How to Grow Success
SUCCESS. WHAT IT IS
Success is not money, nor is it fame. The King in the ancient fable turned to gold all that he touched, and starved to death. The “Sick Man of the East” has wealth galore and world-wide fame, but so abjectly afraid is he that he is never a moment alone; never tastes a dish that has not first been tried on a menial; and springs to his feet with pistol in hand if his best friend across the table happens to make a quick movement. Money and power he has, but not success.
SUCCESS is liberty to command, coupled with a clear conscience and loving heart. William Gladstone was a success Abraham Lincoln was another. Few men attain so complete a success as theirs. Jesus of Nazareth was a success, though most people imagine he was “poor.” He was not. He wore seamless robes and fine linen and fared sumptuously in many elegant homes, where he was more at liberty to command than were the masters themselves. Nothing was too good for Jesus. To own all those homes would be a burden Jesus was too wise to assume. Liberty to command must not be overworked. lest it cease to be liberty and become the drudgery of taking care of things.
A successful man is not necessarily a rich man, but he is a man who can command all he desires. Among, money kings it is said J. Pierpont Morgan is not rated a very rich man. But he commands more money than any other man in the world. It is said men confide in him because of his fine business sense, gained by using his own judgment; and because “he does exactly what he agrees to.” He never asks advice and he keeps his mouth shut unless he has something special to say. Then he says it, in the simplest and fewest words possible. This is concentration, the mode of success.
Money is not success, but success includes the power to command money.
Success includes the liberty to command money enough to gratify all one’s aspirations to better his own condition, and the condition of those dependent upon him. This does not mean that success includes money enough to enable one to outshine his neighbor. No man with that aim in life was ever successful, or ever will be.
Not to out-shine, but to shine upon his neighbors, is the successful man’s mission.
SUCCESS IS ALIVE
It germinates, sprouts and grows. It grows first underground. In due time it appears and keeps on unfolding.
It is just as easy to grow success as to grow potatoes. Yes, it is easier; for success will grow out of potatoes, and it will grow where potatoes won’t. There is not a spot on earth, or in heaven, or hell, that will not serve to sprout success in—not one. Success may outgrow a place and need transplanting; but it will sprout anywhere.
And at any time. Potatoes must be started at a certain time. The time to plant and tend success is NOW.
You plant potatoes and you know they will grow. You go off and do something else whilst they germinate and sprout. You can’t see them grow but you KNOW they are growing, and whilst you are working away at other things you have a nice little warm glow in your heart, over the fine crop that is coming on out there in the tater patch. You love that patch. You planted it just as well as you could, with the best seed potatoes, and you are proud of it, even before there is the first peep of green. When that comes your love increases. You hoe every hill carefully and you take good care of the bugs. In due time you exhibit some of those spuds at the State Fair and you get a prize. And at last you command more money for your potatoes than others get for theirs.
Now do you imagine you had no success until you got the gold for those potatoes? Then you are greatly mistaken. You planted success with every blessed tater hill. You loved it and beamed on it, hoed the weeds away, picked the bugs off, and reveled in success all summer long. You lived on success all summer.
Perhaps you say, “Oh, that is a very pretty picture but my potato patch was a failure.” Then you planted failure with your potatoes. When you were plowing and planting and hoeing you were telling yourself all the time that “there is no use—nothing ever did well for you—it seemed to be your lot to drudge and pinch and worry along and never have anything—there is John Smith over the way—he can take it easy and have fine stock and hire men to do the drudgery whilst he rides around and bosses—and here you are—everything is against you—damn the stones on this land anyhow—your spuds never do well—ground is no good—why can’t you take it easy like other folks?” And so on, ad infinitum, ad nauseam, your mind meanders. Whilst you, with less than half a heart get through the “drudgery” any old way—just so you get through.
Potatoes are not the only thing you planted. You planted thoughts in every hill. You cursed every hill you planted—cursed it with mean thinking. You planted failure and you will reap ditto. Every idle thought will bring its meed of failure and subtract from the money that might have been yours.
It takes the finest seed potatoes, good land and thinking to match, to insure a good crop and good prices.
The successful man puts his thought into his work, The unsuccessful one turns his thought away from it: as if when be was supposed to be watering his garden he should turn the stream over the fence into the road, leaving his garden dry and gasping.
YOU MUST LOVE
And think about your work if you are to make a success of it and make it pay. “Blessed is that man who hath found his work.” If you are doing work you dislike you will not succeed, and all the treatments in creation can’t make you succeed.
Get into line with a work you do love—something in which you can express yourself. If you think you must remain where you are then put your interest, your love, yourself, into that business. One touch of yourself will make business go. A young man laid in coal, opened shop, placed his card in the local paper and sat down to wait for custom that did not come. When he went home to dinner one day his wife remarked that she had a headache which had been aggravated by the noise of putting in coal at the next house. That young man went to the newspaper office and added a line to his ad—“Coal delivered without noise!” He delivered his coal in sacks. Yes, delivered it. One touch of himself did the business and he was custom-less no longer.
A man’s success is measured on the unseen side by the amount of LOVE he feeds his work with; and on the seen side it is measured by money.
I do not mean that the amount of money a man manages to corner by fair means or foul, his own or his father’s, is the measure of his success. Not at all. But the amount of real love a man puts INTO his work determines exactly the amount of money he or some other man can get out of it. If he respects himself and the rest of mankind—if he knows that justice rules NOW,—really knows it—he will himself get the money. If he “knows just what mean and grasping liars men are,” he attracts men who will rob him of the money due his work. But in either event HE is at the bottom of the whole business.
