If you are not grander and handsomer at eighty then at eighteen, your spiritual, mental and physical cash register has been out of working order more than fifty years. You can worry yourself a big lot, but you can’t build a happy home on the lot.
If your religion makes you miserable, change it for a happy philosophy. If you catch the gleam of a possibility to-day that seems too good to be true, grasp it, believe it, endeavor towards it, and tomorrow it will be true.
=Supreme PERSONALITY=
BY DR. DELMER EUGENE CROFT
Psychotherapist and Lecturer. Personality is founded upon self-consciousness, with self-governed intelligence and self-directed action
If the word “Death,” had never been known to human thought, or language,
and some such term as “Passing to the New Life,” had been adopted, crepe
would have been a drug on the market, painful funeral discourses unheard, and long, somber funeral processions unknown.
* * * * *
Thousands of human lives are blasted by negative goodness.
* * * * *
A little country boy whose mother everlastingly nagged him about being
good, but whose father was ever telling him about the beautiful things in
the city, ended his prayer with this: “O, God make me such a good boy, that
when I die I can go to New York.”
One Hundredth Thousand
Observe your opportunities to be kind. A little boy was sitting in his father’s
lap in the street car when a charming young lady entered, and as the little
fellow observed there was no seat, he quickly jumped off his father’s lap and
said to the young lady, “please take my seat.”
* * * * *
It is not wealth, or position that gives health and happiness.
* * * * *
A mighty Emperor was stricken with a malady; his court physicians gave
him up to die. He called in his magicians and they told him if he would wear
the shirt of a happy man he would recover. He ordered his kingdom
searched for a happy man. They found him, up in the silent mountains, but
alas, he had no shirt.
No, Satan did not bring the temptation to Eve instead of Adam, because
woman was a weaker, and man a superior being. He brought the temptation
to Eve because a woman isn’t afraid of the Devil. If he had brought it to
Adam, he would have been running yet.
* * * * *
Some people are so stupid in passive goodness, that their whole life
wouldn’t fill three feet of a moving picture reel.
* * * * *
=Dedication=
This book is gratefully dedicated to the kindly memory of two eminent
physicians, long since gone from this earth plane, who professionally
observed my fourth physical eclipse by rheumatic fever; and who hopefully
assured me, as I fluttered weakly from the shadow, that I could never pass
thru it again. When I received their bills I was sure I could not.
The Author.
* * * * *
If you are “A Self-Made Man,” don’t say too much about it, someone may
suspect you “loafed on the job,” and tell the Union.
* * * * *
Prayer should always prepare you for action. For example, little Willie was
saying his prayer, and his sister, seeing his pink toes sticking out from under
his nightie, tickled them. Willie grew red in the face and suddenly
exclaimed: “O God, excuse me a minute while I get up and knock the
stuffing out of Susie.”
=The Fore=word=
Life is self-realization. Every birth is divine. We are born anew every
morning. My wish is that you may catch the gleam, be freed from limitations
and enter upon your boundless possibilities. Your endowments are so rich
and rare. There is no other person in the world just like you. You have
genius, which, if it were brought forth into the sunlight, would glorify with
brilliant inspiration a thousand lives. You have insight that, if it were
energized, would make the desert blossom as the rose. You have initiative
that once illuminated would create an empire fairer than any ever raised in
marble. You have harmony lying latent in the vast octaves of your being,
which if awakened into melody would sooth, comfort, restore, and purify
the passions of a world. You have beauty, matchless in forms of grace, which
if breathed into marble, or spread in soul colors upon the canvass would
adorn the palaces of kings. You have thoughts which if given expression
would burn and shine thru countless ages and bear their messages of hope
and power to fainting multitudes.
To bring you into the throne-room of your being, that you may awaken in
self-realization, is why I have prepared this course of lessons. Should you
give five minutes a day to them, in a year you will know the joy there is in
Life, in Power, and in Service.
THE AUTHOR.
=Supreme Personality=
Your Psychic Nature possesses limitless power and possibilities, which you
may have as life realities.
CONTENTS
LESSON FIRST
SUPREME CONTROL OF CONDITIONS.
LESSON SECOND
SUPREME CONTROL OF AGE.
LESSON THIRD
SUPREME DAILY-LIFE METHOD.
LESSON FOURTH
THE SUPREME LAW OF SUCCESS.
LESSON FIFTH
SUPREME BODY BUILDING METHOD.
LESSON SIXTH
SUPREME LAW OF INTERNAL VIBRATION.
LESSON SEVENTH
SUPREME METHOD OF MENTAL HEALING.
LESSON EIGHTH
SUPREME POWER OF MAGNETISM.
LESSON NINTH
SUPREME LAW OF TELEPATHY.
* * * * *
You cannot bring Health, Success, Happiness and Power to others without
bringing them to yourself.
=This Supreme Day=
Out of the tomb of night a day has risen. Be not anxious, this day is all your
own. Do not hurry, for in time it is like all other days. Neither delay, for
NOW is opportunity.
Early turn your face to the dawn and let its beams bathe away all stains of
the night. Then, should the noon be dark with storms, your smile shall wear
the serene promise of confidence and realization.
This Supreme day can only be saved by spending it. Therefore, to its burden
give your strength; to its confusion give your patience; to its sorrow give
your comfort; to its trial give your nobleness; to its peril give your heroism;
to its sacrifice give your love.
