chapter 4 self mastery success
SUCCESS THROUGH
SELF-MASTERY BY
BERNARD L. CALMUS
This monthly e-course is brought to you by Moya Mulvay
Chapter 4
HOW TO APPLY PSYCHOLOGY TO EVERYDAY EXISTENCE
How to find success—How to achieve mental balance .
www.inspirational-quotes-and-thoughts.com
2
How to Find Success
THE application of psychology to your life means
term but also in the sense that you feel good with yourself. If you feel good with yourself, you are at harmony with yourself; this means that there are no conflicts between body and mind; this again acts outwardly,
YOU SUCCEED WITH THE WORLD
ONCE YOU
SUCCEED WITH YOURSELF. Now, success is not only a pleasant feeling in itself, which begets pleasantness and all the kindred feelings that go with it, but it is a
POSITIVE
feeling. You look forward to life because you feel it has something to offer you. What life has to offer you is what you have to offer it. There is a constant balance between the inner and outer worlds. Ask for the good things in life, and you will get them; ask for the evil things, and you will reap the reward of evil. But success begins with the little things. It is the little things which accumulate to make the big things. If you find harmony and pleasure in doing the small things, you will receive the reward of big success.
You look forward to life because you feel it has something to offer you.
success for you, not only in the worldly sense of the
You have to start from the beginning. Just as all living matter has a past,
3
present and future, so it has a beginning, a middle and an end. You can only reach the www.inspirational-quotes-and-thoughts.com
end by going through the previous stages; you can only get to know your stages by planning them before you start.
Success is a deliberate attitude.
It has to be, to become positive.
When you start off the day deliberately, you go through the day deliberately, and you achieve the night successfully. The day has been harmonious and you can continue to the week; the week has been harmonious, and you can proceed to face the month: the month has been successful and you can face the whole year before you: the year has been successful, and thereafter your whole life is successful. You have learnt to be positive in your attitude. The little things have drawn you on to the big things. When you wake up in the morning, stay a few moments in bed and relish the day to come. If you have to be up at a certain time in order to go to work, command yourself to wake up a few moments earlier. Don't wake up at the last moment and rush your movements. This is negative, because you have no chance to think properly.
IT IS PSYCHOLOGICALLY IMPORTANT THAT YOU VISUALISE YOURSELF. Therefore it is important to learn to start the day this way. As soon as you become conscious, remain still a moment, while you allow the realization of the new day to sweep slowly over you. Breathe deeply, thinking” I
FEEL FINE”,
making each word coincide with
your inward breath: breathe out, thinking “I FEEL FRESH”.
www.inspirational-quotes-and-thoughts.com
4
Next stretch your limbs, each limb separately and deliberately, making
conscious of the muscles, the reflex movements. Do the same with your left leg, your arms, and then each separate finger. Then flex your arm muscles. Think of your body with pride, until a glow begins to spread over you. Breathe in: “I FINE.”
Breathe out: “I
FEEL
FEEL FRESH.”
Do all this deliberately and carefully. You need no more than five minutes for the complete action-plan; then spring out of bed and dress yourself. You will be feeling alert by now. While you are dressing, quickly
glance
over
the
day
to
come.
Remember anything special which is to happen that day, thinking, “This is exciting: the day has a new adventure in store for me.” Try to feel pleasant about what is to happen, even if you are anticipating “trouble”. No trouble is trouble until you begin to dwell on it
AS
trouble. Trouble increases tenfold the more you
anticipate its unpleasant effects. Erase the word completely from your vocabulary:
“This is exciting: the day has a new adventure in store for me.”
yourself utterly conscious of each movement. Move your right leg slowly: become
call it “emergency” and remember that you are strong enough to master any emergency that arises in your life, IT IS THE EMERGENCIES WHICH MAKE LIFE EXCITING.
