YOU CAN WORK YOUR OWN MIRACLES
Big thanks to my mentor Dale Brown for forwarding me the following from Napoleon Hill titled "You Can Work Your Own Miracles."
1. Every adversity, every unpleasant circumstance, every failure, and every physical pain carries with it the seed of an equivalent benefit.
2. Refuse to accept as inevitable any circumstance one does not desire.
3. Your mental attitude determines whether you find peace of mind or go through life in a state of frustration and misery.
4. The mind is the one and only means by which an individual may plan his own life and live it as he chooses.
A positive mental attitude is the fixed purpose to make every experience, whether it is pleasant or unpleasant, yield some form of benefit which will help us to balance our lives with all the things which lead to peace of mind.
It is the habit of searching for “the seed of an equivalent benefit” which comes with every failure, defeat, or adversity we experience, and causing that seed to germinate into something beneficial.
The majority of people go all the way through life with their mental attitudes dominated by fears and anxieties and worries over circumstances which somehow have a way of making their appearance sooner or later.
A positive mental attitude is the habit of acting with definiteness of purpose, with full belief in both the soundness of that purpose and one’s ability to achieve it.
All habits, good or bad, voluntary or involuntary, are established by one’s mental attitude.
5. Mental attitude is everything, because it influences every experience with which we meet, and it is under our complete control at all times.
What a profound thought it is to recognize that the one thing which can give us success or bring us failure, bless us with peace of mind, or curse us with misery all the days of our lives, is simply the privilege of taking possession of our own minds and guiding them to whatever ends we choose, through our mental attitude.
6. Every circumstance known to man, every mistake and every failure and every heartache, may become highly beneficial when one relates himself to them in a spirit of harmony and understanding
of their nature and purpose.
7. By the simple process of changing his mental attitude, man can draw himself any pattern of life and living he chooses and make that pattern a reality.
8. The seven basic fears we must overcome are:
a. The Fear of POVERTY
b. The Fear of CRITICISM
c. The Fear of ILL HEALTH and PHYSICAL PAIN
d. The Fear of the LOSS of LOVE
e. The Fear of the LOSS of LIBERTY
f. The Fear of OLD AGE
g. The Fear of OUR DEATH or DEATH of a LOVED ONE
9. Suffering, through physical or mental pain, disappointments, frustrations, and sorrows, is the means by which one may become great or go down in permanent failure. The determining factor as to which of these two circumstances one embraces depends entirely upon one’s mental attitude toward them.
10. Struggle keeps man from going to sleep with self-satisfaction or laziness, and forces him onward and upward in the fulfillment of his mission in life, and he thereby makes his individual contribution to whatever may be the Universal Purpose of mankind on earth.
Strength, both physical and spiritual, is the product of struggle!
Meet struggle and master it, says nature, and you shall have strength and wisdom sufficient for all your needs.
11. When a majority of the people of any nation give up their inherited prerogative right to make their own way through struggle, history shows clearly that the entire nation is in a tailspin of decay that inevitably must end in extinction.
The individual who not only is willing to live on the public treasury, but demands that he be fed from it, is already dead.
Poverty is a disease which, once it is accepted, becomes a fixation which is hard to shake off.
It is no disgrace to be born in poverty but is most decidedly is a disgrace to accept this birthright as irrevocable.
Most of the truly great men and women throughout civilization have known poverty, but they experienced it, renounced it, mastered it and made themselves free.
Poverty can be a profound blessing. It can also be a lifelong curse. The determining factor as to which it shall be consists in one’s mental attitude toward it. If it is accepted as a challenge to greater effort, it is a blessing. If it is accepted as an unavoidable handicap, then it is an enduring curse.
12. The Twelve Great Riches of Life:
a. A POSITIVE MENTAL ATTITUDE. One’s mental attitude supplies the “pulling power” which attracts to him the material equivalent of all fears, desires, doubts and beliefs.
b. SOUND PHYSICAL HEALTH. Maintenance of a Positive Mental Attitude is one of the greatest forms of prevention of ill health known to mankind.
c. HARMONY IN HUMAN RELATIONS. Friction in human relations is often the result of confusion, frustration, fear, and doubt within the individual who, oftentimes, mirrors these negative states of mind in other people, thus making harmony impossible.
d. FREEDOM FROM FEAR. No man enslaved by fear is rich; nor is he free.
e. THE HOPE OF FUTURE ACHIEVEMENT. Hope sustains one in times of emergency when, without it, fear would take over. Hope is the basis of the most profound form of happiness which comes from the expectancy of success in some, as yet unattained, plan or purpose.
f. THE CAPACITY FOR FAITH. Faith is the spiritual quality which, when mixed with prayer, gives one direct and immediate connection with Infinite Intelligence.
g. WILLINGNESS TO SHARE ONE’S BLESSINGS. He who has not learned the blessed art of sharing his blessing with others has not found the true path to enduring happiness. Neglect or refusal to share one’s blessings is a sure way to cut the line of communication between a man and his soul.
