You are victory organized; you were born to conquer, to play a magnificent part in life’s great game. But you can never do anything great or grand until you have such a conviction of yourself and your ability.
We establish relations with our desires, with whatever is dominant in our minds, with the things we long for with all our hearts, and we tend to realize these things in proportion to the persistency and intensity of our longings and our intelligent efforts to realize them.
Stop thinking trouble if you want to attract its opposite; stop thinking poverty if you wish to attract plenty. Refuse to have anything to do with the things you fear, the things you do not want.
The men who have climbed up in the world have seen themselves climbing, have pictured themselves actually in the position they longed to be in. They have climbed up mentally first. They have kept a vision of themselves as ever climbing to higher and higher things. They have continually affirmed their ability to climb, to grow up to their ideal. If we ever hope to make our dreams come true, we must do as they did; we must actually live in the conscious realization of our ideal. This is the entering wedge which will split the difficulties ahead of us, which will open the doors which shut us from our own.
We rise with our vision. All elevation, all progress, is first mental. It is based on faith in a visualized ideal. Everything starts with a vision, and the result always corresponds to the nature of the vision and our faithfulness to it. Buddha became what he did because he gravitated towards his vision. George Washington concentrated upon a vision of liberty and a grand democracy which would be a model for the whole world, and he never ceased to struggle until the vision became a reality. Andrew Carnegie became the great iron master because he gravitated towards his vision; because of his struggles to realize that dominant vision. John Wanamaker is what he is because he concentrated upon his vision, by always reaching out toward it, always striving to match with reality his dream of a mammoth business.
Every man becomes like his ideal, realizes the vision which dominates his life, and towards which he constantly struggles. No matter how discouraging your present outlook, how apparently unpromising your future, cling to your desire and you will realize it. Picture the ideal conditions, visualize the success, which you long to attain; imagine yourself already in the position you are ambitious to reach. Do not acknowledge limitations, do not allow any other suggestion to lodge in your mind than the success you long for, the conditions you aspire to. Picture your desires as actually realized, and hold fast to your vision with all the tenacity you can muster. This is the way out of your difficulties; this is the way to open the door ahead of you to the place higher up, to better and brighter conditions. The constant nursing, cultivating the desire, the ambition, keeping our heart’s longings and soul yearnings alive, wholesome and healthy by active endeavor, is the only way in which we can match our dreams with their realities.
The way to do this is to follow our inspiration, what our soul longs to do. You are always gravitating toward the vision you hold in mind. You will never make headway in any other direction than toward your dominant thought, your dominant desire, and your dominant motive. Visualization will sometime be found to be one of the great secrets of character building and achievement. Effort follows visualization as achievement follows effort. Jesus achieved His Christ-hood. It was not thrust upon Him. He achieved it just as we must achieve our ideal if we ever attain it. The Savior was not born a Christ. This was a result of His efforts and His work to realize His vision.
