Prosperity Practitioners

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.