LAW of COSMIC HABIT FORCE
The seventeenth and final principle of Your Right to Be Rich is the Law of Cosmic Habit Force, and this particular principle presents us with a paradox. On the one hand, some of Dr. Hill’s students have said that this is the most difficult principle to understand. On the other hand, it is perhaps the simplest principle of all. Perhaps the paradox lies in the fact that cosmic habit force is so obvious; it surrounds and permeates everything in the cosmos: the sweep of the galaxies, the ebb and flow of the tides, the rhythm of the seasons. As the saying goes, it can be easy to overlook the obvious. Simply put, cosmic habit force is the law through which the balance of the universe is maintained in orderliness—through established habits.
If the universe is a company, then cosmic habit force is its comptroller. That’s the big picture. The small picture is how this principle affects you. The reason cosmic habit force is so important to you is that through it, you create the individual habits that become a fixed part of you—habits that can be positive or negative. You must learn the secrets of cosmic habit force and how to apply its power to your physical and mental behaviors. The power is there and, whether you know it or not, you are using it every day. How you use it will lead you to failure or to success.
If you’re a student of Emerson, and you’ve read his essay on the law of compensation, you’ll get the sum and substance of this lesson much more quickly and you’ll also get more out it (than those who aren’t familiar with it). Over a period of ten years, I read Emerson’s essays, especially the one on compensation. When I finally interpreted what he was talking about, I decided that one day I would rewrite that particular essay so that men and women could understand it the first time they read it. This lesson is that rewrite.
It’s called the law of cosmic habit force because it is the controlling force of all of the natural laws of the universe. As you know, we have many natural laws and it’s obvious that they all work automatically. They’re not suspended for one moment, for anybody. Those laws are such that any individual that makes it his business to understand and adapt himself to them can go very far in life. Those who do not understand and adapt themselves to them will go down in defeat.
I often get questions about the subject of habits: why we have them, how we get them, and how we get rid of the ones we don’t want. I hope to give you a fleeting glimpse of the answer to these questions. Time and again, I have repeated the importance in recognizing that man has control over but one thing and one thing only. Man has the privilege of developing his own habits, tearing them down, replacing them with others, refining them, changing them, and generally doing anything in the world that he wants to do with them. He has that complete prerogative and he’s the only creature on the face of this earth that does have that privilege.
Every other living thing has its destiny fixed and its life patterned and it cannot go one iota beyond that pattern. We call that instinct. Man is not bound by instinct; man is bound only by the imagination and the willpower of his own mind. He can project his willpower and his mind to whatever object he pleases. He can form whatever habits he may need in order to take him toward his objectives. This lesson deals with that subject.
In this science of success course, the previous lessons are designed to enable one to establish habits that lead to the financial security, health, and peace of mind necessary for happiness. In this lesson, we examine the established law of nature, which makes all habits permanent to everything else except mankind. There’s no such a thing as permanent habit for man because, in addition to establishing his own habits, he can change them at will. Consider that the Creator gave you complete control over your mind and the means of making use of that control. The law of cosmic habit force is the means by which you’ll set the pattern of your own mind and direct it to whatever object you choose.
The stars and planets are fixed by cosmic habit force and are not subject to suspension (or circumvention). They are established in their fixed course. Think of all of those millions, billions, quadrillions, and trillions of planets and stars out there in the heavens. They’re all going according to a system and never colliding. So precise is this system that the astronomers can determine hundreds of years in advance the precise relationship of certain stars and planets. It’s all carried on according to a system. If the Creator had to hang out those stars and watch them every night, he would be a very busy fellow. He’s not going to do that. He’s got a better system that works automatically.
If you learn what those laws are, you can adapt yourself to them and profit by them. If you don’t learn what they are, through ignorance or neglect you’ll suffer by them. The majority of people don’t realize that there is a law of cosmic habit force. Do they go through life using this marvelous law to bring prosperity and health and success and peace of mind? No. Instead, they experience poverty, and ill health, and frustration, and fear, and all of those things that people do not want, because they keep their mind on those things. The cosmic habit force simply picks up those habits of thought and makes them permanent. That’s where I come along and break them up with this science of success philosophy and that’s just why you’re here.
