power there is, is all about you-no matter where you may be. Your Mind is part of it. You have access to it. If you fail to avail yourself of it, you have no one to blame but yourself. For, as the drop of water in the ocean shares in all the properties of the rest of the ocean water so you share in that all-power, all-wisdom of Mind. If you have been sick and ailing, if poverty and hardship have been your lot, don’t blame it on “fate.” Blame yourself. “Yours is the earth and everything that’s in it.” But you’ve got to take it. The power is there-but you must use it. It is round about you like the air you breathe. You don’t expect others to do your breathing for you. Neither can you expect them to use your Mind for you. Universal Intelligence is not only the mind of the Creator of the universe, but it is also the mind of MAN, your intelligence, your mind. “Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus!”
So start today by KNOWING that you can do anything you wish to do, have anything you wish to have, be anything you wish to be. The rest will follow.
“Ye shall ask what ye will and it shall be done unto you.”
IV
Desire-The First Law of Gain
“Ah, Love! Could Thou and I with Fate conspire
To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things entire,
Would we not shatter it to bits-and then
Re-mold it nearer to the Heart’s Desire!”
-The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.
If YOU had a fairy-wishing ring, what one thing would you wish for? Wealth? Honor? Fame? Love? What one thing do you desire above everything else in life? Whatever it is, you can have it.
Whatever you desire wholeheartedly, with singleness of purpose-you can have. But the first and all-important essential is to know what this one thing is. Before you can win your heart’s desire, you’ve got to get clearly fixed in your mind’s eye what it is that you want.
It may sound paradoxical, but few people do know what they want. Most of them struggle along in a vague sort of way, hoping-like Micawber-for something to turn up. They are so taken up with the struggle that they have forgotten-if they ever knew- what it is they are struggling for. They are like a drowning man-they use up many times the energy it would take to get them somewhere, but they fritter it away in aimless struggles – without thought, without direction, exhausting themselves, while getting nowhere.
You’ve got to know what you want before you stand much chance of getting it. You have an unfailing “Messenger to Garcia” in that Genie-of-your Mind-but YOU have got to formulate the message. Aladdin would have stood a poor chance of getting anything from his Genie if he had not had clearly in mind the things he wanted the Genie to get.
In the realm of mind, the realm in which is all practical power, you can possess what you want at once. You have but to claim it, to visualize it, to bring it into actuality-and it is yours for the taking. For the Genie-of-your-Mind can give you power over circumstances. Health, happiness and prosperity. And all you need to put it to work is an earnest, intense desire.
Sounds too good to be true? Well, let us go back for a moment to the start. You are infected with that “divine dis-
satisfaction with things as they are” which has been responsible for all the great accomplishments of this world- else you would not have gotten thus far in this book. Your heart is hungering for something better. “Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness (right-wise ness) for they shall be filled.” You are tired of the worry and grind, tired of the deadly dull routine and daily tasks that lead nowhere. Tired of all the petty little ills and ailments that have come to seem the lot of man here on earth.
Always there is something within you urging you on to bigger things, giving you no peace, no rest, no chance to be lazy. It is the same “something” that drove Columbus across the ocean; that drove Hannibal across the Alps; that drove Edison onward and upward from a train boy to the inventive wizard of the century; that drove Henry Ford from a poor mechanic at forty to probably the richest man in the world at sixty.
This “something” within you keeps telling you that you can do anything you want to do, be anything you want to be, have anything you want to have-and you have a sneaking suspicion that it may be right.
That “something” within you is your subconscious self, your part of Universal Mind, your Genie-of-the-brain. Men call it ambition, and “Lucky is the man,” says Arthur Brisbane, “whom the Demon of Ambition harnesses and drives through life. This wonderful little coachman is the champion driver of the entire world and of all history.
“Lucky you, if he is your driver. “He will keep you going until you do something worthwhile-working, running and moving ahead.
“And that is how a real man ought to be driven.
“This is the little Demon that works in men’s brains, that makes the blood tingle at the thought of achievement and that makes the face flush and grow white at the thought of failure.
“Every one of us has this Demon for a driver, IN YOUTH AT LEAST.
“Unfortunately the majority of us he gives up as very poor, hopeless things, not worth driving, by the time we reach twenty-five or thirty.
“How many men look back to their teens, when they were harnessed to the wagon of life with Ambition for a driver? When they could not wait for the years to pass and for opportunity to come? “It is the duty of ambition to drive, and it is your duty to keep Ambition alive and driving.
“If you are doing nothing, if there is no driving, no hurrying, no working, you may count upon it that there will be no results. Nothing much worthwhile in the years to come.
“Those that are destined to be the big men twenty years from now, when the majority of us will be nobodies are those whom this demon is driving relentlessly, remorselessly, through the hot weather and the cold weather, through early hours and late hours.
“Lucky YOU if you are in harness and driven by the Demon of Ambition.”
Suppose you have had disappointments, disillusionments along the way. Suppose the fine point of your ambition has become blunted. Remember, there is no obstacle that there is not some way around, or over, or through-and if you will depend less upon the 10 per cent of your abilities that reside in your conscious mind, and leave more to the 90 per cent that constitutes your subcon-scious, you can overcome all obstacles. Remember this-there is no condition so hopeless, no life so far gone, that mind cannot redeem it.
Every untoward condition is merely a lack of something. Darkness, you know, is not real. It is merely a lack of light. Turn on the light and the darkness will be seen to be nothing. It van-ishes instantly. In the same way poverty is simply a lack of necessary supply. Find the avenue of supply and your poverty vanishes. Sickness is merely the absence of health. If you are in perfect health, sickness cannot hurt you. Doctors and nurses go about at will among the sick without fear-and suffer as a rule far less from sickness than does the average man or woman.
So there is nothing you have to overcome. You merely have to acquire something. And always Mind can show you the way. You can obtain from Mind anything you want, if you will learn how to do it. “I think we can rest assured that one can do and be prac-tically what he desires to be,” says Farnsworth in “Practical Psychology.” And psychologists all over the world have put the same thought in a thousand different ways.
“It is not will, but desire,” says Charles W. Mears, “that rules the world.” “But,” you will say, “I have had plenty of desires all my life. I’ve always wanted to be rich. How do you account for the difference between my wealth and position and power and that of the rich men all around me?”
The Magic Secret
The answer is simply that you have never focused your desires into one great dominating desire. You have a host of mild desires. You mildly wish you were rich, you wish you had a position of responsibility and influence; you wish you could travel at will. The wishes are so many and varied that they conflict with each other and you get nowhere in particular. You lack one intense desire, to the accomplishment of which you are willing to subordinate everything else.
Do you know how Napoleon so frequently won battles in the face of a numerically superior foe? By concentrating his men at the actual point of contact! His artillery was often greatly outnumbered, but it accomplished far more than the enemy’s because instead of scattering his fire, he concentrated it all on the point of attack!
The time you put in aimlessly dreaming and wishing would accomplish marvels if it were concentrated on one definite object. If you have ever taken a magnifying glass and let the sun’s rays play through it on some object, you know that as long as the rays were scattered they accomplished nothing. But focus them on one tiny spot and see how quickly they start something.