During this Supreme day step softly among human hearts and leave so much
of kindness along its path, that in golden days, gladness shall spring up
bearing its tribute to other weary hearts in the cool eventide of the world’s
glad Easter.
Set eternity in your heart, let Truth be your fadeless Day Star, then over your
life of service, sacrifice, courage, cheerfulness, patience, kindness and love,
time shall have no power.
THE AUTHOR.
Lesson First
SUPREME CONTROL OF CONDITIONS
Conditions are thought made. Change your thought and you will change
your condition. To agonize and struggle in a bad condition is like struggling
in quicksand, you get in deeper. Tell your bad conditions to another and you
multiply them. If the heavens are falling and the earth is slipping under your
feet, grab a big Turkish towel, walk briskly into the supreme sanctuary of
the body,--the bath-room, take a thorough salt-water bath, with a few drops
of perfume in it to awaken your self-respect. Then in a quiet, darkened room
take a good sleep of ten to fifteen hours. Then rise and eat slowly, quietly
and happily some nourishing food. God, Himself, could do nothing with
Elijah, until He had given him a long sleep and a good meal. Then Elijah
went forth and crowned a King, appointed a Prophet, established a
Kingdom, and rode Home in chariots of fire. Once you make a start, the
world is at your command. Let go of the past. Stop the foolish thinking that
conditions hold you, it is you holding onto conditions. Quit your self-pity,
blaming others, and saying you are the victim of circumstances. Stop
whining, and begin singing, then will your feet be loosed from the stocks
and the iron gates open outward before you. Look away from yourself.
=IS YOUR WILL ASLEEP AT THE WHEEL?= Awake it. See if you are
sailing, or drifting. Set the compass of your Mind to new thoughts, fresh
purposes, selfless desires, fill your sails with boundless hope, and let your
daily voyage spell SERVICE in a big way. You are not a chip on the River of
Life, you are a Supreme Master in a Universe of Facts. You think you are
stuck in the harbor mud, but it is only that the tide is out. Command your
Will to put up the sails, God will send you wind and tide to bear you out of
the stale, sordid mental and bodily conditions you are living in, give you
wider horizon, and a limitless ocean of experience. If anybody does not wish
to sail with you, leave them on the shore. Let go of your past, break away
from conditions that hold you in slavery. Seek new scenery, form new
surroundings, begin a new Supreme Life.
=KEEP YOUR BODY SUPREME:= Go back to Nature; be a fine animal. Get
into the sunshine, the silent woods, the open fields. Magnetize your body by
walking thru the dew barefooted, by sleeping on the grass, or half buried in
the sand. Tuberculosis, rheumatism, insomnia are unknown to wild animals.
Our bodies are sick and weak because we have denatured ourselves. Make
friends of the wild animals, they will teach you how to keep well. They have
not a single case of nervous prostration in all their vast forest home. Learn to
relax. Drop your tension and you check confusion. Stop a few minutes
sometime in the day and quiet your nerves, rest your muscles, calm your
senses, sooth your thoughts, somewhere in the sunshine, or under the shade
of an old apple-tree. Eat simply, slowly, nuts, dates, cereals, fruits. Drink
abundantly of water between meals. Dress less somber, study your personal
appearance, give it harmony. Keep your body well groomed. A bath and hair
cut will change the out-look of life. Quit habits that weaken the body. Never
talk about your bodily weakness, illness, or condition, nor listen to those of
others. Criticise your body and it will fail you. Praise your body and it will
serve you. Take air-baths, cold water plunges, or cold water sponges, every
morning. Fix your mind upon having a sound and energized body and you
will attract it. Exercise, walk, run, play, work, and learn to rest. Change
your habits of living. Cut out the grouch. Stop nagging. You’re sour because
your pores are stopped up; get a buck-saw and take a sweat. You’re
morbidly blue because your solar plexus has gone to sleep; give it half an
hour of internal vibration. Don’t knock the weather, like it, get into it, let it
put iron into your blood. Plunge into a storm, it will act as tonic on your
spirit. A dip in the ocean will add magnetism to your body. Your body is a
mighty fine engine of marvelous energy. Over-fed, under-fed, over-burdened,
neglected, abused, weakened, shamefully talked about, yet year after year it
goes on generating the divinest thing in the universe—Life. It transmutes
profane elements into divine energy, washes a river of blood free of tons of
poison, supports a brain that builds and rules limitless empires, sustains a
vision that dissolves darkness into light, the unknown into the known,
upholds the image of, and is “the Temple of the Living God.” Your body is
Supreme. Keep it divine. Strip your body bare and lie in the sunshine. Let it
soak deeply into the tissue, it will magnetize your body, and renew it with
youth. Take these sun-baths every sunny day possible by lying on a couch
before a large window, or even better, out in the open air. If you want a
magnetic body that is supple, elastic and youthful give it sun-baths and airbaths daily.
=KEEP YOUR MIND SUPREME:= Your mind is limitless. You were born to
lead, not to be always led. Think for yourself. Do your own planning. Make
new plans. Train your mind to think alone. Misery is rust on a mind that has
stopped working. Train your mind to delight people. Don’t follow the
crowd, but step softly among human hearts. Train your mind to think big.
