All
creatures on earth are supplied at birth with everything
they need for successful survival. All creatures except one
are
supplied with a set of instincts that will do the job for
them. And because of that, most creatures don't need much of
a brain. In the Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright Archibald
MacLeish's play The Secret of Freedom, a character
says,
"The only
thing about a man that is man is his mind. Everything else
you can find in a pig or a horse." That's
uncomfortably true.
Take the
magnificent bald eagle for example. To see one of them
swooping down and pluck a live and sizeable fish from the
water on a single pass is astonishing. More astonishing
still is the eagle's eyesight. And because of its need to
see small rodents moving in the grass from high altitudes or
a fish just inches under the surface of the water, its
incredible eyes take up just about all the space in its
head. For the eagle, its eyes are the most important thing,
and everything else works in unison with them. Its brain is
tiny and rudimentary. It doesn't think or plan or remember;
it simply acts in accordance with stimuli.
And it's
the same with most other living creatures. Even the
beautiful porpoise, with a much larger brain, and the
chimpanzee are easily tamed and taught. Only one takes 20
years to mature and has dominion over all the rest on the
earth itself, and has today the power to destroy all life on
earth in a couple of hours. Only one is given the godlike
power to fashion its own life according to the images it
holds in its remarkable mind.
The human
mind is the one thing that separates us from the rest of the
creatures on earth. Everything that means anything to us
comes to us through our minds, our love of our families, our
beliefs, all of our talents, knowledge, abilities.
Everything is reflected through our minds. Anything that
comes to us in the future will almost certainly come to us
as a result of the extent to which we use our minds.
And yet,
it's the last place on earth the average person will turn to
for help. You know why? You know why people don't
automatically turn their own vast mental resources on when
faced with a problem? It's because they never learned
how to think. Most people will go to any length to
avoid thinking when they're faced with a problem. They will
ask advice from the most illogical people, usually people
who don't know any more than they do: next-door neighbors,
members of their families, and friends stuck in the same
mental traps that they are. Very few of them use the muscles
of their mind to solve their problems.
Yet living
successfully, getting the things we want from life, is a
matter of solving the problems that stand between where we
are now and the point we wish to reach. No one is without
problems. They're part of living. But let me show you how
much time we waste in worrying about the wrong problems.
Here's a reliable estimate of the things people worry about:
Things that never happen: 40%. Things over and past that can
never be changed by all the worry in the world: 30%.
Needless worries about our health: 12%. Petty miscellaneous
worries: 10%. Real legitimate worries: 8%.
In short,
92% of the average person's worries take up valuable time,
cause painful stress, even mental anguish, and are
absolutely unnecessary. And of the real legitimate worries,
there are two kinds. There are the problems we can solve,
and there are the problems beyond our ability to personally
solve. But most of our real problems usually fall into the
first group, the ones we can solve, if we'll learn how.
The
average working person has at his or her disposal an
enormous amount of free time. In fact, you'll see if you'll
total the hours in a year and subtract the sleeping hours:
If we sleep 8 hours every night, we have about 6,000 waking
hours, of which less than 2,000 are spent on the job. Now
this leaves 4,000 hours a year when a person is neither
working nor sleeping. These can be called discretionary
hours with which that person can do pretty much as he or she
pleases.
So that
you can see the amazing results in your own life, I want to
recommend that you take just one hour a day, five days a
week, and devote this hour to exercising your mind. You
don't even have to do it on weekends. Pick one hour a day on
which you can fairly regularly count. The best time for me
is an hour before the others are up in the morning. The
mind's clear, the house is quiet, and, if you like, with a
fresh cup of coffee, this is the time to start the mind
going.
During
this hour every day take a completely blank sheet of paper.
At the top of the page write your present primary goal
clearly, simply. Then, since our future depends on the way
in which we handle our work, write down as many ideas as you
can for improving that which you now do. Try to think of 20
possible ways in which the activity that fills your day can
be improved. You won't always get 20, but even one idea is
good.
Now
remember two important points with regard to this. One, this
is not particularly easy, and, two, most of your ideas won't
be any good. When I say it's not easy, I mean it's like
starting any new habit. At first you'll find your mind a
little reluctant to be hauled up out of that old familiar
bed. But as you think about your work and ways in which it
might be improved, write down every idea that pops into your
head, no matter how absurd it might seem.
The most
important thing that this extra hour accomplishes is that it
deeply embeds your goal into your subconscious mind, starts
the whole vital machine reworking the first thing every
morning. And 20 ideas a day, if you can come up with that
many, total 100 a week, even skipping weekends.
An hour a
day, five days a week, totals 260 hours a year and still
leaves you 3,740 hours of free leisure time. Now this means
you'll be thinking about your goal and ways of improving
your performance, increasing your service six full extra
working weeks a year, 61/2 40-hour weeks devoted to thinking
and planning. Can you see how easy it is to rise above that
socalled competition? And it'll still leave you with seven
hours a day to spend as you please. </P< span>
Starting
each day thinking, you'll find that your mind will continue
to work all day long. And you'll find that at odd moments,
when you least expect it, really great ideas will begin to
bubble up from your subconscious. When they do, write them
down as soon as you can. Just one great idea can completely
revolutionize your work and, as a result, your life.
Each time
you write your goal at the top of the sheet of paper, don't
worry or become concerned about it. Think of it as only
waiting to be reached, a problem only waiting to be solved.
Face it with faith and bend all the great powers of your
mind toward solving it. And believe me, solve it you will.
This puts each of us in the driver's seat.
Each of us
has a tendency to underestimate his or her own abilities. We
should realize that we have deep within ourselves deep
reservoirs of great ability, even genius that can be tapped
if we'll just dig deep enough. It's the miracle of your
mind.
Everything fashioned by human beings is a
result of goal setting. We reach our goals. That's how we
know that the diseases that plague us will be conquered.
We've set goals to eradicate every disease that plagues us
and eradicate them we will, one by one. We have never set a
goal that we have not reached or are now in the process of
reaching.
