October 31

Ever practice remembered peacefulness? I think of a favorite spot in Switzerland, remembering how, at evening time, the snows on the mountains change coloring from brilliant gold to mystic purple and then fade into the dark. I think of a night on the China Sea when mists veiling the face of the moon were blown aside by a gentle breeze to allow long, silvery shafts of moonlight to fall on limpid waters. I think of a night at Srinagar in the Vale of Kashmir, where the sound of singing boatmen came across the lake on the surface of which water lilies floated. Once in my doctor's office, my pulse and blood pressure readings were taken. "Well!" he said, "that's fine. You have learned to live calmly." I told him the technique of remembered beauty to help promote tranquility. He nodded, "Good, that helps in keeping healthy."

October 30

Basic in living creatively is to accept pain and difficulty as a challenge. God, who made this universe, gives us difficulties for our own best interest. He wants to make something of us and people do not grow strong in soft and fortuitous circumstances. Struggle toughens personalty.

October 29

When you attain a sense of undefeatableness, you will always be high-spirited and confident. Spirit is taken out of you when you allow yourself to be overwhelmed, nonplussed, and stymied by circumstances and conditions. An important secret of success is to get yourself firmly based in spiritual understanding, in faith and positive thinking. Then nothing, no matter what, can defeat you. You will have attained indomitability.

October 28

We are continuously building up or breaking down the self. Through the years, every thought, every emotion, every experience contributes to the quality of self. No matter how old or how set we become, self is in the making. Everything contributes to its greatness or littleness, its stagnation or growth. What will your contribution be today?

October 27

Experience bears out the thesis that things go wrong because we are wrong. If we resolutely seek to understand where we're wrong and make changes, we are on our way to better things. "Most of the shadows of this life," said Ralph Waldo Emerson, "are caused by standing in our own sunshine." When we get busy changing attitudes that have been casting shadows and making things go wrong, then things start going right. A changed person changes situations and conditions.

October 26

Here are five simple and workable rules for overcoming inadequacy attitudes and for learning to believe in yourself:

1. Formulate and stamp indelibly on your mind a mental picture of yourself as succeeding. Hold this picture tenaciously. Never permit it to fade. Your mind will seek to develop this picture as fact. Never think of yourself as failing; never doubt the reality of the mental image.
2. Whenever a negative thought concerning your ability comes to mind, deliberately voice a positive thought to cancel it out.
3. Do not build obstacles in your imagination. Depreciate every so-called obstacle. Minimize them. Difficulties must be studied and efficiently dealt with, but they must be seen only for what they are. They must not be inflated by fear thoughts.
4. Do not be awestruck by other people or try to copy them. Nobody can be you as efficiently as you can.
5. Ten times a day repeat these words: "If God be for me, who can be against me?" (See Romans 8:31).

October 25

Get worked up about your job and you will work your job up. Get fired up about about it and you will put fire into it. Any human occupation has excitement in it if you have excitement in you. And how do you find this excitement? A famous French writer answered with these words: "Faith is an excitement and an enthusiasm: it is a condition of intellectual magnificence to which we must cling as a treasure."

October 24

I continually advocate that you be a true optimist, rugged mentally, a real believer. No doubt-thinking person can be an optimist, for an optimist is a person who believes in good outcomes even when he can't yet see them. That is also the Bible's definition of faith as "the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." So the real believer is a person who believes in better things when there is yet no evidence to confirm his expectation. He is one who believes in his own future even when he cannot see much possibility in it.

October 23

A basic fact about every individual is the craving to be appreciated. One can find happiness by looking for the best in other people, and that will bring the best out of them. And it also helps when we put the best possible connotation on everyone and everything. Faith in people and a positive attitude can release these tremendous resources that are resident in everyone.