Expand your mind until it encircles the universe. Stop fussing over little
things, over useless people, and fill your mind with new ideals and fresh
purpose. Stop wailing over flowers that will never blossom on the north side
of your house; go around to the south side and make a new garden. You have
a temperament that is likely to be misunderstood; that’s fine. So did
Sarvonarola, Columbus, Galileo, Luther, Whitfield, Emerson, Lincoln and
Christ. “Seven cities fought for Homer, dead, thru whose streets the living
Homer begged his bread.” The reputation of Christ was just the opposite of
His character. These, stood thinking their brave thoughts on the horizon
where Truth asks you to stand. You are better than you think; or as good.
You are the sum total of your thinking. Build thought palaces, not mud huts.
Create, originate, produce new ideas. Beware of dead monotony, it kills the
brain. Unfetter your thoughts from notions, prejudices and limitations.
Think well of yourself, think well of what you have, think well of what you
do, think invincibly, think persistently, think with unflinching resolve.
Concentration is getting at a thing, thinking it, planning it, preparing for it,
working on it, DOING IT. Your conditions, mental, physical, financial, are
thought made; fill your mind with different thoughts and you will have
different conditions. Thought gathers around you the things you want,
when you stop thinking of them they pass away. Thoughts are seeds, they
produce after their kind. A little thought will shake off useless conditions
and confused environment. Think some fun into your daily events. Don’t be
over-serious; it breeds disease germs, just as anger and hate thoughts induce
cancer, tumor and liver troubles. Start a hurricane of jollity. Break loose in a
thunderstorm of mirth, it will clear the atmosphere under a roof, just as a
thunderstorm clears the air over the roof. On the other hand “there is a
season to weep.” Never smother your emotion, to choke it back stifles the
heart. Lift the flood-gates and let your tears water the garden of your heart.
“Be renewed in the spirit of your mind.” That is the life. Be renewed every
morning, for each day is a new life, a fresh world, the beginning of eternity.
Think your thought created enemies into thought created friends. Think
your thought created suspicions, into thought created confidences. Thought
has drawn you into your conditions, it will pull you out. Your Soul, your
Mind, your Body cannot become ugly, useless, imprisoned so long as you
think supreme harmony, dominion, and love. Thought makes your body a
hovel, your mind a madhouse, or thought makes your body a temple and
your mind a shrine where angels commune with you. Environment,
conditions, circumstances are not your masters, they are materials out of
which thought makes the beautiful mosaics of character. Light the candle of
a new thought and diligently sweep every corner of your mind, and you shall
find the rare treasure—happiness. Put fun into your thinking. Do not take
yourself so serious, put the red blood of mirth into your daily thinking.
=KEEP YOUR WILL SUPREME:= Your will is divine energy, therefore it is a
Supreme Power. Christ said: “Be it unto thee even as thou WILLED.” It is
inertia that suffers. Fate, Fear and Doubt are children of the imagination.
The power of the will dissolves them into mist. Will power into your Being.
Will power into your work. Will power into your ambitions. Will power
into your expressions. Will power into your words. And you shall be “a
fellow workman with God, a master builder that needeth not to be
ashamed.” Your Will gives infinite clearness, infinite strength, infinite
ideals, infinite aspirations, for infinite realities. Your Will tells you that if
there is anything to-day that seems to you too good to be true, believe it,
endeavor toward it, reach forth to receive it, and tomorrow it will be true.
Will is the engine in the depths of the ship that drives it thru the buffeting
waves and storm to the distant harbor. Will puts your back-bone where
your wish-bone is now. Will puts iron into your blood, tightens up your
vertebrate and makes you “a self-starter.” You may have lost your battle,
your Will stands ready for another better campaign. You miss an
opportunity, your Will stands ready to open the door to a hundred new
ones. Delay is the mother of most failures. One thing worse than “a quitter,”
is the person afraid to begin. Your Will gives purpose and makes you stick
to it. Get grit for a new siege. Will makes desire. Will makes brains. Will
gives decision. To decide means “to cut”; cut deep into the world of
possibilities, cut out of your prison of difficulties, cut thru your jungle of
opposition to liberty, to health, to success, to supreme power. THINK,
PLAN, DO IT. Will heals disease. Will drives poisons out of the system.
Will makes the body immune. Will illumines the brain with brilliant
perception. Will sweeps misfortunes aside and rebuilds a nobler success.
Julius Caesar trained his supreme will until it became the dominion of the
Roman Empire. The goddess Diana said of Hercules: “When I saw him,
whether he sat or stood, I knew he was a god, so majestic is his will.” Like
the magnetic mountain in the “Arabian Nights,” your Will can draw the
nails from your enemies’ ships, so they shall fall to pieces before they reach
your shores. Will is a dynamic, cosmic energy from whence eternal things
proceed, and immortal organisms are constructed. Will is the glory of the
Divine universe, and you are a part of that Will. In your Will sleep the
oracles of prophecy. You were made master over this world. In your Will is
enthroned Sovereignty, Dominion, Kingship. With force of Will, Pygmalion
carved his soul dream into the marble until its loveliness of form and grace
became so real as to take on life and motion. With force of Will Dante
created his Hell, and with force of Will Milton created his Paradise
Regained. Put your Will into command. Start new. Realize that you are
Supreme. Get a mind picture of what you want, what you want to be, what
you want to do, THEN ACTUALIZE IT. Get above doubts. Do not wait to
be well, to be happy, to be rich, all of these will be added unto you. Climb
out of your prison of doubts, worries, fears. Begin where you are. Let your
Will create, even as God creates. “He that believeth shall not perish, shall
not abide in darkness, shall have the light of life, shall have everlasting life;
all things are possible to him that believeth.” Come down out of the gallery
of supine hero worshippers, get into the arena and be the hero. Quit the
drivel of matinee idol longing, and get onto the stage of life and get the
bouquets for yourself. The world is waiting to ring up the curtain for your
star part in life.
