Integral Development Forum

YOUR MIND IS AN amazing mechanism. When your mind works one way, it can carry you forward to outstanding success. But the same mind operating in a different manner can produce a total failure.

The body is what the body is fed. By the same token, the mind is what the mind is fed. Mind food is your environment—all the countless things that influence your conscious and subconscious thought. The kind of mind food we consume determines our habits, attitudes, personality.

You are a product of your environment.

Mark it well. Environment shapes us, makes us think the way we do.

More important, the size of your thinking, your goals, your attitudes, your very personality is formed by your environment.

You will change over the months and years. This we know. But how you will change depends on your future environment, the mind food you feed yourself.

RECONDITION YOURSELF FOR SUCCESS

The number one obstacle on the road to high-level success is the feeling that major accomplishment is beyond reach.

As a result of being bombarded with the “you-can’t-get-ahead-so-don’t-bother-to-try” propaganda, most people you know can be classified into three groups:

First group: Those who surrendered completely.
Second group: Those who surrendered partially.

Third group: Those who never surrender.
This group is the happiest because it accomplishes the most. These people find life stimulating, rewarding, worthwhile.

To get—and stay—in this group, however, we must fight off the suppressive influences of our environment.

Big men do not laugh at big ideas.

Remember: People who tell you it cannot be done almost always are unsuccessful people, are strictly average or mediocre at best in terms of accomplishment. The opinions of these people can be poison.

You are judged by the company you keep. Birds of a feather do flock together. Fellow workers are not all alike.

How we think is directly affected by the group we’re in. Be sure you’re in the flock that thinks right.

Don’t let negative thinkers pull you down to their level. Let them slide by, like the water from the proverbial duck’s back. Cling to people who think progressively. Move upward with them.

You can do it, simply by thinking right!

MAKE IT A RULE TO SEEK ADVICE FROM PEOPLE WHO KNOW

Every farmer in the corn belt knows that if he puts plenty of fertilizer with his corn, he’s going to get a bigger yield. Thinking too must be given additional nourishment if we want to get better results.

Here are a few simple “do’s” to help make your social environment first class:

1. Do circulate in new groups.
2. Make new friends, join new organizations, enlarge your social orbit.
3. Do select friends who have views different from your own. In this modern age, the narrow individual hasn’t much future.

Do select friends who stand above petty, unimportant things.

Conversation is a big part of our psychological environment. Some conversation is healthy. It encourages you. Some conversation makes you feel like a winner.

But other conversation is more like walking through a poisonous, radioactive cloud. It chokes you. It makes you feel ill. It turns you into a loser.

Gossip is just negative conversation about people, and the victim of thought poison begins to think he enjoys it.

MAKE YOUR ENVIRONMENT MAKE YOU SUCCESSFUL

1. Be environment-conscious. Just as body diet makes the body, mind diet makes the mind.
2. Make your environment work for you, not against you. Don’t let suppressive forces—the negative, you-can’t-do-it people—make you think defeat.
3. Don’t let small-thinking people hold you back. Jealous people want to see you stumble. Don’t give them that satisfaction.
4. Get your advice from successful people. Your future is important. Never risk it with freelance advisors who are living failures.
5. Get plenty of psychological sunshine. Circulate in new groups. Discover new and stimulating things to do.
6. Throw thought poison out of your environment. Avoid gossip. Talk about people, but stay on the positive side.
7. Go first class in everything you do. You can’t afford to go any other way.

IT’S OBVIOUS. MUCH HUMAN behavior is puzzling. Others see in us what we see in ourselves. We receive the kind of treatment we think we deserve.

To be important, we must think we are important, really think so; then others will think so too.

Here again is the logic:
How you think determines how you act.
How you act in turn determines: How others react to you.
Self-respect shows through in everything we do

LOOK IMPORTANT—IT HELPS YOU THINK IMPORTANT

People do evaluate you on the basis of your appearance. Your appearance is the first basis for evaluation other people have. And first impressions last, out of all proportion to the time it takes to form them.

