Speaker 1: Efficient action. You must use your thought as directed in
previous chapters and begin to do what you can do
where you are, And you must do all that you
can do where you are. You can advance only by
being larger than your present place. And no man is
larger than his present place who lives undone any of
the work pertaining to that place. The world is advanced
only by those who more than feel their present places.
If no man quiet filled his present place, you can
see that there must be a going backward in everything.
Those who do not quiet feel their places are dead.
With upon society, government, commerce, and industry. They must be
carried along by others at a great expense. The progress
of the world is retarded only by those who do
not feel the places they are holding. They belong to
a former age and a lower stage or plane of life,
and their tendency is toward the generation. No society could
advance if every man was smaller than his place. Social
evolution is guided by the law of physical and mental evolution.
In the animal world, evolution is caused by excess of life.
When an organism has more life than can be expressed
in the functions of its own plane, it develops the
organs of a higher plane, and a new species is originated.
There never would have been new species had there not
been organisms which more than feel their places. The law
is exactly the same for you. You are getting rich
depends upon your applying this principle to your own affairs.
Every day is either a successful day or a day
of failure, and it is the successful days which get
you what you want. If every day is a failure,
you can never get rich, while if every day is
a success, you cannot fail to get rich. If there
is something that may be done to day and you
do not do it, you have failed in so far
as that thing is concerned, and the consequences may be
more disastrous than you can imagine. You cannot foresee the
results of even the most trivial act. You do not
know the workings of all the forces that have been
set moving in your behalf. Much may be depending on
your doing some simple act. It may be the very
thing which is to open the door of opportunity to
very great possibilities. You can never know all the combinations
which supreme intelligence is making for you in the world
of things, and of things and of human affairs. Your
neglect or failure to do some small things may cause
a long delay in getting what you want do every
day all that can be done that day. There is, however,
a limitation or qualification of the above that you must
take into account. You are not to overwork, nor to
rush blindly into your business in the effort to do
the greatest possible number of things in the shortest possible time.
You are not to try to do to morrow's work
to day, nor to do a week's work in a day.
It is really not the number of things you do,
but the efficiency of each separate action that counts. Every
act is in itself either a success or of failure.
Every act is in itself either effective or inefficient. Every
inefficient act is a failure, and if you spend your
life in doing inefficient acts, your whole life will be
a failure. The more things you do, the verses for you.
If all your acts are inefficient ones. On the other hand,
every efficient act is a success in itself, and if
every act of your life is an efficient one, your
whole life must be a success. The cause of failure
is doing too many things in an inefficient manner and
not doing enough things in an efficient manner. You will
see that it is a self evident proposition that if
you do not do any inefficient acts, and if you
do a sufficient number of efficient acts, you will become rich.
If now it is possible for you to make each
act an efficient one, you see again that the getting
of riches is reduced to an exact science, like mathematics.
The matter turns then on the questions whether you can
make each separate act success in itself, and this you
can certainly do. You can make each act a success
because all power is working with you, and all power
cannot fail. Power is at your service, and to make
each act efficient you have only to put power into it.
Every action is either strong or weak, and when everyone
is strong, you are acting in a certain way which
will make you rich. Every act can be made strong
and efficient by holding your vision while you are doing
it and putting the whole power of your faith and
purpose into it. It is at this point that people
fail to separate mental power from personal action. They use
the power of mind in one place and at one time,
and they act in another place and at another time,
so their acts are not successful in themselves. Too many
of them are inefficient. But if all power goes into
every act, no matter how commonplace, every act will be
a success in itself, and as in the nature of things,
every success opens the way to other successes. Your progress
toward what you want and the progress of what you
want toward you will become increasingly rapid. Remember that successful
action is cumulative in its results, Since the desire for
more life is inherent in all things. When a man
begins to move toward larger life, more things attach themselves
to him, and the influence of his desire is multiplied.
Do every day all that you can do that day,
and do each act in an efficient manner. In saying
that you must hold your vision while you are doing
each act, however trivial or commonplace, I do not mean
to say that it is necessary at all times to
see the vision distinctly to all its smallest details. It
should be the work of your leisure hours to use
your imagination on the details of your vision, and to
contemplate them until they are firmly fixed upon memory. If
you wish speedy results, spend practically or your spare time
in this practice. By continuous contemplation, you will get the
picture of what you want, even to the smallest details,
so firmly fixed upon your mind, and so completely transfer
to the mind of formless substance, that in your working
hours you need only to mentally refer to the picture
to stimulate your faith and purpose and cause your best
effort to be put forth. Contemplate your picture in your
leisure hours until your consciousness is so full of debt
that you can grasp it instantly. You will become so
enthused in its bright promises that the mere thought of
it will call forth the strongest energies of your whole being.
Let us again repeat our syllabus, and, by slightly changing
the closing statements, bring it to the point we have
now reached. There is a thinking stuff from which all
things are made, and which in its original state permits, penetrates,
and feels the interspaces of the universe. A thought in
this substance produces the thing that is imaged by the thought.
Men can form things in his thought, and by impressing
his thought upon formless substance, can cause the thing he
thinks about to be created. In order to do this,
man must pass from the competitive to the creative mind.
He must form a clear mental picture of the things
he wants, and do with faith and purpose all that
can be done each day, doing each separate thing in
an efficient manner,