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The secret is to work out a method of attack and keep working at it. There is value in doing something that dramatises to our own minds that an effective counterattack is in progress. In so doing we bring spiritual forces to bear upon the problem in a manner both understandable and usable.
It is always true that the greatest minds have the best ability to be simple, that is, they have the capacity to work out some simple plans for putting profound truths into operation,
it was a one-day calendar. You could see only one date at a time, and that date was in large print. He said: “Now I will perform my evening ritual, the one that has helped me break the worry habit.” He reached up and tore off the calendar page for that particular day. He rolled it into a small ball and I watched with fascination as his fingers slowly opened and he dropped that ‘day’ into the waste-basket.
He dramatised the finishing of the day and he set his face to the future, expecting to do better the next day.
You became a worrier by practicing worry. You can become free of worry by practising the opposite and stronger habit of faith. With all the strength and perseverance you can command, start practising faith.
8. Cultivate friendships with hopeful people. Surround yourself with friends who think positive, faith-producing thoughts and who contribute to a creative atmosphere. This will keep you re-stimulated with faith attitudes.
See how many people you can help to cure their own worry habit.
Every day of your life conceive of yourself as living in partnership and companionship with Jesus Christ. If He actually walked by your side, would you be worried or afraid? Well, then, say to yourself: ‘He is with me’. Affirm aloud: ‘I am with you always’. Then change it to say: ‘He is with me now’. Repeat that affirmation three times every day.
that I would try not to allow hate to creep in, for animosity not only corrodes the soul, but disorganises thought processes as well.
By the ‘put it in God’s hands’ method they have learned to solve their problems right.
Practise believing that God is as real and actual as your wife, or your business partner, or your closest friend. Practise talking matters over with Him; believe that He hears and gives thought to your problem.
‘effect a merger with God’.
‘Lord, I can’t offer You much in the way of a partnership, but please join with me and help me. I don’t know how You can help me, but I want to be helped. So I now put my business, myself, my family, and my future in Your hands. Whatever You say goes. I don’t even know how You are going to tell me what to do, but I am ready to hear and will follow Your advice if You will make it clear.’
take God as a partner in their business they will get more good ideas than they can ever use, and they can turn those ideas into assets.
In the very necessary business of solving personal problems, it is important, first of all, to realise that the power to solve them correctly is inherent within you. Second, it is necessary to work out and actualise a plan.
it a habit normally to draw upon powers that would otherwise be ignored except in some dramatic necessity.
In addition to the method of two or three praying together in the ‘surrender of God’ technique and that of establishing a partnership with God and the importance of a plan to tap and utilise emergency inner powers, there is still another tremendous technique—that of practising faith attitudes.
The requirement is faith, and directly in proportion to the faith that you have and use will you get results. Little faith gives you little results, medium faith gives you medium results, great faith gives you great results.
They were in their present unhappy condition, so they reasoned in their diseased thoughts, not because of any failure on their part but because of ‘dirty deals’ other people had given them. They actually used to lie in bed at night telling each other what they would like to say to other people by way of insult. In this unhealthy atmosphere they tried to find sleep and rest, but with no successful result.
“Don’t you know, Maurice,” Mary Alice said, “that you don’t need an actual mustard seed. That is only the symbol of an idea.” “I don’t know about that,” he replied. “It says mustard seed in the Bible and that’s what I want. Maybe I need the symbol to get faith.”
With each one was a card which bore the title: “Mustard Seed Remembrancer.’ The card also told how this piece of jewelry could be used; how the mustard seed would remind the wearer that ‘if he had faith, nothing was impossible’.
Ask Maurice and Mary Alice Flint how to get a problem solved right. They will tell you—‘Have faith—really have faith’. And believe me, they know.
List these facts on paper. This clarifies your thinking, bringing the various elements into orderly system. You see as well as think. The problem becomes objective, not subjective.
It has been variously computed that from 50 to 75 per cent of present-day people are ill because of the influence of improper mental states on their emotional and physical make-up.
Dr. Franklin Ebaugh of the University of Colourado Medical School maintains that one-third of all cases of illness in general hospitals are clearly organic in nature and onset, one-third are a combination of emotional and organic, and one-third are clearly emotional.