It is the same way with your mind. You’ve got to concentrate on one idea at a time.
“But how can I learn to concentrate?” many people write me. Concentration is not a thing to be learned. It is merely a thing to do. You concentrate whenever you become sufficiently interested in anything. Get so interested in a ball game that you jump up and down on your hat, slap a man you have never seen before on the back, embrace your nearest neighbor-that is concentration. Become so absorbed in a thrilling play or movie that you no longer realize the orchestra is playing or there are people around you-that is concentration.
And that is all concentration ever is- getting so interested in some one thing that you pay no attention to anything else that is going on around you.
If you want a thing badly enough, you need have no worry about your ability to concentrate on it. Your thoughts will just naturally center on it like bees on honey.
Hold in your mind the thing you most desire. Affirm it. Believe it to be an existing fact. Let me quote again the words of the Master, because there’s nothing more important to remember in this whole book. “Therefore I say unto you, what things so ever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them and ye shall have them.”
And again I say, the most important part is the “believe that ye receive them.” Your subconscious mind is exceedingly amenable to suggestion. If you can truly believe that you have received something, can impress that belief upon your subconscious mind, depend upon it, it will see that you have it. For being a part of Universal Mind, it shares that Universal Mind’s all power. “The Father that is within me, He doeth the works.” Your mind will respond to your desire in the exact proportion in which you believe. “As thy faith is, so be it unto thee.”
The people who live in beautiful homes, who have plenty to spend, who travel about in yachts and fine cars, are for the most part people who started out to accomplish some one definite thing. They had one clear goal in mind, and everything they did centered on that goal.
Most men just jog along in a rut, going through the same old routine day after day, eking out a bare livelihood, with no definite desire other than the vague hope that fortune will some day drop in their lap. Fortune doesn’t often play such pranks. And a rut, you know, differs from a grave only in depth. A life such as that is no better than the animals live. Work all day for money to buy bread, to give you strength to work all the next day to buy more bread. There is nothing to it but the daily search for food and sustenance. No time for aught but worry and struggle. No hope of anything but the surcease of sorrow in death.
You can have anything you want-if you want it badly enough. You can be anything you want to be, have anything you desire, accomplish anything you set out to accomplish-if you will hold to that desire with singleness of purpose; if you will understand and BELIEVE in your own powers to accomplish.
What is it that you wish in life? Is it health? In the chapter on health I will show you that you can be radiantly well-without drugs, without tedious exercises. It matters not if you are crippled or bedridden or infirm. Your body rebuilds itself entirely every eleven months. You can start now rebuilding along perfect lines.
Is it wealth you wish? In the chapter on success I will show you how you can increase your income, how you can forge rapidly ahead in your chosen business or profession.
Is it happiness you ask for? Follow the rules herein laid down and you will change your whole outlook on life. Doubts and uncertainty will vanish, to be followed by calm assurance and abiding peace. You will possess the things your heart desires. You will have love and companionship. You will win to contentment and happiness.
But desire must be impressed upon the subconscious before it can be accomplished. Merely conscious desire seldom gets you anything. It is like the daydreams that pass through your mind. Your desire must be visualized, must be persisted in, must be concentrated upon, and must be impressed upon your subconscious mind. Don’t bother about the means for accomplishing your desire-you can safely leave that to your subconscious mind. It knows how to do a great many things besides building and repairing your body. If you can visualize the thing you want, if you can impress upon your subconscious mind the belief that you have it, you can safely leave to it the finding of the means of getting it. Trust the Universal Mind to show the way.
The mind that provided everything in such profusion must joy in seeing us take advantage of that profusion. “For herein is the Father glorified-that ye bear much fruit.”
You do not have to wait until tomorrow, or next year, or the next world, for happiness. You do not have to die to be saved. “The Kingdom of Heaven is within you.” That does not mean that it is up in the heavens or on some star or in the next world. It means here and now! All the possibilities of happiness are always here and always available. At the open door of every man’s life there lies this pearl of great price-the understanding of man’s dominion over the earth. With that understanding and conviction you can do everything, which lies before you to do, and you can do it to the satisfaction of everyone and the well being of yourself. God and good are synonymous. And God-good-is absent only to those who believe He is absent.
Find your desire, impress it upon your thought, and you have opened the door for opportunity. And remember, in this new heaven and new earth, which I am trying to show you, the door of opportunity is never closed. As a matter of fact, you constantly have all that you will take. So keep yourself in a state of receptivity. It is your business to receive abundantly and perpetually. The law of opportunity enforces its continuance and availability. “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above and cometh down from the Father of light, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.”
Infinite Mind saith to every man, “Come ye to the open fountain.” The understanding of the law of life will remedy every discord, giving “Beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, and the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness.
Believe that you share in that goodness and bounty. Act the part you wish to play in this life. Act healthy, act prosperous, and act happy. Make such a showing with what you have that you will carry the conviction to your subconscious mind that all good and perfect gifts ARE yours. Register health, prosperity and happiness on your inner mind and some fine morning soon you will wake to find that you are healthy, prosperous and happy, that you have your dearest wish in life.
The Soul’s Sincere Desire”
Do you know what prayer is? Just an earnest desire that we take to God- to Universal Mind-for fulfillment. As Montgomery puts it-”Prayer is the soul’s sincere desire, uttered or unex-pressed.” It is our Heart’s Desire. At least, the only prayer that is worth anything is the prayer that asks for our real desires. That kind of prayer is heard. That kind of prayer is answered.
Mere lip prayers get you nowhere. It doesn’t matter what your lips may say. The thing that counts is what your heart desires, what your mind images on your subconscious thought, and through it on Universal Mind. “Thou, when thou prayest, be not as the hypocrites are; for they love to pray standing in the synagogue and at the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, they have their reward.”
What was it these hypocrites that Jesus speaks of really wanted? “To be seen of men.” And their prayers were answered. Their sincere desire was granted. They were seen of men. “They have their reward.” But as for what their lips were saying, neither God nor they paid any attention to it.
“Thou, when thou prayest enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut the door, pray to thy Father which is in secret, and thy Father which seeth in secret, shall reward thee openly.” Go where you can be alone, where you can concentrate your thoughts on your one innermost sincere desire, where you can impress that desire upon your subconscious mind without distraction, and so reach the Universal Mind (the Father of all things).
But even sincere desire is not enough by itself. There must be BELIEF, too. “What things so ever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them and ye shall have them.” You must realize God’s ability to give you every good thing. You must believe in his readiness to do it. Model your thoughts after the Psalmists of old. They first asked for that which they wanted, then killed all doubts and fears by affirming God’s power and His willingness to grant their prayers. Read any of the Psalms and you will see what I mean. So when you pray, ask for the things that you want. Then affirm God’s readiness and His Power to grant your prayer. Glenn Clark, in “The Soul’s Sincere Desire,” gives some wonderfully help-ful suggestions along these lines.