The better you are packaged, the more public acceptance you will receive.

Pay twice as much and buy half as many. Commit this advice to memory. Then practice it. Apply it to hats, suits, shoes, socks, coats—everything you wear. Insofar as appearance is concerned, quality is far more important than quantity.

You are what you think you are. If your appearance makes you think you’re inferior, you are inferior. If it makes you think small, you are small. Look your best and you will think and act your best.

THINK YOUR WORK IS IMPORTANT

There’s a story often told about the job attitudes of three bricklayers. It’s a classic, so let’s go over it again.

When asked, “What are you doing?” the first bricklayer replied, “Laying brick.” The second answered, “Making $9.30 an hour.” And the third said, “Me? Why, I’m building the world’s greatest cathedral.”

Job thinking tells a lot about a person and his potential for larger responsibility.

Like your appearance, the way you think toward your work says things about you to your superiors, associates, and subordinates in fact, to everyone with whom you come in contact.

The key to winning what you want lies in thinking positively toward yourself. The only real basis other people have for judging your abilities is your actions. And your actions are controlled by your thoughts.

You are what you think you are.

People continue to imitate others throughout life. And they imitate their leaders and supervisors; their thoughts and actions are influenced by these people.

Consider just one characteristic of successful people: enthusiasm. But how does one develop enthusiasm? The basic step is simple: Think enthusiastically.

You are what you think. Think enthusiasm and you’ll be enthusiastic.

Here are two suggestions for getting others to do more for you:

1. Always show positive attitudes toward your job so that your subordinates will “pick up” right thinking.
2. As you approach your job each day, ask yourself, “Am I worthy in every respect of being imitated? Are all my habits such that I would be glad to see them in my subordinates?”

GIVE YOURSELF A PEP TALK SEVERAL TIMES DAILY

To be on top, you’ve got to feel like you’re on top. Give yourself a pep talk and discover how much bigger and stronger you feel.

Practice uplifting self-praise. Don’t practice belittling self-punishment.

You are what you think you are. Think more of yourself and there is more of you.

The half-alive person needs to be resold on himself. He needs to realize that he’s a first-class person. He needs honest, sincere belief in himself.

Don’t accept the judgment of average people. You are not average. If you have any doubts as to the basic soundness of the “sell-yourself-to-yourself” principle, ask the most successful person you know what he thinks about it. Ask him, and then start selling yourself to yourself.

UPGRADE YOUR THINKING. THINK LIKE IMPORTANT PEOPLE THINK

Upgrading your thinking upgrades your actions, and this produces success.

In a nutshell, remember: Look important; it helps you think important. Your appearance talks to you. Be sure it lifts your spirits and builds your confidence. Your appearance talks to others. Make certain it says, “Here is an important person: intelligent, prosperous, and dependable.”

Think your work is important. Think this way, and you will receive mental signals on how to do your job better. Think your work is important, and your subordinates will think their work is important too.

Give yourself a pep talk several times daily. Build a “sell-yourself-to-yourself” commercial. Remind yourself at every opportunity that you’re a first-class person.

In all of life’s situations, ask yourself, “Is this the way an important person thinks?” Then obey the answer.

FIRST, LET’S CLEAR UP a common fallacy about the meaning of creative thinking. For some illogical reason, science, engineering, art, and writing got tabbed as about the only truly creative pursuits.

But creative thinking is not reserved for certain occupations, nor is it restricted to superintelligent people.

Creative thinking is simply finding new, improved ways to do anything. Let’s see what we can do to develop and strengthen our creative thinking ability.

Step one: Believe it can be done. Here is a basic truth: To do anything, we must first believe it can be done.

WHEN YOU BELIEVE, YOUR MIND FINDS WAYS TO DO.