=YOU CAN WORK MIRACLES=: A miracle is a wonder, a marvel, a
supernatural occurrence, a result obtained by suspension of natural
processes. You can do that any day. The miracle is that so few do it.
You know Ibsen’s play, “The Doll House.” How the wife forged a note, raised
the money to send her husband to regain his health. How he did regain it,
returned to great prominence and wealth as a banker. Then the blackmailer
threatened to reveal the crime. How the husband rushed to his wife in anger
that she should have done such a thing, that it meant ruin to him in his high
position. How the wife replied: “Why, I expected the miracle. That you
would save me as I saved you. That you would say that you did it.” If he only
had, what a marvelous, what a wonderful, what a supernatural thing it
would have been. Christ made whole and useful a withered hand. People
say, “O, that I could do so wonderful a thing.” Well, why don’t you. See the
withered hands around you. A young woman with a beautiful voice, but no
means to cultivate it. You have a thousand or so in the bank? You can save
that voice to a world that needs song. A young man with a fine mind,
helpless to go thru college, you have means to give that mind to a world in
power and usefulness. The natural thing is for you not to do it, the
supernatural, the miracle, is that you are divine enough to do it. A man, a
woman, is forsaken, friendless, cruelly judged by the world, their goodness
blasted, their spirit crushed, their hearts bleeding, their lives made useless,
withered. The natural thing is to avoid such, stand aloof, be quite scornfully
indifferent. The miracle would happen if you went to them, lifted them up,
restored them to society. I have said avoid useless people, I mean selfish,
lazy, purposeless, aimless people. Sir Humphrey Davy worked a miracle
when he took the boy Farrady out of a stable loft and gave him a chance to
cultivate his genius. The Sistine Chapel is Angelo’s miracle. When the band
on the deck of the Titanic, under the pale light of the morning stars played
“Nearer My God To Thee,” to give hope and strength to men and women
struggling to be saved, each player, as the voice of his melody was forever
hushed behind the shining emerald gates, in the crystal tomb of the sea,
went down crowned with the glory of a selfless miracle. The natural thing
would have been for them to have frantically fought to save themselves.
What superb opportunities to work miracles have passed you! What
magnificent possibilities are still right before you! The cripple is always at
your Gate Beautiful. Are you divine enough, wonderful enough, marvelous
enough, supernatural enough to say: “Such as I HAVE, GIVE I unto thee”?
Do it quickly. Do it, and you shall know daily the joy of hearing the Father
say: “This is My Son in whom I am well pleased.”
If there is any one person on this earth to whom I take off my hat and wait
until they safely pass, it is a school teacher. The most obscure teacher, back
in the country hills, unknown, unthought of, unpraised, but with loving
patience unfolding the secrets of knowledge to little frowzy headed boys
and girls, can look into her mirror at evening and behold the face of an angel.
Flowers cast their wealth upon the vacant air, and rich fathers oft cast their
wealth upon the vacant heir.
* * * * *
Some people are so sensitive that if you call them “Honey,” they will break
out with the “hives” the next morning.
* * * * *
Do not divorce your husband because he has cold feet, perhaps he got them
since you were married.
* * * * *
Christ stopped every funeral that came his way and sent the mourners home
singing. Funeral sermons were too sad for Him to preach. Every sick room
He entered became a health resort. He made grave-yards unpopular.
* * * * *
Many a lonely bachelor looking back over the stretch of years, recalls the
charming moonlight nights, when the cool summer air was perfumed with
old fashioned flowers, and he looked into the loving eyes of his sweetheart;
recalls how the crimson glow of youth flushed her velvet cheeks as he took
her warm hand in his; recalls sadly that if he had only given that hand “a
square deal,” played it in the game of life, he would have had “a full house”
now.
* * * * *
Would you like to become young? Then tap new reservoirs of youthful
thoughts, irrigate your alkali desert from the fountains of youth, become
youthfully active in some new field of work. Vanderbilt added $100,000,000
to his fortune after he was eighty. Wordsworth earned the Laureateship at
seventy-three. Theirs established the French Republic and became its first
president at seventy-two. Verdi wrote “Falstaff” at eighty. Sir Walter Scott
was $600,000 in debt when he was fifty-five, but thru his own efforts he
paid all and made himself a lasting name.
* * * * *
Book knowledge is not all. A wealthy, fond father, fearing his son would be
contaminated by college life, had him educated at home. When he was
twenty-one, he took him to ride thru the streets of the city. They passed a
female seminary just as the doors opened and a crowd of young women
came out. The dear boy grabbed his father’s arm and cried, “What are
those?” His father replied, “They are only goslins.” Later in the day, the fond
father said: “My son, you have obeyed me, have faithfully completed your
education, now I am ready to spend $50,000 to give you the highest
ambition of your life.” The boy looked up in glad wonder and said: “O, dad,
give me a goslin.”
