Positive Attitude & Passionate Belief
nurtured by
Meaningful Goals & Powerful Motivation
sustained by
Untiring Perseverance & Loving Compassion
can achieve
Amazing Success & Abundant Happiness
for
Time Eternal through Life’s Journey
blessed by
Enlightened Wisdom & Almighty’s Bounty!
As a Man Thinketh!
James Allen had long been impressed by the ancient philosophy that a man becomes what he thinks, that a man’s character is the outward expression of his inward thoughts. He had traced it back to the Upanishads, the sacred Hindu literature: “Man becomes that of which he thinks!” He had found it eloquently expressed in the writings of Buddha: “The mind is everything…what you think you become!” And in the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius: “Your life is what your thoughts make it!” He had found the same basic idea in the writings of Confucius, Mohammed, Aristotle, Socrates, and scores of others. And he knew it, of course, in its most familiar form from the Bible: “As he thinketh in his heart, so is he!” And this inspired his celebrated work ‘As a Man thinketh,’ from which reads this powerful and inspirational passage…
As the plant springs from, and could not be without, the seed, so every act of a man springs from the hidden seeds of thought and could not have appeared without them. Act is the blossom of thought, and joy and suffering are its fruits…thus does a man garner in the sweet and bitter fruitage of his own husbandry.
A man’s mind may be likened to a garden, which may be intelligently cultivated or allowed to run wild… but whether cultivated or neglected, it must, and will, bring forth. If no useful seeds are put into it, then an abundance of useless weed-seeds will fall therein…and will continue to produce their kind.
Just as the gardener cultivates his plot, keeping it free from weeds, and growing the flowers and fruits which he requires, so may a man tend the garden of his mind, weeding out all the wrong, useless, and impure thoughts, and cultivating toward perfection the flowers and fruits of right, useful, and pure thoughts. By pursuing this process, a man sooner or later discovers that he is the master-gardener of his soul, the director of his life. He also reveals within himself the laws of thought, and understands with ever-increasing accuracy, how the thought forces operate in the shaping of his character and destiny.
Man is buffeted by circumstances so long as he believes himself to be the creature of outside conditions.
Only when a man realizes that he is a creative power, and that he may command the hidden soil and seeds of his being, out of which circumstances grow, he then becomes the rightful master of himself.
Good thoughts bear good fruit, bad thoughts, bad fruit. A man will find that as he alters his thoughts towards things and other people, things and other people will alter towards him. Let a man radically alter his thoughts, and he will be astonished at the rapid transformation it will effect in the material conditions of his life. Men do not attract that which they want, but that which they are. The divinity that shapes our ends is in ourselves. It is our very self. All that a man achieves or fails to achieve is the direct result of his own thoughts. A man can only rise, conquer, and achieve by lifting up his thoughts. He remains weak and abject and miserable by refusing to life up his thoughts.
A man should conceive of a legitimate purpose in his heart and set out to accomplish it. He should make this purpose the centralizing point of his thoughts. He should devote himself to its attainment, not allowing his thoughts to wander away into ephemeral fancies, longings, and imaginings. This is the royal road to self-control and true concentration of thought. Even if he fails again and again to accomplish his purpose (as he necessarily must, until weakness is overcome), the strength of character gained will be the measure of his true success, and this will form a new starting point for future power and triumph.
Into your hands will be placed the exact results of your own thoughts…you will receive that which you earn… no more, no less. Whatever your present environment may be, you will fall, remain, or rise with your Thoughts, your Vision, your Ideals. You will become as small as your controlling desire…as great as your dominant aspiration!
The Vision that you glorify in your Mind, the Ideals that you enthrone in your Heart…this is what will build your life! This is what you will become! A man is literally what he thinks, his character being the complete sum of all his thoughts! - James Allen
There is one thing stronger
than all the armies in the world...
...and that is an idea, whose time has come!
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