Now have your breakfast, digesting properly and without undue hurry. Try to have a brisk sharp walk to your work or at least part of the way. This will help you to digest your food and your mind to dwell on the pleasant things around you. www.inspirational-quotes-and-thoughts.com
5
To do this, you must learn to see. This seems a surprising statement, but how many people do see anything worth seeing around them? Think a moment: can you describe in any minute detail that street down which you walk every day? You have taken it so much for granted that you have walked down it with unseeing eyes. Note anything special on your walk. Note the people. Walk on the balls of your feet and not on your heels. Note that most people do just the opposite. Walking flat-footed throws a burden on the spine, down which most of our nerves wind: our mental messages go down that way. Throw the weight of your body forward and you will think better.
The value of observation cannot be overpraised.
Once you learn to see,
you have a new world opening before you —a world to conquer.
Learn to read places and learn to read people. Learn to note the
expressions on their faces, the way their eyebrows meet in a heavy frown, their eyes concentrate shortsightedly, their lips purse and become thin. Note all the little details about them—the way they carry themselves. Note the habits they have: their attitude, their bearing and their background. When you learn all this you have the mastery over others. You know what is attractive and what is repellent. Never mould yourself on others, but you can always learn from them. Be your own self, but adapt the qualities of others to the texture of your character. www.inspirational-quotes-and-thoughts.com
6
Just as you receive an education through observation, so you receive grace and sincerity from the books you read. Book-reading is important, but indiscriminate reading is like gorging on too much cake: mental indigestion is as painful as bodily indigestion. Read the books you like, but read also the books you think you might not like. Never meet your reading with prejudice: it is neither fair on the author nor fair on yourself.
The attitude you bring to your reading is the attitude you will bring to your relationship with people; for books are of all types and so are people. To avoid reading a book because you think it is going to be difficult for you is to give yourself a sense of inferiority. Books are made to be conquered, just as situations are made to be overcome. I will not tell you what books to read, though I can recommend some. You must read certain types of books: those which give you pleasure because they fictionise situations which appeal to you, which is a form of daydreaming which will do you no harm; those which relate the true lives of great men and women, which will spur you on to similar achievements and do you a great deal of good; and those which good taste has recommended as “classics”, not because they
ARE
classics but in order to overcome a
prejudice preconceived (usually in schooldays).
www.inspirational-quotes-and-thoughts.com
7
How to Achieve Mental Balance
Your day naturally divides into periods, of which there is the morning, the afternoon, and late evening. You are conscious of these periods mainly because there are intervals between each—some lunch, some dinner, something to eat. Now become conscious of your intervals in a new way. Let your approach towards the breaks in the day become mental instead of merely physical. Let them mean something to you as apart from a meal. Plan your day deliberately. Only in this way can you rid your life of monotony; for monotony is the most deadly of all poisons, because it involves a mental attitude of indifference; which means that there is nothing in you that is working vigorously. Have a bath or a shower in the morning, if you can. If you have no shower, scoop up the cold water into your hands and let it run sharply over your head or neck, breathing deeply while you are doing so. Then rub yourself vigorously with the towel. While you are shaving, if you are a man, or while you are combing your hair, if you are a woman, think deliberately about the day to come. Think of the morning. If you go to work, think of what you are to do. Think of it with excitement. Think: “Something new might happen today!” DELIBERATELY WORK UP A POSITIVE ACTION. If you think of the morning as an ordeal which must be got through
www.inspirational-quotes-and-thoughts.com
8
because you have to earn some money, you are perpetuating a defeatist attitude and your existence becomes intolerable. Whether you do the housework, whether you are a laborer, an office-worker, or an executive, you
MUST
have
the one approach to the day. You view the prospect with excitement. This positive attitude sets up a glow within you which gives you new vigor and allows you to show your best. This best is so positive that it magnetizes itself, grows upon itself, and makes for better work, calls attention to your ardor, and changes your worldly situation for the better, ONLY THE POSITIVE APPROACH CAN BETTER YOUR WORLDLY PROSPECTS.
convinces herself that her work is really unessential, therefore monotonous; that anyone could do it, and therefore why bother? Notice the housewife who treats her house with loving care, learns to enjoy cooking, and even takes pleasure in laundry work. She is alert, happy, her bearing is vigorous: and she looks pretty because she is
GLOWING.