=Lesson Second
SUPREME CONTROL OF AGE=
=YOUTH IS ETERNAL:= Nature never grows old. The flowers that
bloomed in Eden are blooming to-day. Just as lovely, just as sweet,
just as fresh and unchanged. The roses your life-mate brings home to
you, have the same fragrance as the roses Adam brought to Eve, if he
thought of it. The lovely stars that glitter in the azure fields above
you tonight, have the same loveliness that gleamed in tremulous glory
down upon the shepherds beyond Bethlehem. The radiant, life giving
rays of the sun that ten thousand, thousand years ago warmed mother
earth into vernal spring life, are the same life giving rays that
shall bring again the spring-tide. Life never grows old, it only
changes form. Your life is perpetual, then your youth may be
perpetual. The human race is ever young, its units fall off. You
should be younger at sixty, than at sixteen, because you have more
of life. Growing old is a habit. People travel along the years up
the hill of life, till they reach a certain point where they begin to
THINK they must be growing old. Think its time to sag. Think its time
to droop. Think its time to begin the process of decay. Then begin to
talk about it. To write letters about it. To feel around for it. To
look for it in others. Finally the habit they inherited from the race
is on, and they are old. Life is endless, but you can think it short,
“The power of an endless life,” is within you, but by thinking you can
turn it to the white ashes of old age. THINK YOUTH AND YOU STAY
YOUNG.
=YOUTH IS GROWTH:= Keep growing and you keep young. A new idea
will make you feel younger. Develop it and it will develop you. Quicken
your mental throb with new ideas. Begin now. Stop talking about being too
old to grow. You pass by trees daily, a hundred, two hundred years old, still
they are growing. The rose bush on a wall in China is supposed to be over a
thousand years old, it bears more roses now, than when it was a mere slip of
a vine of only one hundred. Gladstone at eighty-two was a growing
statesman, and elected prime minister of England for the fourth time. Cato
at eighty began to study Greek, and renewed the youth of his mind. Donald
Davis is a growing hunter at one hundred and three. Goddard Diamond was
a growing teacher of health, when he was one hundred and eleven. I know a
bright, cheery lady who is just beginning a new study for decorating china,
along with her household cares, and she is eighty-eight. Also another
woman who has taken up a new process of enlarging drawings into watercolors and she is eighty-one years young. The fig tree withered when the
Master of Life found it not growing, producing, creating. When you stop
growing you will wither by the same law. Grow something, create
something, produce something and the law of youth will pervade your
Being.
=YOUTH IS OBSERVING THE LAW:= Observing the law of health, the law
of mind, the law of growth, the law of harmony, the law of production, the
law of expression, the law of beauty, the law of selflessness. Keep your
bodily forces up. Rebuild destroyed tissue. Keep the system free of waste.
Stop poisoning your body with anger, hate, jealousy, fear. Keep your mind
sweet. Think cheerfully. Avoid mental turmoil and excitement. Two great
enemies of youth are worry and fear. The next is selfishness. Think every
morning when you rise—“This new day is new life. It is fresh from the hand
of God. It is mine to use. I will increase it unto the Perfect Day.” Grow in
each day, and make each day grow. Check discord. Quit useless discussion
for it weakens and withers. Stop quarreling. Check complainings. Root
criticism out of your life. You are bigger than these things. Get into
harmony. You are of the world, upon worlds, universe unto universe. Study
your words to make them have beauty, your walk to have grace, your
personality to make it magnetic, your smile to give courage and comfort,
your presence to have it healing, helping, inspiring. “If there be any virtue in
whatsoever things are lovely, think on those things.”
=YOUTH IS LOVING WORK:= Like what you do. Do what makes you and
others happy. Enter your daily work with joy. Adjust it until you do like it.
Learn to love work for the happiness it brings. Put joy into your work in the
morning and you will find it multiplied into happiness at night. Work is a
law of youth. Inaction is decay. Inertia is death. Men and women do not
usually lose their positions, they drive their positions away from them. The
law of work will not stand personal abuse, any more than the law of beauty
will endure brutality. Form an ideal of your work, make a mental picture of
it, simplify it, orderly it, beautify it, then glorify it. Start the process in the
slightest degree and you will get a result. Put a new shock absorber on your
disposition. Bring your fine sensibilities to your work, be big morally, be
deep mentally, and work with confident expectation. Put rules and system
into your daily task. Exercise your self-control, your self-possession, selfmastery, march up to your task with efficiency backed up by a dominant
will. Realize your Supreme Personality in your work. Put the absolute “I
AM,” into your purpose of toil. Put dominating decision “I HAVE
DECIDED,” into your efforts. Put invincible determination, “I WILL,” into
your complex problem. Put irresistible confidence, “I SHALL ACHIEVE,”
into your ardent desires. You will then love work. When you come to love
work you will not exhaust yourself in it, you will not tire your brain and
body with its friction, because you will not work with selfish purposes, but
work to enrich the world. “Love is the fulfilling of the law.”
=YOUTH IS SUPREME CHEERFULNESS:= To be funless is to be
lifeless.Good cheer is the tonic of youth. If you are so sad you cannot laugh
at something, then laugh at nothing. “Laugh and the world”—you know it.
An ounce of smiles will give you more real life than seven tons of
solemncholy. Cheerfulness and prosperity go hand in hand. Bathe in mirth.
