Chain Reaction:
Inspiring Self to Make History (third installment)
Inspiring Self to Make History
Do you have a challenge/problem? Good. Before you dismiss my positive attitude as toxic, we must speak about your inner currency. Some of our Ancestors argue that our inner current activity is the only activity that is going on. If that is true, ever the more reason to study how our inner currents work.
Photo by Renee B
Our Teacher for this subject is a founding member of The Guidepost Magazine. Dr. Norman Vincent Peale, who began his 1952 classic, The Power of Positive Thinking, with a simple sentence. “Believe in yourself.” He completed his thought, “Have faith in your abilities! Without a humble but reasonable confidence in your own powers you cannot be successful or happy.”
Unlike others who can eloquently articulate high philosophy, when Dr. Peale gave out advice he knew what he was talking about from actual, personal experience. Remembered, in death, as a superb orator, at one point he lost confidence within himself.
Just like you and I, his business ventures generated debt. The Guidepost magazine was temporarily in a slump. The books he wrote didn’t sell. Fortunately, the newspapers who published his nationally syndicated columns kept food on the table for his growing family; and the pastorate maintained his clothing and shelter, but there was little left over for luxuries, such as utility bills and a car payment. Dr. Peale became so frustrated, low self-esteem inspired him to throw the first manuscript version of The Power of Positive Thinking into a wastebasket.
Mrs. Peale did not share in her husband’s emotion. Depressed as her husband was, she believed in the genius he was trying so hard to express. She picked up the manuscript, inspiring a negative reply from her husband. Mr. Peale ordered his wife not to remove the manuscript from the wastebasket he had deposited it in. To everyone’s surprise, Mrs. Peale obeyed her husband! A few days later a publisher received a weird looking package. It was the manuscript still housed inside the wastebasket.
History records Mrs. Peale’s determination sold millions of her husband’s books and permanently raised her family out of poverty. The book continues touching the lives of Readers to this day, by inspiring them to find inner solutions to outer problems. Dr. Peale’s words provide guidance towards changing inner conditions.
The above argument, and it is an argument, comes to the conclusion that as a citizen, you possess a tremendous amount of personal power. By luck, or special circumstances, you live in one of the greatest countries human thought and effort has created. For good or bad, you possess the ability and resources to overcome any obstacle before you.
By that conclusion, any statement denying the divine spark illuminating the higher versions of you to you is a lie.
Our society has plenty of problems, or imbalanced equations in need of answers. America has enough problems to give everyone, with the determination to organize themselves, and others into new practices, an opportunity to solve one of those problems. Solving a problem creates jobs, as the materials and services needed to resolve that problem are concentrated and then distributed. Maintaining the proper balance justifies those jobs remaining. Without those services, the next stage in society’s growth and development is not possible.
WHAT OBSTACLES HAVE YOU ALREADY OVERCOME?
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The Pressure of Life. It is an undisputed fact that life comes with pressure; an impersonal force that does not respect persons or situations. No one, not even the super rich and powerful, can escape feeling life’s pressure.
The most basic pressure is the demands of survival. You and I need a certain amount of food, clothing and shelter to remain alive. Once these needs are adequately met, we desire social contact. (This is a pressure many never learn how to manage. Relationships are tricky! Smile.)
Once we are in a satisfying relationship, we crave the higher ideals of love, respect and dignity. Lastly, we aspire to passion; to some activity where we receive enjoyment simply from the activity itself. Every stage of human maturity comes with increased pressure.
Pressure is such a constant in our external environment that we must treat it as a given. Although we boast of medical advances, no one has yet found a way to control the pressures that life exerts. We are so sure that pressure will be with us always that our only course of action is to explore our response to it. Yes, how we perceive and respond to pressure makes all the difference in the world.
Only two responses exist to the challenges Life continually showers upon us. The Universe has so conspired that no one – not our family, nor the government – can experience our challenges for us. At any given period of space and time, a limited number of options are given to you. All choices come with guides. Sso, if you choose to listen, the answer is before you, sometimes, due to emotional currents, without you knowing it at first.
We can 1) choose a victim stance and bow down to the pressure. This choice acknowledges the challenge before us as our master. We are giving up, forfeiting our rights to write our own destiny. We are choosing to accept whatever options society forces upon us. Otherwise, we can 2) choose to mount tremendous resistance to our current condition and demand, through sustained effort, that Life give us exactly what we want.
(Yes, I want you to become stubborn, just with a purpose.)
I make the assumption, because you are reading this communication, you wish to segregate yourself from the mainstream experience. You no longer wish to experience the drama and frustration documented in newspaper articles, (so-called) reality tv shows and popular fiction. Instead, you choose the second choice of positive resistance. I assume then that the nature and quality of the secret exercised by a precious few is of interest to you.
This secret is called one of the fundamental keys to this human experience. Like all wisdom passed from one generation to the next, this insight is not difficult to grasp intellectually. The problem does not lie in the intellectual acceptance, b.u.t. in it’s the personal application – the application of the wisdom to your daily life.
The secret is: It is done unto you as you act and believe.
I conclude this third installment with an affirmation. May it resonate within your subconscious and inspire a vision/dream to arise within you.
I AM THAT I AM. I AM GOOD AND EVER INCREASING GOOD. IN MY INNER BEING, I CHOOSE TO ENJOY THIS MOMENT AND INSPIRE THOSE WHO CROSS MY PATH TO ENJOY THEIR EXPERIENCE WITH ME. WITH EACH STEP I TAKE MY DREAM/VISION COMES CLOSER AND CLOSER TO ME. I AM THAT I AM.
NEWS BULLETIN: 60k and Below is engaged in a membership drive. This author is normally available under our PAID subscription. Because of the membership drive, we are showing you what quality is available. Every paid subscription for the entire year will earn a book from this author. Please read for more information.
(1) Chain Reaction: Can you BANK in IDEAS?
(2) Chain Reaction: Changing the Social Landscape for Good
(3) Chain Reaction: Inspiring Self to Make History
(4) Chain Reaction: Attention is the Currency of the Universe