That glow is mental first,
have the one approach to the day
of the ills that beset the housewife can be traced to boredom. The housewife
MUST
housework as in working in the business world for others. Many
you
This positive attitude is as essential in doing the
but because the mental attitude is so magnetic, it overpowers the bodily functions and urges them to their best performance. www.inspirational-quotes-and-thoughts.com
9
Think, ”I will read a book”, “I will meet a friend”, “I will go window-shopping”. The positive “I excitement
which
ANTICIPATORY
begins
to
WILL”
glow
DAY-DREAMING
IS
is the key to the
within
you.
THE
MEDICINE.
IT
INVIGORATES YOU.
Plan out your whole day in this fashion,
YOU WILL GET IT.
ANTICIPATE PLEASURE AND
Plan out your evening. Do something positive each evening, in
your leisure time. Take up a hobby, something that is entirely different from your normal work. If your work is physical, take up something that is mental; if your work is mental, take up something physical. This is learning to relax. Painting is an excellent remedy for the laborer. It is stimulating because it is creative. It does not matter a hoot whether your painting is crude; it will improve. The very fact that you are doing something different will presently put new life into your hobby and will react on your work by making your mind view everything you do and see in a new fashion. Gardening and fretwork are two good remedies for the office-worker. Both are creative and pump new vigor into your mental life. Plan your life, but never plan it so strictly that it becomes mere routine. The mere fact that you are following to a plan is negative. What that plan means to you is positive. www.inspirational-quotes-and-thoughts.com
10
Make your plan but mould it to circumstances which suddenly arise. You are determined to do so and so. Do it. Let nothing stop you. That is acting to a plan. But if, in attempting to perform your mental resolve, certain obstacles arise, never be afraid to alter the details slightly. The over-all plan is essential, but the details mould with life. It is mere obstinacy to force a plan through in every detail,
All great men have ceased to be great the moment they forgot to change the details of their plan.
when some of the details may no longer fit the situation.
TO BE MASTER OF YOUR FATE IS TO KNOW WHEN TO CHANGE YOUR TACTICS. It is as negative to stick to every detail of a plan because you cannot
admit defeat, as it is to go through life without a plan and admit defeat before you even start. We reach the knowledge of our “Happy Mean” again. All great men have ceased to be great the moment they forgot to change the details of their plan. Napoleon's great Plan was to become master of Europe; while he kept to his over-all plan, he was successful. But when the plan became submerged in his hatred for England, he was no longer great. The sense of inferiority called out the negative within him; he was no longer charged with the positive. We all have the potentials of great men and women. The difference between the ordinary person and the great one is that
11
the one goes through life haphazardly, wasting time, while the other has an ambition, a www.inspirational-quotes-and-thoughts.com
plan, which calls forth the best. He clears away obstacles, not always by charging straight over them, but sometimes by going
AROUND
them and
OVERCOMING THEM FROM
ANOTHER DIRECTION.
The Captain who refuses to change his course when he becomes aware of a storm raging not far from him, knowing that his ship is not strong enough to stand up to it, is bound to be wrecked. His obstinacy calls for disaster. Find your own weaknesses and root them out. Never avoid difficult situations, but meet them to the best of your ability, which is the sum total of your weaknesses. Think about them quietly, or encounter them quietly; and as you overcome them one by one, you will gradually drop your weaknesses and become strong.
To know your weaknesses is to know your strength, which is to know yourself. make it stronger than you until you
ARE
Your Plan is
YOU;
don't
strong: and as you become stronger, make your
plan stronger. This is to plan correctly and truly. To plan strictly, when you realize you cannot keep to the letter of your plan, is to ask for defeat and to get the negative content. Your mental reserves are great; draw on them gradually, not all at once. In this way, and this way alone, you will achieve your perfect mental equilibrium and enjoy life www.inspirational-quotes-and-thoughts.com
12
to the full.