Mr. Stone and I had a very charming lady in our office last week. She wanted to sell us some space in a book that she was getting out based upon the birth dates of people. She wanted to know my birth date, but Mr. Stone didn’t let her get very far with her story. He told her he would have nothing to do with any system or book that presupposed their birth date had anything to do with what happened in one’s life. He said, “I can’t speak for Napoleon Hill but that’s my decision,” and I said, “Well, you just made my speech, Mr. Stone.” To the woman, I said, “I don’t care what star you were born under. I don’t care what unfavorable circumstances you may have met with in life, and I don’t care what happened to you in the past. I do know that if you will follow my instructions, you will get from where you are now to where you want to go, and you’ll get there easily. I know that, and I know that you can set up habits that will make your success so easy, you’ll wonder why in the world you worked so hard in the past and didn’t get so far.”
Most people work harder at failing in life than I work at succeeding—a lot harder. It’s much easier to succeed when you learn the rules. There’s a lot more pleasure in it than in failing, and you are not going to succeed unless you understand this law of cosmic habit force. Start building habits that lead to where you want to go. All actions—and reactions—of matter are based upon the fixed habits of cosmic habit force. Have you ever stopped to think of that? The very smallest particulars of matter all exist as a result of habits that are fixed upon.
Thought habits of individuals are automatically fixed and made permanent by cosmic habit force. Think about that. Thought is not fixed, but a habit of thought is automatically fixed. Another way of saying this is this: the thoughts that you give expression to are going to be fixed into habits. You don’t need to worry about this. As long as you keep your mind on the things that you want to become a habit, cosmic habit force will take over from there. The individual creates the pattern of his thoughts by repetition of thought on a given subject. The law of cosmic habit force takes these patterns and makes them permanent (unless they are broken up or changed by the will of the individual). What a terrible thing if we couldn’t break habits.
When I see the number of people smoking cigarettes, I’m beginning to think maybe they can’t break that habit. When I see all the publicity that the magazines and newspapers give about the high death rate in lung cancer due to cigarettes, I wonder whether or not people can break the cigarette habit. If you want to go ahead and get lung cancer by smoking, that’s your business. There’s nothing more for me to say about it. However, I want to give you a little test that might be helpful. If you can’t start out tomorrow morning and prove your willpower stronger than a little pinch of tobacco and a little piece of silk paper, then you’ll want to begin working on your willpower right away and reeducating it. When I quit smoking, I laid my pipes down and told Annie Lou to take them and throw them away because I wouldn’t need them anymore. She said, “I’ll put them away until you call for them,” but I said, “Throw them away. I’ll not be needing them anymore.” Habits? If you can’t get control of the habit of smoking, it’s going to be very difficult for you to get control of other habits, like fear and poverty and everything else you allow your mind to dwell upon.
When I have some enemies to deal with, I always take the biggest guy first, because when I lick him then the rest put their tails between their legs and run. If you got some habits you want to break, don’t start with the little easy ones; anybody can do that. Start with the big ones, the ones that you most want to do something about.
Take that pack of cigarettes that you have in your handbag or in your pocket. When you go home, put it up on the dresser and say, “You may not know it, but I’m more powerful than you are, and I’m going to prove it by not going into that package again. I am going to let it sit there for forty days, after which I won’t need cigarettes anymore.” I’m not talking against the cigarette business, and I don’t have any stock in the cigarette companies. I’m just giving you some ideas through which you must start testing your capacity to build the kind of habits that you want by starting with the tough ones.
Here’s another habit. Go on a week’s fast, that’s a whole week without any food. Tell your stomach that you’re the boss (it may think it’s the boss, but you’re the boss). Don’t do this on your own, do it under the directions of a doctor, because fasting is not child’s play. Get control over your stomach and you’ll be surprised at how many other things you have control over.
How in the world can we expect to be successes in this world if we’re going to allow all these merriment habits to take hold of us and rule our lives? We can’t expect to be successes. We have to form our own habits long enough until cosmic habit force takes them up automatically.
Now let’s return to the question of how the individual may apply the law of cosmic habit force. Let’s look at physical health, for instance. The individual can contribute to the healthful maintenance of his physical body by establishing habit patterns. If you want to prove the effectiveness of this law of cosmic habit force, this is a mighty fine place to start because I don’t know of anything people want more than a good strong physical body that responds to every need in life. Without it, I couldn’t do the kind of work that I do. I couldn’t write the inspirational books. I couldn’t deliver inspirational lectures if I didn’t know that when I put my foot on the gas, there’s going to be power there. No matter how steep or how long the hill, I know that I’ve got plenty of power to go the full distance because I keep my body in that kind of condition.