To quote him:
“For money troubles, realize: There is no want in Heaven, and affirm:
“Our Heavenly Father, we know that thy Love is as infinite as the sky is infinite, and Thy Ways of manifesting that love are as unaccountable as the stars of the heavens.
“Thy Power is greater than man’s horizon, and Thy Ways of manifesting that Power are more numerous than the sands of the sea.
“As Thou keepest the stars in their courses, so shalt Thou guide our steps in perfect harmony, without clash or discord of any kind, if we keep our trust in Thee. For we know Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on Thee, because he trusteth in Thee. We know that, if we acknowledge Thee in all our ways, Thou wilt direct our paths. For Thou art the God of Love, Giver of every good and perfect gift, and there is none beside Thee. Thou art omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent, in all, through all, and over all, the only God. And Thine is the Kingdom, and the Power, and the Glory, forever, Amen.
“For aid in thinking or writing, realize: There is no lack of ideas, and affirm: “Thy wisdom is greater than all hidden treasures, and yet as instantly available for our needs as the very ground beneath our feet.”
“For happiness: There is no unhappiness in Heaven, so affirm:
“Thy joy is brighter than the sun at noonday and Thy Ways of expressing that Joy as countless as the sunbeams that shine upon our path.”
This is the kind of prayer the Psalmists of old had recourse to in their hours of trouble-this is the kind of prayer that will bring you every good and perfect gift.
Make no mistake about this-prayer is effective. It can do anything. It doesn’t matter how trivial your desires may be-if it is RIGHT for you to have them, it is RIGHT for you to pray for them.
According to a United Press dispatch of May 3, 1926:
“Prayer belongs to the football field as much as to the pulpit, and a praying team stands a good chance of getting there,” Tim Lowry, Northwestern University football star, told a large church audience here.
“Just before the Indiana-Northwestern game last year,” Tim said. ‘We worried a great deal about the outcome. Then we saw that bunch of big husky Indiana players coming toward us and we knew something had to be done quickly.
“‘Fellows,’ I said, ‘I believe in prayer and we better pray.’ We did and won a great victory.
“When the next game came, every fellow prayed again.
“You don’t need to think that churches have a copyright on prayer.”
In “Prayer as a Force,” A. Maude Royden compares the man who trusts his desires to prayer with the swimmer who trusts himself to the water: “Let me give you a very simple figure which I think may perhaps convey my meaning. If you are trying to swim you must believe that the sea is going to keep you afloat. You must give yourself to the sea. There is the ocean and there are you in it, and I say to you, ‘According to your faith you will be able to swim!’ I know perfectly well that it is literally according to your faith. A person who has just enough confidence in the sea and in himself to give one little hop from the ground will certainly find that the water will lift him but not very much; he will come down again. Persons who have enough confidence really to start swimming but no more, will not swim very far, because their confidence is so very small and they swim with such rapid strokes, and they hold their breath to such an extent, that by and by they collapse; they swim five or six, or twelve or fourteen st
rokes, but they do not get very far, through lack of confidence.
“Persons who know with assurance that the sea will carry them if they do certain things, will swim quite calmly, serenely, happily, and will not mind if the water goes right over them. ‘Oh,’ you say, ‘that person is doing the whole thing!’ He can’t do it without the sea! You might hypnotize people into faith; you might say, ‘You are now in the ocean; swim off the edge of this precipice’ (which is really a cliff). You might make them do it, they might have implicit faith in you, you might hypnotize them into thinking they were swimming; but if they swam off the edge of the cliff they would fall. You can’t swim without the sea! I might say to you, ‘It lies with you whether you swim or not, according to your faith be it unto you’; but if the sea is not there you can’t swim. That is exactly what I feel about God. ‘According to your faith be it unto you.’ Yes, certainly, if you try to swim in that ocean which is the love of God your faith will be rewarded, and according to your faith it will be to you. In exact proportion to your faith you will find the answer, like a scientific law. There is not one atom of faith you put in God that will not receive its answer.”
But remember: you would not plant a valuable seed in your garden, and then, a day or a week later, go out and dig it up to see if it were sprouting. On the contrary, you would nourish it each morning with water. It is the same with your prayers. Don’t plant the seed of your desire in your subconscious mind and then go out the next morning and tear it up with doubts and fears. Nourish it by holding in thought the thing you desire, by believing in it, visualizing it, SEEING it as an accomplished fact.
If you ask for my own formula for successful prayer, I would say- 1st. Center your thoughts on the thing that you want. Visualize it. Make a mental image of it. You are planting the seed of Desire. But don’t be content with that. Planting alone will not make a seed of corn grow. It has to be warmed by sunshine, nurtured by rain. So with the seed of your Desire. It must be warmed by Faith, nurtured by constant Belief. So-2nd. Read the 91st and the 23rd Psalms, just as a reminder of God’s power and His readiness to help you in all your needs.
3rd. Don’t forget to be thankful, not merely for past favors, but for the granting of this favor you are now asking! To be able to thank God for it sincerely, in advance of its actual material mani-festation, is the finest evidence of belief.
4th. BELIEVE! Picture the thing that you want so clearly, see it in your imagination so vividly, that for the moment, at least, you will actually BELIEVE THAT YOU HAVE IT!
It is this sincere conviction, registered upon your subconscious mind, and through it upon Universal Mind that brings the answer to your prayers. Once convince your subconscious mind that you HAVE the thing you want, and you can forget it and go on to your next problem. Mind will attend to the bringing of it into being.
The Secret of the Ages
In Seven Volumes
VOLUME Three
V
Aladdin & Company
“But the feeble hands and helpless,
Groping blindly in the darkness,
Touch God’s right hand in that darkness,
And are lifted up and strengthened.”
-LONGFELLOW.
It is not always the man who struggles hardest who gets on in the world. It is the direction as well as the energy of struggle that counts in making progress. To get ahead-you must swim with the tide. Men prosper and succeed who work in accord with natural forces. A given amount of effort with these forces carries a man faster and farther than much more effort used against the current. Those who work blindly, regardless of these forces, make life difficult for themselves and rarely prosper.
It has been estimated by wise observers that on the average something like 90 per cent of the factors producing success or failure lie outside a man’s conscious efforts-separate from his daily round of details. To the extent that he cooperates with the wisdom and power of Universal Mind he is successful, well and happy. To the extent that he fails to cooperate, he is unsuccessful, sick and miserable.
All down the ages some have been enabled to “taste and see that the Lord is good.” Prophets and Seers being blessed with the loving kindness of God, have proclaimed a God of universal goodness saying: “The earth is full of the goodness of the Lord”; “Thou wilt show me the path of life; in Thy presence is fullness of joy.”
Now we know that this Infinite Good is not more available to one than it is to all. We know that the only limit to it is in our capacity to receive. If you had a problem in mathematics to work out, you would hardly gather together the necessary figures and leave them to arrange themselves in their proper sequence. You would know that while the method for solving every problem has been figured out, you have got to work it. The principles are there, but you have got to apply them. The first essential is to understand the principle-to learn how it works-how to use it. The second-and even more important part-is to APPLY that understanding to the problem in hand.
