Part 2 (2/2)
=PERSISTENCE AND PLANNING=: A plan is a mighty source of power.
Do not work and live ”hit-or-miss” in your activities day by day. Have a plan. Sit in Silence a few moments each morning and create a plan.
You can double your efficiency. Think out a plan, open a way. Get an effectual insight. Keep your plan under your cap, and work it out.
Persist in your plan. Stick to it. Never grow sour or negative in your manner. Keep sweet. If your plan is blocked, dig in another direction.
Build a new foundation. Shake off doubts and start new. Unless your success makes you happy it is not success. Deep at the heart of the Universe lies happiness. Live closely to that heart, in persistent power of service.
=IMPERSONATE YOUR DESIRES:= Impersonate greatness and you will become great. Impersonate loveliness and you will become lovely. Why do actors become matinee idols? They could readily marry a hundred times a month. It is quite impossible for an actor to remain unmarried. What is the secret? Can a person get it? Certainly; here it is. Actors impersonate heroes, villains, model husbands, daring lovers, in a real way. They think, plan, and train themselves to impersonate the character, they make it so real that people think it must be a part of their nature. You can do it, young man, bachelor, widower. If you are only half a man, half a lover, impersonate a whole one. If you are so bashful that it makes you blush to walk with your best girl, in the garden where the flowers are in bed, impersonate a das.h.i.+ng, dare-devil, scamp of fascination, and your sweetheart will faint from adorable bliss and fall into your arms. If you are a coward impersonate a hero, until you are one. Do not stand on one foot, or bite your fingernails, or tear the rim off your hat, trying to tell a beautiful, healthy twentieth century young woman you love her. You'll be all to the mustard. Do something brave. Go hire a kid that is a good swimmer, to fall into the lake as you and your sweetheart are walking past, then throw back your shoulders and tear off your coat and leap in, the kid will get you to sh.o.r.e, but you'll be a hero in her eyes. Impersonate the hero, and you will win the heroine.
Young woman, if you would marry a hero, impersonate beauty. Maiden lady of quite impossible age, if you would marry the best man in the world, impersonate youth and beauty. Dear languis.h.i.+ng widow, if you would marry a real man, impersonate youth, beauty and wealth. You will win. The odds are much against you here in the East, where in every state there are thousands and thousands of more women than there are men, but you will win. Men follow actresses around the world because they impersonate love, pa.s.sion, beauty, virtue and n.o.bleness. The men really think actresses must possess what they portray. You see, it is all a matter of thinking. It does not matter how many times a man has lost on the races, if he is a good sport he will bet on the next horse that looks good to him. Women need to impersonate looking good, better, best. Not on occasions only, but all the time. Men like women who are good pals. So ladies impersonate sympathy, kindness, patience, good fellows.h.i.+p, enthusiasm, in the things that interest men. If you belong to the Citrus family, impersonate the Peach. If you belong to the Nettle family, impersonate the Violet. You may be so homely that your face pains you, but think of the impersonations of beauty you can buy at the drug store. Impersonate silence. A young lady in Philadelphia lost her voice and she had nineteen proposals that year.
Impersonate form. You may be as angular as the streets in Boston, yet almost any department store will shape you up. You may be so fat that you haven't seen your feet in years, still you can impersonate so much good nature that men will be attracted to you as flowers to the sun.
Have confidence in everything you do, even when you eat sausages at a quick lunch next door to the dog-catcher.
h.e.l.l is not paved with good intentions. h.e.l.l is paved with sanctimonious pretensions.
When you get up, where does your lap go? When you love, where does your hate go?
After you have walked the floor all night trying to get the baby to sleep, you can at least be thankful that you do not live in Greenland where the nights are six months long.
Avoid hot words in anger, you might tell the truth. A Chicago father thrashed his son for being out late at night. Then added: ”When I was your age my father would not let me be out after dark.” The boy answered: ”Then you must have had a devil of a father.” The old man came back hotly: ”I had a d.a.m.n sight better father than you have.”
Fretting is like a rocking chair, you can do a great deal of agitating in it without getting anywhere.
Do not kick at the squirrel that runs up to you in the park; it may be only mistaken ident.i.ty--he thought he saw a nut.
Children radiate truth, they intuitively feel and express it. Elsie had been bad and her mother sent her upstairs to talk it over with G.o.d. After an hour she came down stairs singing; her mother asked her what G.o.d had said to her. ”O,” she replied, ”G.o.d said, Great Scott, Elsie, don't feel badly, there are a lot of worse people in this house than you are.”
=Lesson Fifth
SUPREME BODY BUILDING METHOD
HEALTH, HARMONY, POWER, SERVICE:= That is what a supreme body gives. Do not always be taking care of your health, take care of your body and you will generate health. Thought animates the body with health. This is an age of electrification. We are fed, lighted, heated, and transported by electricity. In the lightning pace we are going, the body is neglected. Give three minutes morning and night to the exercises below and you will straighten, develop, heal, and energize your body. Enter upon these exercises as you would an arena of conquest where you expected to win the great prize of life.
=THE BREATH IS LIFE:= Take a deep, full, abdominal breath with each body building exercise, inhale through the nose and expel forcefully through the mouth. NEVER HOLD YOUR BREATH.
=FIRST EXERCISE:= Stand erect, drop hands to the side, clinch your fists tightly, then with muscular tension raise fists and arms slowly high above the head, taking a deep, full, abdominal breath as you raise them, relax and expel the breath forcefully through the mouth. Repeat 5 times.
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