Would you like me to give you a formula for success? It’s quite simple, really. Double your rate of failure. You are thinking of failure as the enemy of success. But it isn’t at all. You can be discouraged by failure or you can learn from it, So go ahead and make mistakes. Make all you can. Because remember that’s where you will find success. Thomas J. Watson
www.inspirational-quotes-and-thoughts.com
13
SELF-MASTERY BY
BERNARD L. CALMUS
This monthly e-course is brought to you by Moya Mulvay
Chapter 4
HOW TO APPLY PSYCHOLOGY TO EVERYDAY EXISTENCE
How to find success—How to achieve mental balance .
www.inspirational-quotes-and-thoughts.com
2
How to Find Success
THE application of psychology to your life means
term but also in the sense that you feel good with yourself. If you feel good with yourself, you are at harmony with yourself; this means that there are no conflicts between body and mind; this again acts outwardly,
YOU SUCCEED WITH THE WORLD
ONCE YOU
SUCCEED WITH YOURSELF. Now, success is not only a pleasant feeling in itself, which begets pleasantness and all the kindred feelings that go with it, but it is a
POSITIVE
feeling. You look forward to life because you feel it has something to offer you. What life has to offer you is what you have to offer it. There is a constant balance between the inner and outer worlds. Ask for the good things in life, and you will get them; ask for the evil things, and you will reap the reward of evil. But success begins with the little things. It is the little things which accumulate to make the big things. If you find harmony and pleasure in doing the small things, you will receive the reward of big success.
You look forward to life because you feel it has something to offer you.
success for you, not only in the worldly sense of the
You have to start from the beginning. Just as all living matter has a past,
3
present and future, so it has a beginning, a middle and an end. You can only reach the www.inspirational-quotes-and-thoughts.com
end by going through the previous stages; you can only get to know your stages by planning them before you start.
Success is a deliberate attitude.
It has to be, to become positive.
When you start off the day deliberately, you go through the day deliberately, and you achieve the night successfully. The day has been harmonious and you can continue to the week; the week has been harmonious, and you can proceed to face the month: the month has been successful and you can face the whole year before you: the year has been successful, and thereafter your whole life is successful. You have learnt to be positive in your attitude. The little things have drawn you on to the big things. When you wake up in the morning, stay a few moments in bed and relish the day to come. If you have to be up at a certain time in order to go to work, command yourself to wake up a few moments earlier. Don't wake up at the last moment and rush your movements. This is negative, because you have no chance to think properly.
IT IS PSYCHOLOGICALLY IMPORTANT THAT YOU VISUALISE YOURSELF. Therefore it is important to learn to start the day this way. As soon as you become conscious, remain still a moment, while you allow the realization of the new day to sweep slowly over you. Breathe deeply, thinking” I
FEEL FINE”,
making each word coincide with
your inward breath: breathe out, thinking “I FEEL FRESH”.
www.inspirational-quotes-and-thoughts.com
4
Next stretch your limbs, each limb separately and deliberately, making
conscious of the muscles, the reflex movements. Do the same with your left leg, your arms, and then each separate finger. Then flex your arm muscles. Think of your body with pride, until a glow begins to spread over you. Breathe in: “I FINE.”
Breathe out: “I
FEEL
FEEL FRESH.”
Do all this deliberately and carefully. You need no more than five minutes for the complete action-plan; then spring out of bed and dress yourself. You will be feeling alert by now. While you are dressing, quickly
glance
over
the
day
to
come.
Remember anything special which is to happen that day, thinking, “This is exciting: the day has a new adventure in store for me.” Try to feel pleasant about what is to happen, even if you are anticipating “trouble”. No trouble is trouble until you begin to dwell on it
AS
trouble. Trouble increases tenfold the more you
anticipate its unpleasant effects. Erase the word completely from your vocabulary:
“This is exciting: the day has a new adventure in store for me.”
yourself utterly conscious of each movement. Move your right leg slowly: become
call it “emergency” and remember that you are strong enough to master any emergency that arises in your life, IT IS THE EMERGENCIES WHICH MAKE LIFE EXCITING.
