or imagining of yourself as an ever-increasing force or power.
When you hold to such resolve and imagining, you are not only attracting force to yourself, never to be lost, but you are also ever sending from you, night and day, a current of force or thought which is pushing your plan, scheme, or business ahead. It is acting on other minds far and near, and putting ideas into those minds in favor of your idea, and making them say when you meet them in person and put out your plan, “That’s just what I need;” or, “That’s just what I want;” or, “That’s just what I’ve been thinking about.”
Force is the power which quickly lifts out of discouragement. Force is the power which, after a night of dejection and perhaps tears, takes you out in the morning, renews your hope and your confidence in yourself, gives you new plans, new ideas, and makes you see new opportunities. Force is that quality or element which makes you stop brooding over mistakes or disappointments, and starts you again on the main track toward success. Force always turns your face toward ultimate success, and away from failure. You will find this element in every successful business-man. It is a spiritual power whether used by a good man or a bad one; whether used by the Good Samaritan in dressing wounds, or the Pharisee in making long prayers; whether used by a company of male or female gossips in tearing somebody’s character to pieces and sending them through the air a current of injurious thought or force, or by a company of friends whose talk has only for its aim the benefit of others. You can have more and more of this quality by desiring it, or demanding it, when alone. But you can get far more of it by so desiring it in the company of such people as have a certain faith in the truth of the law, that the more minds who come together to call for force the more will each one receive through such co-operation of demand.
Read the above sentence over again. It conveys a truth, so far as it is in the writer’s power to state it, which is of mighty import on the bread-and-butter, practical side of life.
Force is the element which drives away fear. It is the element which gives you tact and address. As you increase it, you can stand and assert yourself before those who in the past have browbeat you, bullied you, and overcome you by force of stronger will tyrannically exercised. This is the power constantly used against those who are trying to get up in the world. No matter how good, how amiable, how well disposed you are toward others, if you lack force, if you lack the ability to assert yourself or get justice, if your wits are driven out of you temporarily by a snub, a frown, a sneer, you cannot succeed in the world; you cannot have that to which you are justly entitled.
Force is that quality or element which, in case you receive a sudden shock, a misfortune, an unexpected failure, causes you quickly to rally, get yourself together again, forget all the trouble, and lose sight of it in new efforts to push ahead. Force is that spiritual element which must rule the material. In the physical world there will always be accidents and failures. Houses will decay or burn; business may not succeed for a time according to our hopes; friends may fail in time of need. Trials must come in every phase of life, until they cease to be trials through your growing force. What now may be to you as mountains, will in the future, through getting more force, be but as mole-hills. You may not to-day fear the person or thing which in your childhood was a terror to you. Why? Because you have more force, more wisdom; and wisdom and force mean the same thing. But wisdom is seeing by the mind’s eye. It is not the knowing or holding in memory of a store of assertions or opinions gathered from books or men.
Why force should come to us when we set our minds toward it in the attitude of prayer or demand is a mystery. Probably it will always remain one. It is not desirable to be ever occupied in the endeavor to unravel mysteries.
The mystery of existence will always increase. To solve it is to try and find bounds to endless space. We need only to know that which will do us real good for the hour and the day.
It is a truth that we can get more and more force by simply asking for it: and it is in the possibilities of human spirit to get so much, that through it the material world can be wholly subdued and ruled. Then misfortunes are impossible. For if they do come, you have always the power to build up again. You may be turned on the street without food or shelter; yet if you have grown to a full confidence and faith in this power, you will feel certain that by keeping your mind calling for force, force will come to you to relieve your difficulties. It will come in the shape of a friend, or an idea to be acted on immediately. To call or pray for force is to connect yourself with the higher thought-realm of force; and out of this there will always come element or individualized spirit to give aid in some way. But all aid coming of individuals, seen or unseen, cannot be lasting. For if you depend in any way on another, you cease to call for force. You are then content to be carried, not to walk with your own limbs. You are also as much a reservoir—a vessel whose mouth can be turned toward this power to receive of it—as the other person on whose force of character you depend. You want to earn the house you live in, the carriage you ride in, the clothes you wear, the food you eat. Call, demand, pray for force, and then for wisdom to apply it, and you can earn these.
When, through prayer or demand, you have gained force, then ask for wisdom to direct it. You can direct your own force to injure or benefit yourself. You can use your force on a whim, or an imaginary necessity. You may run about half a day to buy something you do not need. You may employ two hours in cheapening an article ten-cents; and in so doing, use up the same force which might have made you ten dollars. It is not enough to be merely industrious. Mere industry can use up valuable force in scouring the bottoms of tin pans, or counting the tacks in the parlor carpet. It is quite as important to know where, or on what, to put your industry or force so it shall bring the best result.
If you spend half an hour in moping, or fretting, or frantic hurry, or indecision, you spend the same force, the same material, the same element, which would turn in some other channel, push your business, or do you good in some way. The question we need to ask every morning is: “I have now a certain amount of force for to-day. How shall I expend it so as to get the best results—the most lasting happiness out of the day?” When you arise in the morning, if you need force to push things—if you feel timid and like shrinking away from people, then simply think of force. Keep the word, the idea, in your mind as much as possible. That keeps your mind in the direction of force. What you think of, you are always attracting to you.
The mood in which you keep your mind is a force in the kingdom of nature, as much as the current of air or electricity is a force. The thoughts ever going in a current from you are forces acting on other minds, and as real in such action, though unseen, as is the push of your arm against a door. Your force does not stop with the action of your muscles, but in thought can go, and may now be going, hundreds and thousands of miles from your body, and acting and affecting other mind, or minds, for good or ill as you put out good or ill thought toward them.
Force is that which gives you daily new idea, plan, suggestion, as to business. The methods for every successful business are always changing. Fertility of invention is force. A. T. Stewart’s force begot a new method for carrying on the dry-goods business. The same force which begets a new idea also pushes it. If the timid inventor called for force to put his invention before the public he would get it. Now he often starves in the corner, while the man who knows only how to use force to push an invention takes the inventor’s property and makes by it a fortune.
Sometimes the unsuccessful but talented artist fails to sell his pictures, because he fails to cultivate or bring himself-properly before society; while the inferior artist finds a ready market for his work, because he keeps himself favorably before the world. If you stand and point and make faces at the world, no matter how valuable your goods, it will not be so ready to buy of you. It is also a part of life’s business and happiness to make ourselves inviting to others. To do this we must commence and invite from the inside—not the outside alone. The successful business method of to-day will not be the successful business method of twenty years hence. New force,—that is, new device,—new invention, is always coming. Force begot the railway. But something is to supersede the railway. Force begot the telegraph.