Your thinking is the place to start in applying cosmic habit force for the purpose of developing sound health. A positive mind leads to the development of a health consciousness. Do you know what I mean when I talk about a health consciousness, or a prosperity consciousness, or any other kind of a consciousness? It’s a continuous awareness of the condition you want. A health consciousness is a predominating tendency of your mind to think about health, and not about disease or ailments.
Everyone will tell you all about their medical operations. Just six months ago, a good friend of mine visited me after he came out of the hospital. Let me tell you, he described his operation so vividly, I could feel the surgeon’s scalpel turning in my back. I finally turned around and rubbed my back, because it actually began to hurt back there where he was describing. Fortunately, I got myself under control, but I didn’t ask him to come back and see me again.
Most people don’t like to hear you talk about your ailments. They’re not interested in your ailments, and you ought not to be either, except to get rid of them, and the best way to get rid of them is to form a health consciousness. Think in terms of health, talk in terms of health, look in the glass a dozen times a day and say, “You healthy man!” or, “You healthy woman!” Talk to yourself, and you’ll be surprised at what’ll happen.
The positive mind leads to the development of a health consciousness, and cosmic habit force carries out the thought patterns to their logical conclusion. However, it will just as readily carry out of the picture of an ill-health consciousness created by the thought habits of the hypochondriac, even to the extent of producing the physical and the mental symptoms of any disease on which the individual fixes his thought habits through fear. I’m saying that if you think about certain ailments or disease long enough, nature will actually simulate them in your physical makeup.
There was an old elderly lady in the mountain section of Wise County, Virginia, where I lived as a small boy. She used to come over to my grandmother’s house every Saturday afternoon, sit on the front porch, and entertain us all afternoon with operations of herself, her husband, what her husband died with, what her mother died with, what two of her children died with, and so on. After about three or four hours of this, she ended up saying, “I know that I’m going to die of cancer,” and put her hands on her left breast. I saw her do that a dozen times. I didn’t know what cancer was at the time. About ten years later, my father sent me a copy of the county paper and I saw an announcement of Aunt Sarie Ann Steve’s death, from cancer of the left breast. It seems she finally talked herself into it. That’s not an exaggerated case at all. It just happens to be one of the cases that I know about. You can talk yourself into a headache, you can talk yourself into a bilious condition, and you can talk yourself into anything. You can think yourself into any malady, if you allow your mind to dwell upon the negative side of your physical body. Thinking is important.
The mental attitude and the thought patterns established while eating (and also during the following two or three hours, while the food is being broken down into liquid form for introduction into the bloodstream) may determine whether the food entering the body is suitable for the maintenance of sound health. In fact, your mental attitude when you’re eating becomes part of the energy that goes into your bloodstream. If you don’t know that, you’d better learn about it, because it does. You can’t afford to eat when you’re disturbed, and you can’t afford to eat when you’re too tired physically. Sit down, rest, and relax when you eat. As a matter of fact, eating food should be a form of religious exercise. It should be a religious ceremony. When I get up in the morning, the first thing I do is to go out to the kitchen and squeeze a great big tall glass of orange juice. I worship every ounce of that orange juice as it goes down. I don’t just drink it all down at once, I let it go a little at a time and worship every mouthful of it. If you think I’m kidding, perish the idea because I’m telling you something very important about your eating. If you get into the habit of blessing your food, not only when you sit down at the table but as it goes into your body, it’ll go a long way toward keeping you healthy.
With your work, mental attitude becomes a vital ally; a silent repairman works on every cell of the body while one is engaged in physical action. Therefore, work should also become a religious ceremony, surrounded by only positive thoughts. One of the tragedies of civilization is the fact that so few people in the world are engaged in the labor of love, that is, doing the thing they want to do because they want to do it, and not just because they have to eat and sleep and wear some clothes.
I hope and pray that before I cross over to the other side, I will have made valuable contributions to mankind, such that individuals may find a labor of love in which to make a living and earn their way. What a grand world this would be if it weren’t for some of the people who live here. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with them, it’s just their habits that are wrong. They think wrong, and that’s what’s wrong. Let them think in terms of good health, opulence, and plenty. Let them think of fellowship and brotherhood instead of stirring race riots, setting a man against man, brother against brother, nation against nation, and thinking in terms of war instead of cooperation.
There’s plenty in this world for everybody, including the squirrels, and animals, and birds. If only some people didn’t try to get too much while trying to keep other people from getting enough through wrong thinking. I honestly don’t want any advantage or benefits of any nature that can’t be shared everywhere and with all people. I don’t want anything that I can’t share with people. I want no advantage over other people, save only the opportunity of sharing my knowledge and my ability to help them help themselves.
