The Prosperity & Wealth Bible. Kahlil Gibran
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of the most essential requisites in the accomplishment of any important work is patience. Not the patience that sits and folds its hands and waits — Micawber like — for something to turn up. But the patience that never jeopardizes or upsets a plan by forcing it too soon. The man who possesses that kind of patience can always find plenty to do in the meantime.
Make your plan — then wait for the opportune moment to submit it. You’d be surprised to know how carefully big men go over suggestions from subordinates, which show the least promise. One of the signs of a really big man, you know, is his eagerness to learn from everyone and anything. There is none of that “know it all” about him that characterized the German general who was given a book containing the strategy by which Napoleon had for fifteen years kept all the armies of Europe at bay. “I’ve no time to read about bygone battles,” he growled, thrusting the book away, “I have my own campaign to plan.”
There is priceless wisdom to be found in books. As Carlyle put it — “All that mankind has done, thought, gained or been — it is lying in matchless preservation in the pages of books.”
The truths which mankind has been laboriously learning through countless ages, at who knows what price of sweat and toil and starvation and blood — all are yours for the effort of reading them.
And in business, knowledge was never so priceless or so easily acquired. Books and magazines are filled with the hows and whys, the rights and wrongs of buying and selling, of manufacturing and shipping, of finance and management. They are within the reach of anyone with the desire to KNOW.
Nothing pays better interest than judicious reading. The man who invests in more knowledge of his business than he needs to hold his job, is acquiring capital with which to get a better job.
As old Gorgon Graham puts it in “The Letters of a Self-Made Merchant To His Son” — “I ain’t one of those who believe that a half knowledge of a subject is useless, but it has been my experience that when a fellow has that half knowledge, he finds it’s the other half which would really come in handy.
“What you know is a club for yourself, and what you don’t know is a meat-ax for the other fellow. That is why you want to be on the look-out all the time for information about the business and to nail a fact just as a sensible man nails a mosquito — the first time it settles near him.”
The demands made upon men in business today are far greater than in any previous generation. To meet them, you’ve got to use your talents to the utmost. You’ve got to find in every situation that confronts you, the best, the easiest and the quickest way of working it out. And the first essential in doing this is to plan your work ahead.
You’d be surprised at how much more work you can get through by carefully planning it, and then taking each bit in order and disposing of it before starting on the next.
Another thing — once started at work, don’t let down. Keep on going until it is time to quit. You know how much power it takes to start an auto that is standing motionless. But when you get it going, you can run along in high at a fraction of the expenditure of gas. It is the same way with your mind. We are all mentally lazy. We hate to start using our minds. Once started, though, it is easy to keep along on high, if only we won’t let down. For the moment we let down, we have that starting to do all over again. You can accomplish ten times as much, with far less effort or fatigue, if you will keep right on steadily instead of starting and stopping, and starting and stopping again.
Volumes have been written about personal efficiency, and general efficiency, and every other kind of efficiency in business. But boiled down, it all comes to this:
1 — Know what you want.
2 — Analyze the thing you’ve got to do to get it.
3 — Plan your work ahead.
4 — Do one thing at a time.
5 — Finish that one thing and send it on its way before starting the next.
6 — Once started, KEEP GOING!
And when you come to some problem that “stumps” you, give your subconscious mind a chance.
Frederick Pierce, in “Our Unconscious Mind,” gives an excellent method for solving business problems through the aid of the subconscious:
“Several years ago, I heard a successful executive tell a group of young men how he did his work, and included in the talk was the advice to prepare at the close of each day’s business, a list of the ten most important things for the next day. To this I would add: Run them over in the mind just before going to sleep, not thoughtfully, or with elaboration of detail, but with the sure knowledge that the deeper centers of the mind are capable of viewing them constructively even though conscious attention is surrendered in sleep.
“Then, if there is a particular problem which seems difficult of solution, review its features lightly as a last game for the imaginative unconscious to play at during the night. Do not be discouraged if no immediate results are apparent. Remember that fiction, poetry, musical composition, inventions, innumerable ideas, spring from the unconscious, often in forms that give evidence of the highest constructive elaboration.
“Give your unconscious a chance. Give it the material, and stimulate it with keenly dwelt-on wishes along frank Ego Maximation lines. It is a habit which, if persisted in, will sooner or later present you with some very valuable ideas when you least expect them.”
I remember reading of another man — a genius at certain kinds of work — who, whenever an especially difficult problem confronted him, “slept on it.” He had learned the trick as a child. Unable to learn his lessons one evening, he had kept repeating the words to himself until he dozed in his chair, the book still in his hands. What was his surprise, on being awakened by his father a few minutes later to find that he knew them perfectly! He tried it again and again on succeeding evenings, and almost invariably it worked. Now, whenever a problem comes up that he cannot solve, he simply stretches out on a lounge in his office, thoroughly relaxes, and lets his subconscious mind solve the problem!
Chapter 19 — The Master Mind
Among your friends there is one of those men who doesn’t have much use for the word “can’t.”
You marvel at his capacity for work.
You’ll admire him the more the longer you know him.
You’ll always respect him.
For he not only has made good, but he always will make good. He has found and appropriated to himself the “Talisman of Napoleon” — absolute confidence in himself.
The world loves a leader. All over the world, in every walk of life, people are eagerly seeking for someone to follow. They want someone else to do their thinking for them; they need someone to hearten them to action; they like to have someone else on whom to lay the blame when things go wrong; they want someone big enough to share the glory with them when success crowns his efforts.
But to instill confidence in them, that leader must have utter confidence in himself. A Roosevelt or a Mussolini who did not believe in himself would be inconceivable. It is that which makes men invincible — the Consciousness of their own Power. They put no limit upon their own capacities — therefore they have no limit. For Universal Mind sees all, knows all, and can do all, and we share in this absolute power to the exact extent to which we permit ourselves. Our mental attitude is the magnet that attracts from Universal Mind everything we may need to bring our desires into being. We make that magnet strong or weak as we have confidence in or doubt of our abilities. We draw to ourselves unlimited power or limit ourselves to humble positions according to our own beliefs.
A long time ago Emerson wrote: “There is one mind common to all individual men. Every man is an inlet to the same and to all of the same. He that is once admitted to the right of reason is made a freeman of the whole estate. What Plato has thought, he may think; what a saint has felt, he may feel; what at any time has befallen any man, he can understand. Who hath access to this Universal Mind, is a party to all