Prosperity Chapter XIX

Prosperity Chapter XIX: 

If we could only learn always to talk and think decisively, constructively, what a wonderful civilization this would be! It is the strong, optimistic, expectant-of-good-things mind, the mind of faith, and of hope and confidence, belief in the good, that attracts the good. The mind of the pessimist attracts pessimistic products.

If you do not learn to decide firmly and finally and then act on. your decision; if you waver and dilly-dally, allow yourself to be carried this way and that by conflicting circumstances, your life ship will always be adrift; you will never be anchored. You will always be at the mercy of storms and tempests, and will never make the port of prosperity.

When a young man asks my opinion of his chances for success in life, I try to find out something about his ability to decide things. If he can do this quickly, firmly, and finally, I am very sure he will win out. There is no other one quality which plays such an important part in business careers especially as the ability to decide things wisely, quickly, firmly, and finally.

The man who is made of winning material does not hesitate and dawdle and waver and balance on the fence. He jumps right in and tackles the hardest thing first, and goes through with it. Voltaire tells us that vacillation is the most prominent feature of weakness of character.

What we get out of life we do not get by physical force, but by the subtle power of mental attraction. We bring it to ourselves by making our minds magnets to attract it out of the great cosmic storehouse of intelligence.

Out of the great ocean of supply that surrounds us we attract the things for which our mental attitude has an affinity. Some attract success, some failure; some attract opulence, plenty; others, poverty and lack. It all depends upon the difference in thought whether it is positive or negative, constructive or destructive, Negative thoughts demagnetize the mind so that it attracts just the opposite of what we want.

People who plod along in mediocrity, or who fail in life, might make a very creditable life record if they could only keep the things out of their minds which make them negative. It is their discouraging moods and all of their enemy thoughts, — their doubts, fears, worries, uncertainties, and their lack of confidence in themselves that kill the creative power of the mind and make it negative.

The negative mind never gets anywhere. It is the positive mind that radiates force and pushes its way in the world. A negative mind can only destroy, tear down.

Many people dwell so much upon their failure to get on in the world, their poverty, their misfortunes, that they develop a real failure atmosphere; they surround themselves with destructive, tearing-down thoughts, disintegrating suggestions, until they make impossible that mental condition, that positive mental attitude which creates, produces.

We are just beginning to learn that we cannot only control our moods and all of our thoughts, but that we can also control our environment, because our environment is largely our objectified thought, feeling, emotion, and mental attitude. We make our own world by our thoughts, our motives.

As long as you keep your mind positive and creative you will have courage, initiative, and sound judgment, you will be a producer. But the moment you become discouraged and blue, your ability, your mind, becomes demagnetized, negative, and you are no longer a creator or a producer. Your decision wobbles, your judgment is weak and uncertain, your whole mental kingdom is demoralized.

Keep your mind positive by refusing to admit to it such traitors as doubt, discouragement, fear or worry. They are your fatal enemies. You can never succeed while you entertain them. Drive them out. Don't leave the doors of your mind open to them.

Be known as a man of great faith regarding everything in the world; believe that everything is right in the world because God made it, God ordered it. Believe only in the best. Live success; walk about among your fellows as though you were successful, with a triumphant, victorious air; show that you are victory organized. Never fear failure; don't visualize it; don't picture poverty or have a horror of it, for this tends to make it a reality and keeps away from you the very things you desire.

"What is the use of dreaming about the wonderful things I am going to do in the future? There is no such achievement in store for me. I am not a genius. I must content myself with an ordinary career." These negative thoughts and assertions permeate the atmosphere of most homes and chill the youthful ardor of the children with the result that their ambition sags, their ideals shrivel, and, having no great life incentive, they drop into a humdrum routine and fall far below the level they might have attained.

It is criminal not to correct the tendency to negatives in a child's mind. It is not very difficult to cultivate a positive habit of thinking and acting if undertaken when a child is young. With the adult it is not so easy, but it is possible.

When you long for something that it is perfectly legitimate for you to have, sow your affirmation seed in perfect confidence that it will bloom in reality. Say to yourself, "God is no respecter of persons. He is not partial in his treatment of His children. They all have the same rights, the same privileges. He will give me through my own effort what I need, what I ask for. The poorest, most ragged wretch that crawls has just as many hours in his day as has the richest and most powerful magnate. I can and I will do what I long to do. I will be what I desire to be."

Whatever you do, don't set up in your mind and in that of others, a picture of yourself as a weak, ineffective, negative personality.

If you are constantly depreciating yourself, other people will think there is a reason for it, that you are not worthy, that there is something about you that they do not know about as a basis of your own judgment. Why should not others think meanly of you if you do yourself?

