Imagination

True imagination is a belief in the impossible? It is your launching pad for creativity. Somerset Maugham once said, “Man consists of body, mind, and imagination. His body is faulty, his mind untrustworthy, but his imagination has made him remarkable.” Think of the imagination of Leonardo Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Newton, Brahms, Bach, etc. What a poorer world this would be without their imagination! Were these people extraordinary? No, they were ordinary people with extraordinary imagination.
Don’t stifle your dreams because they sound impossible or too far-fetched. Dream on. Let your imagination loose; let it trigger your creativity. There is one simple rule: Never suppress your curiosity.
Do not stifle your children’s imagination; don’t yell at them if they crayon outside the lines. Look at it as a blessing if your child daydreams a lot. Encourage your children to ask a million questions and if they have this imaginary friend that only they can see, don’t tell them the imaginary friend doesn’t exist. The world needs dreamers; your children are the Edison’s or Einstein’s of tomorrow.
If you want to accomplish something of value, see it from the end. Visualize in your mind what it will look like when it’s completed and then work backwards to see what you have to do each step of the way. When you get to the beginning, you will know exactly what you have to do to take the first step. Then take it. Don’t look for problems. Look for solutions. There are many ways to accomplish your goal. Keep trying until you find one that works. Please do not try to go it alone. Tune in your Subconscious Mind to the Universal Superconscious Mind of God. God already knows the answer and God has been giving you hints through your imagination. God does not give you a dream without the ability to accomplish the dream.
“I would rather fail attempting something great than succeed in doing nothing at all.” I probably said this several times in these messages and it bears repeating. From Think and Grow Rich, “Whatsoever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve.

Today’s Exercise: Take a half of an hour, find a quiet place and let your imagination out of its cell.
Today’s Affirmation: The kingdom of God is within me.
Points to Ponder: Don’t stifle your dreams because they sound impossible or too far fetched. If you want to accomplish something of value, see it from the end.

Preparing the Mind

To prepare your mind to be successful and happy, it begins with identifying, studying, understanding, and the clearing out of the three enemies: indecision, doubt, and fear. Your sixth sense will never function properly while any one or all three remain in your mind. The members of this destructive trinity are closely related. Where one may be found, the other two are lurking close by. Indecision spawns doubt and when the two blend, they become fear. This is usually a slow process that may grow without your awareness. There are six basic fears that will prevent you from attaining your goals:
1. Fear of poverty – This fear forces many people to take no end jobs or stay where they have no hope of advancement.
2. Fear of criticism – This fear keeps people from trying new things or taking any kind of risk, whatsoever.
3. Fear of ill health – Believe it or not this fear keeps us sick and creates illness where there was no cause.
4. Fear of loss of love. This fear forces loneliness, depression, and anxiety.
5. Fear of old age – This fear is debilitating, causes illness, and lack of productivity.
6. The fear of death – This fear is lack of understanding who we really are.

Fears are nothing more than states of mind. Once we control our state of mind, we will eliminate fear. Fear is an illusion; it is False Education Appearing Real. Just as simply turning on a light can eliminate fear of the dark, turning on your mind to the truth eliminates these fears. This whole exercise is designed to turn on the light in your mind.

Today’s Exercise: Go into a totally dark room and stay there for ten minutes. Note the feelings you are going through. Now turn on the light.
Today’s Affirmation: My Subconscious Mind will make into reality whatever I ask of it.
Points to Ponder: Fears are nothing more that states of mind. Fear is an illusion; it is False Education Appearing Real.

Lead by Example

It’s funny how often the problem is you. Whenever you don’t get the results you want, you need to swallow your pride and look inward to see if you were part of the problem. Ask yourself these three questions:
1. Did I clearly articulate the goal?
2. Did I give myself enough time and resources to accomplish the goal?
3. Did I really believe I could do it?
Leaders need to understand how profoundly they affect those around them. Optimism and pessimism are equally infectious. You directly set the tone of everyone around you.
Successful people make time for those who answer to them. Unsuccessful or poor leaders treat their subordinates as necessary Evils. Mediocre leaders don’t even take the trouble to know their people. As a successful person you know that you don’t do it alone; you need to send a signal to people you work with that they are important. As a matter of fact, nothing else should be more important to you.
No matter what your current status is, start thinking of yourself as a leader. Leaders are not born; they are made. Lead by example. A leader is a person who continually looks for solutions to problems. Leaders know how to be held accountable. Leaders must acknowledge mistakes and take responsibility. It is far more important to correct the mistakes than to worry about making them.
Show me a person who doesn’t make mistakes and I’ll show you a person who doesn’t do anything. Mistakes are blessings in disguise. Mistakes account for many of the great discoveries of our time. Think of vulcanized rubber, Post-It notes, etc. Don’t ever stop trying.

