PART I
How to Understand Yourself

1. NEW LIGHT ON POSITIVE THINKING

You will discover this book to be unique. It departs sharply from the timeworn formula for self-realization. Its pages do not dangle the promise of success and happiness before the reader and end by giving him just another warmed-over version of positive thinking. Neither does it suggest to the man beset with problems, who is low in spirit and harassed from too much fail­ure, that he is equipped to achieve the success that has eluded him all of his life. The millions are mute evidence that we are generally incapable of rising to the heights by courage alone. True, a man may read one of the current self-help books and experience a flutter of hope. But does it accomplish anything permanent for him? Is he equipped to make it work? Rarely. More often it acts as a psychological opiate and, like sedation, soon disappears, leaving the symptoms as severe and the victim as discouraged as ever.

Today, we are learning to do many things for ourselves. Advice is everywhere. From the pages of books and magazines we are urged to solve many problems, from repairing the kitchen sink to being our own psychoanalyst, for this is the Do-It-Yourself Age. Rules, techniques, and tools are abundant, and frequently we do acquire considerable skill in fixing material things, but our efforts in the past have been infinitely less fruitful in the repair of our own attitudes and beliefs. Why? Because man has not been given a workable method for controlling the basic attitudes and habits that keep him in bondage! In lieu of an effective method for such control, man has attempted to elevate his beliefs and correct his personality defects by will power alone. We are smarting today from an acute rash of "Positive Thinking-itis." No one escapes. Every amateur psychologist in­sists success and well-being are attainable, suggesting that you have hidden qualities of strength and wisdom tucked away just awaiting your recognition. You are told that, although you may be in debt, without a job, and engulfed in gloom, it doesn't matter, for positive thinking and will power can melt away your problems. Though you may have forgotten how it feels to be healthy and vigorously alive, the experts patiently explain how your positive thoughts of good health will vitalize your ailing body and make it hum anew. Now how are you supposed to generate this power? It is about as easy to do as trying to start the family automobile in zero weather with a run-down battery. It is possible to accomplish these things—we know a bare hand­ful who have—but the odds are greatly against it. The irony of

positive thinking and its popular application is that those who need it most have lost the will power to make it work, and those who have self-confidence and will power are successful and do not need it! Doesn't it seem cruel to expect man, weary from defeat, to utilize dynamic will power, a force he so obviously lacks and one that he perhaps never possessed?

Lest we be misunderstood, positive thinking does work. It can and will do all the things claimed for it when it is enforced and sustained by the inner power of the subconscious mind. But without this collaboration of the conscious and subconscious, positive thoughts become weak, flicker, and die, for want of fuel to sustain them. Can those who are depressed and ill vigor­ously apply to their positive thoughts the continued force and drive to make them work? Are the tense and neurotic any better equipped? Does the failure, the insomniac, or the alcoholic have the lasting fortitude and courage to cope with his problem through self-generated positive thoughts? Few have. Those capa­ble of such perseverance have been using their subconscious power as a matter of course. By nature, they are healthy, happy, well-adjusted, and successful. We must agree, ordinarily, that it is futile to expect a person numbed from a lifetime of defeat to automatically reverse this pattern with positive thinking. We are asked to spend resources lavishly from an account long overdrawn. If you expected to build a house you would not begin without tools or plans; neither would you expect to repair an automobile without the proper equipment. Is it not logical, then, to re-examine and evaluate our mental equipment before we undertake to reverse lifetime habits and revolutionize our lives? Of course it is. Self-discipline is not the simplest task in the world, so it is wise to begin the job as well equipped as possible.

WHAT IS ABILITY?

To have ability, or to be able, refers to one's capacity for accomplishment. Ability may be classified either as active or latent. Ability is latent that has been thwarted, blocked, or other­wise rendered unusable, which then becomes action unexpressed. Achievement occurs from intelligently applied ability properly motivated and fortified by the power of will. A goal could be within easy reach, and you may have the ability to achieve it, but should motivation be lacking, action remains unexpressed and you accomplish nothing. A man can. have many talents, yet his negative attitudes may render them, one by one, inef­fective. Reduced to simple formula: we are, at this moment, the sum total of our positive and negative attitudes. If our scale of attitudes tilts to the negative side, we become slaves of doubt, fear, uncertainty, and failure. A balance that is positive leads just as surely to success. This is why positive thoughts are so often difficult to hold. Positive thoughts are outnumbered, so to speak, when our scale of attitudes dips far to the left, making the climate unfavorable for growth. Abilities start unfolding like the petals of a rose when the various facets of self-doubt are eliminated and replaced by positive beliefs. Laziness defeats more people than heredity and poor health combined. Oppor­tunities have a way of slipping by the lazy person without arousing his attention. The clerk with executive potential and the student who "just gets by" in school need one thing in common —motivation or desire for achievement.

While abilities and talents are present within most of us, the element of doubt can reduce them to nothingness. Remove doubt and replace it with belief, for laziness substitute motiva­tion, and you remove the shackles of limitation. Is this hard to do? It has been next to impossible in the past but this is no longer true. Today, it is relatively simple: no study is required, no hard work or rigorous discipline is necessary. Tools are now available for unlocking the inner mind, removing the attitudes of limitation, and substituting, instead, the positive seeds of suc­cess. An inner certainty of success is the only route to success, and an inner attitude of defeat can lead to nothing but defeat. It is a paradox that we may "talk" success while we subcon­sciously strive for failure, but millions of us do just this, and it is the path of defeat. The hypochondriac talks about good health but he is inwardly convinced that his illness will persist. It is a law that you attract and achieve what you visualize for yourself, whether it be success or failure, illness or good health. Impress the inner mind with positive beliefs of good health and the inner mind strives to make good health a normal factor. To fear illness, one must create mental beliefs and pictures of him­self as being ill. In this mental creation he sees himself without good health, or in a weakened condition. Should he continue to dwell upon such morbid thoughts, the power within will alter the body to match these negative impressions. In this way we struggle against the ever tightening noose of self-imposed limita­tion. We race to and fro, searching for someone or something to help us, never suspecting the answer to life's enigmas is within us.

The day is just beginning to dawn when men will know that neither the counsel of others nor miracle drugs can ever supply them with inner strength and physical health. Some day, all will know that the Creator fully equipped us for our journey through life. One by one, the frustrated, the ill, and the harassed must cease fighting themselves. They must pause, "still" their minds, and look within instead of without for courage and strength. Then each will know, for he will have found the wis­dom of eternity—the power within.

Are You Ready To Move Onto The Next Lesson? Click Here….