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Affirmation Creates Power by Orison Swett Marden – Part 2 of 3

AFFIRMATION CREATES POWER by Orison Swett Marden – Part 2 of 3

 

Part 2 of 3

Perpetual Positive Affirmation Creates a Life of Harmony, Achievement, and Success

Affirmation Creates PowerYou can do a difficult thing only with a

positive state of mind, never with a negative.

Plus force, not minus, does things.

The dominant qualities are all positive,

assertive, aggressive, and they require a corresponding

attitude of mind for their exercise and application.

A man who has not these dominant, qualities

can never be a leader or independent; he must be a trailer,

an imitator, until he changes his thought from negative to positive,

from doubtful to certain, from shrinking and retiring to asserting and advancing.

It is the decisive, positive soul that wins.

If you wish to amount to anything in the world, never for one moment permit the idea to come into your mind that you are unlucky, that you are less fortunate than other human beings. Deny it with all the power you can muster. Discipline yourself never to acknowledge weakness or think of mental, physical, or moral defects. Deny that you are a weakling, that you cannot do what others can do; that you are handicapped and must be satisfied to take an inferior position in the world. Strangle every doubt as you would a viper threatening your life.

Never talk, think, or write of your poverty or unfortunate condition. Cut out of your life all thought that limits, hampers, dwarfs, and darkens it. These are ghosts of fear; the Creator never made them or intended them to haunt or torment you. He made you for happiness, for joy, for conquest over your environment.

Persistently affirm that the Creator handicapped no one; that our limitations are all our own. Resolve that, come what may, you will be an optimist; that there shall be nothing pessimistic in you; believe in the final triumph of the right, the victory of all that is true and noble.

Affirm that you are one of the most fortunate beings. Congratulate yourself that you were born just in the nick of time, and in just the right place; that there is a definite work for you to do that on one else can do; and that you are one of the most lucky persons in the world to have the opportunity, the health, the education, to do the thing you are bound to accomplish.

If you are out of work and poor, just throw out of your mind every idea of penury and poverty. Hold the thought of plenty, of abundance, of all good, which the Creator has promised you. Stoutly deny that you are poor, or miserable, or unlucky; claim that you are lucky, that you are well, vigorous, and strong; that you must succeed; and you will succeed.

Always affirm that the Creator who gave you the longing to be somebody and to do something in the world, has also given you the ability and the opportunity to realize the ambition.

When you set your mind toward achievement, let everything about you indicate success. Let your manner, your dress, your bearing, your conversation, and everything you do speak achievement and success. Carry always a success atmosphere with you.

You will find a wonderful advantage in starting out every morning with the mind set toward success and achievement by permeating it with thoughts of prosperity and harmony, whether by repetition of set formulas, as some advise, or not. It will then be so much the harder for discord to get into the day’s work.

If you are inclined to doubt your ability to do any particular thing, school yourself to hold the self-trust thought firmly and persistently. It is the assumption of power, of self-trust, of confidence in yourself, in your integrity or wholeness, that cannot be shaken, that will enable you to become strong, and to do, with vigor and ease, the thing you undertake.

You will find that the perpetual holding of these ideals will change your whole outlook upon life:

  • You will approach your problems from a new standpoint, and
  • life will take on a fresh meaning.
  • This perpetual affirmation will put you in harmony with your surrounding;
  • it will make you contented and happy; and
  • it will be a powerful tonic for your health.
  • It will help you to build up individuality and personal power.
  • It will make your brain clearer, your thought more effective.

Keeping the mental machinery clean makes for vigorous thinking, decisive action.

*** end of part 2 of 3 ***

AFFIRMATION CREATES POWER by Orison Swett Marden

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Affirmation Creates Power by Orison Swett Marden – Part 1 of 3

AFFIRMATION CREATES POWER by Orison Swett Marden – Part 1 of 3

 

Part 1 of 3

Constant Affirmation Increases Courage; the Backbone of Confidence

“An affirmation is a statement of Truth consciously used so as to become the directing power of Life’s expression.”
— Orison Swett Marden

Affirmation Creates PowerOnly he can who thinks he can!

The world makes way only for the determined man,

for the man who laughs at barriers which limit others,

at stumbling-blocks over which others fall.

The man who, as Emerson says,

“hitches his wagon to a star,”

is more likely to arrive at his goal than

the one who trails in the slimy path of the snail.

Confidence is the father of achievement.

It reinforces ability, doubles energy,

buttresses mental faculties, increases power.

Your thought will carry only the force of your conviction, the weight of your decision, the power of your confidence. If these are weak, your thought will be weak and your work futile.

Some people are incapable of strong, deep conviction; they are all surface, and liable to be changed by the opinions of everybody else. If they resolve upon a certain course, their resolution is so superficial that the first obstacle they strike deflects them. They are always at the mercy of the opposition, or of people who do not agree with them. Such people are shifty and unreliable; they lack strength of decision, positiveness of resolution.

What is a man good for if he hasn’t strength of resolution?

