You
can advance only by being larger than your present place; and no man is larger
than his present place who leaves undone any of the work pertaining to that
place.
The
world is advanced only by those who more than fill their present places.
If
no man quite filled his present place, you can see that there must be a going
backward in everything. Those who do not quite fill their present places are
dead weight 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 fill the places they are holding; they belong
to a former age and a lower stage or plane of life, and their tendency is
toward degeneration. 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
filled their places. The law is exactly the same for you; your 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 everyday 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 today, 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 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 thing 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 tomorrow's work today, 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 a 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 worse 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 a
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 every one is strong, you are acting
in the 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 the people fail who separate mental power from personal
action. They use the power of mind in one place and at one time, and they act
in another pace 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 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 all 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 transferred
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 it that you can grasp it
instantly. You will become so enthused with 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, permeates, penetrates, and fills the interspaces of the universe.
A
thought, in this substance, produces the thing that is imaged by the thought.
Man
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.