When you believe something is impossible, your mind goes to work for you to prove why. But when you believe, really believe, something can be done, your mind goes to work for you and helps you find the ways to do it.

Believe, and you’ll start thinking—constructively. Your mind will create a way if you let it.

The traditional thinker’s mind is paralyzed. He reasons, “It’s been this way for a hundred years. Therefore, it must be good and must stay this way. Why risk a change?”

In truth, there is no one best way to do anything.

Traditional thinking freezes your mind, blocks your progress, and prevents you from developing creative power. Here are three ways to fight it:

1. Become receptive to ideas.
2. Be an experimental person. Break up fixed routines.
3. If your work is in distribution, develop an interest in production, accounting, finance, and the other elements of business. This gives you breadth and prepares you for larger responsibilities.

Be progressive, not regressive.

The successful person doesn’t ask, “Can I do it better?” She knows she can. So she phrases the question: “How can I do it better?”

Big success calls for persons who continually set higher standards for themselves and others, persons who are searching for ways to increase efficiency, to get more output at lower cost, do more with less effort. Top success is reserved for the I-can-do-it-better kind of person.

Capacity is a state of mind. How much we can do depends on how much we think we can do. When you really believe you can do more, your mind thinks creatively and shows you the way.

As a personal policy I have accepted fully the concept: If you want it done, give it to a busy person. All the successful, competent people I know are busy.

Try this three-stage program to strengthen your creativity through asking and listening:

1. Encourage others to talk.
2. Test your own views in the form of questions.
3. Concentrate on what the other person says. Listening is more than just keeping your own mouth shut. Listening means letting what’s said penetrate your mind.

Ideas are fruits of your thinking. But they’ve got to be harnessed and put to work to have value.

Use these three ways to harness and develop your ideas:

1. Don’t let ideas escape. Write them down.
2. Next, review your ideas. File these ideas in an active file.
3. Cultivate and fertilize your idea. Now make your idea grow. Think about it. Tie the idea to related ideas.

USE THESE TOOLS AND THINK CREATIVELY

Believe it can be done. When you believe something can be done, your mind will find the ways to do it. Believing a solution paves the way to solution.

Eliminate “impossible,” “won’t work,” “can’t do,” “no use trying” from your thinking and speaking vocabularies.

Don’t let tradition paralyze your mind. Be receptive to new ideas. Be experimental. Try new approaches, Be progressive in everything you do.

Ask yourself daily, “How can I do better?” There is no limit to self-improvement. When you ask yourself, “How can I do better?” sound answers will appear. Try it and see.

Ask yourself, “How can I do more?”
Capacity is a state of mind.

Practice asking and listening. Ask and listen, and you’ll obtain raw material for reaching sound decisions. Remember: Big people monopolize the listening; small people monopolize the talking.

Stretch your mind. Get stimulated. Associate with people who can help you think of new ideas, new ways of doing things. Mix with people of different occupational and social interests.

Where success is concerned, people are not measured in inches or pounds or college degrees, or family background; they are measured by the size of their thinking. How big we think determines the size of our accomplishments. Now let’s see how we can enlarge our thinking.

Probably the greatest human weakness is self-deprecation—that is, selling oneself short.

Here is an exercise to help you measure your true size.

1. Determine your five chief assets.
2. Next, under each asset, write the names of three persons you know who have achieved large success but who do not have this asset to as great a degree as you.

There is only one conclusion you can honestly reach: You’re bigger than you think. Think as big as you really are! Never, never, never sell yourself short!

We do not think in words and phrases. We think only in pictures and/or images. Words are the raw materials of thought.

Look at it this way. When you speak or write, you are, in a sense, a projector showing movies in the minds of others. And the pictures you create determine how you and others react.

Big thinkers are specialists in creating positive, forward-looking, optimistic pictures in their own minds and in the minds of others. To think big, we must use words and phrases that produce big, positive mental images.