The famous Mayo Brothers discovered four vitally important factors that must be observed to maintain sound physical health. There must be an equal balance of the thought habits of work, play, love, and worship. Isn’t that interesting? That’s according to the great Mayo Institute, where they have had thousands of people pass through their clinic. They found out that when those four things are out of kilter, the imbalance almost invariably results in some form of physical ailment.
Here is one of the major reasons for adopting and following the habit of going the extra mile. This habit not only benefits one economically, but it also enables one to work with a mental attitude that leads to sound physical health. When you do something out of the spirit of love, or out of the spirit of desire to help other people, and not out of a selfish desire, it tends to give you better health and builds up better health habits. Conversely, consider the person who has the habit of griping and who performs all work grudgingly and in a negative frame of mind. Nobody wants to work with him or employ him. The fellow who gripes while working not only damages himself, he also damages everybody around him.
Mr. Andrew Carnegie told me that one single negative mind in an organization of ten thousand could more or less discourage the mind of everyone there, within only two or three days. He wouldn’t even have to open his mouth or say anything. Just releasing thoughts would affect everyone. Go into a home where’s there fighting between members of the family, and you know it the moment you cross the threshold. I can tell when I get in the front yard whether I want to go in or not, or whether it’s safe to go in or not.
We have an experience in our home that makes me prouder than anything else. Almost invariably, when a person walks into our home for the first time, they look around and make a compliment. For instance, an outstanding publisher came to see me not long ago and when he walked into our living room he said, “What a beautiful home.” He looked around again and probably noticed that it was just an ordinary home after all, not anything outstanding. Then he said, “The word beautiful is not just the word I want.” He said, “It’s the way I feel when I come in here. The vibrations are good.” I said, “Now you’re getting hot. You’re talking right up my alley.”
This home is constantly charged and recharged with positive vibrations. Nothing inharmonious is permitted inside this house. Even our little Pomeranian dogs have picked that up. They respond to the vibrations of the home, they can tell a person that’s not in harmony with our home the moment they come in, and they don’t like that kind of a person. Sparky will go up and sniff a person and if she’s pleased with that harmonious atmosphere, she’ll go over and kiss his hand. If she’s not pleased, she finds that he’s not in harmony, she’ll bark at him and back away. I didn’t teach her that, either; it was her own idea.
Homes, places of business, streets, and cities all have their own vibrations, made up of the dominating thoughts of those who work and go that way. If you go down Fifth Avenue, New York City, it doesn’t matter how much or how little money you’ve got in your pocket; if you walk by those big, prosperous stores like Tiffany’s, you’ll catch the feel of that crowd and you’ll feel like you’re prosperous, too. On the other hand, go just four blocks in the other direction to Eighth Avenue or Ninth Avenue in Hell’s Kitchen. I defy you to walk one block there without feeling like you’re as poor as a church mouse even though you may have all the money in the world.
Let’s consider the economic and financial benefits of working with the principle of cosmic habit force. First of all, remember definiteness of purpose.
Through a combination of these principles of success, one may condition his mind and body to hand over to cosmic habit force the exact picture of the financial status he wishes to maintain, and these thoughts will automatically be picked up and carried out through their logical conclusion by this law of nature which knows no such reality as failure.
I’ve probably had more opportunities to study successful people at close range than any other man living today. I have observed that they constantly think in terms of things they can do, never in terms of things they can’t do. I once asked Henry Ford if there’s anything he wanted to do that he couldn’t do. He said, “Why, no. I don’t think about the things I can’t do. I think about the things I can do.” The majority of people are not like that. They think and worry about the things they can’t do. Consequently, they can’t do them. In other words, they think about the money they don’t have, and worry about it. Consequently, they don’t have it, and never get it. Money is a peculiar thing, isn’t it? It doesn’t follow the fellow who doesn’t believe he’s got a right to get it. I wonder why that is? Money is an inanimate thing; I don’t believe it’s the fault of the money. No, the fault’s not there, it’s in the mind of the person who doubts that he can get it.
I notice that when a student of mine starts believing that they can do things, it starts to change their entire financial condition. And when they don’t believe they can do things, they don’t do them. The whole purpose of this philosophy is to induce my students to build up habits of belief in themselves and in their ability, to direct their minds to whatever they want in life, and to keep their mind off the things they don’t want.