In the same way, the Principle of Infinite Energy, Infinite Supply, is ever available. But that Energy, that Supply, is static. You’ve got to make it dynamic. You’ve got to understand the law. You’ve got to apply your understanding in order to solve your problems of poverty, discord, and disease.
Science shows that it is possible to accomplish any good thing. But distrust of your ability to reach the goal desired often ~holds you back and failure is the inevitable result.
Only by understanding that there is but one power-and that this power is Mind, not circumstances or environment-is it possible to bring your real abilities to the surface and put them to work.
Few deny that intelligence governs the universe. It matters not whether you call this intelligence Universal Mind or Providence or God or merely Nature. All admit Its directing power. All admit that It is a force for good, for progress. But few realize that our own minds are a part of this Universal Mind in just the same way that the rays of the sun are part of the sun.
If we will work in harmony with It, we can draw upon Universal Mind for all power, all intelligence, in the same way that the sun’s rays draw upon their source for the heat and light they bring the earth.
It is not enough to know that you have this power. You must put it into practice-not once, or twice, but every hour and every day. Don’t be discouraged if at first it doesn’t always work. When you first studied arithmetic, your problems did not always work out correctly, did they? Yet you did not on that account doubt the principle of mathematics. You knew that the fault was with your methods, not with the principle. It is the same in this. The power is there. Correctly used, it can do anything.
All will agree that the Mind, which first brought the Life Principle to this earth-which imaged the earth, itself and the trees and the plants and the animals-is all-powerful. All will agree that to solve any problem, to meet any need, Mind has but to realize the need and it will be met. What most of us do not understand or realize is that we ourselves, being part of Universal Mind, have this same power. Just as the drop of water from the ocean has all the properties of the great bulk of the water in the ocean. Just as the spark of electricity has all the properties of the thunderbolt. And having the power, we have only to realize it and use it to get from life any good we may desire.
In the beginning all was void-space-nothingness. How did Universal Mind construct the planets, the firmaments, the earth and all things on and in it from this formless void? By first making a mental image on which to build.
That is what you, too, must do. You control your destiny, your fortune, your happiness to the exact extent to which you can think them out, VIZUALIZE them, SEE them, and allow no vagrant thought of fear or worry to mar their completion and beauty. The quality of your thought is the measure of your power. Clear, forceful thought has the power of attracting to itself everything it may need for the fruition of those thoughts. As W. D. Wattles puts it in his “Science of Getting Rich”:
“There is a thinking stuff from which all things are made and which, in its original state, permeates, penetrates, and fills the interspaces of the universe. A thought in this substance produces the thing that is imagined by the thought. Man can form things in his thought, and, by impressing his thought upon formless substance, can cause the thing he thinks about to be created.”
The connecting link between your conscious mind and the Universal is thought, and every thought that is in harmony with progress and good, every thought that is freighted with the right idea, can penetrate to Universal Mind. And penetrating to it, it comes back with the power of Universal Mind to accomplish it. You don’t need to originate the ways and means. The Universal Mind knows how to bring about any necessary results. There is but one right way to solve any given problem. When your human judgment is unable to decide what that one right way is, turn to Universal Mind for guidance. You need never fear the outcome, for if you heed its advice you cannot go wrong.
Always remember-your mind is but a conductor-good or poor as you make it-for the power of Universal Mind. And thought is the connecting energy. Use that conductor, and you will improve its conductivity. Demand much, and you will receive the more. The Universal is not a niggard in any of its gifts. “Ask and ye shall receive, seek and ye shall find, knock and it shall be opened unto you.”
That is the law of life. And the destiny of man lies not in poverty and hardship, but in living up to his high estate in unity with Universal Mind, with the power that governs the universe.
To look upon poverty and sickness as sent by God and therefore inevitable, is the way of the weakling. God never sent us anything but good. What is more, He has never yet failed to give to those who would use them the means to overcome any condition not of His making. Sickness and poverty are not of His making. They are not evidences of virtue, but of weakness. God gave us everything in abundance, and he expects us to manifest that abundance. If you had a son you loved very much, and you
surrounded him with good things which he had only to exert himself in order to reach, you wouldn’t like it if he showed himself to the world half-starved, ill-kempt and clothed in rags, merely because he was unwilling to exert himself enough to reach for the good things you had provided. No more, in my humble opinion, does God.
Man’s principal business in life, as I see it, is to establish a contact with Universal Mind. It is to acquire an understanding of this power that is in him. “With all thy getting, get understanding,” said Solomon.
“Happy is the man that findeth wisdom,
And the man that getteth understanding.
For the gaining of it is better than the gaining of silver.
And the profit thereof than fine gold.
She is more precious than rubies:
And none of the things thou canst desire are to be compared unto her.
Length of days is in her right hand:
In her left hand are riches and honor.
Her ways are ways of pleasantness,
And all her paths are peace.
She is a tree of life to them that lay hold upon her.
And happy is every one that retaineth her.”
-Proverbs.
When you become conscious, even to a limited degree, of your oneness with Universal Mind, your ability to call upon It at will for anything you may need, it makes a different man of you. Gone are the fears gone are the worries. You know that your success, your health, your happiness will be measured only by the degree to which you can impress the fruition of your desires upon mind.
The toil and worry, the wearisome grind and the backbreaking work, will go in the future as in the past to those who will not use their minds. The less they use them, the more they will sweat. And the more they work only from the neck down, the less they will be paid and the more hopeless their lot will become. It is Mind that rules the world.
But to use your mind to the best advantage doesn’t mean to toil along with the mere conscious part of it. It means hitching up your conscious mind with the Man Inside You, with the little “Mental Brownies,” as Robert Louis Stevenson called them, and then working together for a definite end.
“My Brownies! God bless them!” said Stevenson, “Who do one-half of my work for me when I am fast asleep, and in all human likelihood do the rest for me as well when I am wide awake and foolishly suppose that I do it myself. I had long been wanting to write a book on man’s double being. For two days I went about racking my brains for a plot of any sort, and on the second night I dreamt the scene in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde at the window; and a scene, afterward split in two, in which Hyde, pursued, took the powder and underwent the change in the presence of his pursuer.”
Many another famous writers have spoken in similar strain, and every man who has problems to solve has had like experiences. You know how, after you have studied a problem from all angles, it sometimes seems worse jumbled than when you started on it. Leave it then for a while-forget it-and when you go back to it, you find your thoughts clarified, the line of reasoning worked out, your problem solved for you. It is your little “Mental Brownies” who have done the work for you!
The flash of genius does not originate in your own brain. Through intense concentration you’ve established a circuit through your subconscious mind with the Universal, and it is from It that the inspiration comes. All genius, all progress, is from the same source. It lies with you merely to learn how to establish this circuit at will so that you can call upon It at need. It can be done.
