CHAPTER 4. THE SUPREME LAW OF SUCCESS
SELLING POWER : Study out plans. Approach your customer or the public, with a definite plan. Here is one of simple power: Attract the attention, secure the interest, carry the conviction, demand the decision, then in any line of business you will have your order book full. Selling power is confidence backed up by the will. Success is ambition and desire driven by the will. Do you desire success? How much? When you desire it as a starving man has hunger for food, you will win. Want to attain your ambition? How much? When your ambition becomes a thirst, a burning consuming thirst, such as the lost traveler has in the blistering sands of the desert, then you will achieve. What you want is not opportunity, the world is flooded with golden opportunities. What you want is not a fair chance, chances gleam in your future sky fairer than the endless myriads of stars that encrust with glittering splendor the evening heavens. What you do want is concentration, confidence, self-reliance, desire, ambition, PERSONAL POWER.
POWER OF ATTRACTION : Make your purpose brilliant. Keep it clear. Seek to energize it with positives. Do not lumber up your plan. Centralize it. Modify it. Create it as a necessity. Form into it the indispensable. Then embody yourself into it. See that nothing about you defeats, or neutralizes attraction. Have a burning interest in your proposition. Look for fulfillment. Anticipate success. Make the world feel that you know you are right. Stop asking folks if they think you will succeed. Of course they do not, because they have not. Hold your mind relaxed in Silence. Make your desire active. Set your wishes in motion. Confidence attracts confidence. Positives attract positives. Bring out your latent forces, they only need arousing. THINK AND ACT.
YOUR MENTAL ATTITUDE: Have faith in yourself. Arouse faith in others. Think in the affirmative. Assert your hope and confidence. Root out every doubt. Help someone out of their slough of doubt and despondency. Believe in the world, in life, in growth, in possibilities. Let your faith be as big and bright as the sun. "Cast not away your confidence which hath great recompense of reward." "Dwell in confidence." "Hold fast your confidence and hope unto the end." Keep your mental attitude independent. Keep it brave. Think of money as a means, not as an end. Seek wealth for the power of service it gives. Have a generous mental attitude. Help others succeed. Banish fear, worry, indecision, timidity, irresolution, anxiety from your mental attitude, they paralyze effort. Trust yourself. Trust others. Have a mental attitude that is supreme, divine, and absolute. Spend your last dollar like a king. Gird the loins of your mind with "I WILL." "I CAN." All the mountains of difficulty will melt before your presence.
AMBITION AND DESIRE: Ambition is idealism. Desire is faith. You cannot have either without the possibility of their fulfillment. Desires come from Supreme Intelligence in the Universe, and they are divine. Therefore, they are real, possible of positive realization. Keep them sacred. Let them become the ideals of your life. Make them glow with the fires of your energies. They spell success and victory. They will crown your life, if you will breathe your life into them. Let your ambition make you irrepressible. Avoid reactionary influences. Keep away from dull, stupid, inactive people.
CREATIVE FORCE AND HARMONY: Be original. Think original thoughts, put them into form. Invent and produce. Create ideas. Feel complete in yourself. Do not stand in wonder at what others have done, right at your feet lies a secret that will enrich the world and make you famous. A thinker discovered a substitute for the artist camel's hair brush by taking the hair from inside a cow's ear. If you work in an office think up some out-door vocation. Grow something, raise something, get interested in animals. Study the market near you, create, produce, or raise something to sell. If not for money, for the forces of life the work gives. It will keep you from habits, from speculating, from gambling, from politics and other evils. Build something, raise chickens, pets, sheep, cattle, or grow flowers, fruits, berries. WORK WITH NATURE. This is the very harmony of success. In it you will be in touch with Universal Intelligence, will get the inflow of Infinite Life, and thru it will keep growing.
YOUR LATENT POWERS : Take account of your personal abilities. Your gifts, talents, forces, equipment. What per cent are you using? Most people are not using over 20 per cent of their capital of personal power. The 80 per cent lies dormant. Why have only 20 per cent of your share of Life, Success, Harmony and Happiness, when you should have 100 per cent. There are big prizes awaiting your latent powers. At every turn of the way, you can read the sign: "Wanted. Men with Power." There is an unexplored continent in your Being. Go into it, bring out its riches, for yourself and for the world.
