THE MIRACLES OF RIGHT THOUGHT. Orison Swett Marden

our minds are negative we are always cowards.

      While we are holding the positive thoughts and creating something, the negative, discouraging, sickly, haphazard thoughts do not get a chance to act upon us. It is in our non-producing moments that negatives, such as fear, worry, anxiety, hatred, and jealously get in their destructive work. While positive energy is busy creating something, we are not troubled with the destructive negative thoughts. It is negative people who are victims of“ the blues,” extreme mental depression.

      The normal mind acts under law. The mental faculties will not give up their best unless they are marshaled by order. They respond cordially to system, but they rebel against slipshod methods. They are like soldiers. They must have a leader, a general, who enforces order, method.

      The strength and persistency of our habitual thought-force measure our efficiency. The habitual thought-force in many people is so feeble and spasmodic that they cannot focus their minds with sufficient vigor to accomplish much.

      We can quickly tell the first time we meet a person whether his thought-force is constructive or weak, for every sentence he utters will partake of its quality.

      It is the positive man who carries force. Some men are so positive, so constructive in their mentality, and carry such a power of conquest in their very presence, that the ordinary person instinctively follows. The world makes way for the robust character. He radiates power. His presence commands men. His very words carry the force of conviction.

      People do not stop to analyze the reason for following a strong character. They instinctively obey superior mentality. Some strangers we meet at once impress us as producers. They make a positive, aggressive impression; we instantly feel their qualities of leadership, feel that such persons will certainly succeed in their undertakings, that things must go their way. Other people make a weak, negative, indifferent impression upon us and we say they are failures; they do not blaze their own path. To make people feel your power, the positive faculties must dominate.

      The art of all arts is to make one’s life a perpetual victory, and this would not be difficult if we were properly trained. As it is, the mind is much of the time in a negative, non-creative condition; instead of causing things, acting, it is acted upon.

      The graduate who goes into the world without training in what constitutes a positive and a negative mental attitude is liable to be ruined in a very short time. His doubts, fears, and lack of confidence, his timid and negative mental picture, the effect of his discouraged emotions, may utterly ruin his natural, positive, productive mind by making it negative, and this change may be accomplished wholly unconsciously.

      It is of infinitely more value for a student or youth to know how to keep his mind up to its maximum creative power, by keeping it positive and avoiding everything which would make it negative and unproductive, than to learn all the Latin and Greek and philosophies in the world.

      We often see college graduates fail because their minds have become negative and incapable of producing, creating. A few months of training the mental faculties and building up the weak, deficient ones by scientific right thinking would be worth more to them than a whole college course without it.

      A positive thought develops constructiveness, and this is the most important of all mental qualities. If your mind is inclined to be negative, if you lack initiative, you can soon increase your constructiveness wonderfully by forming a habit of holding the positive, creative mental attitude towards everything.

      This is true even when you are enjoying recreation. It is always weakening to hold the negative thought. It is infinitely better, in fact, to hold the mind absolutely passive, for there is a great difference between the passive mind, the mind at rest, and the negative mind.

      The mental loom weaves whatever pattern we give it. It reproduces the ideal, whether of discord or harmony, error or truth, courage or cowardice. The characteristics of the model are very quickly transferred to the subject.

      You will find a tremendous help in constantly affirming that you are the person you wish to be; not that you hope to be, but that you actually are now. You will be surprised to see how quickly the part which you assume will be realized in your life, will be out pictured in your character.

      What magnificent characters we could build up by holding persistently in the mind that pattern which we wish woven into the life web, forming the health pattern, the pattern of wholeness, completeness, the pattern of the perfect man, the man God intended, the ideal man without spot or blemish!

      What we need do is to keep the dominant qualities always in the ascendancy, to discourage and kill the opposites, the enemies of all constructiveness.

      The moment the building-up process—the chemical force in the soil, in the atmosphere, in the sunshine, in the rain—ceases to operate upon the plant, upon the fruit, upon the tree, the injurious elements set in, and decay and destruction are certain. So, the moment the building-up and creative principles in man cease to dominate, the moment he loses confidence in them, the tearing down and destructive elements begin their work.

      The right mental attitude has a powerful influence in protecting the mind from the influence of bad suggestions. For instance, if you constantly deny the power of the evil which you are compelled to hear and see in a vicious environment this denial will have a great counteractive influence upon it.

      On the other hand, if your attitude of mind is that of responsiveness, receptiveness to the evil, if you encourage it, welcome it, enjoy it, it will have a very strong influence over you.

      There is everything in keeping the mind saturated with one’s aim until it becomes a life habit, in setting the life currents and all of the forces within us towards the goal of our ambition. This will after a while create a sort of tide which will tend to float things our way.

      We must look out for the cross currents which bring discord—the thought currents of hatred, jealousy, envy, or unkind feelings towards others, the thought currents of revenge, of malice—for all these are enemies which sap our energies and handicap our progress.

      Anything which produces discord cripples our effort. We must have harmony, peace of mind, freedom of thought, to get efficiency. In other words, all the thought currents must be creative instead of destructive. Currents of courage, confidence and determination—these are the electrical mental forces which bring success.

      A great many people who are comparative failures would succeed if they could only keep the failure thought currents out of their mind. It is a great art to learn to clear the mind of rubbish, of fear, anxiety, and all of the things that hinder, and to fill it with vigorous, hopeful, uplifting thoughts. This is what puts the mind into the producing, creative attitude.

      We radiate our mental attitude, our hopes or our fears; and our reputation and others’ estimate of us have a great deal to do with our success. If others do not believe in us, if they think we are weak and timid because our mental radiation is negative, weak, and timid, we shall not be put forward for positions of importance or responsibility.

      There is everything in radiating a confident, courageous, fearless impression; in carrying the confident air which accompanies the conquering habit.

      People will think that if we are in the habit of conquering we are much more likely to win in the future than those who are in the habit of losing or who radiate an impression of weakness or inferiority.

      In other words, it is nearly as important to make others believe in us as to believe in ourselves; and to do this we must carry a confident, victorious air.

      There is a great difference between a man who lives like a victor, who goes about the world as a conqueror, and one who carries a submissive, vanquished air, who always acts as though he had been defeated in the great life race.

      Compare the influence of a man like Theodore Roosevelt, who radiates force from every pore and gives an impression of great vigor and superb power, with that of a timid, retiring, self-effacing, apologizing man, who radiates weakness and shows inefficiency and the lack of a bold, vigorous nature. The world likes a man who has the bearing of a conqueror, who gives the impression that he is in the habit of winning and always expects to