“In the Inner Consciousness of each of us,” quotes Dumont in “The Master Mind,” “there are forces which act much the same as would countless tiny mental brownies or helpers who are anxious and willing to assist us in our mental work, if we will but have confidence and trust in them. This is a psychological truth expressed in the terms of the old fairy tales. The process of calling into service these Inner Consciousness helpers is similar to that which we constantly employ to recall some forgotten fact or name. We find that we cannot recollect some desired fact, date, or name, and instead of racking our brains with an increased effort, we (if we have learned the secret) pass on the matter to the Inner Consciousness with a silent command, ‘Recollect this name for me,’ and then go on with our ordinary work. After a few minutes-or it may be hours-all of a sudden, pop! will come the missing name or fact before us-flashed from the planes of the Inner Consciousness, by the help of the kindly workers or ‘brownies’ of those planes. The experience is so common that we have ceased to wonder at it, and yet it is a wonderful manifestation of the Inner Consciousness’ workings of the mind. Stop and think a moment, and you will see that the missing word does not present itself accidentally, or ‘just because.’ There are mental processes at work for your benefit, and when they have worked out the problem for you they gleefully push it up from their plane on to the plane of the outer consciousness where you may use it.
“We know of no better way of illustrating the matter than by this fanciful figure of the ‘mental brownies,’ in connection with the illustration of the ‘subconscious storehouse.’ If you would learn to take advantage of the work of these Subconscious Brownies, we advise you to form a mental picture of the Subconscious Storehouse in which is stored all sorts of knowledge that you have placed there during your lifetime, as well as the impressions that you have acquired by race inheritance-racial memory, in fact. The information stored away has often been placed in the storage rooms without any regard for systematic storing, or arrangement, and when you wish to find something that has been stored away there a long time ago, the exact place being forgotten, you are compelled to call to your assistance the little brownies of the mind, which perform faithfully your mental command, ‘Recollect this for me!’ These brownies are the same little chaps that you charge with the task of waking you at four o’clock tomorrow morning when you wish to catch an early train-and they obey you well in this work of the mental alarm- clock. These same little chaps will also flash into your consciousness the report, ‘I have an engagement at two o’clock with Jones’-when looking at your watch you will see that it is just a quarter before the hour of two, the time of your engagement.
“Well then, if you will examine carefully into a subject which you wish to master, and will pass along the results of your observations to these Subconscious Brownies, you will find that they will work the raw materials of thought into shape for you in a comparatively short time. They will analyze, systematize, collate, and arrange in consecutive order the various details of information which you have passed on to them, and will add thereto the articles of similar information that they will find stored away in the recesses of your memory. In this way they will group together various scattered bits of knowledge that you have forgotten. And, right here, let us say to you that you never absolutely forget anything that you have placed in your mind. You may be unable to recollect certain things, but they are not lost- sometime later some associative connection will be made with some other fact, and lo! the missing idea will be found fitted nicely into its place in the larger idea-the work of our little brownies. Remember Thompson’s statement: ‘In view of having to wait for the results of these unconscious processes, I ‘have proved the habit of getting together material in advance, and then leaving the mass to digest itself until I am ready to write about it.’ This subconscious ‘digestion’ is really the work of our little mental brownies.
“There are many ways of setting the brownies to work. Nearly everyone has had some experience, more or less, in the matter, although often it is produced almost unconsciously, and without purpose and intent. Perhaps the best way for the average person-or rather the majority of persons-to get the desired results is for one to get as clear an idea of what one really wants to know-as clear an idea or mental image of the question you wish answered. Then after rolling it around in your mind-mentally chewing it, as it were-giving it a high degree of voluntary attention, you can pass it on to your Subconscious Mentality with the mental command: ‘Attend to this for me-work out the answer!’ or some similar order. This command may be given silently, or else spoken aloud- either will do. Speak to the Subconscious Mentality-or its little workers-just as you would speak to persons in your employ, kindly but firmly. Talk to the little workers, and firmly command them to do your work. And then forget all about the matter-throw it off your conscious mind, and attend to your other tasks. Then in due time will come your answer-flashed into your consciousness-perhaps not until the very minute that you must decide upon the matter, or need the information. You may give your brownies orders to report at such and such a time-just as you do when you tell them to awaken you at a certain time in the morning so as to catch the early train, or just as they remind you of the hour of your appointment, if you have them all well trained.”
Have you ever read the story by Richard Harding Davis of “The Man Who Could Not Lose?” In it the hero is intensely interested in racing. He has studied records and “dope” sheets until he knows the history of every horse backward and forward.
The day before the big race he is reclining in an easy chair, thinking of the morrow’s race, and he drops off to sleep with that thought on his mind. Naturally, his subconscious mind takes it up, with the result that he dreams the exact outcome of the race.
That was mere fiction, of course, but if races were run solely on the speed and stamina of the horses, it would be entirely possible to work out the results in just that way. Unfortunately, other factors frequently enter into every betting game.
But the idea behind Davis’ story is entirely right. The way to contact with your subconscious mind, the way to get the help of the “Man Inside You” in working out any problem is:
First, fill your mind with every bit of information regarding that problem that you can lay your hands on.
Second, pick out a chair or lounge or bed where you can recline in perfect comfort, where you can forget your body entirely.
Third, let your mind dwell upon the problem for a moment, not worrying, not fretting, but placidly, and then turn it over to the “Man Inside You.” Say to him-”This is your problem. You can do anything. You know the answer to everything. Work this out for me!” And utterly relax. Drop off to sleep, if you can. At least, drop into one of those half-sleepy, half-wakeful reveries that keep other thoughts from obtruding upon your consciousness, Do as Aladdin did-summon your Genii, give him your orders, then forget the matter, secure in the knowledge that he will attend to it for you. When you waken, you will have the answer! For whatever thought, whatever problem you can get across to your subconscious mind at the moment of dropping off to sleep, that “Man Inside You,” that Genie-of-your-Mind will work out for you.
Of course, not everyone can succeed in getting the right thought across to the subconscious at the first or the second attempt. It requires understanding and faith, just as the working out of problems in mathematics requires an understanding of and faith in the principles of mathematics. But keep on trying, and you WILL do it. And when you do, the results are sure.
If it is something that you want, VISUALIZE it first in your mind’s eye, see it in every possible detail, see yourself going through every move it will be necessary for you to go through when your wish comes into being. Build up a complete story, step by step, just as though you were acting it all out. Get from it every ounce of pleasure and satisfaction that you can. Be thankful for this gift that has come to you. Then relax; go on to sleep if you can; give the “Man Inside You” a chance to work out the consummation of your wish without interference.
When you waken, hold it all pleasurably in thought again for a few moments. Don’t let doubts and fears creep in, but go ahead, confidently, knowing that your wish is working itself out. Know this, believe it-and if there is nothing harmful in it, IT WILL WORK OUT!
For somewhere in Universal Mind there exists the correct solution of every problem. It matters not how stupendous and complicated, nor how simple a problem may appear to be. There always exists the right solution in Universal Mind. And because this solution does exist, there also exists the ability to ascertain and to prove what that solution is. You can know, and you can do, every right thing. Whatever it is necessary for you to know, whatever it is necessary for you to do, you can know and you can do, if you will but seek the help of Universal Mind and be governed by its suggestions.
