YOU must use your thought as directed in previous chapters, and begin to
do what you can do where you are; and you must do ALL that you can do
where you are.
You can advance only by being larger than your present place; and no man
is larger than his present place who leaves undone any of the work
pertaining to that place.
The world is advanced only by those who more than fill their present
places.
If no man quite filled his present place, you can see that there must be
a going backward in everything. Those who do not quite fill their
present places are dead weight upon society, government, commerce, and
industry; they must be carried along by others at a great expense. The
progress of the world is retarded only by those who do not fill the
places they are holding; they belong to a former age and a lower stage
or plane of life, and their tendency is toward degeneration. No society
could advance if every man was smaller than his place; social evolution
is guided by the law of physical and mental evolution. In the animal
world, evolution is caused by excess of life.
When an organism has more life than can be expressed in the functions of
its own plane, it develops the organs of a higher plane, and a new
species is originated.
There never would have been new species had there not been organisms
which more than filled their places. The law is exactly the same for
you; your getting rich depends upon your applying this principle to your
own affairs.
Every day is either a successful day or a day of failure; and it is the
successful days which get you what you want. If everyday is a failure,
you can never get rich; while if every day is a success, you cannot fail
to get rich.
If there is something that may be done today, and you do not do it, you
have failed in so far as that thing is concerned; and the consequences
may be more disastrous than you imagine.
You cannot foresee the results of even the most trivial act; you do not
know the workings of all the forces that have been set moving in your
behalf. Much may be depending on your doing some simple act; it may be
the very thing which is to open the door of opportunity to very great
possibilities. You can never know all the combinations which Supreme
Intelligence is making for you in the world of things and of things and
of human affairs; your neglect or failure to do some small thing may
cause a long delay in getting what you want.
Do, every day, ALL that can be done that day.
There is, however, a limitation or qualification of the above that you
must take into account.
You are not to overwork, nor to rush blindly into your business in the
effort to do the greatest possible number of things in the shortest
possible time.
You are not to try to do tomorrow's work today, nor to do a week's work
in a day.
It is really not the number of things you do, but the EFFICIENCY of each
separate action that counts.
Every act is, in itself, either a success or a failure.
Every act is, in itself, either effective or inefficient.
Every inefficient act is a failure, and if you spend your life in doing
inefficient acts, your whole life will be a failure.
The more things you do, the worse for you, if all your acts are
inefficient ones.
On the other hand, every efficient act is a success in itself, and if
every act of your life is an efficient one, your whole life MUST be a
success.
The cause of failure is doing too many things in an inefficient manner,
and not doing enough things in an efficient manner.
You will see that it is a self-evident proposition that if you do not do
any inefficient acts, and if you do a sufficient number of efficient
acts, you will become rich. If, now, it is possible for you to make each
act an efficient one, you see again that the getting of riches is
reduced to an exact science, like mathematics.
The matter turns, then, on the questions whether you can make each
separate act a success in itself. And this you can certainly do.
You can make each act a success, because ALL Power is working with you;
and ALL Power cannot fail.
Power is at your service; and to make each act efficient you have only
to put power into it.
Every action is either strong or weak; and when every one is strong, you
are acting in the Certain Way which will make you rich.
Every act can be made strong and efficient by holding your vision while
you are doing it, and putting the whole power of your FAITH and PURPOSE
into it.
It is at this point that the people fail who separate mental power from
personal action. They use the power of mind in one place and at one
time, and they act in another place and at another time. So their acts
are not successful in themselves; too many of them are inefficient. But
if ALL Power goes into every act, no matter how commonplace, every act
will be a success in itself; and as in the nature of things every
success opens the way to other successes, your progress toward what you
want, and the progress of what you want toward you, will become
increasingly rapid.
Remember that successful action is cumulative in its results. Since the
desire for more life is inherent in all things, when a man begins to
move toward larger life more things attach themselves to him, and the
influence of his desire is multiplied.
Do, every day, all that you can do that day, and do each act in an
efficient manner.
In saying that you must hold your vision while you are doing each act,
however trivial or commonplace, I do not mean to say that it is
necessary at all times to see the vision distinctly to its smallest
details. It should be the work of your leisure hours to use your
imagination on the details of your vision, and to contemplate them until
they are firmly fixed upon memory. If you wish speedy results, spend
practically all your spare time in this practice.
By continuous contemplation you will get the picture of what you want,
even to the smallest details, so firmly fixed upon your mind, and so
completely transferred to the mind of Formless Substance, that in your
working hours you need only to mentally refer to the picture to
stimulate your faith and purpose, and cause your best effort to be put
forth. Contemplate your picture in your leisure hours until your
consciousness is so full of it that you can grasp it instantly. You will
become so enthused with its bright promises that the mere thought of it
will call forth the strongest energies of your whole being.
Let us again repeat our syllabus, and by slightly changing the closing
statements bring it to the point we have now reached.
There is a thinking stuff from which all things are made, and which, in
its original state, permeates, penetrates, and fills the interspaces of
the universe.
A thought, in this substance, Produces the thing that is imaged by the
thought.
Man can form things in his thought, and, by impressing his thought upon
formless substance, can cause the thing he thinks about to be created.
In order to do this, man must pass from the competitive to the creative
mind; he must form a clear mental picture of the things he wants, and
do, with faith and purpose, all that can be done each day, doing each
separate thing in an efficient manner.
< Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13 >
This work is in the public
domain in the United States because it was published before January 1,
1923.