October 22

Here is a prayer to start this day, to help you make it a great day:

"Dear Lord, thank You for the night's rest You so graciously gave me. I am grateful for renewed energy and enthusiasm. I accept this new day as a wonderful opportunity. May I use it minute by minute to do Thy will. Guide me in every problem, every decision I shall make this day. Help me to treat everyone kindly and to be fair and just and thoughtful in everything today. And if I should forget Thee during this day, O Lord, please do not forget me. Amen."

October 21

He lives today no less than long ago. He is alive, not merely as Caesar and Napoleon and Lincoln, for example, are alive - as memories of great men. Jesus is not a memory. He is an actual, contemporary, reachable Person. He is the living Christ, who has power to enter into people's lives and change and lift them up. Every day the very much alive Lord Jesus is at work among us.

October 20

A good man who had always walked with God approached death. The light was on in his room. Suddenly, a look of surprise crossed the dying man's face. "Turn out the light, the sun is up," he said - and was gone. Apparently it is always light and beautiful over there. But it can be the same here as well when we think it so.

October 19

One of the greatest blessings in this world is to have good, sound healthy-mindedness. The person who possesses it is most fortunate. Healthy-mindedness is to be a normal, well-balanced, integrated, well-organized human being. It means a mind devoid of inner conflicts and obsessive reactions. The emotional aspect of your nature is under the control of your reason or mind. When you achieve such healthy-mindedness you are free of abnormal fear, free of hate; you are not motivated by resentments; you are free of sulkiness, gloominess, and depressiveness. And such a condition makes for a life that is good every day.

October 18

I rode with a man who had the following prayer taped to his instrument [dashboard] panel:

"Dear Lord, this is Your car. Put Your hands on the steering wheel along with mine and guide me through busy streets and highways. Protect this car from all danger and accident. Give us a safe and pleasant journey. Keep me from getting angry at other drivers. Help me to be polite and observe the rules of the road. Let my driving be a pleasure and not a strain. Amen."

October 17

It is never necessary for any individual to live a dull, uninteresting and lackluster life. If one does so, it is because of just letting life become that way. No one needs to live in frustration or allow oneself to become old, worn, and tired. Everyone has the opportunity to open wide the mind and heart, to live a life that is dynamic and exciting. Becoming a positive thinker will help you to have a good day.

October 16

I have not slightest doubt concerning the truth and validity of immortality. I believe absolutely and certainly that, when you die, you will meet your loved ones and know them and be reunited with them, never to be separated again. I believe that identity of personality will continue in that greater sphere of life in which there will be no suffering or sorrow as we know them here in the physical sense. I hope there will be struggle, for struggle is good. Certainly there will be ongoing development, for life with no upward effort of the spirit would be incredibly dull. In the teachings of Jesus Christ, death does not refer to the body but rather to the soul: "The soul that sinneth, it shall die" (Ezekiel 18:20). But the soul that is in God will live forever.

October 15

A young woman successfully achieved a considerable weight loss - here is what she did: She pictured explicitly the weight she wanted to reach by a certain age. Each time she was tempted, she estimated how long it would take her to eat the gooey desserts, chocolates, or other rich food. Then she thought how happy she would feel after those few minutes had she not eaten it. For the first time she began to experience the thrill of self-mastery. At bedtime, she ran over her temptations mentally and added up all the fattening things she had not eaten that day. Eagerly, she looked forward to topping her record the next day. She achieved her weight goal. And she held it, too.

October 14

It's good to keep our dreams of the future and the thrill of going somewhere ever luring us on. When I was a newspaper reporter, my editor wrote a piece I've kept for years:

"As a boy of fourteen I stopped Old Bess in the furrow where I was trying to cultivate my father's cornfield. The field was near the railroad track which crossed a trestle. I took off my cap, wiped my brow, and looked up at the fast train of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad. At every window, as the train sped on, was someone going somewhere. I had never been anywhere, but then and there I made up my mind that someday I would be on my way. I have been on my way ever since, but there are still so many places to go, so many fascinating things to see and do. The train went around the bend. But the dreams of a boy, as the twilight came down, are the dreams I have today. The future beckons with the same mystic allure. It was so in the cornfield; it is so now."