Prosperity Chapter XIX , continued...

If you carry about with you a negative mental attitude yours will be a negative life. You cannot act negatively without getting negative results.

Negative people do not start vigorous, positive vibrations; they are so passive and so susceptible to the influences about them that their negative minds take off all of the negative vibrations from all the cross currents from other negative minds.

It is perfectly possible to make our mentality so vigorously positive that, no matter what conflicting currents or vibrations from other negative, discordant minds strike us, they find no response. Then we are immune to all negative thoughts; we can walk through all sorts of adverse conditions about us without responding, because we do not vibrate to the negative thought and the negative condition, and we can still keep our robust, positive poise.

Living in the stronger thought makes us stronger. People with a vigorous, positive mental attitude, people with a strong, firm decision, people with great faith, have a much stronger mentality than do negative minds, because they habitually live in a more vigorous mental attitude, and a positive mental attitude makes for growth, for mental enlargement.

We all know the negative man, the man who never has any opinion of his own, who is always asking other people's advice and depending upon others. The negative character is always a weakling. The negative man in any community is the nobody. It is the positive, vigorous mentality that does things, that makes things move, which puts things through. It is the positive man who does his own thinking; who dares to step out of the beaten path and blaze his own way; who dares to have opinions of his own and dares to express them. This is the sort of man who gains the respect and confidence of mankind.

A lot of people go through life doing little things, because their negative thought paralyzes their initiative; they do not dare undertake anything important. The negative mind, the man who is afraid to act, who is always deliberating or hesitating, never accomplishes much.

The leader is always characterized by positive qualities. He rules by his vigorous affirmatives. There is nothing negative or minus about him. The positive man, the natural leader, is always assertive, while the negative man shrinks, and effaces himself, waits for someone else to take the initiative.

One of the most pathetic sights in the world is the man who never has any opinion of his own, — the backboneless, shiftless, slovenly, negative man, who never differs from you, whose only opinion is assent to the one you express. We instinctively despise such a weakling, a man who never opposes us, who always says "yes, yes," to everything we say.

We want leaders and originators more than we want followers or imitators. We have enough, and to spare, of those who are willing to lean on others. We want our young people to depend on themselves. We want them to be so educated and trained that their qualities of leadership, their originality and their individuality, will be emphasized and strengthened instead of obliterated.

All negative thinking, all negative mental attitudes, such as doubting one's ability, hesitating to undertake things, the habit of putting off, waiting for more favorable conditions, and of reconsidering one's decisions, are deadly enemies of initiative.

If one does not cultivate a positive mental attitude he will have a weak, wishy-washy initiative, and initiative is the executive officer of the other faculties. It is the brain leader.

Do not forget that the force that is going to project you to the success and prosperity goal is actually inside of you. Do not look to others to push you, to give you a pull or to use their influence. Your resources, your assets, are right inside of you; they are nowhere else.

If you feel paralyzed by the very responsibility of deciding things, beginning things of your own accord, make up your mind that if you ever are to amount to anything in the world you must strangle this habit. The only way to do this is to form the counter-habit of starting out every morning with the grim resolution not to allow yourself, during the day, to waver, to wait for somebody to show you the way. 

Resolve that during the entire day you are going to be a pusher, a leader; that you are not going to be a trailer, not going to wait for somebody to tell you what to do and how to do it; that you are going to take the initiative, start things yourself, put them through without advice. Determine to carry a positive mental attitude. This will sharpen the faculties, put a keen edge upon them, and make the mind alert and eager for opportunities.

It is not only necessary to keep your mind positive, but to be immune from all the enemies of your success and happiness it must be vigorously positive. When the mind is saturated with all sorts of negation, with the thoughts of sickness, of failure and poverty, it beomes chronically discordant, and gradually deteriorates.

Form the habit of talking up, not down, of talking optimism instead of pessimism. Cut criticism, fault-finding and blame out of your vocabulary. One of the first signs of deterioration in many minds is a tendency to be negative; to hold the discordant, belligerent, envious, jealous mental attitude. This is just as abnormal as is chronic melancholy, gloom, and despondency. These indicate an abnormal or diseased condition of the mind. Try to see things from a large, generous standpoint; hold a large consciousness. Show everybody that you have a great faith in humanity, in your calling, and in yourself. Resolve to keep the negatives out of your life.

You are too large for jealousy or envy, too big for worry, or to be anxious about your career, or about your future.

Making yourself positive to everybody and everything you contact within life is what counts. This is the key to mastership, to success and prosperity.

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