Four Ways to Develop the Big Thinker’s Vocabulary

1. Use big, positive, cheerful words and phrases to describe how you feel.

Every time someone asks you, “How are you?” or “How are you feeling today?” respond with a “Just wonderful thanks, and you?” or say “Great” or “Fine.”

2. Use bright, cheerful, favorable words and phrases to describe other people.
3. Use positive language to encourage others. Compliment people personally at every opportunity, Everyone you know craves praise.
4. Use positive words to outline plans to others.

Promise victory and watch eyes light up. Promise victory and win support. Build castles, don’t dig graves!

SEE WHAT CAN BE, NOT JUST WHAT IS

Look at things not as they are, but as they can be. Visualization adds value to everything. A big thinker always visualizes what can be done in the future.

Here is how you can develop your power to see what can be, not just what is. I call these the “practice adding value” exercises.

1. Practice adding value to things.
2. Practice adding value to people.
3. Practice adding value to yourself.

REMEMBER, IT PAYS IN EVERY WAY TO THINK BIG!

Don’t sell yourself short. Conquer the crime of self-deprecation. Concentrate on your assets. You’re better than you think you are.

Use the big thinker’s vocabulary. Use big, bright, cheerful words. Use words that promise victory, hope, happiness, pleasure; avoid words that create unpleasant images of failure, defeat, grief.

Stretch your vision. See what can be, not just what is. Practice adding value to things, to people, and to yourself.

Get the big view of your job. Think, really think your present job is important. That next promotion depends mostly on how you think toward your present job.

Think above trivial things. Focus your attention on big objectives. Before getting involved in a petty matter, ask yourself, “Is it really important?”

Grow big by thinking big!

Yes, fear is real. And we must recognize it exists before we can conquer it.

Most fear today is psychological. Worry, tension, embarrassment, panic all stem from mismanaged, negative imagination. But simply knowing the breeding ground of fear doesn’t cure fear.

The old “it’s-only-in-your-mind” treatment presumes fear doesn’t really exist. But it does. Fear is real. Fear is success enemy number one.

Fear of all kinds and sizes is a form of psychological infection. We can cure a mental infection the same way we cure a body infection—with specific, proved treatments.

No one is born with confidence. Those people you know who radiate confidence, who have conquered worry, who are at ease everywhere and all the time, acquired their confidence, every bit of it.

You can, too.

Action cures fear. Indecision, postponement, on the other hand, fertilize fear.

When we face tough problems, we stay mired in the mud until we take action. Hope is a start. But hope needs action to win victories.

Isolate your fear. Then take appropriate action.

Use this two-step procedure to cure fear and win confidence:

1. Isolate your fear. Pin it down. Determine exactly what you are afraid of.
2. Then take action. There is some kind of action for any kind of fear.

Here are two specific things to do to build confidence through efficient management of your memory bank.

1. Deposit only positive thoughts in your memory bank.

What kind of performance would your car deliver if every morning before you left for work you scooped up a double handful of dirt and put it into your crankcase? That fine engine would soon be a mess, unable to do what you want it to do. Negative, unpleasant thoughts deposited in your mind affect your mind the same way.

Just before you go to sleep, deposit good thoughts in your memory bank. Count your blessings. Recall the many good things you have to be thankful for.

2. Withdraw only positive thoughts from your memory bank.

It is clear that any negative thought, if fertilized with repeated recall, can develop into a real mind monster, breaking down confidence and paving the way to serious psychological difficulties.

Don’t build mental monsters. Refuse to withdraw the unpleasant thoughts from your memory bank. When you remember situations of any kind, concentrate on the good part of the experience; forget the bad. Bury it.

Fear of other people is a big fear. But there is a way to conquer it. You can conquer fear of people if you will learn to put them into proper perspective.

If the other fellow is basically like me, there’s no reason to be afraid of him.