h. A LABOR OF LOVE. Engagement in a labor of love is the greatest of all cures for melancholy, frustration, and fear. And it is a builder of physical health without equal.
i. AN OPEN MIND ON ALL SUBJECTS. Tolerance, which is among the higher attributes of culture, is expressed only by the person who holds an open mind on all subjects, toward all people, at all times.
j. SELF-DISCIPLINE. Self-discipline is the only means by which one may take full and complete possession of his own mind and direct it to the attainment of whatsoever ends he may wish.
k. THE CAPACITY TO UNDERSTAND PEOPLE. The person who is rich in the understanding of people recognizes that all people are fundamentally alike. Know yourself and you will be well on the road to understanding others.
l. ECONOMIC SECURITY. Economic security is not attained by the possession of money alone. It is attained by the service one renders, for useful service may be converted into all forms of human needs, with or without the use of money.
13. Failure is an accurate measuring device by which an individual may determine his weaknesses; and it provides therefore an opportunity for correcting them. In this sense failure always is a blessing.
Most so-called failures are only temporary defeats which can be converted into assets of a priceless nature if one takes a positive mental attitude toward them.
From birth until death, life poses a constant challenge to people to master failure without going down for the count, and rewards with bountiful opulence and great personal powers those who successfully meet the challenge.
In all human endeavors nature seems to favor the “fool” who did not know he could fail, but who went ahead and did the “impossible” before he discovered it couldn’t be done.
14. A man without the capacity for sorrow is the nearest thing to a Devil in the flesh.
The emotion of sorrow, like the emotion of love, refines the souls of those who experience it, and gives them courage and faith to meet the trials and tribulations of struggle in a world of confusion and chaos, provided always that sorrow is accepted as a benefit and not as a curse. Resentment of sorrow develops stomach ulcers, high blood pressure and general unfriendliness from other people.
Every sorrow brings with it the seed of an equivalent joy!
15. Man alone has been given the privilege of fixing his own earthly destiny, with the right to make it pleasant or unpleasant, successful or unsuccessful, happy or unhappy, rich or poor, and his achievements are always unpredictable because his potential power is limited.
Man has potential control over almost everything, but he rarely discovers the powers available to him or makes any attempt to use these powers for his own uplift, or to make this a better world.
Man’s major weakness consists not in riches he does not possess, but in the failure to make use of that which he has!
16. If negative thoughts stray into the minds of the truly great, these thoughts are immediately transmuted into positive thoughts and exercised by positive physical action appropriate to their nature.
17. Freedom of the American way of life is one of the Great Miracles of all times. Here in the United States of America the stage has been set and the way has been prepared, as nowhere else on this earth at any period of time, for man to take full and complete possession of his own mind and direct it to whatever ends he may desire.
Where else on earth, except in America, could a uneducated Italian immigrant such as A. B Giannina, start his career by pushing a banana cart and pyramid his efforts into the ownership of the world’s largest banking system—the Bank of America?
Where else but in America could a young, uneducated mechanic give birth to an industry like that of the automobile industry, and without capital to begin with, pyramid his humble beginning into a world-wide empire with a fabulous fortune, and provide employment for hundreds of thousands of people, as did Henry Ford?
Where else is every male child born as a potential holder of the highest office the people have to offer.
Where, except in the United States of America, can any individual of any race or creed walk with dignity upon the earth and say truly, “I am free?”
Let us be reminded that this heritage will remain ours only so long as we recognize it, use it properly and protect it. Like, all other blessings conferred upon man by Mother Nature, our rights to the privileges we enjoy in America will remain only as long as we earn the right to them. Nature looks with great disfavor on the idea of something for nothing.
18. All of man’s successes and all of his failures and frustrations are the direct result of the manner in which he uses his mind, or neglects to use it.
One of the greatest of the inconsistencies of mankind is the fact that the majority of people go through life with their minds devoted largely to thinking of all the things and circumstances they do not wish—poverty, failure, ill health, unhappiness, and physical pain—and they then wonder why they are cursed with all of these undesirable conditions.
The mind attracts to one the exact material equivalent of that which one thinks about most often. The Creator provided every normal person with complete, unchallengeable right and power to control and direct his mind power to whatever ends he may choose, and you will have no difficulty in recognizing that all undesirable circumstances one meets with are the results of neglect to take possession of the mind and to guide it to the ends one desires.
Hypochondria means imaginary physical ailment! It is a conservative statement to say that this ailment gives doctors and dentists more trouble than all the real ailments known to mankind.
19. The most profound truth known to man is the fact that man alone has been given the inexorable privilege of controlling and directing his own mind to whatsoever ends he may choose. We know also that the acceptance and use of this profound prerogative gives man the key to his own destiny.
The subconscious mind will not act upon any idea, plan, or purpose which is not clearly expressed to it.