Try this method every night for a little while, and the problem does not exist that you cannot solve.
VI
See Yourself Doing It
You say big corporations scheme
To keep a fellow down;
They drive him, shame him, starve him, too,
If he so much as frown.
God knows I hold no brief for them;
Still, come with me to-day
And watch those fat directors meet,
For this is what they say:
“In all our force not one to take
The new work that we plan!
In all the thousand men we’ve hired
Where shall we find a man?”
-ST. CLAIR ADAMS.*
You’ve often heard it said that a man is worth $2 a day from the neck down. How much he’s worth from the neck up depends upon how much he is able to SEE.
“Without vision the people perish” did not refer to good eyesight. It was the eyes of the mind that counted in days of old just as they do today. Without them you are just so much power “on the hoof,” to be driven as a horse or an ox is driven. And you are worth only a little more than they.
But given vision-imagination-the ability to visualize conditions and things a month or a year ahead; given the eyes of the mind-there’s no limit to your value or to your capabilities.
The locomotive, the steamboat, the automobile, the aeroplane-all existed complete in the imagination of some man before ever they became facts. The wealthy men, the big men, the successful men, envisioned their successes in their minds’ eyes before ever they won them from the world. From the beginning of time, nothing has ever taken on material shape without first being visualized in mind. The only difference between the sculptor and the mason is in the mental image behind their work. Rodin employed masons to hew his blocks of marble into the general shape of the figure he was about to form. That was mere Thinker.” mechanical labor. Then Rodin took it in hand and from that rough-hewn piece of stone there sprang the wondrous figure of “The Company.
That was art!
The difference was all in the imagination behind the hands that wielded mallet and chisel. After Rodin had formed his masterpiece, ordinary workmen copied it by the thousands. Rodin’s work brought fabulous sums. The copies brought day wages. Conceiving ideas-creating something-is what pays, in sculpture as in all else. Mere handwork is worth only hand wages.
“The imagination,” says Glenn Clark in “The Soul’s Sincere Desire,” “is of all qualities in man the most God-like- that which associates him most closely with God. The first mention we read of man in the Bible is where he is spoken of as an ‘image.’ ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.’ The only place where an image can be conceived is in the imagination. Thus man, the highest creation of God, was a creation of God’s imagination.
“The source and center of all man’s creative power-the power that above all others lifts him above the level of brute creation, and that gives him dominion, is his power of making images, or the power of the imagination. There are some who have always thought that the imagination was something, which makes-believe that which is not. This is fancy-not imagination. Fancy would convert that which is real into pretense and sham; imagination enables one to see through the appearance of a thing to what it really is.”
There is a very real law of cause and effect, which makes the dream of the dreamer come true. It is the law of visualization-the law that calls into being in this outer material world everything that is real in the inner world. Imagination pictures the thing you desire. VISION idealizes it. It reaches beyond the thing that is, into the conception of what can be. Imagination gives you the picture. Vision gives you the impulse to make the picture your own.
Make your mental image clear enough, picture it vividly in every detail, and the Genie-of-your-Mind will speedily bring it into being as an everyday reality.
That law holds true of everything in life. There is nothing you can rightfully desire that cannot be brought into being through visualization.
Suppose there’s a position you want- the general manager-ship of your company. See yourself-just as you are now-sitting in the general manager’s chair. See your name on his door. See yourself handling his affairs as you would handle them. Get that picture impressed upon your subconscious mind. See it! Believe it! The Genie-of-your-Mind will find the way to make it come true.
The keynote of successful visualization is this: See things, as you would have them be instead of as they are. Close your eyes and make clear mental pictures. Make them look and act just as they would in real life. In short, daydream- but day dream with a purpose. Concentrate on the one idea to the exclusion of all others, and continue to concentrate on that one idea until it has been accomplished.
Do you want an automobile? A home? A factory? They can all be won in the same way. They are in their essence all of them ideas of mind, and if you will but build them up in your own mind first, stone by stone, complete in every detail, you will find that the Genie-of-your- Mind can build them up similarly in the material world.
“The building of a trans-continental railroad from a mental picture,” says C. W. Chamberlain in “The Uncommon Sense of Applied Psychology,” “gives the average individual an idea that it is a big job. The fact of the matter is, the achievement, as well as the perfect mental picture, is made up of millions of little jobs, each fitting in its proper place and helping to make up the whole.
“A skyscraper is built from individual bricks, the laying of each brick being a single job which must be completed before the next brick can be laid.”
It is the same with any work, any study. To quote Professor James:
“As we become permanent drunkards by so many separate drinks, so we become saints in the moral, and authorities and experts in the practical and scientific spheres, by so many separate acts and hours of working. Let no youth have any anxiety about the upshot of his education whatever the line of it may be. If he keeps faithfully busy each hour of the working day he may safely leave the final result to itself. He can with perfect certainty count on waking some fine morning, to find himself one of the competent ones of his generation, in whatever pursuit he may have singled out. . . . Young people should know this truth in advance. The ignorance of it has probably engendered more discouragement and faintheartedness in youths embarking on arduous careers than all other causes taken together.”
Remember that the only limit to your capabilities is the one you place upon them. There is no law of limitation. The only law is of supply. Through your subconscious mind you can draw upon universal supply for anything you wish. The ideas of Universal Mind are as countless as the sands on the seashore. Use them. And use them lavishly, just as they are given. There is a little poem by Jessie B. Rittenhouse* that so well describes the limitations that most of us put upon ourselves that I quote it here:
“I bargained with Life for a penny, And Life would pay no more, however I begged at evening when I counted my scanty store.
“For Life is a just employer; He gives you what you ask, but once you have set the wages, why, you must bear the task.
“I worked for a menial’s hire, Only to learn, dismayed, That any wage I had asked of Life, Life would have paid.”
Aim high! If you miss the moon, you may hit a star. Everyone admits that this world and all the vast firmament must have been thought into shape from the formless void by some Universal Mind. That same Universal Mind rules today, and it has given to each form of life power to attract to itself whatever it needs for its perfect growth. The tree, the plant, and the animal-each one finds its need.
You are an intelligent, reasoning creature. Your mind is part of Universal Mind. And you have power to say what you require for perfect growth. Don’t be a niggard with yourself. Don’t sell yourself for a penny. Whatever price you set upon yourself, life will give. So aim high. Demand much! Make a clear, distinct mental image of what it is you want. Hold it in your thought. Visualize it, see it, and believe it! The ways and means of satisfying that desire will follow. For supply always comes on the heels of demand.
It is by doing this that you take your fate out of the hands of chance. It is in this way that you control the experiences you are to have in life. But be sure to visualize only what you want. The law works both ways. If you visualize your worries and your fears, you will make them real. Control your thought and you will control circumstances. Conditions will be what you make them.
Most of us are like factories where two- thirds of the machines are idle, where the workmen move around in a listless, dispirited sort of way, doing only the tenth part of what they could do if the head of the plant were watching and directing them. Instead of that, he is off idly dreaming or waiting for something to turn up. What he needs is someone to point out to him his listless workmen and idle machines, and show him how to put each one to working full time and overtime.
