Little Deep Thoughts

Every successful concern is the result of a One-Man Power. Cooperation, technically, is an iridescent dream—things cooperate because the man makes them. He cements them by his will. But find this Man, and get his confidence, and his weary eyes will look into yours and the cry of his heart shall echo in your ears. "O, for some one to help me bear this burden!" Then he will tell you of his endless search for Ability, and of his continual disappointments and thwarting in trying to get some one to help himself by helping him. Ability is the one crying need of the hour. The banks are bulging with money, and everywhere are men looking for work. The harvest is ripe. But the Ability to captain the unemployed and utilise the capital, is lacking—sadly lacking. In every city there are many five- and ten-thousand-dollar-a-year positions to be filled, but the only applicants are men who want jobs at fifteen dollars a week. Your man of Ability has a place already. Yes, Ability is a ...

I often start the day by drawing four circles on a blank piece of paper. The circles represent my day (today), my month, my year, and my life. Inside each circle I write down what I want. It can be a dollar figure, it can be anything, and the goals can change from day to day-it doesn’t matter. There is no way to get this process wrong.   But by writing the goals down, I am like an airline pilot who is consulting a map prior to takeoff. I am orienting my mind to what I am up to in life. I am reminding myself of what I really want. We wouldn’t think, before an airline flight, of poking our heads into the cabin and saying to pilot, “Just take me anywhere!” Yet, that’s how we live our days when we don’t check the map.   Without advertising our goals to ourselves, we can lose sight of them altogether. It is possible to go an entire week, or two or three, without thinking about our main goals in life. We get caught up in reacting and responding to people and circum...