If his convictions are on the surface, he stands for nothing; nobody has confidence in him.  He may be a good man, personally, but he does not inspire confidence. No one would think of calling upon him when anything of importance was at stake.

Unless conviction takes hold of one’s very being, there will be very little achievement in life. It is the man whose conviction is rooted deep and takes hold of his very life-blood, the man who is strong and persistent in his determination that can be depended upon. He is the man of influence, who carries weight; he is above the influence of any man who happens to have a different opinion.

If young people only knew the power of affirmation, of the habit of holding in the mind persistently and affirming that they are what they wish to be, that they can do what they have attempted, it would revolutionize their whole lives, it would exempt them from most of their ills and troubles, and carry them to heights of which they scarcely dream.

We are always talking about the power of the will. Its exercise is only another form of the affirmation. The will, the determination to do a thing, is the same as the affirmation of the ability to do it. No one ever accomplishes anything in this world until he affirms in one way or another that he can do what he undertakes.

It is almost impossible to keep a man back who:

  • has a firm faith in his mission,
  • who believes that he can do the thing before him,
  • that he is equal to the obstacles which confront him,
  • that he is more than a match for his environment.

The constant affirmation of ability to succeed, and of our determination to do so:

  • carries us past difficulties,
  • defies obstacles,
  • laughs at misfortunes, and
  • strengthens the power to achieve.

It reinforces and buttresses the natural faculties and power, and holds them to their tasks.

Constant affirmation increases courage, and courage is the backbone of confidence.

Furthermore, when a person gets in a tight place and says “I must,” “I will,” he not only reinforces his courage and strengthens his confidence, but also weakens the opposite qualities. Whatever strengthens a positive will weaken the corresponding negative.

*** end of part 1 of 3 ***

AFFIRMATION CREATES POWER by Orison Swett Marden

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Achievement: Why Live with Regrets When You Can Live to Succeed?

Achievement: Why Live with Regrets When You Can Live to Succeed?

Achieve Success With No Regrets!

Achieve Success With No Regrets!Achievement is connected to our

personal growth and that is a lifelong

learning process of ups and downs.

Do you let setbacks, failed ventures, or

wrong choices weigh you down with regrets?

Refuse to let your life fill up with regrets.

Why? Because living in a state of regret will hinder your personal growth and ability to achieve success.

The Pain Of Regret

Regret is a feeling or sense of sorrow or remorse over a past choice. Regret is like a first cousin to condemnation. They both leave us feeling guilty, defective, and unhappy.

In the short term, this can actually be a positive thing…

  • It is like a wake-up call to show us how our life got off course.
  • It makes us take a look at the choices we have been making in life.
  • It makes us realize we can’t live this life on our own and it is important to cry out to the Lord for help.

“The godly cry out and the Lord hears; He saves them from all their troubles.”
— Psalm 34:17

We can, and should, learn from our mistakes and successes on our journey of life. And no doubt, living with regret and condemnation is a negative, low confidence, unhealthy state to be in. It keeps us stuck and unable to move forward.

“The LORD redeems his servants; no one will be condemned who takes refuge in Him.”
— Psalm 34:22

Remember: we have been blessed with the gift of life and a purpose for our time here on this earth. Why live in a way that causes constant regrets, and even worse, regrets we may have once we are in heaven and look back on how we lived our lives?

Success Is Full Of Challenges

The road to success is full of challenges and struggles. Achievement in any degree requires work, and often an outright battle. The storms of life can blow through and make it a fight just to survive at times, let alone stay on track pursuing our goals and desires.

“A righteous man may have many troubles, but the LORD delivers him from them all.”
— Psalm 34:19

If you look back in history, the greatest, most successful individuals had to invest a lot of effort in order to successfully achieve their goals. They had to push through their challenges with much determination. So we shouldn’t be surprised at the labor involved in achieving our goals.

Live With Purpose to Succeed

Live with no regrets by choosing to fight through the battles that come your way. Don’t quit. Run the race to finish – run the race to win.

“Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us…looking unto Jesus.”
— Hebrews 12:1-2

Take a moment to feel the pain of past regrets. No doubt you prefer to avoid those feelings of remorse, caused from not having done something you should have, or for making poor choices.

Today is the day to say no more regrets. Do not be afraid to step out and give the thing you know you should be doing a try. Do everything in your power to achieve it. Don’t give up at the first hurdle in your way. Learn to move beyond your mistakes. We all make them.

And remember always: “There is therefore now no condemnation to them who are in Christ Jesus.” (Romans 1:8)

Purpose to make positive choices in life and avoid future regrets. Leave the past in the past and move forward with no regrets.

Put this to the test right away: Maintain the mindset that you will always do your best to achieve whatever task is at hand. Strive to be the best person you can possibly be. Live life with no regrets – live to succeed.

May you choose to always do your best, live an amazing, successful life with no regrets, full of growing prosperity!

Soar higher in Him –

Cheers,
Brenda

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Godly Humility – How Can a Humble Heart Put You On the Road to Destination Greatness?

