Self-Growth – Uncovering the Great Power of Possibilities Within! Part 1 of 2

The Great Secret the Creator Put in Our Hands at Birth!

Fall is in the air and children are heading back to school.

This is a great time of year to remind all of us,

young and old, in school or out of school,

that men and women who are trying to

make the most of their lives,

never stop growing on their journey through life.

The following are words of wisdom and encouragement from Orison Swett Marden. They are excerpts from chapter 7 “How to Find Oneself” from the book “How to Get What You Want.”  Although written back in 1917, these words still hold great insight and the ability to stir us up and check our current progress in life.

Excerpts from “How to Find Oneself” by Orison Swett Marden:

One of the most difficult things in the world is to get people to realize the extent of their latent powers, to believe in their own bigness, in their own possibilities.

The reason is that they see only a part of themselves, because they have only partially discovered themselves.

“Each of us has resources of which he does not dream.”
— Professor William James

If we could only turn a spiritual X-ray on ourselves most of us would find powers and potencies in the great within of us which may not have gotten even to their germinating stage.

There is probably not a living being who would not be amazed if he could see unfolded in panorama all of the potentialities within him, if he could only glimpse the man he might be.

He would say, “These remarkable success qualities belong to someone who has achieved distinction, not to an unknown person like me.”

What you are actually doing may be a dwarfed thing compared with the giant achievement you are capable of. It is not what you have done, but what you long to do, what you feel capable of doing that will, if you struggle to express your ideal, count most.

Up to this time you may have been seriously hampered or dwarfed in your development. All sorts of things may have happened to the possible man, or the possible woman in you, to limit its growth, to restrict it, to impoverish it.

But it is that superb thing that is possible to you, the thing which the Creator sent you here to do that you must strive to express.

In the great within of yourself there may be vast powers which you have never called out. What masterfulness, what vast reserves of helpfulness, inspiration, and encouragement may still lie uncovered within you!

You doubt that there is anything of the kind? But you do not know.

Many a man has carried locked up within himself for more than half a century the germs of a mighty genius without even guessing at it. There are multitudes of men and women all over the world who are as ignorant of their possibilities, of their hidden success assets.

“Few men find themselves before they die.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Many carry with them to their graves undiscovered continents of ability. The great majority die without developing their possible efficiency of hand, or tongue, or of brain; without developing any of the special gifts locked up in the great within of themselves.

Most of us die with the great secret, with the sealed message which the Creator put in our hands at birth, still unread, because we have never learned how to open or how to read it.

How can you be sure that you have not a lot of this ability you long for locked up in yourself?

If you have not tried your strength, how do you know what you may be able to do? You may have more ability slumbering within you than you dream of.

Why waste your precious time thinking about other people’s genius? Why not unlock your own, see what you have, bring it out into the light and develop it?

When we know that even the great majority of men whom we call successful use only a comparatively small part of their ability because they never find all of themselves, why should any of us put a narrow limit to our possibilities, remain paupers in achievement when we might be princes?

We set our own limitations.

There are enough powers, enough resources in the minds of the people in the great failure army today to revolutionize the world if their sleeping potencies could be aroused; if they could only be made to believe in themselves.

If they could only learn how to enter into the secret depths of their nature, to get hold of themselves, to arouse latent qualities and powers, they could do marvelous things. The great problem is to know how to get at the force in the great within of ourselves and to put it to work to the best advantage.

For whether life shall be a success or a failure depends upon the call we make on our resources, the extent to which we develop all our possibilities.

We don’t know what we can do until we try, and unused faculties never grow or strengthen.

Everywhere we see starved, stunted lives, people who have discovered but little bits of themselves, little patches cleared up here and there in the great wilderness of their possibilities. They couldn’t believe in their inherent greatness.

They couldn’t realize that they were born into this world to do a certain work; and that to do that work they would need every bit of power they could develop.

The average youth starting out in life has no means of knowing what his total assets are.

He sees only the assets that lie on the surface, and if he is not instructed how to find those that are deep down below the surface, if he does not get into the right environment, if he does not make a call on the divinity within him, he may never develop the man it is possible for him to be.

The end of part 1 of 2…

=======

“‘For I know the plans I have for you’, declares the Lord, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.'”
— Jeremiah 29:11

Be blessed to be a blessing!

God bless you –
Cheers,
Brenda

P.S. Image credit thanks go to Billy Alexander