To be ambitious for wealth, and
yet always expecting to be poor; to be always doubting your ability to get what
you long for, is like trying to reach east by traveling west. There is no philosophy,
which will help man to succeed when he is always doubting his ability to do so,
and thus attracting failure. No matter how hard you work for success, if your
thought is saturated with the fear of failure, it will kill your efforts,
neutralize your endeavors and make success impossible
– Charles Baudouin
I tried to learn how to jive
dance once and so tripped up my feet that I fell several times and looked like
a klutz most of the time. I love to dance and the complexity of step with the
fast timing was beyond my ability. The truth is that I was so amazed by what I
saw that I confounded my own ability to learn by thinking about how hard it was
to learn and how lacking I was in the talent the other dancers possessed. In
this case, my desire to preserve my dignity and avoid bruises outweighed my
desire to look cool on the dance floor.
Could I have learned the jive? I
don’t know but my doubts prevailed and I had to settle for my own steps. In a
sales training, the instructor reminded us that the majority of missed sales
occurred when the salesperson did not assume the sale and that this happened
repeatedly to those people who lacked self-confidence and became timid when
confronting confident people.
We pour the cold water of doubt
on the flames of our desires every time we see obstacles instead of avenues.
Worse, we work hard and fail, which justifies to us and expands before us our
belief that we do not prosper because we cannot prosper. Therefore, we prosper
in difficulty and failure instead of success. We attract to us the object of
our attention regardless of the object of our desire or our good intentions.
The way to begin movement in
thought and belief away from our own self-blocks to self-made success is to
notice and praise our every small success even as we diminish our seeming
failures as evidence that we just need more practice. Sincerely acknowledge
every success. Practice thinking success in the face of seeming failure. Remain
cheerful and expectant no matter what appears. Finally, celebrate every win no
matter how small. Remember that record breaking athletes fall short of the
record more often than they beat it, but they break records by persisting
through their “failures.”
Notice that we must move toward
something to arrive at it. Rather than avoiding failure, we achieve success,
first in mind then in action. It is not enough to seek to avoid mistakes; we
must actively seek to be our own channel of right action based on right
thoughts in order to receive our desire as our righteous reward. “Nothing
ventured, nothing gained,” is truth no matter how old and trite it sounds.
I move in the direction of my
success by relying on my spiritual compass, which points me always to the
abundant prosperity that Spirit provides when I accept. I accept it now with my
entire doubt-dispelling acceptance, and receive, and experience it with
feelings of joy and delight. And so it is.
John
John Lusk
“First
you ask definitely for direction, then it will enter your consciousness as a definite
thought; then in your turn you give it back the thought and it will give you
back the thing. It answers every question, solves every problem; it is the
solution to every difficulty.” Ernest Holmes
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