Frolic in some sunshine daily, even if you live in Pittsburgh and have to
make your own sunshine. Make fun, don’t always buy it. You can cure
disease and kill the Devil with laughter. Cultivate an infectious laugh. Mirth
makes work easy. Read humor and learn to tell it. Practice telling a good,
funny story. Be a quick wit. There is a bright side to everything in this
world, even to a dark-lantern. The end of the film is sure to be jolly. Good
cheer attracts good luck. Cheer up. If you haven’t a smile get one of
somebody and wear it as your own. “Let thine heart cheer thee.” Give it outlet. Go to sleep with a smile on your face and you will awaken with a joy in
your heart. Let your humor be rich humor. Laughter is the cipher-key to a
man. It is one of the most delightful sounds of earth. Most utterly lost is the
day you laugh not. Mirth clears the mirrors of the mind. A person who does
not laugh is not healthy. “A merry heart doeth good, like a medicine.” To
forget your sorrow begin to cultivate joy. Keep away from sad people, or you
will be sad. Stop rehearsing your grief, you only enlarge it. If you suffer grief,
find someone in trouble and cheer them, encourage them, help them, and
you will deliver yourself. You will comfort yourself when you comfort
another. You cannot lose a loved one, tho absent from the earth plane they
are nearer than ever. Life and love never change. Death is an unreality
thought made. Our friends take on a new embodiment that is glorified in life
and spirit. When you believe you were “created in His image,” and “are a
partaker of the divine nature,” it is easier to believe, “you shall arise in His
likeness.” Some day we shall all believe we have not disfigured, morally
broken natures, but Divine Natures, supreme in limitless power. Traditions,
teachings, education, environment of generations of thinking have
disfigured, morally broken, sin burdened humanity. All are thought created
conditions. Thought made limitations. Thought made original sins. System
cultivated human wrongs. Institutionalized teachings of error. But you
should know the universe is one undivided Soul. You are a yoke-fellow with
God. You are a part of One Complete Life. You are a lobe of the Infinite
Brain. You are a Supreme Personality of Absolute Personality. Nothing that
has life is God-damned.
Where love is only a dream, the marriage is an alarm clock.
* * * * *
If you cannot endure your mother-in-law, you can begin your plans at once
to live alone, when your children are married.
* * * * *
A quarrel between two people to settle things, is a good deal like a dog fight
in a flower bed, the only things that get settled are the flowers.
* * * * *
Nearly always when you hear the lusty wail of a boy with energy plus filling
the air, you can look in at the window and find a woman’s hand at the seat
of his trouble.
* * * * *
You can over-work your notion of neatness. A woman in Vermont crippled
her usefulness for life, by mopping a hole thru her kitchen floor and falling
into the cellar.
* * * * *
=Lesson Third
A SUPREME DAILY-LIFE METHOD
A CENTRAL PLAN:= Do your mental work in the morning, your manual
work in the afternoon. Do not dictate letters in the afternoon; from ten to
twelve in the morning is best. The brain is usually at low ebb at three
o’clock in the afternoon. Do not have your desk so that you have to look
side-wise at persons approaching you. It blunts your personality. By no
means have people enter behind you, it is the most negative psychic
influence possible. Let your position in your office be such that when
anyone approaches your eyes will fall upon them as near a straight level as
possible. Plan your workroom for efficiency. No matter how small, how
large, or if it be but a bench. Put your character stamp on the plan of the
work you do. Go to that work as a King goes to his throne. Centralize your
work. Plan it. Work your plan.
=HAVE A SYSTEM OF ORDER=: Set your mind in order first. If you are
living as I have taught in the lessons that have gone before, then your mind
will assume a supreme command of order almost at once. Classify what you
do. Keep matters separate. Do the big things first. As you classify, drop the
non-essentials. Weed out the useless. Never spend a minute of your morning
hours winding up a string or folding a piece of wrapping paper. Do that
when your brain tide has ebbed out in the afternoon, or not at all. Don’t
hunt for a pin, or sharpen a pencil, or manicure your nails after you reach
your work of the day. Classify your movements, eliminate the useless.
Energize your movements. Move with enthusiasm. Put elastic cheer into
your step. Wear rubber heels of quiet manners. Simplify your work. Keep it
straight, after a little it will keep you straight. Don’t fall over your work, nor
step on it, or sit on it. Simplify by stopping the waste of words, waste of
material, waste of time. Jollify your work. Put fun into each day’s round of
toil. Be original in plans and ideas.
=CULTIVATE YOUR EFFICIENCY=: To all the above add mental energy.
Develop insight, grow new business brain cells. Do not overload your
stomach with food, nor your body with clothing. Study directness. Master
application. At Niagara Falls I saw two giant dynamos generating twentyfive thousand horse power, their efficiency was kept in perfect balance by a
little automatic nickle gate. Your efficiency is kept in balance by little,
invisible and automatic thought neurons. A clear brain is the test of
efficiency. Plans, orders, system, application, give efficiency. Efficiency is
positive thinking. Freedom-thinking, above fear-thinking. Get out and keep
out of negative thinking. Just as soon as you drop negative thinking your
mind will begin to rise to a new brilliance of expression. One big element in
efficiency is silence. It is the strongest thing to be silent. Noise is emptiness,
weakness, inefficiency. Silence is the law of greatness; noise the breaking of
the law.