PERSISTENCE AND PLANNING : A plan is a mighty source of power. Do not work and live "hit-or-miss" in your activities day by day. Have a plan. Sit in Silence a few moments each morning and create a plan. You can double your efficiency. Think out a plan, open a way. Get an effectual insight. Keep your plan under your cap, and work it out. Persist in your plan. Stick to it. Never grow sour or negative in your manner. Keep sweet. If your plan is blocked, dig in another direction. Build a new foundation. Shake off doubts and start new. Unless your success makes you happy it is not success. Deep at the heart of the Universe lies happiness. Live closely to that heart, in persistent power of service.
IMPERSONATE YOUR DESIRES: Impersonate greatness and you will become great. Impersonate loveliness and you will become lovely. Why do actors become matinee idols? They could readily marry a hundred times a month. It is quite impossible for an actor to remain unmarried. What is the secret? Can a person get it? Certainly; here it is. Actors impersonate heroes, villains, model husbands, daring lovers, in a real way. They think, plan, and train themselves to impersonate the character, they make it so real that people think it must be a part of their nature. You can do it, young man, bachelor, widower. If you are only half a man, half a lover, impersonate a whole one. If you are so bashful that it makes you blush to walk with your best girl, in the garden where the flowers are in bed, impersonate a dashing, dare-devil, scamp of fascination, and your sweetheart will faint from adorable bliss and fall into your arms. If you are a coward impersonate a hero, until you are one. Do not stand on one foot, or bite your fingernails, or tear the rim off your hat, trying to tell a beautiful, healthy twentieth century young woman you love her. You'll be all to the mustard. Do something brave. Go hire a kid that is a good swimmer, to fall into the lake as you and your sweetheart are walking past, then throw back your shoulders and tear off your coat and leap in, the kid will get you to shore, but you'll be a hero in her eyes. Impersonate the hero, and you will win the heroine.
Young woman, if you would marry a hero, impersonate beauty. Maiden lady of quite impossible age, if you would marry the best man in the world, impersonate youth and beauty. Dear languishing widow, if you would marry a real man, impersonate youth, beauty and wealth. You will win. The odds are much against you here in the East, where in every state there are thousands and thousands of more women than there are men, but you will win. Men follow actresses around the world because they impersonate love, passion, beauty, virtue and nobleness. The men really think actresses must possess what they portray. You see, it is all a matter of thinking. It does not matter how many times a man has lost on the races, if he is a good sport he will bet on the next horse that looks good to him. Women need to impersonate looking good, better, best. Not on occasions only, but all the time. Men like women who are good pals. So ladies impersonate sympathy, kindness, patience, good fellowship, enthusiasm, in the things that interest men. If you belong to the Citrus family, impersonate the Peach. If you belong to the Nettle family, impersonate the Violet. You may be so homely that your face pains you, but think of the impersonations of beauty you can buy at the drug store. Impersonate silence. A young lady in Philadelphia lost her voice and she had nineteen proposals that year. Impersonate form. You may be as angular as the streets in Boston, yet almost any department store will shape you up. You may be so fat that you haven't seen your feet in years, still you can impersonate so much good nature that men will be attracted to you as flowers to the sun. Have confidence in everything you do, even when you eat sausages at a quick lunch next door to the dog-catcher.
Hell is not paved with good intentions. Hell is paved with sanctimonious pretensions.
When you get up, where does your lap go? When you love, where does your hate go?
After you have walked the floor all night trying to get the baby to sleep, you can at least be thankful that you do not live in Greenland where the nights are six months long.
Avoid hot words in anger, you might tell the truth. A Chicago father thrashed his son for being out late at night. Then added: "When I was your age my father would not let me be out after dark." The boy answered: "Then you must have had a devil of a father." The old man came back hotly: "I had a damn sight better father than you have." Fretting is like a rocking chair, you can do a great deal of agitating in it without getting anywhere.
Do not kick at the squirrel that runs up to you in the park; it may be only mistaken identity—he thought he saw a nut.
Children radiate truth, they intuitively feel and express it. Elsie had been bad and her mother sent her upstairs to talk it over with God. After an hour she came down stairs singing; her mother asked her what God had said to her. "O," she replied, "God said, Great Scott, Elsie, don't feel badly, there are a lot of worse people in this house than you are."