The individual himself is Lord of his own circumstances; circumstances and other men are puppets in his hands. As a man realizes this he moves circumstances and people at will, by pulling the right strings in himself.
YOU MUST LOVE
People in order to be able to move them. You must be able to see them as they see themselves, and you must meet them heart-ily. Love is not sentimental gush; love is not a self announcer. Love is divine emotion—that which moves outward from the point where the Universal meets the personal. Love manifests in the person as pure GOOD WILL. It shines in his face, beams from his eyes and impels his every action. The successful man is a man of pure GOOD WILL.
Remember, Success is the liberty to command, coupled with a clear conscience and loving heart. In proportion as a man is possessed of Good Will his conscience is clear. Good Will is the outward-moving power of a loving heart.
Only such a heart ever has liberty to command.
In proportion as a man succeeds in letting Good Will flow outward to each person, thing or circumstance with which he comes in touch, in that proportion will he be able to influence persons, things and circumstances according to his will—his Good Will, which is just to all.
The art of succeeding is the art of concentrating Good Will, and using it for definite purposes. He that doubteth and yet doeth, directs Evil Will, not Good Will, and he is condemned in his own soul. Not only that, but he will reap outwardly what he has sown—Evil Will.
GOOD WILL
Must go out to all mankind, collectively and individually. A single grudge is a “worm i’ the bud” of your success. Send out such positive, definite, personal Good Will that a grudge finds no room to grow by eating out your heart and success. It is your grudge that has the power to destroy your success—your grudge against person, place, work, or “fate.” Spray your soul daily, hourly, with Good Will; and withhold not the spray from thy neighbor.
THE ESSENTIALS
Of success are these:
1.Good Will toward all. This includes justice, honesty, a clear conscience and loving heart.
2.An Aim; a stake to be reached.
2.Eternal stick-to-it-iveuess.
4.Concentration of thought and effort upon the details of reaching the stake set.
A man’s aim in life is the reflection of his opinion of himself. A man with a pretty low opinion of himself has no aim at all. He feels himself merely a fallen twig borne helplessly on the bosom of life. Wake up, dearie, exalt yourself, and set your stake just as high us you dare. Then, as you find you can face your stake with a feeling that you are really going to make it after all, congratulate yourself upon your soul stature, and move your stake higher.
Listen to what somebody of the name of Buxton has said about the third essential to success.
“The longer I live, the more I am certain that the great difference between men, between the feeble and the powerful, the great and the insignificant, is energy, invincible determination, —a purpose once fixed, and then death or victory! That quality will do anything that can be done in this world; and no talents, no circumstances, no opportunities, will make a two-legged creature a man without it.”
And Ella Wheeler Wilcox says:
“There is no chance, no destiny, no fate,
Can circumvent or hinder or control.
The firm resolve of a determined soul.”
Another has said: “All things are possible to him that believeth.” And I say unto you, “Go in to win and stick to it.”
Concentration of thought upon the details of getting there: You can’t afford to waste thought upon grumblings and resentments, against individuals, circumstances or “fate.” Yon may imagine you have brains enough to divide between your work and these petty fault findings and resentments; but you have not. Every idle thought subtracts a definite amount from your success and your cash. Put your thought into business.
This does not mean you are never to think of anything but business; but it does mean that you are never to separate thought from Good Will. Whatever you can think of with Good Will will aid you to self-expression; will increase your power.
Concentrate; on the detail of getting there. I was once lost above the snow line on a great mountain and had to retrace my steps upward to the point where I had taken the wrong trail. I was so anxious to get to that point that my whole soul seemed to leap up ward and away toward that place leaving me so utterly paralyzed that I was actually unable to take a step. In a few moments I collected myself and put my thought into the climbing, when I made the distance easily and quickly. Where the thought runs ahead like that the will, the real motive power of the body, actually goes out of the body, leaving it unable to accomplish what is expected of it. When you are doing something put your thought into it. Will follows thought and thus you work easily and effectively. When yon are relaxed and resting you may without injury let thought take any flight. “Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might;” that is with all of thee—thought and will, as well as hands. Work done in this way actually rejuvenates the body; whilst a scattered mind scatters or disintegrates the body. You are a unit—a One. Work as a One.
NEVER FEAR FEAR
Fear is a great bugaboo and like moat bogies he is merely a shadow. No amount of fear will hinder your success if you will keep your eye on the stake you have set, and keep sticking to it mentally, fears or no fears. When I ride the wheel I see stones to be avoided. If I look at one and say to myself, “I am afraid—I’ll probably run over it”—then I go over it every time. But I may have more fear—it may be a larger stone—but if I say to myself, “I shall go around that,” I invariably go around it.
It is the Word, the mental statement, that determines whether I miss or hit those stones. I have proven by hundreds of careful observations that fear has absolutely nothing to do with it. I may be scared blue over something; I may not be able to keep my eyes off the obstacle; but if I affirm resolutely, “I shall miss that”—I miss it every time.
Our bodies are just bundles of mental statements, which are being hourly augmented and revised by more statements. It is these mental statements that incite motion. Every thought sends vibrations clear to the tips of the nerves and on out through the personal and universal auras. Every thought incites corresponding muscular activity. “Mind reading,” is really “muscle reading,” as Dr. Parkyn claims.
Fear literally has no power over your body except as you state to yourself that it has. Deny it—deny that fear has power. Make persistent mental statements of what you desire; make them in the face of fear, until fear tucks his tail betwixt his legs and gets off the earth.
Kate Boehme gives this sentence to her students to “concentrate” upon: “I am open on my inner side to the inexhaustible ocean of Divine Love and Power. I flow forth from it and am one with it. All success is mine through the working of this power. I shall succeed in all my undertakings.”
Be still and know.