=DEVELOP YOUR POWER TO REST:= That person is wise who knows
how
to rest. It is a powerful thing to rest successfully. Over-fed persons, or
animals, do not rest, they are stupefied. Rest is filling your capacities with
energy. “Sleep knits up the ravelled sleeve of care,” or it should. Rest is
relaxing the nerves and muscles. Rest is reconstructing broken down
cellular tissues. Rest is restringing the harp of the senses, retuning the
rhythmic harmonies of the spirit. Rest lets down the tension. When you sit
down, let what you sit on hold you. When you lie down, do not try to hold
yourself on the bed. Rest is the opposite of labor. Rest is recreation. Rest
with sleep is a divine restorative. When you cannot rest, or sleep, you are
expending energy without production. Try this little code for rest and sleep:
“My mind is empty, my soul is at rest.” Repeat it with your eyes closed and
your body relaxed. Say it just as you would imagine the swing of the
pendulum of an old fashion hall clock. I never knew it to fail of inducing
sleep. Never rest or sleep with light falling on your eyes. Shut out the world
and noise.
=GROW THE FRUITS OF THE SPIRIT:= Love, Joy, Peace, Gentleness,
Goodness, Faith, Meekness, Temperance, against such there is no law. Do
not sit down and wish for them, nor wait for someone to bring them to you,
even God will not bring them to you. Grow them. Cultivate them. Produce
them. No power on this earth can defeat you, make you fail, or over-throw
you if you fill your Spirit with them. As you work, use them. Take them with
you to the store, the factory, the shop, the mill, to your bench. Take them
with you to the office, the counting-room, the court-room, and to your
throne-room. Take them with you to the battle field, to the halls of justice,
to the senate chamber, to the presidential chair. Take them with you thru
the streets, along the highways, and over the unbeaten paths of your life.
Take them with you down the rivers, and out into the storm driven sea.
Chain them to the wheel of your ship, sail on thru the starless night alone.
Trust them, for they are the initiative of the Supreme in you.
=TRAIN YOUR VOICE:= Take your snarling, growling, snapping, whining
voice away into the jungle and leave it to the wild beasts. Take your
sobbing, sniveling, trembling, dolorous, sanctimonious voice down into
some dismal swamp and bury it. Train your voice as you would tune a harp.
Your voice is an index of character. Keep it on the level. Let it “speak as one
having authority.” Charm it with modulation. Make it ripple with music.
Allow no thrust of anger to ruffle it. Intensify it with determination.
Strengthen it with courage. Give it dominion and power. When other voices
are hot and spuming around you, keep your voice cool. Never allow your
voice to become dull, dubious, uncertain, shrinking, or hollow. Voice tones
that are round, rhythmic, full measured. Have a serene and reposeful voice.
Look at what you speak. Reflect your soul in your voice. Let the manner of
your voice be calm, smooth, collected, but energized with positive forces.
Have a cheerful voice, a voice that makes one think of sunshine and smiles.
=HOW TO LOVE RELATIVES:= To love your relatives be away from home
all you can. To have them love you keep about three hundred miles between
you and them. Thousands of homes and lives are wrecked by two families of
the same family trying to live under the same roof. Noah would have
foundered with the Ark ten days after the flood started if he had taken more
than two out of any one family with him. Cain would never have killed Abel
if Adam hadn’t made the fool blunder of trying to keep his two sons
everlastingly with him. Of course there was some excuse in the fact that in
those days New York and Paris were not brilliantly attractive cities. If there
is any one thing outside a church row, that tickles the devil into a frenzy of
laughter it is when a young married couple go home to live with the family.
There is about as much real life joy and harmony in it as there would be in a
jungle picnic of monkeys and parrots. There is just one place where large
families can dwell together peaceably—the grave-yard. It is contrary to
natural law that families of grown ups, should live together. When a cub
bear is old enough, big enough to hunt for food, and comes back after he
once goes out, his mother gives him a mauling that makes him feel he would
rather starve than come back again. Does she love him? Of course she loves
him to the limit of her instinct, loves him to the point of pride that she
wants him to be a brave, daring, self-reliant master of the forest. When the
whelps of a lion get to be more than playful kittens, the mother leads them
into the jungle, slips away, leaving them to hunt. The young lions may
return to the old home, but their father and mother have moved away to a
distant den. To evolve their natures, to become supreme denizens of the
forest they must rely upon their own prowess. Take the eagle, when the
mother eagle by instinct knows the wings of her babies have become strong
enough to support their bodies, she pushes them out of the eyrie. They fly,
or will be dashed to death on the rocks. They always fly. But you say human
beings are not bears, lions, or eagles. Well, humans could well afford to
attend the Nature College of the wild animals of the woods, to learn the
ethics of health, happiness and the development of the individual.
Treat your relatives royally, then let them alone. Keep out of their affairs, try
to keep them out of your affairs. Be kind, generous, sympathetic. But keep
out of the danger zone. Insist upon living by yourself, living your own life,
thinking your own thoughts, playing your part in life’s drama. Parents wish
they could hold their children, the way to hold them is to let go of them. If
you love them you will let go. Love is unselfish. God sent His only Son on
the loneliest journey ever taken, and He came back crowned with glory.