And that is what YOU need, too. You are working at only a tenth of your capacity. You are doing only a tenth of what you are capable of. The time you spend idly wishing or worrying can be used in so directing your subconscious mind that it will bring you anything of good you may desire.
Philip of Macedon, Alexander’s father, perfected the “phalanx”-a triangular formation which enabled him to center the whole weight of his attack on one point in the opposing line. It drove through everything opposed to it. In that day and age it was invincible. And the idea is just as invincible today.
Keep the one thought in mind, SEE it being carried out step by step, and you can knit any group of workers into one homogeneous whole, all centered on the one idea. You can accomplish any one thing. You can put across any definite idea. Keep that mental picture ever in mind and you will make it as invincible as was Alexander’s phalanx of old.
“It is not the guns or armament
Or the money they can pay,
It’s the close cooperation
That makes them win the day.
It is not the individual
Or the army as a whole
But the everlasting team work of every bloomin’ soul.”
- J. MASON KNOX.
The error of the ages is the tendency mankind has always shown to limit the power of Mind, or its willingness to help in time of need.
“Know ye not,” said Paul, “that ye are the temples of the Living God?”
No-most of us do not know it. Or at least, if we do, we are like the Indian family out on the Cherokee reservation. Oil had been found on their land and money poured in upon them. More money than they had ever known was in the world. Someone persuaded them to build a great house, to have it beautifully furnished, richly decorated. The house when finished was one of the show places of that locality. But the Indians, while very proud of their showy house, continued to live in their old sod shack!
So it is with many of us. We may know that we are “temples of the Living God.” We may even be proud of that fact. But we never take advantage of it to dwell in that temple, to proclaim our dominion over things and conditions. We never avail ourselves of the power that is ours.
The great Prophets of old had the forward look. Theirs was the era of hope and expectation. They looked for the time when the revelation should come that was to make men “Sons of God.” “They shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.”
Jesus came to fulfill that revelation. “Ask and ye shall receive, that your joy may be full.”
The world has turned in vain to matter and materialistic philosophy for deliverance from its woes. In the future the only march of actual progress will be in the mental realm, and this progress will not be in the way of human speculation and theorizing, but in the actual demonstration of the Universal, Infinite Mind.
The world stands today within the vestibule of the vast realm of divine intelligence, wherein is found the transcendent, practical power of Mind over all things.
“What eye never saw, nor ear ever heard, What never entered the mind of man- Even all that God has prepared for those who love Him.”
VII
“As A Man Thinketh”
“As A Man Thinketh”
“Our remedies in ourselves do lie
Which we ascribe to heaven.”
-SHAKESPEARE.
In our great-grandfather’s day, when witches flew around by night and cast their spell upon all unlucky enough to cross them, men thought that the power of sickness or health, of good fortune or ill, resided outside himself or herself.
We laugh today at such benighted superstition. But even in this day and age there are few who realize that the things they see are but effects. Fewer still who have any idea of the causes by which those effects are brought about.
Every human experience is an effect. You laugh, you weep, you joy, you sorrow, you suffer or you are happy. Each of these is an effect, the cause of which can be easily traced.
But all the experiences of life are not so easily traceable to their primary causes. We save money for our old age. We put it into a bank or into safe bonds-and the bank breaks or the railroad or corporation goes into a receivership. We stay at home on a holiday to avoid risk of accident, and fall off a stepladder or down the stairs and break a limb. We drive slowly for fear of danger, and a speeding car comes from behind and knocks us into a ditch. A man goes over Niagara Falls in a barrel without harm, and then slips on a banana peel, breaks his leg, and dies of it.
What is the cause back of it all? If we can find it and control it, we can control the effect. We shall no longer then be the football of fate. We shall be able to rise above the conception of life in which matter is our master. There is but one answer. The world without is a reflection of the world within. We image thoughts of disaster upon our subconscious minds and the Genie-of-our Mind finds ways of bringing them into effect-even though we stay at home, even though we take every possible precaution. The mental image is what counts, be it for good or ill. It is a devastating or a beneficent force, just as we choose to make it. To paraphrase Thackeray-”The world is a looking-glass, and gives back to every man the reflection of his own thought.”
For matter is not real substance. Material science today shows that matter has no natural eternal existence. Dr. Willis R. Whitney, in an address before the American Chemical Society on August 8th, 1925, discussing “Matter-Is There Anything In It?” stated, “the most we know about matter is that it is almost entirely space. It is as empty as the sky. It is almost as empty as a perfect vacuum, although it usually contains a lot of energy.” Thought is the only force. Just as polarity controls the electron, gravitation the planets, tropism the plants and lower animals-just so thought controls the action and the environment of man. And thought is subject wholly to the control of mind. Its direction rests with us.
Walt Whitman had the right of it when he said-”Nothing external to me has any power over me.”
The happenings that occur in the material world are in themselves neither cheerful nor sorrowful, just as outside of the eye that observes them colors are neither green nor red. It is our thoughts that make them so. And we can color those thoughts according to our own fancy. We can make the world without but a reflection of the world within. We can make matter a force subject entirely to the control of our mind. For matter is merely our wrong view of what Universal Mind sees rightly.
We cannot change the past experience, but we can determine what the new ones shall be like. We can make the coming day just what we want it to be. We can be tomorrow what we think today. For the thoughts are causes and the conditions are the effects.
What is the reason for most failures in life? The fact that they first thought failure; they allowed competition, hard times, fear and worry to undermine their confidence. Instead of working aggressively ahead, spending money to make more money, they stopped every possible outlay, tried to “play safe,” but expected others to continue spending with them. War is not the only place where “The best defensive is a strong offensive.”
The law of compensation is always at work. Man is not at the caprice of fate. He is his own fate. “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.” We are our own past thoughts, with the things that these thoughts have attracted to us added on.
The successful man has no time to think of failure. He is too busy thinking up new ways to succeed. You can’t pour water into a vessel already full.
All about you is energy-electronic energy, exactly like that which makes up the solid objects you possess. The only difference is that the loose energy round about is unappropriated. It is still virgin gold-undiscovered, unclaimed. You can think it into anything you wish-into gold or dross, into health or sickness, into strength or weakness, into success or failure. Which sha1l it be? “There is nothing either good or bad,” said Shakespeare, “but thinking makes it so.” The understanding of that law will enable you to control every other law that exists. In it is to be found the panacea for all ills, the satisfaction of all want, all desire. It is Creative Mind’s own provision for man’s freedom.
Have you ever read Basil King’s “Conquest of Fear”? If you haven’t, do so by all means. Here is the way he visions the future:
“Taking Him (Jesus) as our standard we shall work out, I venture to think, to the following points of progress:
“a. The control of matter in furnishing ourselves with food and drink by means more direct than at present employed, as He turned water into wine and fed the multitudes with the loaves and fishes.
“b. The control of matter by putting away from ourselves, by methods more sure and less roundabout than those of today, sickness, blindness, infirmity, and deformity.