Here are two ways to put people in proper perspective:

1. Get a balanced view of the other fellow.

Keep these two points in mind when dealing with people: first, the other fellow is important. Emphatically, he is important. But remember this, also: You are important, too.

2. Develop an understanding attitude.

“Underneath he’s probably a very nice guy. Most folks are.”

Remember those two short sentences next time someone declares war on you. Hold your fire. The way to win in situations like this is to let the other fellow blow his stack and then forget it.

There is within each of us a desire to be right, think right, and act right. When we go against that desire, we put a cancer in our conscience. This cancer grows and grows by eating away at our confidence.

Doing what’s right keeps your conscience satisfied. And this builds self-confidence.

Here is a psychological principle that is worth reading over twenty-five times. Read it until it absolutely saturates you: To think confidently, act confidently.

Psychologists tell us we can change our attitudes by changing our physical actions.

Act the way you want to feel. Below are five confidence-building exercises. Read these guides carefully.

1. Be a front seater.

Sitting up front builds confidence. Practice it.

2. Practice making eye contact.

You say nothing good about yourself when you avoid making eye contact. You say, “I’m afraid. I lack confidence.” Conquer this fear by making yourself look the other person in the eyes.

3. Walk 25 percent faster.

Use the walk-25-percent-faster technique to help build self confidence. Throw your shoulders back, lift up your head, move ahead just a little faster, and feel self-confidence grow.

4. Practice speaking up.

Make it a rule to speak up at every open meeting you attend. Speak up, say something voluntarily at every business conference, committee meeting, community forum you attend. Make no exception. Comment, make a suggestion, ask a question. And don’t be the last to speak. Try to be the icebreaker, the first one in with a comment.

5. Smile big.

Make this little test. Try to feel defeated and smile big at the same time. You can’t. A big smile gives you confidence. A big smile beats fear, rolls away worry, defeats despondency.

Go deep into your study of people, and you’ll discover unsuccessful people suffer a mind-deadening thought disease. We call this disease excusitis.

Persons with mediocre accomplishments are quick to explain why they haven’t, why they don’t, why they can’t, and why they aren’t.

Once the victim of this failure disease has selected a “good” excuse, he sticks with it. Then he relies on the excuse to explain to himself and others why he is not going forward.

Thoughts, positive or negative, grow stronger when fertilized with constant repetition. At first the victim of excusitis knows his alibi is more or less a lie. But the more frequently he repeats it, the more convinced he becomes that it is completely true, that the alibi is the real reason for his not being the success he should be.

THE FOUR MOST COMMON FORMS OF EXCUSITIS

Excusitis appears in a wide variety of forms, but the worst types of this disease are health excusitis, intelligence excusitis, age excusitis, and luck excusitis.

1. “But My Health Isn’t Good.”

Health excusitis ranges all the way from the chronic “I don’t feel good” to the more specific “I’ve got such-and-such wrong with me.”

FOUR THINGS YOU CAN DO TO KICK HEALTH EXCUSITIS

The best vaccine against health excusitis consists of these four doses:

• Refuse to talk about your health.

• Refuse to worry about your health.

• Be genuinely grateful that your health is as good as it is. There’s an old saying worth repeating often: “I felt sorry for myself because I had ragged shoes until I met a man who had no feet.”

Remind yourself often, “It’s better to wear out than rust out.”

2. “But You’ve Got to Have Brains to Succeed.”

Most of us make two basic errors with respect to intelligence:

1. We underestimate our own brainpower.
2. We overestimate the other fellow’s brainpower.

The thinking that guides your intelligence is much more important than how much intelligence you may have.

We can’t do much to change the amount of native ability, but we can certainly change the way we use what we have.

Knowledge is power-when you use it constructively. Closely allied to intelligence excusitis is some incorrect thinking about knowledge. Knowledge is only potential power. Knowledge is power only when put to use—and then only when the use made of it is constructive.