“It is not a question of whether an illness is physical or emotional, but how much of each.”
One who is ‘quick on the trigger’, he wrote, is likely to blame someone else, impulsively, for a fault or mistake, when it would be wiser simply to avoid being so much disturbed by what is done and is therefore unavoidable.
He said that his life was at the mercy of anyone who could annoy him.
So if you are under par I suggest that you do a very scrupulous job of self-analysis.
Many people suffer poor health not because of what they eat, but from what is eating them.
So we realise today the effect of thought patterns upon physical states. We realise that a person can make himself ill by resentment. We know he can develop various kinds of physiological symptoms because of a sense of guilt. Also, one may show definite physical symptoms as a result of fear and anxiety. We know that healing has been accomplished when the thoughts are changed.
I was interested to read a statement by a psychologist that infants can ‘catch’ fear and hatred from people around them more quickly than they can catch measles or other infectious diseases.
“fortunately infants can also catch love and goodness and faith and so grow up to become normal, healthy children and adults.”
that chronic victims of pains and aches in the muscles and joints may be suffering from nursing a smouldering grudge against someone close to them. He added that such persons usually are totally unaware that they bear a chronic resentment.
In no case is the patient consciously to blame for developing the disease. Such persons are not suffering from any disease of the mind, but rather from a disorder of their feelings, often linked to a marital or parent-child problem’.
The doctor sent Mrs. X to a psychiatrist who saw at once that there was some irritating situation in her life which she was translating outwardly in the form of a skin rash, thus taking out on her own person the urge to scratch some thing or person.
“There are colds which develop in medical students at the time of their examinations and colds which develop in many persons before or after a trip. Colds develop in housewives when they must care for a large family. And one often sees a cold develop in a patient when his mother-in-law comes to live in the house, and it often disappears when she leaves.” (Dr. Fowler does not specify the effects on the mother-in-law of a daughter-in-law or son-in-law. Perhaps she has a cold also.)
Dr. Fowler calls attention to the ‘emotional colds’ suffered by children who feel insecure. He reports that many cases of chronic colds occur in children who come from broken homes.
Since irritation, anger, hate, and resentment have such a powerful effect in producing ill-health, what is the antidote? Obviously it is to fill the mind with attitudes of goodwill, forgiveness, faith, love, and the spirit of imperturbability.
Remember that anger is an emotion, and an emotion is always warm, even hot. Therefore to reduce an emotion, cool it. And how do you cool it?
So deliberately oppose the heat of this emotion with coolness—freeze it out. Deliberately, by an act of will, keep your hands from clenching. Hold your fingers out straight. Deliberately reduce your tone; bring it down to a whisper. Remember that it is difficult to argue in a whisper. Slump in a chair, or even lie down if possible. It is very difficult to get mad lying down.
make a list of everything that irritates you. No matter how inconsequential it may be or how silly each is, list it just the same. The purpose in doing this is to dry up the tiny rivulets that feed the great river of anger.
snip away by prayer each annoyance that feeds your anger.
‘It isn’t worth it to spend $1,000 worth of emotion on a five-cent irritation.’
When a hurt-feeling situation arises, get it straightened out as quickly as possible. Don’t brood over it for a minute longer than you can help. Do something about it. Do not allow yourself to sulk or indulge in self-pity. Don’t mope around with resentful thoughts. The minute your feelings are hurt, do just as when you hurt your finger. Immediately apply the cure. Unless you do so the situation can become distorted out of all proportion. So put some spiritual iodine on the hurt at once by saying a prayer of love and forgiveness.
Simply start praying for the person who has hurt your feelings. Continue this until you feel the malice fading away. Sometimes you may have to pray for quite a while to get that
Actually take the advice of Jesus to forgive seventy times seven. To be literal, that means four hundred ninety times. Before you have forgiven a person that many times you will be free of resentment.
my generation is that human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind.”
So flush out all old, tired, worn-out thoughts. Fill your mind with fresh, new creative thoughts of faith, love, and goodness. By this process you can actually remake your life.
He altered his thinking, and the new thoughts which flowed in displaced the old thoughts which had been defeating him and his life was changed.