God can live with lots of people you and I can’t. Abraham amounted to
something, God said to him: “Get thee out.” “And he went out, not knowing
whither.” He staid until he became the head of a people as numberless and
brilliant as the stars of the heaven. But Isaac hung around home, lived on his
father’s greatness, and the only real thing he did that was worth while was
to re-dig some wells his father had dug before him. The first time he saw his
sweetheart Rebecca, whom another man had to go and get for him, he lifted
up his voice and cried like a boob. He had become soft on the mutton and
grape juice of his father. Tender little doves flit around the home cote, but
the eagle sweeps from sun to sun. Anyhow, in these modern days children
are very largely bringing up their parents.
* * * * *
To kill a quarrel, shut your mouth.
* * * * *
There is a world of sense in the saying; “Sell your hammer and buy a horn.”
* * * * *
There is one place we can bear a boil, and smile—on the other fellow’s neck.
* * * * *
Many people possess more than a thousand acres of possibilities, and have
about half an acre under cultivation.
* * * * *
The best way to exterminate mosquitoes would be to start a plan to
cultivate them as a money making commodity.
* * * * *
Stop nagging, twitting, insinuating, suspecting those whose love you wish
to hold. You assassinate love when you ridicule it.
* * * * *
Temper is the yeast of personality. No man or woman ever rises in the world
without it. A razor, knife, ax, or writer, actor, minister, without it, isn’t
worth a damn in any market. Never lose your temper, lose all things, but
keep your temper.
* * * * *
When I see people who are great stickers as to form, or attitude, in prayer,
they remind me of my old neighbor, Saxby, who fell into Bill Smith’s well.
He said: “The prayingest prayer I ever said, was in that well standing on my
head.”
* * * * *
Do you know the meanest thing about the worst boy on your street? I will
tell you. It is the fact that you do not like him, and he knows it. God never
made a mean boy. Parents have made some, towns have made some, and
cities have made a host.
=Lesson Fourth
THE SUPREME LAW OF SUCCESS
SELLING POWER=: Study out plans. Approach your customer or the
public, with a definite plan. Here is one of simple power: Attract the
attention, secure the interest, carry the conviction, demand the decision,
then in any line of business you will have your order book full. Selling power
is confidence backed up by the will. Success is ambition and desire driven
by the will. Do you desire success? How much? When you desire it as a
starving man has hunger for food, you will win. Want to attain your
ambition? How much? When your ambition becomes a thirst, a burning
consuming thirst, such as the lost traveler has in the blistering sands of the
desert, then you will achieve. What you want is not opportunity, the world
is flooded with golden opportunities. What you want is not a fair chance,
chances gleam in your future sky fairer than the endless myriads of stars
that encrust with glittering splendor the evening heavens. What you do
want is concentration, confidence, self-reliance, desire, ambition,
PERSONAL POWER.
=POWER OF ATTRACTION=: Make your purpose brilliant. Keep it clear.
Seek to energize it with positives. Do not lumber up your plan. Centralize
it. Modify it. Create it as a necessity. Form into it the indispensable. Then
embody yourself into it. See that nothing about you defeats, or neutralizes
attraction. Have a burning interest in your proposition. Look for fulfillment.
Anticipate success. Make the world feel that you know you are right. Stop
asking folks if they think you will succeed. Of course they do not, because
they have not. Hold your mind relaxed in Silence. Make your desire active.
Set your wishes in motion. Confidence attracts confidence. Positives attract
positives. Bring out your latent forces, they only need arousing.
THINK AND ACT.
=YOUR MENTAL ATTITUDE:= Have faith in yourself. Arouse faith in
others. Think in the affirmative. Assert your hope and confidence. Root out
every doubt. Help someone out of their slough of doubt and despondency.
Believe in the world, in life, in growth, in possibilities. Let your faith be as
big and bright as the sun. “Cast not away your confidence which hath great
recompense of reward.” “Dwell in confidence.” “Hold fast your confidence
and hope unto the end.” Keep your mental attitude independent. Keep it
brave. Think of money as a means, not as an end. Seek wealth for the power
of service it gives. Have a generous mental attitude. Help others succeed.
Banish fear, worry, indecision, timidity, irresolution, anxiety from your
mental attitude, they paralyze effort. Trust yourself. Trust others. Have a
mental attitude that is supreme, divine, and absolute. Spend your last dollar
like a king. Gird the loins of your mind with “I WILL.” “I CAN.” All the
mountains of difficulty will melt before your presence.
=AMBITION AND DESIRE:= Ambition is idealism. Desire is faith. You
cannot have either without the possibility of their fulfillment. Desires come
from Supreme Intelligence in the Universe, and they are divine. Therefore,
they are real, possible of positive realization. Keep them sacred. Let them
become the ideals of your life. Make them glow with the fires of your
energies. They spell success and victory. They will crown your life, if you
will breathe your life into them. Let your ambition make you irrepressible.
Avoid reactionary influences. Keep away from dull, stupid, inactive people.
=CREATIVE FORCE AND HARMONY:= Be original. Think original
thoughts, put them into form. Invent and produce. Create ideas. Feel
complete in yourself. Do not stand in wonder at what others have done,
right at your feet lies a secret that will enrich the world and make you
famous. A thinker discovered a substitute for the artist camel’s hair brush by
taking the hair from inside a cow’s ear. If you work in an office think up
some out-door vocation. Grow something, raise something, get interested in
animals. Study the market near you, create, produce, or raise something to
sell. If not for money, for the forces of life the work gives. It will keep you
from habits, from speculating, from gambling, from politics and other evils.