Godly Humility – How Can a Humble Heart Put You On the Road to Destination Greatness?

A Life of Humility that Leads to God’s Richest Blessings!

Godly Humility Leads to Destination GreatnessHumility needs to take root in the heart first…

and then it will begin to grow and expand

into every area of life.

Humility has to be taught to us by God

and is not generally something we easily learn. 

“I believe the first test of a truly great man is his humility.” 
— John Ruskin

Power to Change

Humility changes the way we see God and helps us submit our heart to Him. It changes the way we view others and gives us a servant’s perspective. Humility is not denial of self, but it is an embracing of God’s Word within us. It allows us to lay aside our personal wants and needs and adopt His desires and goals for our lives.

“Be clothed with humility: for God resists the proud, and gives grace to the humble. Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due time.” 
— 1 Peter 5:5-6

Humbling ourselves under God’s hand allows Him to raise us up to greatness at the proper time. Keep in mind; greatness from our perspective is different from God’s. God is more interested in our humility than He is of our ‘great’ works.

Do you want to be blessed? Then develop a servant’s heart.

“Whoever, wishes to be great among you shall be your servant.” 
— Jesus Christ (Matthew 20:26)

Destination Greatness

When we humble ourselves before God, we gain new strength and insight. God prepares us for greatness and blessing. He will often allow intense pressures and adversity to humble us and refocus our thoughts so that we begin to think the way He thinks. Pain, embarrassment, and criticism are like safety checks to keep us from becoming proud and arrogant.

When facing challenges, we have a choice. We can either be hardened by our circumstances or humbled by them. If we choose to be humbled, we will gain God’s perspective and quickly discover that He is guiding us to victory (spiritually and physically).

Don’t be fooled though; if we choose to have a hard heart, we open the door to bitterness and close-mindedness. And remember, God resists the proud. Pride and rebellion are the opposite of humility and they separate us from God.

God says He hates a proud look and a proud heart is a sin. (Proverbs  6:17, 21:4) Pride is not only dangerous it is destructive and does not fit who we are in Christ. Humility transforms us into the image of Christ and empowers us to stand strong through the storms of life.

Many people view humility as a sign of weakness, but it is not. It is a sign of strength and spiritual maturity.

How Do We Gain Godly Humility?

It starts with a commitment to study God’s Word and a willingness to submit to Him. Then God will begin to show each of us individually the steps we must take in our lives to gain true humility. God develops humility within us through the power of His Spirit.

Humility is not something we practice in church or to impress others. It must reflect our lifestyle and who we are deep inside.

“He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” 
— Micah 6:8

In our love for God, we must be careful to walk humbly before Him. When we begin to understand the greatness of God’s love, humility will become our first choice. To bring God glory and honor simply because we love Him is at the heart of true humility.

Needless to say: Living a life of humility may not be easy, but it certainly leads to God’s richest blessings.

May you humble yourself and experience all the abundant goodness God has for you and enjoy a life of growing prosperity!

God bless you –

Cheers,
Brenda

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

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

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

Secret, Sealed message from The CreatorFall 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

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Personal Growth – Are You A Uniquely Gifted Specialist Created for Greatness?

Personal Growth – Are You A Uniquely Gifted Specialist Created for Greatness?

Find Out Now if You are a Specialist in the Making!

Unique and Created for GreatnessPersonal growth is a lifelong process…

And we are individual creations…

with our own unique seeds to achieve greatness.

Watering these seeds allows our special talents and gifts to grow…

and develop us into unique specialist.

Fearfully and Wonderfully Made

Do you realize you are a miracle and have been fearfully and wonderfully made? (Psalm 139:14) We are each the only one in all of creation who has our unique set of talents and abilities.

Never see yourself as insignificant. Make the most of yourself and use what talents you possess. Like the saying goes, “Use it or lose it.”

Specialist in the Making

You are special. When we begin to use our God given gifts, we develop into a specialist. Keep in mind: We were not created to be all things to all people.

Do not be one of the masses that bury their talents and gifts. Do not be a copy cat and go down the path of least resistance. Develop your unique gifts to the fullest and do not be surprised when others call you gifted.

God tells us not to conform to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of our minds to His Word. Then we will be able to test and approve what His perfect and acceptable will is. (Romans 12:2)

Your Life Makes a Difference

Use your life to make a positive difference. God gifted us with unique abilities for a special purpose. No one can do what we ought to be doing and contributing to this world as well as we should. God gives us the ability to do what we have been called to do.

Living a life less than we are capable of will bring unhappiness. We must also remember that we are responsible to God for how we use our gifts in life. So let us use them wisely and achieve greatness.

Are you with me still? Good. Then become a uniquely gifted specialist and put your stamp on this world. Society is counting on you and more importantly God is counting on you. Let your light shine and achieve greatness on your journey of personal growth.

May your life be full of growing achievements and growing prosperity!

God bless you –

Soar higher,
Brenda

P.S. Image credit goes to: Thad Zajdowicz

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