Now have your breakfast, digesting properly and without undue hurry. Try to have a brisk sharp walk to your work or at least part of the way. This will help you to digest your food and your mind to dwell on the pleasant things around you. www.inspirational-quotes-and-thoughts.com
5
To do this, you must learn to see. This seems a surprising statement, but how many people do see anything worth seeing around them? Think a moment: can you describe in any minute detail that street down which you walk every day? You have taken it so much for granted that you have walked down it with unseeing eyes. Note anything special on your walk. Note the people. Walk on the balls of your feet and not on your heels. Note that most people do just the opposite. Walking flat-footed throws a burden on the spine, down which most of our nerves wind: our mental messages go down that way. Throw the weight of your body forward and you will think better.
The value of observation cannot be overpraised.
Once you learn to see,
you have a new world opening before you —a world to conquer.
Learn to read places and learn to read people. Learn to note the
expressions on their faces, the way their eyebrows meet in a heavy frown, their eyes concentrate shortsightedly, their lips purse and become thin. Note all the little details about them—the way they carry themselves. Note the habits they have: their attitude, their bearing and their background. When you learn all this you have the mastery over others. You know what is attractive and what is repellent. Never mould yourself on others, but you can always learn from them. Be your own self, but adapt the qualities of others to the texture of your character. www.inspirational-quotes-and-thoughts.com
6
Just as you receive an education through observation, so you receive grace and sincerity from the books you read. Book-reading is important, but indiscriminate reading is like gorging on too much cake: mental indigestion is as painful as bodily indigestion. Read the books you like, but read also the books you think you might not like. Never meet your reading with prejudice: it is neither fair on the author nor fair on yourself.
The attitude you bring to your reading is the attitude you will bring to your relationship with people; for books are of all types and so are people. To avoid reading a book because you think it is going to be difficult for you is to give yourself a sense of inferiority. Books are made to be conquered, just as situations are made to be overcome. I will not tell you what books to read, though I can recommend some. You must read certain types of books: those which give you pleasure because they fictionise situations which appeal to you, which is a form of daydreaming which will do you no harm; those which relate the true lives of great men and women, which will spur you on to similar achievements and do you a great deal of good; and those which good taste has recommended as “classics”, not because they
ARE
classics but in order to overcome a
prejudice preconceived (usually in schooldays).
www.inspirational-quotes-and-thoughts.com
7
How to Achieve Mental Balance
Your day naturally divides into periods, of which there is the morning, the afternoon, and late evening. You are conscious of these periods mainly because there are intervals between each—some lunch, some dinner, something to eat. Now become conscious of your intervals in a new way. Let your approach towards the breaks in the day become mental instead of merely physical. Let them mean something to you as apart from a meal. Plan your day deliberately. Only in this way can you rid your life of monotony; for monotony is the most deadly of all poisons, because it involves a mental attitude of indifference; which means that there is nothing in you that is working vigorously. Have a bath or a shower in the morning, if you can. If you have no shower, scoop up the cold water into your hands and let it run sharply over your head or neck, breathing deeply while you are doing so. Then rub yourself vigorously with the towel. While you are shaving, if you are a man, or while you are combing your hair, if you are a woman, think deliberately about the day to come. Think of the morning. If you go to work, think of what you are to do. Think of it with excitement. Think: “Something new might happen today!” DELIBERATELY WORK UP A POSITIVE ACTION. If you think of the morning as an ordeal which must be got through
www.inspirational-quotes-and-thoughts.com
8
because you have to earn some money, you are perpetuating a defeatist attitude and your existence becomes intolerable. Whether you do the housework, whether you are a laborer, an office-worker, or an executive, you
MUST
have
the one approach to the day. You view the prospect with excitement. This positive attitude sets up a glow within you which gives you new vigor and allows you to show your best. This best is so positive that it magnetizes itself, grows upon itself, and makes for better work, calls attention to your ardor, and changes your worldly situation for the better, ONLY THE POSITIVE APPROACH CAN BETTER YOUR WORLDLY PROSPECTS.
convinces herself that her work is really unessential, therefore monotonous; that anyone could do it, and therefore why bother? Notice the housewife who treats her house with loving care, learns to enjoy cooking, and even takes pleasure in laundry work. She is alert, happy, her bearing is vigorous: and she looks pretty because she is
GLOWING.
