The Victorious Attitude

by Orison Swett Marden

"I am success. Though hungry, cold, ill-clad,
I wander for a while. I smile and say,
'It is but for a time—I shall be glad
To-morrow, for good fortune comes my way.
God is my father, He has wealth untold,
His wealth is mine, health, happiness and gold.'"

If you have made fatal mistakes for which you have been ostracized from society; if you are morbidly worrying over some unfortunate experience, thus making it bigger, blacker and more hideous, just thrust it out of your mind, bury it, forget it, say to it, "You have no power over me; I will not allow you to destroy my peace and thwart my career; you are not the truth of my being; the reality of me is divine, and you cannot touch that. I can and I will rise above all my troubles, make good all my mistakes and errors. From now on I will work with the God in me. I will not be overcome. I will overcome."

If you are the slave of a demon habit which has blasted your hopes, blighted your happiness, thwarted your ambition, cast its black shadow across your whole life, say to yourself: "I will break away from this vile habit. I will be free and not a slave."

If it is impurity, say, "I was not made to be dominated by such a monstrous vice. God's image in me was not intended to wallow in this filth. I have suffered long enough from this damnable habit, which is undermining my health, killing my chances of success in life, and lowering me below the level of the beast. I am a child of the Infinite, sent here to make a worthy contribution to humanity, to make good. I am going to make good. I am going to free myself from this base habit and recover my self-respect, my manhood, at any cost. I am going to be a MAN, not a THING, a son of God, not of the devil."

Continually flood your mind with purity thoughts and affirmations which will neutralize your sensual desires. Repeat again and again your determination not to allow your life to be spoiled by unrestrained passion. Make such an emphatic and vigorous call upon your better self, make the demand so appealing that your higher nature will be aroused and will dominate your acts. Say, "The Creator has bidden me look up, not down. He made me to climb, not to descend and wallow in the mire of animalism."

If it is drink, opium, excessive smoking, or any other vicious habit that is robbing you of manhood and holding you back in life, string this bead on your rosary, "I was not made to be dominated by you, a mere weed, an extract of grain, a habit which I forged. I am done with you once and forever. The appetite for you is destroyed. There is something divine within me which makes me perfectly able to overcome you. You are a vile thing, and have disgraced me for the last time. Never again can you humiliate me and make me despise myself. There can be only one ruler in my mental kingdom and I propose to be that one. I don't propose to allow you Whiskey, Cigarette, Opium, or other Drug or Devil, to ruin my life, to force me to carry in my face the signs of my defeat, the scarlet letter of my degradation, my failure. You have humiliated, insulted me, tyrannized over me long enough, making me confess that I hadn't enough strength of mind to stand up against a single vicious, degrading habit. Now I defy you. Your power over me is at an end. The spell is broken. Hereafter I am going to walk the earth as a conqueror, a victor, not as a slave. I am going to front the world with my head up and face forward. God and one make a majority. I am in the majority NOW."

There is no inferiority or depravity about the man God made. No matter how low you may have fallen, the God image in you never can be smirched or depraved. It is as perfect in the worst criminal in the penitentiary as it is in the greatest saint. There is something in every human being that is incontaminable, something which is never sick, never diseased, and which never sins. This is the God in us, and herein lies the hope of the most brutal human being on the earth. There is something in him that is divine, sinless, immortal, the God in him which when called will instantly rush to his aid.

If you feel that you have wandered very far from your God, that you had gotten out of the current which runs Heavenward, just repeat to yourself such things as this, "Nearer My God to Thee, Nearer to Thee." This will help you to put up your trolley pole, to make your connection with the Divine wire which carries omnipotent power. The sense of separateness will disappear and the load under which you staggered before will grow light, will be lifted from you.

The secret of all health, prosperity, happiness, power, love, of victorious living, is a consciousness of union, of oneness with the Divine. This is the secret of all human blessedness. When you are in this Godward current you are "nearer to God," and you cannot fear, for you know that no harm can come to infinite power.

The closer we are to divinity, the greater our strength and efficiency. What makes us weak and inefficient is that we have shut off this power by our wrong thinking, vicious living. Your life will take on a new meaning, a diviner dignity, when you consciously realize your at-one-ment with the great creative, sustaining Principle of the universe.