environment, he was intended to make his environment, to create his condition.
Nothing comes to us without cause, and that cause is mental. Our mental attitude creates our condition of success or failure. The result of our work will correspond with the nature of our thoughts, our habitual mental attitude. To produce, the mind must be kept in a positive, creative condition. A discordant, worrying, despondent, poverty-facing mental attitude will quickly render the mind negative, and will produce a troop of mental enemies that will effectually bar our way to success and happiness.
Our mental faculties are like servants. They give us exactly what we expect of them. If we trust them, if we depend upon them, they will give us their best. If we are afraid, they will be afraid.
Negative characters wait for things to happen. They have a feeling that somehow things are going to happen anyway, and that they cannot do much to change them.
It is the positive constructive mental attitude that has accomplished all of the great things in the world. It is the creative, aggressive, pushing, stimulating power that is back of all achievement. A strong, vigorous character creates a condition that will force things to happen. Knowing that nothing will move of itself, he is always putting into operation forces that do things.
Many positive minds become negative by influences which destroy their self-confidence. They gradually lose faith in themselves. Perhaps this begins through the suggestion of incompetence from others, the suggestion that they do not know their business or are not equal to the position they hold. After a while, through this subtle suggestion, initiative is weakened; the victims do not undertake things with quite the same vigor as formerly; they gradually lose the power of quick decision, and soon fear to decide anything of importance. Their minds become vacillating. Thus, instead of the leaders they once were, they become followers.
What we vigorously resolve to do, believe in with all our heart, confidently expect, the mental forces tend to realize. The very intensity of expectation enlists the vigor of all the mental processes in trying to accomplish things. In other words, all the forces of the mind fall into line with our expectation and resolution.
Our expectancy, our determination to achieve the thing on which we have set our heart, forms a pattern, a working model, which the mind endeavors to reproduce in reality. It is the mental picture which is used as the model for the creative forces.
The man who is endowed with great expectancy and is determined to reach his goal, let what will stand in his way, by his very resolution gets rid of a lot of success enemies which trip up the weak and the irresolute.
There is a mysterious power in the Great Within of us which we cannot explain, but which we all feel to be there, which tends to carry out our commands, our resolves, whatever they may be.
For example, if I persist in thinking and affirming that I am a nobody, that I am “a poor worm of the dust,” that I am not as good as other people, I shall after a while begin really to believe this, and then a fatal acceptance will be registered in my subconsciousness, and the mental machinery will begin to reproduce the “nobody” pattern. If I radiate the thought of lack and of weakness, of inefficiency, the pattern will, of course, be woven into my life, and I shall express weakness, failure, poverty.
But, on the other hand, if I stoutly affirm that I am heir to all the good things in the universe and that they belong to me as my birthright, if I firmly declare my faith in my kingship and constantly assert that I am able to carry out superbly the great life purpose which is indicated in my bent, assert that power is mine, that health is mine, that I will have nothing to do with sickness, with weakness, with discord, I then make my mind so positive, so creative in its assertive attitude that, instead of destroying, it produces, instead of tearing down, it is building up for me the very thing for which I long.
Constructive thinking means health and prosperity. Our faculties were intended to be producers. Negative thinking means wretchedness, disease, suffering of all kinds. Constructive thought is man’s protector, his savior from all discord, poverty, disease. The people in the great failure army are negative thinkers, while those in the successful ranks are positive, constructive thinkers.
A vigorous, positive mental attitude IS the best possible self-protection.
It is when we are negative that we say “yes” when if we had been positive—normal—we should have said “no.” It is when we are negative, because our judgment is then defective, that we make bad bargains, poor investments, and do all sorts of foolish things. A negative mind is not in a position to take important steps. When we make our slips, our bad breaks and our unfortunate ventures and bad decisions, we are in a more or less discouraged, despondent, unbalanced state and are willing to do almost anything to get into a comfortable position, an attitude of assurance, anything to get rid of our fears and anxieties for the moment, for when our minds are negative we are always cowards.
While we are holding the positive thoughts and creating something, the negative, discouraging, sickly, haphazard thoughts do not get a chance to act upon us. It is in our non-producing moments that negatives, such as fear, worry, anxiety, hatred, and jealously get in their destructive work. While positive energy is busy creating something, we are not troubled with the destructive negative thoughts. It is negative people who are victims of“ the blues,” extreme mental depression.
The normal mind acts under law. The mental faculties will not give up their best unless they are marshaled by order. They respond cordially to system, but they rebel against slipshod methods. They are like soldiers. They must have a leader, a general, who enforces order, method.
The strength and persistency of our habitual thought-force measure our efficiency. The habitual thought-force in many people is so feeble and spasmodic that they cannot focus their minds with sufficient vigor to accomplish much.
We can quickly tell the first time we meet a person whether his thought-force is constructive or weak, for every sentence he utters will partake of its quality.
It is the positive man who carries force. Some men are so positive, so constructive in their mentality, and carry such a power of conquest in their very presence, that the ordinary person instinctively follows. The world makes way for the robust character. He radiates power. His presence commands men. His very words carry the force of conviction.
People do not stop to analyze the reason for following a strong character. They instinctively obey superior mentality. Some strangers we meet at once impress us as producers. They make a positive, aggressive impression; we instantly feel their qualities of leadership, feel that such persons will certainly succeed in their undertakings, that things must go their way. Other people make a weak, negative, indifferent impression upon us and we say they are failures; they do not blaze their own path. To make people feel your power, the positive faculties must dominate.
The art of all arts is to make one’s life a perpetual victory, and this would not be difficult if we were properly trained. As it is, the mind is much of the time in a negative, non-creative condition; instead of causing things, acting, it is acted upon.
The graduate who goes into the world without training in what constitutes a positive and a negative mental attitude is liable to be ruined in a very short time. His doubts, fears, and lack of confidence, his timid and negative mental picture, the effect of his discouraged emotions, may utterly ruin his natural, positive, productive mind by making it negative, and this change may be accomplished wholly unconsciously.
It is of infinitely more value for a student or youth to know how to keep his mind up to its maximum creative power, by keeping it positive and avoiding everything which would make it negative and unproductive, than to learn all the Latin and Greek and philosophies in the world.
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