The Victorious Attitude

by Orison Swett Marden

But for the positive, dominant qualities in man we would still be living in caves and eating our food raw. It is the positive, forceful man that overcomes. Obstacles do not frighten, or turn him from his purpose. They are to him but the apparatus in the gymnasium, which give him additional strength and reinforce his determination to achieve. He knows that he can command infinite supply, that the great forces of the universe are working for him, and that he has only to direct them. He knows that it is his birthright to conquer; that the Creator put him here for that very purpose—to overcome, to grow, to ascend, to be godlike.

Every one has sufficient positive power to guide and direct his own life if he will only use and develop that power. If he does not use he will lose. If you do not think and act for yourself, if you do not assert yourself and push your own way, the forces about you will take command and push you. And remember this: When you are pushed you go down-hill; when you push yourself you go up-hill. Every one is either pusher or pushed in this world. Even the kingdom of heaven is taken by violence. He who would attain it must be aggressive for truth. No namby-pamby weakling who is afraid to stand on his own feet and fight for the right can get there.

If you ever expect to do anything to justify your existence, quit looking for some outside agent which will move your life train. Your power is coiled up right inside of you. There is where your engine is. The name of that engine is I. Use the great force at your command. Get up steam and forge ahead. You will never get very far by any other means. You are only losing time in trying to get any power outside of yourself, in pulls or influence, to move you forward. When the Creator made you a co-partner in His work, He put inside of you all the machinery necessary for the part you were to play. Claim what He intended for you. Develop and use your machinery, and no power on earth can hold you back from the goal you set for yourself.

Say to yourself, "It is my duty to make good, to obey that inner urge, that ambition prod which ever bids me up and on. I am resolved never again to allow anything to interfere with the free and untrammeled exercise of my physical and mental faculties. I will unfold all the possibilities that the Creator has infolded in the ego, the I of me. There is no lost day in God's calendar, no allowance for waste, and I am determined henceforth to make the most of the stuff that has been given me, to play the part of a son of Omnipotence."

As a matter of fact, every day has a splendid possible prize awaiting every human being, a prize which no money can buy. It can be obtained only at the price of splendid effort and self-assertion. We are too timid, too fearful of results even to attempt what we long to do. And we are too easy with ourselves, too willing to drift with the tide of our moods. Every man who has ever achieved grandly has been a stern schoolmaster to himself. He has incessantly affirmed his ideal and held himself unwaveringly to its realization.

By cultivating the positive we drive out the negative. This is a psychological law. It is to "empty by filling." Affirmation is always more potent than negation.

Prof. Halleck says "By restraining of an emotion, we can frequently throttle it; by inducing an expression, we can often cause its allied emotions."

Prof. Wm. James makes a similar statement. "Refuse to express a passion," he says, "and it dies. Count ten before venting your anger and its occasion seems ridiculous. Whistling to keep up courage is no mere figure of speech. On the other hand, sit all day in a moping posture, sigh, and reply to everything with a dismal voice, and your melancholy lingers. There is no more valuable precept in moral education than this, as all of us who have experienced know. If we wish to conquer undesirable emotional tendencies in ourselves we must assiduously, and in the first instance cold-bloodedly, go through the outward movements of those contrary dispositions which we wish to cultivate. Smooth the brow, brighten the eye, contract the dorsal rather than the ventral aspect of the frame, and speak in a major key, pass the genial compliment and your heart must indeed be frigid if it does not gradually thaw."

Few of us realize the tremendous force there is in the vigorous incessant affirmation of conditions which we long to establish. United with the visualizing of the man or woman we yearn to be or the thing we are determined to achieve, it becomes an irresistible power in shaping events. Act the part, affirm the possession, the assured realization of the thing desired, and it will tend to materialize. This is a fundamental law of creation.

What is called auto-suggestion, or self-suggestion, is one of the most active agencies employed in mind building. We can literally make our minds, thought by thought, as we can our bodies, fiber by fiber, through vigorous affirmation.