October 13

A champion golfer says, "What you think while playing golf is probably the most important single part of your game." He stresses the importance of concentration and the practice of visualizing what you want to achieve. The champion confidently projects in his mind the exact direction of flight designed to take the ball where he wants it to go. This principle of imagining also works in determining and reaching goals in life. One must know precisely where he or she wants to go. By firmly visualizing that goal, you force a focus on it and then you can reach it.

October 12

Five words from the Bible can determine the success of any person or any enterprise: "Seek, and ye shall find" (Matthew 7:7). Seek a need - the world has many. Find a need you can fill and you are on the way to success in life.

October 11

How do you go about being a happy person? One way is to get into God's rhythm. The heavenly bodies are in rhythm. The internal system of blood and heart and organs are in rhythm. And rhythm is a kind of synonym of harmony, as harmony is one for joy. Therefore, when you are joyful you are in rhythm, and when you are in harmony with God, you are a happy person.

October 10

Perhaps we have wanted to reach some goal still unattained and to be something which we have not yet accomplished. Let's determine that before this year ends, goals will be reached and dreams come true. Then we will dream new dreams and set higher goals for the years yet to come.

October 9

The important fact isn't that we have problems. It is rather our attitude toward problems. There is a small sign in my office that states a big truth: "Attitudes are more important than facts." Of course you cannot ignore a fact, but the attitude of mind with which you approach that fact is all-important.

October 8

Heart is the essence of creative activity. Fire the heart with where you want to go and what you want to be. Get that goal so deeply fixed in your unconscious that you will not take no for an answer. Then your entire personality, your total mentality, will follow where your heart leads. You will go where you want to go, be what you want to be.

October 7

The secret of a successful life is to reduce the error and increase the truth. It is because of the error in us that we make so many mistakes, do so many stupid things, get ourselves into so much trouble, and have things turn out wrong so much of the time. The opposite of error is truth. Jesus Christ said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life" (John 14:6). When we follow Him we follow the truth. The more truth, the fewer errors. It is just that simple.

October 3

A businessman told me he was going to fire a certain employee because the man was slow, dull, and sleepy. "Instead of firing him out of the business, why not fire him into the business?" I asked. "You mean build a fire under him?" he demanded. "No," I said, "build a fire in him. Get him excited. get him motivated." The employer did just that and now he reports of the same employee, "The man is a ball of fire."

October 6

One of Thomas Jefferson's rules of personal conduct was, "Always take hold of things by the smooth handle." Go at a job or at a difficulty or at a personal-relationship problem by a method that will encounter the least resistance. The less resistance, the faster things move.

October 5

A tornado swept through a southwestern city doing great damage. A mother there, confined to her bed because of infantile paralysis, paralyzed from the waist down, at the height of the tornado became alarmed for her two children in the next room. There was no one to help; the tornado was striking the house with force. Her limbs were assumed to be without power, but concern for the safety of her children was stronger than her limitations.

Slowly she got out of bed and painfully made her way into the adjoining room. Taking her babies in her arms, she walked with them out of the house. Love proved more powerful than the paralysis from which she had been told she might never recover. Some people become paralyzed, not in their limbs, but in their thoughts. They accept limitations by saying, "This is all I can do." But that depreciating self-appraisal is not the truth. You are greater than you think you are.

October 4

The Bible gives a tremendous statement which, in the softness of these days, is scarcely ever quoted, at least not often enough. I heard it frequently in the sturdier days of my boyhood: "Quit you like men, be strong" (1 Corinthians 16:13). We simply have to develop sturdiness of will if the tough, hard problems of life are to be handled effectively. Every person has a will. If it is soft, exercise will strengthen it. Think of your will as a "muscle" of the spirit. Like any muscle, if not exercised, it becomes flabby. But, with repeated use, it toughens up, acquiring tone and resiliency.