The Prosperity & Wealth Bible. Kahlil Gibran
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of the Sea riding us, and because he clings tightly and refuses to be easily shaken off, we let him stay there, sapping our energies, using up our vitality, when to rid us of him it is only necessary to call to our aid ALL our resources, mental as well as physical, for one supreme effort.
When a storm arises, the hardy mariner doesn’t turn off steam and drift helplessly before the wind. That might be the easy way, but that way danger lies. He turns on more steam and fights against the gale. And so should you. There is a something within you that thrives on difficulties. You prize that more which costs an effort to win. You need to blaze new trails, to encounter unusual hardships, in order to reach your hidden mental resources, just as the athlete needs to exert himself to the utmost to reach his “second wind.”
Have you ever seen a turtle thrown on its back? For a while it threshes around wildly, reaching for something outside to take hold of that shall put it on its feet. Just as we humans always look for help outside ourselves first, but presently he draws all his forces within his shell, rests a bit to regain his strength, and then throws his whole force to one side — legs, head, tail, and all — and over he goes!
So it is with us. When we realize that the power to meet any emergency is within ourselves, when we stop looking outside for help and intelligently call upon Mind in our need, we shall find that we are tapping Infinite Resource. We shall find that we have but to center all those resources on the one thing we want most — to get anything from life that it has.
As Emerson put it, when we once find the way to get in touch with Universal Mind we are —
...owner of the sphere,
Of the Seven stars and the solar year,
Of Caesar’s hand and Plato’s brain,
Of the Lord Christ’s heart and Shakespeare’s strain.
Chapter 17 — The Secret of Power
There is a woman in one of the big Eastern cities whose husband died a year or two ago and left her nearly $100,000,000. She has unlimited power in her hands — yet she uses none of it. She has unlimited wealth — yet she gets no more from it than if it were in the thousands instead of millions. She knows nothing of her power, of her wealth. She is insane.
You have just as great power in your hands — without this poor woman’s excuse for not using it.
You have access to unlimited ideas, unlimited energy, and unlimited wealth. The “Open, Sesame!” is through your subconscious mind. So long as you limit yourself to superficial conditions, so long as you are a mere “hewer of wood or carrier of water” for those around you who do use their minds, you are in no better position than the beasts of burden.
The secret of power is in understanding the infinite resources of your own mind. When you begin to realize that the power to do anything, to be anything, to have anything, is within yourself, then and then only will you take your proper place in the world.
As Bruce Barton has it in “The Man Whom Nobody Knows” — “Somewhere, at some unforgettable hour, the daring filled His (Jesus) heart. He knew that He was bigger than Nazareth.”
Again in speaking of Abraham Lincoln, Barton says — “Inside himself he felt his power, but where and when would opportunity come?” And later in the book —
“But to every man of vision the clear voice speaks. Nothing splendid has ever been achieved except by those who dared believe that something inside them was superior to circumstance.”
No doubt Jesus’ friends and neighbors all ridiculed the idea of any such power within Him. Just as most people today laugh at the thought of a power such as that within themselves.
So they go on with their daily grind, with the gaunt specters of sickness and need ever by their side, until death comes as a welcome relief. Are you going to be one of those? Or will you listen to that inner consciousness of power and find the “Kingdom of Heaven that is within you.” For whatever you become conscious of, will be quickly brought forth into tangible form.
Don’t judge your ability by what you have done in the past. Your work heretofore has been done with the help of your conscious mind alone. Add to that the infinite knowledge at the disposal of your subconscious mind, and what you have done is as nothing to what you will do in the future.
For knowledge does not apply itself. It is merely so much static energy. You must convert it into dynamic energy by the power of your thought. The difference between the $25-a-week clerk and the $25,000-a-year executive is solely one of thought. The clerk may have more brains than the executive — frequently has in actual weight of gray matter. He may even have a far better education. But he doesn’t know how to apply his thought to get the greatest good from it.
If you have brains, use them. If you have skill, apply it. The world must profit by it, and therefore you.
We all have inspired moments when we see clearly how we may do great things, how we may accomplish wonderful undertakings. But we do not believe in them enough to make them come true. An imagination, which begins and ends in daydreaming, is weakening to character.
Make the daydreams come true. Make them so clear and distinct that they impress themselves upon your subconscious mind. There’s nothing wrong with daydreaming, except that most of us stop there. We don’t try to make the dreams come true. The great inventor, Tesla, “dreams” every new machine complete and perfect in every particular before ever he begins his model for it. Mozart “dreamed” each of his wonderful symphonies complete before ever he put a note on paper. But they didn’t stop with the dreaming. They visualized those dreams, and then brought them into actuality.
We lose our capacity to have visions if we do not take steps to realize them.
Power implies service, so concentrate all your thought on making your visions of great deeds come true. Thinking is the current that runs the dynamo of power. To connect up this current so that you can draw upon universal supply through your subconscious mind is to become a Super-man. Do this, and you will have found the key to the solution of every problem of life.
Chapter 18 — This One Thing I Do
How did the Salvation Army get so much favorable publicity out of the War? They were a comparatively small part of the “Services” that catered to the boys “over there,” yet they carried off the lion’s share of the glory. Do you know how they did it?
By concentrating on just one thing — DOUGHNUTS!
They served doughnuts to the boys — and they did it well. And that is the basis of all success in business — to focus on one thing and do that thing well. Better far to do one thing pre-eminently well than to dabble in forty.
Two thousand years ago, Porcius Marcus Cato became convinced, from a visit to the rich and flourishing city of Carthage, that Rome had in her a rival who must be destroyed. His countrymen laughed at him. He was practically alone in his belief. But he persisted. He concentrated all his thought, all his faculties, to that one end. At the end of every speech, at the end of every talk, he centered his hearers’ thought on what he was trying to put over by epitomizing his whole idea in a single sentence — “Carthage must be destroyed!” And Carthage was destroyed. If one man’s concentration on a single idea could destroy a great nation, what can you not do when you apply that same principle to the building of a business?
I remember when I was first learning horsemanship, my instructor impressed this fact upon me: “Remember that a horse is an animal of one idea. You can teach him only one thing at a time.”
Looking back, I’d say the only thing wrong with his instruction was that he took in too little territory. He need not have confined himself to the horse. Most humans are the same way.
In fact, you can put ALL humans into that class if you want a thing done well. For you cannot divide your thought and do justice to any one of the different subjects you are thinking of. You’ve got to do one thing at a time. The greatest success rule I know in business