Success comes only to the man who acts most effectively on what he knows.
Right Practice Of the Three Processes
In order to secure quick and effective results, the practice of the three necessary processes of development should be:
First, definitely conscious. You need to know just what quality you want to develop in yourself.
Second, discriminative. You must learn the differences between what you want, and what you don't want to develop in particular.
Third, restrictive. It is necessary that in your training to develop a certain quality, you concentrate your practice on the respects in which this particular quality differs from other qualities.
Most of us are pretty definitely conscious of what we want. We know just the qualities we would like to have. But very few people employ most effectively the discriminative-restrictive methods of training in their processes of development.
Importance of Differentiation
It is impossible to develop a particular quality fully if you only recognize its likenesses to other qualities. Real mental development is accomplished only as a result of the recognition of differences. After studying twins for a year, you still might be unable to tell them apart if you were impressed solely with their remarkable similarity to each other. Another man, with a mind discriminatively and restrictively trained to recognize differences, would learn in five minutes to distinguish the individualities of the twins.
Almost phenomenal development can be attained by use of the discriminative-restrictive training method. The minutest distinctions can be perceived if one concentrates his practice for mental growth on the recognition of differences only. Individuals who have lost one or more senses become extraordinarily adept in detecting contrasts with their other senses. A normal man, possessed of all his senses, is capable of even greater development of his powers of differentiation.