If you don’t know much about Mahatma Gandhi, it’d be a good idea for you to get a book and read up on his life. There’s a man who didn’t have anything to fight the British with, except his own mind. He didn’t have any soldiers, money, or military equipment. He didn’t even own a pair of breeches. Yet he put to test the great British Empire, with nothing more than his mind power, resisting them, not wanting them, and not accepting them, until the British finally got the big idea to pick up and get out. It’s surprising how many individuals do that when you set your mind against them. You don’t have to say anything and you don’t have to do anything. You just have to say in your own mind, “I don’t want that person in my life” and eventually they’ll get out—sometimes very quickly.
This mind power stuff is very powerful, potent, marvelous, and profound once you become acquainted with it and start using it. This is the medium by which one’s thought habits may be controlled until they are taken over by cosmic habit force. I want to call attention to the fact that no one has ever been known to become financially independent without having first established a prosperity consciousness, just as no one may remain physically well without having first established a health consciousness.
I remember so well that when I started out with Andrew Carnegie, my greatest difficulty was forgetting that I was born in poverty and illiteracy and ignorance. It took me a long time to forget the little mountain hut in the mountains of Wise County, Virginia, where I was born. It was a long time before I could forget about it or get it out of my system. When I would start to interview an outstanding man, I’d always think, “Oh well, I’m so insignificant.” I guess I thought I ought to be ashamed and afraid because I remembered where I came from. I remembered my poverty. It was a long time before I could shake that poverty off. But I finally did it.
I began to think in terms of opulence. I began to say, “Why wouldn’t Mr. Edison want to see me, and why wouldn’t Mr. Wanamaker want to see me? I’m just as big in my field as he is in his.” I not only felt that, but I saw the day when I made it come true. It’s an achievement when you can reach out and influence the lives of millions of people all over the world. It’s an achievement that never would have happened if I hadn’t changed the thoughts of Napoleon Hill. My biggest job was not getting in to see the men of affairs and to get their collaboration. That was easy. My biggest job was to change the habits of thinking by Napoleon Hill.
Had I not changed those habits, the books I wrote that have inspired millions of people would never have had the effect that they had, because when an author writes a book or makes a speech, the exact mental attitude that he’s in when he’s writing or speaking is conveyed to his audience. Nothing could keep one’s audience from picking up his thoughts. You get an impression about that writer as you read their book. You couldn’t possibly read one of my books and not know I’m dealing with principles as fundamental as Infinite Intelligence itself. You don’t need anybody to prove it to you; you just know it. Before I could write those books, I had to completely build over my thought processes and my habits of thinking. I had to learn to keep my mind on the things that were positive, and keep it there constantly.
Did you know that each one of you came over to this plane with a marvelous doctoring system of your own? Much the same way a chemist breaks up food and deliberately takes out of it the things that nature needs, if you think right, eat right, exercise right, and live right, the chemist doctor inside you does everything automatically. It’s a system that nature gave you for balancing everything that you need to keep your body in fine condition all the time. But, you have to do your part.
Fixation, or excessive thought, is wonderful if it doesn’t happen to be a negative fixation. Here are fixations of fear: limitation thoughts about the things that you can’t do, the fear of criticism, or the fear of anything else. If you want to make use of fixation and benefit by the law of cosmic habit force, work on the fixation of faith. Applied faith is a fixation you can tie to, because faith is knowing that when you reach out for the things you need, you’ll always find them, and if they’re not where you thought they were, they’ll be close at hand. By all means cultivate that kind of fixation. Don’t let it get away from you by neglect.
How do you go about creating a fixation or thought habit? Repetition. Apply it in everything you do, and think, and say. Repetition. You may remember the Coué formula, “Day by day, in every way, I’m getting better and better.” Millions of people all over this country were saying that and it didn’t amount to a tinker’s damn unless the person saying it believed it. It wasn’t what he said that counted, it was what he thought while he was saying it. There were a lot of people that said it over and over again and then finally turned thumbs-down on it. It didn’t work for me because I didn’t believe it in the first place, so you can understand why it didn’t work. It makes no difference what formula you use, or whether you use any oral formula at all, as long as your thought patterns are positive, you’ve got to repeat them over and over again.
