The Thought Factor in Achievement: Lessons from As a Man Thinketh

Welcome back to the Daily Mastermind. My name is George Wright III with your daily dose of inspiration, motivation, and education so that you can create your ultimate destiny. Wow, what a great day for a great day. Today's Monday and I'm excited about completing our reading of As a Man Thinketh by James Allen. We just got back from San Diego. We had an amazing millionaire conference with a bunch of seven-figure mentors like Alex Morton, Brandon Boyd, Rashard Duncan. Super excited to work with those guys in the future. That was a great event. We had hundreds and hundreds of people show up, and I'm hoping that brought some big value for you. We'll hopefully be able to send some of those recordings over social media over the coming week. But for today, let's go ahead and get back into Chapter 5 of As a Man Thinketh with James Allen. I'm looking forward to finishing this book with you and moving on to some new topics. So I hope you're taking these audiobooks and really going through them, trying to apply them to your life, and listen to them over and over because these truths have been around for hundreds and hundreds of years, and this is information that can really help you take it to the next level. So here we go with chapter five. Chapter five, the thought factor in achievement. All that a man achieves and all that he fails to achieve is the direct result of his own thoughts. In a justly ordered universe where loss of equipoise would mean total destruction, individual responsibility must be absolute. A man's weakness and strength, purity and impurity are his own and not another man's. They are brought about by himself and not by another, and they can only be altered by himself, never by another. His condition is also his own and not another man's. His suffering and his happiness are evolved from within. As he thinks so he is As he continues to think so he remains A strong man cannot help a weaker unless that weaker is willing to be helped and even then the weak man must become strong of himself He must by his own efforts, develop the strength which he admires in another. None but himself can alter his condition. It has been usual for men to think and to say, many men are slaves because one is an oppressor, Let us hate the oppressor. Now, however, there is amongst an increasing few a tendency to reverse this judgment and to say, one man is an oppressor because many are slaves. Let us despise the slaves. The truth is that oppressor and slave are co-operators in ignorance, and while seeming to afflict each other, are in reality afflicting themselves. A perfect knowledge perceives the action of law in the weakness of the oppressed and the misapplied power of the oppressor. A perfect love, seeing the suffering which both states entail, condemns neither. A perfect compassion embraces both oppressor and oppressed. He who has conquered weakness and has put away all selfish thoughts belongs neither to oppressor nor oppressed. He is free. A man can only rise, conquer, and achieve by lifting up his thoughts. He can only remain weak and abject and miserable by refusing to lift up his thoughts. Before a man can achieve anything, even in worldly things, he must lift his thoughts above slavish animal indulgence. He may not, in order to succeed, give up all animality and selfishness by any means, but a portion of it must at least be sacrificed. A man whose first thought is bestial indulgence could neither think clearly nor plan methodically He could not find and develop his latent resources and would fail in any undertaking Not having commenced to manfully control his thoughts he is not in a position to control affairs and to adopt serious responsibilities. He is not fit to act independently and stand alone, but he is limited only by the thoughts which he chooses. There can be no progress nor achievement without sacrifice, and a man's worldly success will be in the measure that he sacrifices his confused animal thoughts and fixes his mind on the development of his plans and the strengthening of his resolution and self-reliance. And the higher he lifts his thoughts, the more manly, upright, and righteous he becomes, the greater will be his success, the more blessed and enduring will be his achievements. The universe does not favor the greedy, the dishonest, the vicious, although on the mere surface it may sometimes appear to do so. It helps the honest and magnanimous, the virtuous. All the great teachers of the ages have declared that in varying forms and to prove and know it is a man has but to persist. in making himself more and more virtuous by lifting up his thoughts. Intellectual achievements are the result of thought consecrated to the search for knowledge and for the beautiful and true in life and nature. Such achievement may be sometimes connected with vanity and ambition, but they are not the outcome of those characteristics. They are the natural outgrowth of long and arduous effort and of pure and unselfish thoughts. Spiritual achievements are the consummation of holy aspirations. He who lives constantly in the conception of noble and lofty thoughts who dwells upon all that is pure and unselfish will as surely as the sun reaches its zenith and the moon its full become wise and noble in character and rise into a position of influence and blessedness. Achievement of whatever kind is the crown of effort, the diadem of thought. By the aid of self-control, resolution, purity, righteousness, and well-directed thought, a man ascends. By the aid of animality, indolence, impurity, corruption, and confusion of thought, a man descends. A man may rise to high success in the world and even to lofty altitudes in the spiritual realm and again descend into the weakness and wretchedness by allowing arrogant, selfish, and corrupt thoughts to take possession of him. Victories attained by right thought can only be maintained by watchfulness. Many give way when success is assured and rapidly fall back into failure. All achievements, whether in the business, intellectual, or spiritual world, are the result of definitely directed thought, are governed by the same law, and are of the same method. The only difference lies in the object of attainment. He who would accomplish little must sacrifice little. He who would achieve much must sacrifice much. He who would attain highly must sacrifice greatly. That's chapter five today, and that's on As a Man Thinketh, The Thought Factor in Achievement. I hope you enjoyed that, and listen to it a couple of times and see what you can take into your life. I know you have much to add and much to pull out of yourself. It's time to unleash your greatness. This is George Wright III with The Daily Mastermind. I hope you have a great day.