December 15

An enemy of worry is reason. Hit your anxiety hard with reason. Worry is an emotion; reason is a sound mental process. No emotion can stand long against cool, factual, reasoned analyst. Spread your worry out and apply reason to it. Take it apart and see how its constituent elements fade in the presence of reason.

December 14

Dare to be what you ought to be; dare to be what you dream to be; dare to be the finest you can be. The more you dare, the surer you will be of gaining just what you dare. But if you go at things timorously, telling yourself, “I’m afraid I’ll never make it” or “I just know I can never do it” or “I haven’t got what it takes,” then you will get a result in kind. Dream great dreams; dare great dreams. Have great hopes, dare great hopes. Have great expectations. “. . . The Lord is the strength of my life . . . in this will I be confident.” (Psalm 27:1-3).

December 13

Set apart a regular time to deliberately still your thoughts and emotions so that you may commune with your deeper self. When the mind is agitated by the noise, hurry, and confusion of modern life, you cannot truly consult the creative depths within yourself where lie answers to your perplexing problems. Remember Thomas Carlyle’s words: “Silence is the element in which great things fashion themselves together.”

December 12

To have courage, think courage. We become what we think. As you think courage, courage will fill your thoughts and displace fear. The more courageous your thinking, the greater the courage you will have. Act courageously. Practice the “as if” principle. Act as if you are courageous and you will become as you think and act. A person should pray for courage as he prays for his daily bread. And your prayer for courage will enable you to think and act with courage.

December 11

Arve Hatcher tells how, after a heavy blizzard, his car was stuck in a snow pile, and his efforts to get it moving only dug its wheels in deeper and deeper. Down the street came a muscular teenager carrying a shovel. When he saw the problem he promptly got to work and set the car free.

“Many thanks,” Hatcher said gratefully, and reached to hand him some folded bills. “No way,” the teenager said with a smile. “I belong to the DUO Club.” “Never heard of it,” Hatcher replied. “Sure you have,” the boy grinned. “It's the do-unto-others-as-you-would-have-them-do-unto-you club.” And with a wave of his hand and another big smile, he was on his way.

December 10

A pilot told me that some of the big jet airplanes have a series of blades extending down the wings which cause air to swirl toward the rear of the plane. This provides the necessary turbulence for directional accuracy in flight. If the air is too smooth, some roughness has to be added to improve flight conditions. Perhaps suffering and hardship serve the same purpose for a human being. Maybe we need “turbulence” to help us develop a sense of direction so that we may ultimately reach the destination intended for us in life.

December 9

When trouble strikes, what you want is not only comfort and sympathy. You want strength to stand up to it and meet it. You can have both. Remind yourself that God is with you, that He will never fail you that you can count upon Him. Say these words: “God is with me, helping me” and “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.” This will give you a sense of comfort. New hope will flood your mind. Emotional reaction will give way to rational thinking. New ideas will come. A new sense of strength will be yours. Result—you will rise above your trouble.

December 8

Never laugh off anyone who has an evangelical zeal for or against anything. A single individual with strong and zealous determination can stimulate amazing forces which may become dominant, even when a vast majority disagrees. A fat, sleepy majority can be pushed around by a few persons aflame with positive conviction or negative destructiveness. Both are powerful motivators. Fortunately, positive convictions are more powerful than negative ones.

December 7

One man checks on the rightness or wrongness of a proposed action this way: He visualizes his role reported in big black headlines in tomorrow’s newspaper. If something in him winces at the thought, he tells himself he had better censor that action.

December 6

At any point in our lives each of us is standing on a kind of moral ladder. There are rungs above us and rungs below. We can climb up or we can step down. Or we can simply stand still, which is the easiest thing to do, because it requires no effort and involves no risk. What we really have to do if we are interested in self-development is make up our minds to move up a rung then another and another on the moral ladder.

December 5

By dwelling too much upon mistakes you can keep yourself in an error groove. Mistakes can be teachers—but they can also be leeches, clinging to your thinking, conditioning you to make the same mistakes again. It is all too easy to let yesterday's mistakes ruin today. Train your mind to learn from your successes.

December 4

How do you draw on a higher power? Practice living with God. Live with Him every day. Be with Jesus Christ. Talk to Him. Have conversation with Him as a friend. Pray to Him. Think about Him. Do not do anything, however seemingly small or insignificant, without bringing Him into it. The more you do this, the more you will identify with divine forces, and the power flow from them to you will increase.

December 3

On an airplane in the Far East, in typhoon season, I asked the pilot how he handled those strong winds. “Oh,” he replied, “I turn typhoons into tailwinds!” In life there are many troubles, some seemingly as big as typhoons. With faith in God and by using the mind He gave you, you can learn the laws that govern trouble. Then you can turn difficulty into opportunity and make it speed you on your way with a strong tailwind to achievement.

December 2

My wife, Ruth, was at a church dinner out west and was seated across from a farmer. His hands and windblown look showed how he had toiled. She asked, “How are the crops this year?” “Ma’am,” he replied, “we had a long drought, then came the grasshoppers. I lost ninety percent of my crop. But my brother lost all of his." Appalled, Ruth asked, “But what did your brother do?" Quietly, he answered, “We just aimed to forget it.” Next year offers a new beginning.

December 1

Two words—deny yourself—are important to self-control. They may relate to success or to failure. Refuse the candy, skip second helpings, don’t buy the dress, don't goof off—where will you start to say no to yourself? Don't consider it a decision against some form of fun but a decision for a desired goal in your life. This makes it a positive, not a negative step. This isn't taking the joy out of life. Actually it’s putting the joy into life. The more we give up to concentrate on an important goal, the stronger we become. Self-denial in the present, to gain greater benefits in the future, is the hallmark of a rational human being.