Today’s Exercise: Make up your mind today that you are a leader.
Today’s Affirmations: I attract success and happiness into my life every day.
Points to Ponder: Mistakes are blessings in disguise. It is far more important to correct the mistakes than to worry about making them.

Happiness Is Your 100th Birthday

Imagine your one-hundredth birthday. Most people will say they don’t want to live that long, because by that time they will be old and feeble, alone in a nursing home and unable to do anything for themselves. But, it doesn’t have to be that way. Your body is designed to last several hundred years, but we abuse it so much that it breaks down way before its time. All through this book we talk about how your mind controls your body and that over eighty percent of all disease and illness is psychosomatic.
What happens if we finally stop feeding our mind with negative prompters and commands? What happens when we realize that happiness is a pill we take to eliminate aging, sickness, disease, boredom, hatred, jealousy, frustration, and fear? What happens when we eliminate the idea of retirement from our thinking process?
Retirement is working forty years at a job we hate with our mind fixated on retiring and doing what we like, only to find out that at age sixty-five or older, our body cannot do the things we wanted to retire for. There is no balance in most people’s lives. They work fifty weeks, take two weeks off and try to cram a years worth of fun in those two weeks, only to find out they are really too tired or broke to do anything meaningful. I have a friend who spent his vacation painting his house. I asked him if he loved painting, he said no and that he hated it. Some vacation, huh?
In some European countries, vacations are four or five weeks and most of the time is spent traveling to new countries and cultures. In the United States, there are many, many people who have never traveled more than one hundred miles away from their home. The secret of longevity is happiness and work. Take a lot of small vacations and get a hobby that makes your heart sing.
I’m seventy years old. I just bought a new home with a thirty-year mortgage. I intend to pay off this mortgage. I’m Chief Executive Officer of three different companies. I intend to write a new book every year for the next thirty years. I’m writing this page at 5:00 A.M. and I’m not the least bit tired. My best advice to you is to get a life. Happiness is the magic pill.

Today’s Exercise: Get up at 5:00 A.M. and do something you Love.
Today’s Affirmation: I am as happy as I make up my mind to be.
Points to Ponder: The secret of longevity is happiness and work.

Continued Success

All great men have followed one success, with another, and another. Thomas Edison did not stop when he invented the talking machine (record player). Next, he invented the light bulb. It did not work with his first try; it came on after 3000 failures. Edison said, “I now know 3000 ways a light bulb won’t work.” Did he quit? No, thank goodness, or I would be writing this in the dark.” Edison patented over an additional 300 inventions.
Edison used to go fishing with his friends, Henry Ford and Harvey Firestone. One day, Edison’s wife asked her husband what he and his friends did while fishing. They had no hooks and no bait. Edison’s reply was, “We’re just fishing for ideas.”
The more the mind does, the more it can do. Ideas are released energy. You can do more and better work than you ever have done before with this released energy. You can know more than you know now. You know from your own experience that under proper mental conditions of joy or enthusiasm, you can do three or four times the work without fatigue than you could ordinarily do with this released energy.
Tiredness is more boredom than actual physical fatigue. You can work almost indefinitely when the work is a pleasure. One of the most famous and most reproduced poem, The Victor, by C.W. Longenecker, starts out by saying:
“If you think you are beaten, you are;
If you think you dare not, you don’t;”
If you like to win, but think you can’t, it’s almost certain you won’t.
The poem ends by saying:
“Life’s battles don’t always go to the stronger or faster man; But, sooner or later, the man who wins is the man who thinks he can.”
The key word throughout this message is THINK.
It all begins in a person’s mind and thinking capacity. Success begins with a person’s will; it’s all in the state of mind.

Today’s Exercise: Use your mind, it’s free!

Today’s Affirmation: I have a positive mental attitude, therefore I am a success.

Points to Ponder: Life’s battles don’t always go to the stronger or faster man; but sooner or later the man who wins is the man who thinks he can.