Prosperity Practitioners
By Jim “Gymbeaux” Brown, February 27, 2017
Have
you ever heard of or listen to or read and of the works of people like Zig Ziglar, Jim Rohn, Tony Robbins, Jon
Gordon, Joe Tye, Kieran Revell, Michael Dunn, Dr. Tom Hill, Connie Podesta, Andy Andrews,
Jeffrey Gitomer, Dr. John Maxwell, Earl Nightingale; the list is
endless. These people teach through
their presentations and writings that the individual has within him or her the
ability to attain all that the individual desires provided they remain focused
on their goals and desires instead of what they do NOT want in their lives. In
a sense, they are all “prosperity
practitioners.”
Why
do I say that? I have been reading the
many works of Orison Swett Marden who wrote in the late 1800s and early 1900s
about the life and times of that period of history. Shockingly he writes about environments and
personal attitudes that exist today that existed then. He writes about how vitally important a
person’s mind is in obtaining all that the person wants to achieve and that
failure to remain focused on the goals, objectives, or dreams and failing to
take decisive action will ultimately lead to failure to achieve those goals,
objectives, or dreams.
Consider
what Marden wrote in his book The Victorious Attitude in 1916:
“The time is not far away when we shall have prosperity practitioners who
will make a specialty of teaching people how
to free their minds from thoughts that produce poverty by replacing them with
their opposites, thus constantly enlarging the mental power of attraction until
the mind becomes a powerful magnet, ever attracting prosperity.”
Who
teaches our children? Parents? Elementary School Teachers? Middle and Senior School Teachers? College Professors? Pastors, Priests, Rabbis and other religious
professionals? Obviously all of
them. The question should be; who
teaches our kids the value of their thought processes? The value of the mental pictures they form of
their everyday lives and more importantly the mental picture they create of
their future lives. In his book, The E-Myth Revisited, Michael Gerber asks the question, what will your business look like
when it is finished? (The book is an
excellent read for anyone in business and I highly recommend it.). Gerber’s question is a GREAT QUESTION!
A
slight deviation of that same question should be answered by every individual;
the question? What will your life look
like when IT is FINISHED? What chapters will
you have written before the final chapter has been written and the book is
closed on your life? Who have you
met? What have you done? What have you created? What have you achieved? What will you leave as a legacy for your
families and others to read and follow?
Will it be worth following?
There
is a great book The Dash: Making a Difference with
Your Life from Beginning to End, by Linda Ellis
and Mac Anderson where they describe
the hidden meaning of the “dash” between the dates that you see on the tombs of
the fallen. Date born – (Dash) – Date
Died. It is the DASH that contains ALL that
happened in between those two dates.
Also included in that “dash” is the HOW
it all happened.
If and when you read The Victorious
Attitude by Marden, and I sincerely hope you read it, you will discover that YOU are the ONLY PERSON that dictates what YOUR
DASH will contain once the book on your life is closed. He describes exactly what YOU MUST DO to create the life YOU WANT. No other person can or will create that life
for you. It all begins with how you
think and what you think and then how you act upon what you have thought. As Henry
Ford so famously said, “If you think you can do a thing or think you can't do a thing, you're right!”
With that thought, if you truly CAN think you CAN do something or you CAN
truly think you CANNOT do it, why
would you ever think you CANNOT do
the very thing you so desire to do or accomplish? Why?
More importantly, if your future can be created by your thoughts, why
would you INTENTIONALLY set the bar
so low when it is within your mental powers to set the bar at whatever level
you desire?
I have come to believe that all the great books
and thoughts about how to achieve success, however you define your level of
success, written by so many great men and women, they all started with the
words and concepts contained in Marden’s books such as The Victorious Attitude
published in 1916.
Think about the book that Marden did not write –
The Participation Attitude. No he wrote
about the VICTORIOUS ATTITUDE. Winning
has taken on a different meaning of late, almost as if only winners (the New
England Patriots) can win and not everyone can be a winner (the Cleveland
Browns); I had to say that. If you truly
believe that, then why try? Why make the
attempt?
The path you could take to achieve success was
written for you in 1916. The only reason
that people like you and me may not have reached our desired achievements may
be because we have never been taught how to achieve them OR we simply did not pay attention to what we were taught OR we did not believe what others have
taught us. Which is it? For me, it was not until I was in my mid 40s
before I heard of any such teachings and my learning was TOTALLY ACCIDENTAL! That is
criminal given that this information has been around since the 1890s. I went through all 12 years of public
education, 2 years of college, and 20 years of military training and not one
person ever put forth the concept that each and every one of us controls our
own futures by what we think our futures should look like. Not one!
Nor did I hear it from my parents.
Why was that? Because they were
not taught the power of our own thoughts and therefore were not in a position
to advance the teachings like Marden’s or anyone else’s.
For everyone who reads this Nugget you can no
longer make the excuse that your children do not know because you were
unaware. Read The Victorious Attitude or any of Marden’s books and
you will know exactly what kind of information, encouragement and actions you
should be providing to your children as I should have mine. There is an ancient proverb, “you can bring a
horse to water but you can’t make him drink” and it certainly applies. You can make people aware of the path to
success but you certainly can make them take it. I only wish that I would have unfolded the
mental map to success at the earliest of my children’s ages had I known then
what I know now. The sky is truly the
limit!
Every person should be “prosperity
practitioners” whether we are talking about teaching our children or teaching
our employees. “If you think you can do a thing or think you can't do a thing, you're right!” So why would you think you can’t? Why would you ever want you children or
employees not to know that they can?
The Winning Recipe for Success
- Add in serious consideration as to what you want your lifetime goal to be
- Blend in 100% of your focus and belief
- Thoroughly beat in 100% of your actions
- Carefully remove those particles of doubt and discouragement
- Periodically check for benchmarks of accomplishments
- Let simmer over a lifetime
- Result – your life’s goal achieved! (*)
(*)Warning, it is quite possible that this
recipe may result in a life’s goal being achieved long before the book on your
life has been written in which case it is highly recommended you create a new
life’s goal or mission and follow the same recipe.