One Thing at a Time

When I receive a letter which says the writer has “so many desires it is impossible to enumerate them,” my heart shows a tendency to slip into my shoes. Such an one is really a hard case. Desire is the creator; but when desire is spread over a host of things it is no longer desire; it is mere shallow wishing, and accomplishes little. You can no more spread out your wishes and works over a multitude of things and bring success, than you can clean a dozen rooms all at once.

One thing at a time. Be definite. What do you want? Call them all up in a row for inspection. What will you have first? Decide upon one thing and then banish the other wishes until this one is realized. Make your mental demand for this ONE thing. Be still, and let the spirit tell you what to do, and how. Keep affirming it. Be faith-full to this one thing until you realize it.

“When it is well in sight call up your wishes again and make another selection. Then banish all others and WISH HARD, and AFFIRM harder, and work faithfully for that one.

One thing at a time and that well done, is the road to all accomplishment. And each thing well done increases your capacity. One thing properly “demonstrated” over makes way for better and quicker “demonstration” over the next thing.

When you are learning to do things it is wise to begin on the easy ones. So in choosing which of your desires shall engage all your attention NOW it is usually best to choose, not the hardest and biggest one, but the one nearest at hand and most reasonable and easy. Generally this is the quickest road to realizing the big desire, as well as the lesser ones.

Now ready, dearie. Look the desires over judicially. Decide. CHOOSE. Now go in to win and keep at it with quiet confidence. Success is yours.

I told you to get down to one desire at a time, and to work and treat for that alone. But sometimes it is hard to decide upon any one as the most important. Sift as you may, there will still seem to be several things equally urgent Now, dearie, you can work daily for several things provided you go rightly about it

When you go to school you work for success in geography, grammar, and arithmetic, and you succeed in all. Not only that, but you do better in each than you would probably do if you had one study alone. There is a lot in “getting your hand in” and keeping it in. “When one puts in so many hours every day, say four, in study, it soon becomes habit and you do it readily and easily; when perhaps one hour a day would scarcely enable you to get well interested before the hour would be over. But if you put the whole of four hours in on one study your mind would tire of the steady strain in one direction; whereas, if you divided the time among three studies your interest would be refreshed and your mind quickened by each change.

But what result would you expect if you sat down with all three text books before you, to put in four hours work at one stretch, dipping a moment into one book, then skipping to the others and back again innumerable times? How much interest could you take in such exercise of the mind? How much could you really take in? How many problems could you work out if you tried to carry the bounding of the Red Sea and the parsing of a sentence at the same time you worked at the problem? You would fail in every study for lack of concentration.

But that is what we are all prone to do with our life problems. We jumble them up together—and fizzle. Whilst we are doing our kitchen problem our minds are trying to practice on the piano, or make money, or “grow spiritual,” or “treat” ourselves out of “conditions,” or do all at once. Our thoughts fly hit and miss from one thing to another with “Oh, I wish this” and “I wish that”; and all the time our kitchen problem is slighted and we are acomplishing next to nothing if not quite nothing, with the other things.

Now if you have simmered your desires down to their last essence and there are still several, instead of one, just divide your time as wisely as possible between them. The better success you make on any one the greater will be your capacity for success in the others. Suppose you have a kitchen problem you can’t just now get rid of. And you want musical opportunities, oh, so much. And you must have health and money. Now there are three things you want—opportunities to practice, health, and money; and there’s that kitchen problem you must solve. And the last shall be first. Give the kitchen problem all the time and thought it needs. To slight that is to reduce the power for the others. Set your time for that. Now set another time for practice, another for health exercise and concentration, and another for concentration for money.

Take health, we’ll say, first thing in the morning. Rise half an hour early, if need be, and make it from 6:30 to 7, perhaps, or earlier. Begin with breathing exercises and light gymnastics enough to wake up on. Follow with a cool shower or sponge bath and rub-down if possible. Then sit down or lie down for twenty minutes or more and “concentrate” on health and nothing else. Keep bringing your mind right down to the word “Whole”—“I AM WHOLE.” Get interested in imagining how whole and strong and lovely you are. Imagine yourself as you want to be.

Now it will be time to change classes and take up your kitchen problem. So put your whole mind and body into that. Keep calling in your thought and interest and putting it into your work.

After a, few days of this you will find your kitchen problem solving beautifully. You will see new things to omit, and new ways of doing things, and you will find your kitchen problem becoming a real pleasure and taking much less time.

At another time take your hour, or half hour, for money. Sit straight and alert, take slow, full breaths, and picture money pouring into your purse. Get enthused over the picture and keep telling yourself it is real and the money is yours. But never permit yourself to wonder HOW the money is to come, or through whom. Simply picture it as coming to you from the “All-Encirling Good.” Feel just as tickled over it as you can.

When this half hour money-study is over dismiss it entirely from mind, and keep dismiss it every time it happens to come in again.

When your practice hour has arrived put your whole mind and soul and imagination and affirmation into that. See yourself a Paderewski preparing for a unique career, and pour your soul into sounds for the joy of the whole world. Practice exactly the time you have allotted yourself, and use the same time every day.

Follow the same rule with all these other problems. Be prompt to the second. But if something unforeseen does happen to prevent, remember that the most important thing is to keep sweet mentally; and take the first minute you can for your exercises. All sorts of “upset” feelings put your mind out of tune so that you must use more time tuning up again before your mental exercises are at their best.

If you do one thing at a time as if that were the only thing you’d ever have to do, with all eternity to do it in, you can work for several things at once. Remember your school days and use the same principle these days. Life is made up of school days. And success is yours.

Last, but not least, remember to take plenty of recesses from your work and concentration and practices. If you filled your lungs full of air and then kept them full it would be only a matter of a little while until you’d die. It is by expanding and then relaxing, expanding and relaxing, that we keep the breath of life going. To try to keep the lungs full all the time would be death. The same law comes into all we do. To work steadily without playing and resting between times, would have the same effect as holding your breath. To work with, all your mind and soul and body, and then to let go with all your mind and soul and body is to complete a real breath of life. All work and no play, or all play and no work, makes us stupid and weak. But plenty of whole-souled work alternated with plenty of whole-souled rest, makes us strong and wise, and keeps us growing.

So take plenty of little recesses, dearie, every day. Go out and take a sun-bath and a soul-bath, and take slow, full, even breaths of the all-pervading love and wisdom and will of the universe. Let life live you. Fluff yourself all out loose and let the world-forces and the unseen forces play through you a while.

Then you will feel like being “strenuous” again when the time comes.