NO doubt
you have many problems, domestic, social, physical, and financial, which seem
to you to be pressing for instant solution.
You have
debts that must be paid, or other obligations that must be met; you are
unhappily or inharmoniously placed, and feel that something must be done at
once. Do not get into a hurry and act from superficial impulses. You can trust
God for the solution of all your personal riddles. There is no hurry. There is
only God, and all is well with the world.
There is
an invincible power in you, and the same power is in the things you want. It is
bringing them to you and bringing you to them. This is a thought that you must
grasp, and hold continuously that the same intelligence that is in you is in
the things you desire. They are impelled toward you as strongly and decidedly
as your desire impels you toward them. The tendency, therefore, of a steadily
held thought must be to bring the things you desire to you and to group them
around you.
So long
as you hold your thought and your faith right all must go well. Nothing can be
wrong but your own personal attitude, and that will not be wrong if you trust
and are not afraid. Hurry is a manifestation of fear; he who fears not has
plenty of time. If you act with perfect faith in your own perceptions of truth,
you will never be too late or too early; and nothing will go wrong. If things
appear to be going wrong, do not get disturbed in mind; it is only in
appearance. Nothing can go wrong in this world but yourself; and you can go
wrong only by getting into the wrong mental attitude. Whenever you find
yourself getting excited, worried, or into the mental attitude of hurry, sit
down and think it over, play a game of some kind, or take a vacation. Go on a
trip, and all will be right when you return.
So surely
as you find yourself in the mental attitude of haste, just so surely may you
know that you are out of the mental attitude of greatness. Hurry and fear will
instantly cut your connection with the universal mind; you will get no power,
no wisdom, and no information until you are calm. And to fall into the attitude
of hurry will check the action of the Principle of Power within you. Fear turns
strength to weakness.
Remember
that poise and power are inseparably associated.
The calm
and balanced mind is the strong and great mind; the hurried and agitated mind
is the weak one. Whenever you fall into the mental state of hurry you may know
that you have lost the right viewpoint; you are beginning to look upon the
world, or some part of it, as going wrong. At such times read Chapter Six of
this book; consider the fact that this work is perfect, now, with all that it contains.
Nothing is going wrong; nothing can be wrong; be poised, be calm, be cheerful;
have faith in God.
Next as
to habit, it is probable that your greatest difficulty will be to overcome your
old habitual ways of thought, and to form new habits. The world is ruled by
habit. Kings, tyrants, masters, and plutocrats hold their positions solely
because the people have come to habitually accept them. Things are as they are
only because people have formed the habit of accepting them as they are. When
the people change their habitual thought about governmental, social, and
industrial institutions, they will change the institutions.
Habit
rules us all.
You have
formed, perhaps, the habit of thinking of yourself as a common person, as one
of a limited ability, or as being more or less of a failure. Whatever you
habitually think yourself to be, that you are. You must form, now, a greater
and better habit; you must form a conception of yourself as a being of
limitless power, and habitually think that you are that being. It is the
habitual, not the periodical thought that decides your destiny. It will avail
you nothing to sit apart for a few moments several times a day to affirm that
you are great, if during all the balance of the day, while you are about your
regular vocation, you think of yourself as not great. No amount of praying or
affirmation will make you great if you still habitually regard yourself as
being small.
The use
of prayer and affirmation is to change your habit of thought. Any act, mental
or physical, often repeated, becomes a habit. The purpose of mental exercises
is to repeat certain thoughts over and over until the thinking of those
thoughts becomes constant and habitual. The thoughts we continually repeat
become convictions. What you must do is to repeat the new thought of yourself
until it is the only way in which you think of yourself. Habitual thought, and
not environment or circumstance, has made you what you are. Every person has
some central idea or thought- form of himself, and by this idea he classifies
and arranges all his facts and external relationships. You are classifying your
facts either according to the idea that you are a great and strong personality,
or according to the idea that you are limited, common, or weak. If the latter is
the case you must change your central idea.
Get a new
mental picture of yourself.