THREE WAYS TO CURE INTELLIGENCE EXCUSITIS

Three easy ways to cure intelligence excusitis are:

• Never underestimate your own intelligence, and never overestimate the intelligence of others.

• Remind yourself several times daily, “My attitudes are more important than my intelligence.”

• Remember that the ability to think is of much greater value than the ability to memorize facts. Use your mind to create and develop ideas, to find new and better ways to do things.

3. “It’s No Use. I’m Too Old (or Too Young).”

Age excusitis, the failure disease of never being the right age, comes in two easily identifiable forms: the “I’m too old” variety and the “I’m too young” brand.

HOW TO HANDLE AGE EXCUSITIS

How old we are is not important. It’s one’s attitude toward age that makes it a blessing or a barricade. Curing yourself of age excusitis often opens doors to opportunities that you thought were locked tight.

In quick recap, the cure for age excusitis is:

• Look at your present age positively. Think, “I’m still young,” not “I’m already old.” Practice looking forward to new horizons and gain the enthusiasm and the feel of youth.
• Compute how much productive time you have left. Remember, a person age thirty still has 80 percent of his productive life ahead of him. And the fifty-year-old still has a big 40 percent—the best 40 percent—of his opportunity years left. Life is actually longer than most people think!
• Invest future time in doing what you really want to do. It’s too late only when you let your mind go negative and think it’s too late. Stop thinking “I should have started years ago.” That’s failure thinking. Instead think, “I’m going to start now, my best years are ahead of me.” That’s the way successful people think.

4. “But My Case Is Different; I Attract Bad Luck.”

There is a cause for everything. Nothing happens without a cause.

CONQUER LUCK EXCUSITIS IN TWO WAYS

• Accept the law of cause and effect.

• Don’t be a wishful thinker. Don’t waste your mental muscles dreaming of an effortless way to win success. We don’t become successful simply through luck. Success comes from doing those things and mastering those principles that produce success.

Every human being wants success. Everybody wants the best this life can deliver. Nobody enjoys crawling, living in mediocrity. No one likes feeling second-class and feeling forced to go that way.

Believe, really believe, you can move a mountain, and you can.

Belief works this way. Belief, the “I’m-positive-I-can” attitude, generates the power, skill, and energy needed to do. When you believe I-can-do-it, the how-to-do-it develops.

The how-to-do-it always comes to the person who believes he can do it.

Those who believe they can move mountains, do. Those who believe they can’t, cannot. Belief triggers the power to do.

Belief in success is the one basic, absolutely essential ingredient of successful people.

Believe, really believe, you can succeed, and you will.

The “Okay-I’ll-give-it-a-try-but-I-don’t-think-it-will-work” attitude produces failures.

Disbelief is negative power.

It is well to respect the leader. Learn from him. Observe him. Study him. But don’t worship him. Believe you can surpass. Believe you can go beyond. Those who harbor the second-best attitude are invariably second-best doers.

A person is a product of his own thoughts. Believe Big.

Launch your success offensive with honest, sincere belief that you can succeed. Believe big and grow big.

Your mind is a “thought factory.” It’s a busy factory, producing countless thoughts in one day.

Production in your thought factory is under the charge of two foremen, one of whom we will call Mr. Triumph and the other Mr. Defeat.

Both Mr. Triumph and Mr. Defeat are intensely obedient. They snap to attention immediately. All you need do to signal either foreman is to give the slightest mental beck and call. If the signal is positive, Mr. Triumph will step forward and go to work. Likewise, a negative signal brings Mr. Defeat forward.

Now; the more work you give either of these two foremen, the stronger he becomes.

Those who convert opportunity into reward will be those wise people who learn how to think themselves to success.

Walk in. The door to success is open wider than ever before. Put yourself on record now that you are going to join that select group that is getting what it wants from life.

Here is the first step toward success. It’s a basic step. It can’t be avoided. Step One: Believe in yourself, believe you can succeed.