Make a habit of thinking in positive terms until the cosmic habit force picks up your mental attitude and makes the circumstances of your mind predominantly positive, and not predominantly negative. The majority of people’s minds are predominantly negative all the time. You want to make the mind predominantly positive all the time so, no matter what you want, you can turn on the power and get some response from Infinite Intelligence. Infinite Intelligence is not going to do anything for you while you’re in a state of anger, no matter how much right you have to be angry. Infinite Intelligence is not going to do anything for you, but she’s going to let you do something to yourself if you keep yourself in a state of a negative mind. You can’t afford to entertain any action, expression, human relationships while you’re in a negative mental attitude, and the best way to keep from being in the negative mental attitude is to build up positive habits and let cosmic habit force take over and make them predominant in your mind.
Here are the negatives that you should avoid making into fixations: poverty, imaginary illness, and everyday garden-variety laziness. Do you know what a lazy man is? He’s a man who hasn’t found a labor of love. There are no lazy people except those who haven’t found what they like to do. Of course, some of them are pretty hard to please. They go through life and have an alibi for why they don’t like this and don’t like that. As a matter of fact, they don’t like anything, period. They are lazy. Other negatives are envy, greed, anger, hatred, jealousy, dishonesty, drifting without aim or purpose, irritability of mental attitude in general, vanity, arrogance, cynicism, sadism, and the will to injure others. Those things can become fixations in the lives of most people, but as a student of this philosophy, you can’t afford to have that kind of a fixation. You just can’t afford it, it’s too expensive.
Here are positive thought habits that you can afford to have (and you can’t afford to not have them). The definiteness of a major purpose in life heads the list. Make it a fixation by all means. Eat it, sleep it, and drink it. Every day, indulge in some act that leads in the direction of your overall major purpose in life. More positives include faith, personal initiative, enthusiasm, willingness to go the extra mile, imagination, the traits of a pleasing personality, accurate thinking, and all the other traits of individual achievement in this philosophy.
Turn those positive thought habits into fixations so that they dominate your mind—you live by them, think by them, act by them, and you relate yourself to people by them—you’ll be surprised how quickly your life will change in these ways:
On every one of those positive thought habits, you’ll notice every one is under your control—and subject to your control—as a result of repetition of thought. All you have to do is keep repeating it over and over and over again, and put some action behind the thought.
Word without deeds is dead. Engage in some sort of action. One should develop fixations, but one should also take care to see that they are fixations on something one wants, not that which one does not want. Isn’t it a strange thing that the majority of people go through life getting everything they don’t want and very few things that they do want? A lot of people don’t get the mate in marriage that they really want (after they get him or her and find out that’s the case, that is). I know a lot of people who don’t get out of their jobs, or profession, what they want.
How does a professional (such as a dentist, lawyer, doctor, or engineer) attract wonderful patients, meaning they are agreeable to get along with, they pay their bills promptly, and that sort of thing? The answer is to be that way himself. In other words, the effects start with the professional man himself. His own mental attitude toward his clients or patients determines what they do toward him. It’s true, whether or not the person happens to be a merchant, a man or a woman in a job, or any other person whatsoever. If you want to reform people, don’t start with other people, start with you. Get your mental attitude right and you’ll find that the others will fall in line. They can’t help it. If your mind is positive, the negative-minded person can’t influence you in the least. A positive-minded person is always the master of the negative-minded person, if the positive person exercises his right to be positive.
We are what we are today because of two forms of heredity. One of them we control outright and one of them we do not control at all.
Through physical heredity we bring a little sum total of all of our ancestors. If we happen to be born with nice brain power or nice well-developed bodies, that’s just fine. Unfortunately, if we happen to be born with a hunchback or some affliction, there’s not much we can do about that. In other words, we have to take “as is” what physical heredity hands us.
I know a man who lost the use of his legs through polio and he ran a peanut stand two blocks away from the White House. However, right inside the White House was a man with the same affliction who was running the biggest nation in the world. That man made an asset out of his affliction instead of a liability.
Social heredity consists of all the influences in your life after you were born (and maybe dating back to the prenatal stage before you were born). These influences include things you hear, things you see, things you are taught, things you read, and legions of other things too numerous to mention. These influences have the greatest impact on what happens to us through life. However, equally important to what we get out of our environment is how much we control it.
It’s a good idea for all of us to go back and reexamine the things we believe and find out what right we have to believe them. Where did we get our beliefs? What is there to support those beliefs? I don’t think I have any beliefs that are not supported by good sound evidence, or least what I believe to be evidence. I didn’t arrive at that open-minded state of tolerance overnight. I used to be as intolerant as the next person, but I realized it was bad for me, and certainly not good for my students, to have a closed mind about anything.