“c. The control of matter by regulating our atmospheric conditions as He stilled the tempest.
“d. The control of matter by restoring to this phase of existence those who have passed out of it before their time, or who can ill be spared from it, as He ‘raised’ three young people from ‘the dead’ and Peter and Paul followed His example.
“e. The control of matter in putting it off and on at will, as He in His death and resurrection.
“f. The control of matter in passing altogether out of it, as He in what we call His Ascension into Heaven.”
Mortals are healthy or unhealthy, happy or unhappy, strong or weak, alive or dead, in the proportion that they think thoughts of health or illness, strength or weakness. Your body, like all other material things, manifests only what your mind entertains in belief. In a general way you have often noticed this yourself. A man with an ugly disposition (which is a mental state) will have harsh, unlovely features. One with a gentle disposition will have a smiling and serene countenance. All the other organs of the human body are equally responsive to thought. Who has not seen the face become red with rage or white with fear? Who has not known of people who became desperately ill following an outburst of temper? Physicians declare that just as fear, irritability and hate distort the features; they likewise distort the heart, stomach and liver.
Experiments conducted on a cat shortly after a meal showed that when it was purring contentedly, its digestive organs functioned perfectly. But when a dog was brought into the room and the cat drew back in fear and anger, the X-ray showed that its digestive organs were so contorted as to be almost tied up in a knot!
Each of us makes his own world-and he makes it through mind. It is a commonplace fact that no two people see the same thing alike. “A primrose by a river’s brim, a yellow primrose was to him, and it was nothing more.”
Thoughts are the causes. Conditions are merely effects. We can mould our surroundings and ourselves by resolutely directing our thoughts towards the goal we have in mind.
Ordinary animal life is very definitely controlled by temperature, by climate, by seasonal conditions. Man alone can adjust himself to any reasonable temperature or condition. Man alone has been able to free himself to a great extent from the control of natural forces through his understanding of the relation of cause and effect. And now man is beginning to get a glimpse of the final freedom that shall be his from all material causes when he shall acquire the complete understanding that mind is the only cause and that effects are what he sees.
“We moderns are unaccustomed,” says one talented writer, “to the mastery over our own inner thoughts and feelings. That a man should be a prey to any thought that chances to take possession of his mind, is commonly among us assumed as unavoidable. It may be a matter of regret that he should be kept awake all night from anxiety as to the issue of a lawsuit on the morrow, but that he should have the power of determining whether he be kept awake or not seems an extravagant demand. The image of an impending calamity is no doubt odious, but its very odiousness (we say) makes it haunt the mind all the more pertinaciously, and it is useless to expel it. Yet this is an absurd position for man, the heir of all the ages, to be in: Hag-ridden by the flimsy creatures of his own brain. If a pebble in our boot torments us, we expel it. We take off the boot and shake it out. And once the matter is fairly understood, it is just as easy to expel an intruding and obnoxious thought from the mind. About this there ought to be nomistake, no two opinions. The thing is obvious, clear and unmistakable. It should be as easy to expel an obnoxious thought from the mind as to shake a stone out of your shoe; and until a man can do that, it is just nonsense to talk about his ascendancy over nature, and all the rest of it. He is a mere slave, and a prey to the bat-winged phantoms that flit through the corridors of his own brain. Yet the weary and careworn faces that we meet by thousands, even among the affluent classes of civilization, testify only too clearly how seldom this mastery is obtained. How rare indeed to find a man! How common rather to discover a creature hounded on by tyrant thoughts (or cares, or desires), cowering, wincing under the lash.
“It is one of the prominent doctrines of some of the oriental schools of practical psychology that the power of expelling thoughts, or if need be, killing them dead on the spot, must be attained. Naturally the art requires practice, but like other arts, when once acquired there is no mystery or difficulty about it. It is worth practice. It may be fairly said that life only begins when this art has been acquired. For obviously when, instead of being ruled by individual thoughts, the whole flock of them in their immense multitude and variety and capacity is ours to direct and dispatch and employ where we list, life becomes a thing so vast and grand, compared to what it was before, that its former condition may well appear almost ante-natal. If you can kill a thought dead, for the time being, you can do anything else with it that you please. And therefore it is that this power is so valuable. And it not only frees a man from mental torment (which is nine-tenths at least of the torment of life), but it gives him a concentrated power of handling mental work absolutely unknown to him before. The two are co-relative to each other.”
There is no intelligence in matter- whether that matter be electronic energy made up in the form of stone, or iron, or wood, or flesh. It all consists of Energy, the universal substance from which Mind forms all material things. Mind is the only intelligence. It alone is eternal. It alone is supreme in the universe.
When we reach that understanding, we will no longer have cause for fear, because we will realize that Universal Mind is the creator of life only; that death is not an actuality-it is merely the absence of life-and life will be ever-present. Remember the old fairy story of how the Sun was listening to a lot of earthly creatures talking of a very dark place they had found? A place of Stygian blackness. Each told how terrifically dark it had seemed. The Sun went and looked for it. He went to the exact spot they had described. He searched everywhere. But he could find not even a tiny dark spot. And he came back and told the earth- creatures he did not believe there was any dark place.
When the sun of understanding shines on all the dark spots in our lives, we will realize that there is no cause, no creator, no power, except good; evil is not an entity-it is merely the absence of good. And there can be no ill effects without an evil cause. Since there is no evil cause, only good can have reality or power. There is no beginning or end to good. From it there can be nothing but blessing for the whole race. In it is found no trouble. If God (or Good-the two are synonymous) is the only cause, then the only effect must be like the cause. “All things were made by Him; and without Him was not anything made that was made.”
Don’t be content with passively reading this. Use it! Practice it! Exercise is far more necessary to mental development that it is to physical. Practice the “daily dozen” of right thinking. Stretch your mind to realize how infinitely far it can reach out, what boundless vision it can have. Breathe out all the old thoughts of sickness, discouragement, failure, worry and fear. Breathe in deep, long breaths (thoughts) of unlimited health and strength, unlimited happiness and success. Practice looking forward- always looking forward to something better-better health, finer physique, greater happiness, bigger success. Take these mental breathing exercises every day. See how easily you will control your thoughts. How quickly you will see the good effects. You’ve got to think all the time. Your mind will do that anyway. And the thoughts are constantly building-for good or ill. So be sure to exhale all the thoughts of fear and worry and disease and lack that have been troubling you, and inhale only those you want to see realized.
VIII
The Law of Supply
“They do me wrong who say I come no more
When once I knock and fail to find you in;
For every day I stand outside your door,
And bid you wake, and rise to fight and win.
“Wail not for precious chances passed away,
Weep not for golden ages on the wane!
Each night I burn the records of the day-
At sunrise every soul is born again!”
-WALTER MALONE.*
Have you ever run a race, or worked at utmost capacity for a protracted period, or swum a great distance? Remember how, soon after starting, you began to feel tired? Remember how, before you had gone any great distance, you thought you had reached your limit? But remember, too, how, when you kept on going, you got your second wind, your tiredness vanished, your muscles throbbe
Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss it, you will land among the stars.