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So roll those words around on your tongue. Say them over and over again until they lodge deeply in your mind, until they get down into your heart, until they take possession of the essence of you:
is evidently a fact, that if you expect the best, you are given some strange kind of power to create conditions that produce the desired results.
the high percentage he attained can be raised with practice, and of course practice in the art of expectation is as essential as practice on a musical instrument or with a golf club.
Adopt the “I don’t believe in defeat” attitude.
The technique used by this man is based on the primary fact about an obstacle which is—don’t be afraid of it.
So the first thing to do about an obstacle is simply to stand up to it and not complain about it or whine under it but forthrightly attack it. Don’t go crawling through life on your hands and knees half-defeated. Stand up to your obstacles and do something about them. You will find that they haven’t half the strength you think they have.
But the factor that won the championship, said the writer, was his staying power and the further fact that “he was never defeated by the discouraging vicissitudes of the game.”
Faith supplies staying power. It contains dynamic to keep one going when the going is hard.
Anybody can keep going when the going is good, but some extra ingredient is needed to enable you to keep fighting when it seems that everything is against you. It is a great secret, that of never being: ‘defeated by the discouraging vicissitudes of the game’.
there is no difficulty you cannot overcome.
Your subconscious, which always resents any change, may say to you: “You don’t believe any such thing.” But remember that your subconscious mind in a sense is one of the greatest liars in existence. It concurs in and sends back to you your own errors about your abilities.
you. So just turn on your subconscious and say to it: ‘Now look here, I do believe that. I insist upon believing it’. If you talk to your subconscious mind with that positiveness, in due course it will be convinced.
After a while your subconscious mind will begin to send back the truth to you, the truth being that with the help of Jesus Christ there isn’t any obstacle you cannot overcome.
An effective method for making your subconscious positive in character is to eliminate certain expressions of thought and speech which we may call the ‘little negatives’. These so-called ‘little negatives’ clutter up the average person’s conversation, and while each one is seemingly unimportant in itself, the total effect of these attitudes is to condition the mind negatively.
if a mass of ‘little negatives’ clutter up your conversation, they are bound to seep into your mind.
found that the best way to eliminate them was deliberately to say a positive word about everything. When you keep asserting that things are going to work out well, that you can do the job, that you will not have a flat tyre, that you will get there on time, by talking up good results you invoke the law of positive effects and good results occur. Things do turn out well.
‘A clean engine always delivers power’.
what you think about your obstacles largely determines what you do about them.
That is a very great fact to remember in connection with difficult problems—‘the rough is only mental.’
Now take another look at that obstacle that has been bothering you. You will find that it isn’t so formidable as you thought. Say to yourself, ‘The rough is only mental. I think victory—I get victory’.
the greatest factor in any undertaking is one’s belief about it.
‘Always take hold of things by the smooth handle’. That is, go at a job or at your difficulty by the use of a method that will encounter the least resistance.
The negative attitude is a friction approach.
The positive approach is the ‘smooth handle’ technique.
It is remarkable how from early life until the end of your existence the application of this philosophy will enable you to attain successful results in areas where otherwise you would be defeated.
believe I am always divinely guided. “‘I believe I will always take the right turn of the road. “‘I believe God will always make a way where there is no way.’”
The following words were printed on a card and wired to this basket: ‘With God all things are possible.’ Whenever a problem came up which the old mechanism of defeat began to develop into a big difficulty, he threw the paper pertaining to it into the basket marked ‘With God all things are possible’ and let it rest there for a day or two. ‘It is queer how each matter when I took it out of that basket again didn’t seem difficult at all,’ he reported.
In this act he dramatised the mental attitude of putting the problem in God’s hands.
‘Anxiety is the great modern plague.’
The destructive quality of worry is indicated by the fact that the word itself is derived from an old Anglo-Saxon word meaning ‘to choke’. If someone were to put his fingers around your throat and press hard, cutting off the flow of vital power, it would be a dramatic demonstration of what you do to yourself by long-held and habitual worry.
The worrier, so it seems, is not likely to live as long as the person who learns to overcome his worries.
“All doctors,” he declared, “are having cases of illness which are brought on directly by fear, and aggravated by worry and a feeling of insecurity.”
But do not be discouraged, for you can overcome your worries.
Here, then, is a practical procedure which will help to eliminate abnormal worry from your experience. Practise emptying the mind daily. This should be done preferably before retiring at night to avoid the retention by the consciousness of worries while you sleep. During sleep, thoughts tend to sink more deeply into the subconscious. The last five minutes before going to sleep are of extraordinary importance, for in that brief period the mind is most receptive to suggestion. It tends to absorb the last ideas that are entertained in waking consciousness.
for fear thoughts, unless drained off, can clog the mind and impede the flow of mental and spiritual power.
Picture all worry thoughts as flowing out as you would let water flow from a basin by removing the stopper. Repeat the following affirmation during this visualisation: ‘With God’s help I am now emptying my mind of all anxiety, all fear, all sense of insecurity.’ Repeat this slowly five times, then add: ‘I believe that my mind is now emptied of all anxiety, all fear, all sense of insecurity.’
Then thank God for thus freeing you from fear. Then go to sleep.
In starting the curative process the foregoing method should be utilised in mid morning and mid afternoon as well as at bedtime. Go into some quiet place for five minutes for this purpose. Faithfully perform this process and you will soon note beneficial results.
A child responds to the game of kissing away a hurt or throwing away a fear.
The dramatic act is a fact for him and so it proves to be the end of the matter.
Imagination is a source of fear, but imagination may also be the cure of fear.
That is to say, you form an image either of fear or of release from fear.
Fear is the most powerful of all thoughts with one exception, and that one exception is faith. Faith can always overcome fear. Faith is the one power against which fear cannot stand. Day by day, as you fill your mind with faith, there will ultimately be no room left for fear. This is the one great fact that no one should forget. Master faith and you will automatically master fear.
Learn to be a practiser of faith until you become an expert in faith. Then fear cannot live in you.
Strategy must be used in the campaign against the worry habit. A frontal attack on the main body of worry with the expectation of conquering it may prove difficult. Perhaps a more adroit plan is to conquer the outer fortifications one by one, gradually closing in on the main position. To change the figure, it might be well to snip off the little worries on the farthest branches of your fear. Then work back and finally destroy the main trunk of worry.
every morning before he arises he repeats these two words: ‘I believe’, three times.
believe, I believe.” In her letter she excitedly reported: ‘It has been only ten days since I started this plan and my husband came home last night and told me he had a job paying $80 a week. And he also says that he is going to quit drinking. I believe he means it. What is even more wonderful, my mother-in-law has practically stopped complaining of her aches and pains. It is almost as if a miracle has happened in this house. My worries seem to have just about disappeared’.
“Howard, don’t you ever worry?” He laughed. “No, not on your life. I don’t believe in it.” “Well,” I commented, “that is quite a simple reason for not worrying. In fact, it seems to me too simple—you just don’t believe in it, therefore you don’t do it. Haven’t you ever worried?” I asked. He replied: “Well, yes, I tried it once. I noticed that everybody else seemed to worry and I figured I must be missing something, so one day I made up my mind to try it. I set aside a day and said: ‘That is to be my worry day.’ I decided I would investigate this worry business and do some worrying just to see
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“Every morning I spend fifteen minutes filling my mind full of God,” he said. “When your mind is full of God, there is no room for worry. I fill my mind full of God every day, and I have the time of my life all day long.”
It is surprising how our most difficult personal problems often yield to an uncomplicated methodology. This is due to the fact that it is not enough to know what to do about difficulties. We must also know how to do that which should be done.
