Wisdom & Empowerment: The Orison Swett Marden Edition (18 Books in One Volume). Orison Swett Marden
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Название: Wisdom & Empowerment: The Orison Swett Marden Edition (18 Books in One Volume)
Автор: Orison Swett Marden
Издательство: Bookwire
Жанр: Сделай Сам
isbn: 9788075839077
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The habit of holding the good-will, kindly attitude of mind toward everybody has a powerful influence upon the character. It lifts the mind above petty jealousies and meannesses; it enriches and enlarges the whole life. Wherever we meet people, no matter if they are strangers, we feel a certain kinship with and friendliness for them, greater interest in them, if we have formed the goodwill habit. We feel that if we only had the opportunity of knowing them, we should like them.
In other words, the kindly habit, the goodwill habit makes us feel more sympathy for everybody. And if we radiate this helpful, friendly feeling, others will reflect it back to us.
On the other hand, if we go through life with a cold, selfish mental attitude, caring only for our own, always looking for the main chance, only thinking of what will further our own interests, our own comforts, totally indifferent to others, this attitude will, after a while, harden the feelings and marbleize the affections, and we shall become dry, pessimistic, and uninteresting.
Try to hold the kindly, good-will attitude toward everybody. If your nature is hard you will be surprised to see how it will soften under the new influence. You will become more sympathetic, more charitable toward others’ weaknesses and failings, and you will grow more magnanimous and whole-souled. The good-will attitude will make us more lovable, interesting, and helpful. Others will look upon us in the same way in which we regard them. The cold, crabbed, unsocial, selfish person finds the same dualities reflected from others.
How muck better it is to go through life with a warm heart, with kindly feelings toward everybody, radiating good will and good cheer wherever we go! Life is short at most and what a satisfaction it is to feel that we have scattered flowers instead of thorns, that we have tried to be helpful and kind instead of selfish and churlish.
The world builds its monuments to the unselfish, the helpful, and if these monuments are not in marble or bronze, they are in the hearts of those whom their inspirers have cheered, encouraged, and helped.
All of us, no matter how poor we may be, whether we have succeeded or failed in our vocations, can be great successes in helpfulness, in radiating good will, good cheer, and encouragement.
Everybody can be a success in the goodwill business, and it is infinitely better to fail in our vocation and to succeed in this, than to accumulate great wealth and be a failure in helpfulness, in a kindly, sympathetic attitude toward others.
The habit of wishing everybody well, of feeling like giving everybody a Godspeed, ennobles and beautifies the character wonderfully, magnifies our ability, and multiplies our mental power.
We were planned on lines of nobility; we were intended to be something grand; not mean and stingy, but large and generous; we were made in God’s image that we might be Godlike.
Selfishness and greed dwarf our natures and make us mere apologies of the men and women God intended us to be. The way to get back to our own, to regain our lost birthright, is to form a habit of holding the kindly, helpful, sympathetic, good-will attitude toward everybody.
Chapter X.
Love As A Tonic
All through the Bible are passages which show that love is a health-tonic, and actually lengthens life.
“With long life will I satisfy him,” says the Psalmist, “because he hath set his love upon me.” Love is harmony, and harmony prolongs life, as fear, jealousy, envy, friction, and discord shorten it.
Who has not seen the magic power of love in transforming rough, uncouth men into refined and devoted husbands!
There is no doubt that those who are filled with the spirit of love, which is the Christ spirit,—whose sympathies and tenderness are not confined to their immediate relatives and friends, but reach out to every member of the human family,—live longer and are more exempt from the ills of mankind than the selfish and pessimistic, who, centered in themselves, lose their better part of life, the joy and the strength that come from giving themselves to others.
The power of love is often illustrated in a delicate mother who walks the floor, night after night, whose days pass without recreation or change, week in and week out, and who feels more than compensated if she can only procure relief for her suffering little one.
In no other way than through the marvelous power of love can we account for the wonderful miracles of endurance presented by many mothers in bringing up large families. Think of a mother carrying about, perhaps for the greater part of a day and the night following, the same weight, in merchandise or other matter, as that of a sick child! She could not stand the strain. She would be ill in a short time. But love lightens her load and makes self-sacrifice a pleasure. She can bear any burden, even poverty, disappointment, or suffering, for the sake of the loved one. This sublimely unselfish moth-er-love is a prototype of the most exalted creative love that enraptures the universe, that invites us to be partakers and dispensers of this world-tonic, this great panacea for all of the ills of mankind.
“The situation that has not its duty, its ideal,” says Carlyle, “was never yet occupied by man. Yes, here in this poor, miserable, hampered, despicable actual, wherein thou even now standest, here or nowhere is thy ideal; work it out therefrom, and, working, believe, live, be free. Fool! the ideal is in thyself.”
Not on some far-off height, in some distant scene, or fabled land, where longing without endeavor is magically satisfied, will we carve out the ideal that haunts our souls, but near at hand.
In the humble valley, on the boundless prairie, on the farm, on sea or on land, in workshop, store, or office, wherever there is honest work for the hand and brain of man to do,—within the circumscribed limits of our daily duties is the field wherein our ideal must be wrought.
Wrapped up in every human being there are energies which, if unfolded, concentrated, and given proper direction, will develop the ideal.
Our very longings are creative principles, indicative of potencies equal to the task of actual achievement. These latent potencies are not given to mock us. There are no sealed orders wrapped within the brain without the accompanying ability to execute them.
If the emancipation proclamation is written in your blood, if it is indicated in the very texture of your being, you will have within you—undeveloped, it may be, but always there,—strength to break the fetters that bind you, power to triumph over the environment which hampers you.
No external means alone, however, will accomplish this. You must lay hold of eternal principles, of the everlasting verities, or you never can accomplish what you were sent into the world to do. You never can reach the goal of your highest possibilities until you believe in your God-given power to do so, until you are convinced that you are master of your will, and that the Creator has endowed you with strength to bend circumstances to aid you in the realization of your vision.
Our energies must not be allowed СКАЧАТЬ