That glow is mental first,
have the one approach to the day
of the ills that beset the housewife can be traced to boredom. The housewife
MUST
housework as in working in the business world for others. Many
you
This positive attitude is as essential in doing the
but because the mental attitude is so magnetic, it overpowers the bodily functions and urges them to their best performance. www.inspirational-quotes-and-thoughts.com
9
Think, ”I will read a book”, “I will meet a friend”, “I will go window-shopping”. The positive “I excitement
which
ANTICIPATORY
begins
to
WILL”
glow
DAY-DREAMING
IS
is the key to the
within
you.
THE
MEDICINE.
IT
INVIGORATES YOU.
Plan out your whole day in this fashion,
YOU WILL GET IT.
ANTICIPATE PLEASURE AND
Plan out your evening. Do something positive each evening, in
your leisure time. Take up a hobby, something that is entirely different from your normal work. If your work is physical, take up something that is mental; if your work is mental, take up something physical. This is learning to relax. Painting is an excellent remedy for the laborer. It is stimulating because it is creative. It does not matter a hoot whether your painting is crude; it will improve. The very fact that you are doing something different will presently put new life into your hobby and will react on your work by making your mind view everything you do and see in a new fashion. Gardening and fretwork are two good remedies for the office-worker. Both are creative and pump new vigor into your mental life. Plan your life, but never plan it so strictly that it becomes mere routine. The mere fact that you are following to a plan is negative. What that plan means to you is positive. www.inspirational-quotes-and-thoughts.com
10
Make your plan but mould it to circumstances which suddenly arise. You are determined to do so and so. Do it. Let nothing stop you. That is acting to a plan. But if, in attempting to perform your mental resolve, certain obstacles arise, never be afraid to alter the details slightly. The over-all plan is essential, but the details mould with life. It is mere obstinacy to force a plan through in every detail,
All great men have ceased to be great the moment they forgot to change the details of their plan.
when some of the details may no longer fit the situation.
TO BE MASTER OF YOUR FATE IS TO KNOW WHEN TO CHANGE YOUR TACTICS. It is as negative to stick to every detail of a plan because you cannot
admit defeat, as it is to go through life without a plan and admit defeat before you even start. We reach the knowledge of our “Happy Mean” again. All great men have ceased to be great the moment they forgot to change the details of their plan. Napoleon's great Plan was to become master of Europe; while he kept to his over-all plan, he was successful. But when the plan became submerged in his hatred for England, he was no longer great. The sense of inferiority called out the negative within him; he was no longer charged with the positive. We all have the potentials of great men and women. The difference between the ordinary person and the great one is that
11
the one goes through life haphazardly, wasting time, while the other has an ambition, a www.inspirational-quotes-and-thoughts.com
plan, which calls forth the best. He clears away obstacles, not always by charging straight over them, but sometimes by going
AROUND
them and
OVERCOMING THEM FROM
ANOTHER DIRECTION.
The Captain who refuses to change his course when he becomes aware of a storm raging not far from him, knowing that his ship is not strong enough to stand up to it, is bound to be wrecked. His obstinacy calls for disaster. Find your own weaknesses and root them out. Never avoid difficult situations, but meet them to the best of your ability, which is the sum total of your weaknesses. Think about them quietly, or encounter them quietly; and as you overcome them one by one, you will gradually drop your weaknesses and become strong.
To know your weaknesses is to know your strength, which is to know yourself. make it stronger than you until you
ARE
Your Plan is
YOU;
don't
strong: and as you become stronger, make your
plan stronger. This is to plan correctly and truly. To plan strictly, when you realize you cannot keep to the letter of your plan, is to ask for defeat and to get the negative content. Your mental reserves are great; draw on them gradually, not all at once. In this way, and this way alone, you will achieve your perfect mental equilibrium and enjoy life www.inspirational-quotes-and-thoughts.com
12
to the full.
Would you like me to give you a formula for success? It’s quite simple, really. Double your rate of failure. You are thinking of failure as the enemy of success. But it isn’t at all. You can be discouraged by failure or you can learn from it, So go ahead and make mistakes. Make all you can. Because remember that’s where you will find success. Thomas J. Watson
www.inspirational-quotes-and-thoughts.com
13
