Earl Nightingale_On Success Track 2

The mind has control over the body, and thoughts can determine one's health and well-being. Negative thoughts can lead to disease and decay, while positive thoughts can bring youthfulness and beauty. Thoughts of fear can even kill a person. Thoughts of anxiety and evil can lead to illness and disease, while strong and happy thoughts can build strength and grace. The body is a sensitive instrument that responds to the thoughts that govern it. Clean thoughts lead to a clean body, while impure thoughts lead to a corrupt body. Changing diet alone is not enough if one's thoughts remain unhealthy. Thoughts and circumstances are closely linked, and a person's thoughts shape their character and destiny. A person's outer conditions reflect their inner state. Circumstances are not random, but a result of a law that cannot err. By understanding the power of thought, one can become the master of their own life. Thoughts attract corresponding circumstances and outcomes. Good thoughts lead to good r The body is the servant of the mind, it obeys the orders of the mind whether they be deliberate or automatic. At the bidding of evil, miserable thoughts, the body may sink rapidly into disease and decay. At the command of dread and beautiful thoughts, it may clothe itself with youthfulness and beauty. Disease and health, like circumstances, are often rooted in thought. Sick thoughts may express themselves to a sick body. In aboriginal societies, thoughts of fear have been known to kill a man as sweetly as a bullet, and they are continually killing thousands of people in our society just as surely, though less rapidly. People who live in fear of disease are apt to become ill. Anxiety quickly demoralizes the whole body and lays it over the illness and disease, while evil thoughts, even though they be no more than that, will soon shatter their inner system. Strong, pure, and happy thoughts build vigor and grace. The body is a sensitive, plastic instrument which responds readily to the thoughts by which it is governed, and habits of thought will produce their own effects, good or bad, upon it. Out of a clean mind comes a clean life and a clean body. Out of a defiled mind proceeds a defiled life and a corrupt body. Thought is the fount of action, life, and manifestation. Make the fountain pure, and the stream of life will flow with greater purity. Change of diet may little help a man who will not change his thoughts. When a man makes his thoughts healthy, he no longer desires unhealthy food. Clean thoughts make clean, healthy habits. The so-called saint who does not wash his body may well not be a saint. If you would perfect your body, guard your mind. If you would renew your body, beautify your mind. Thoughts of malice, envy, disappointment, despondency can rob your body of its health and grace. A sour face does not come by chance. It is made by sour thoughts. Wrinkles that mar are drawn by folly, pride, and passion. I know a woman of ninety-six who has the bright, innocent face of a girl. I know a man well under middle age whose face is drawn into inharmonious contours. The one is the result of a sweet and sunny disposition. The other is the outcome of bad temper and discontent. As you cannot have a sweet and wholesome abode unless you emit the air and sunshine freely in your rooms, so a strong body and a bright, happy, serene countenance can only result from the free admittance into the mind of thoughts of joy and goodwill and serenity. On the faces of the aged, there are wrinkles made by sympathy, others by strong and pure thought, and others are carved by arrogance and resentment. Who cannot distinguish them? With those who have lived thoughtfully, age is calm, peaceful, and softly mellowed like the setting sun. I have recently seen a philosopher on his deathbed. He was not old except in years. He died as sweetly and peacefully as he lived. There is no position like cheerful thought, participating the ills of malcontent. There is no comforter to compare with goodwill for dispersing the shadows of grief and sorrow. To live continually in thoughts of ill will, cynicism, suspicion, and vain is to be confined in a self-made prison for all. But to think well of all, to be cheerful with all, to patiently learn to find the good in all is to live in sight of the very portals of heaven. And day by day, thoughts of peace toward every creature will bring abounding peace to their possessor. Thoughts and Circumstances A man's mind may be likened to a garden, which may be intelligently cultivated or allowed to run wild. But whether cultivated or neglected, it must and will bring forth. If no useful seeds are put into it, then an abundance of useless weed seeds will fall therein and will continue to produce their kind. Just as a gardener cultivates his plot, keeping it free from weeds and growing the flowers and fruits which he requires, so may a man tend the garden of his mind, weeding out all the wrong and useless thoughts, and cultivating toward perfection the flowers and fruits of right, useful, and pure thoughts. By pursuing this process, a man sooner or later discovers that he is the master gardener of his soul, the director of his life. He also reveals within himself the laws of thought and understands with ever-increasing accuracy how his mind operates in the shaping of his character, circumstances, and destiny. Thought and character are one, and as character can only manifest and discover itself through environment and circumstance, the outer conditions of a person's life will always be found to be related to his inner state. This does not mean that a man's circumstances at any given time are an indication of his entire character, but that those circumstances are so intimately connected with the vital thought within himself that, for the time being, they are indispensable to his development. Every man is where he is by the law of his being. The thoughts which he has built into his character have brought him there, and in the arrangement of his life, there is no lasting element of chance, but all of the result of a law which cannot err. This is just as true of those who are discontented with their surroundings as of those who are contented with them. As an evolving being, man is where he is that he may learn, that he may grow, and as he learns the lesson which any circumstance contains for him, it passes away and gives place to other circumstances. Man is buffeted by circumstances so long as he believes himself to be a creature entirely subject to outside conditions. But when he realizes that he is a creating power and that he may command the hidden soil and seeds of his being out of which circumstances grow, he then becomes the rightful master of himself. That circumstances grow out of thought every man knows who has for any length of time practiced self-control of his mind and thoughts, for he will have noticed that the alteration of his circumstances has been an exact ratio with his altered mental condition. So true is this, that when a man earnestly applies himself to remedy the defects in his character and make swift and marked progress, he passes rapidly to a succession of his institutes. The soul attracts that which it secretly harbors, that which it loves, and also that which it fears. It reaches the height of its cherished aspirations. It falls to the level of its unchastened desires, and circumstances are the means by which the soul receives its own. Every thought-seed sown or allowed to fall into the mind and take root there produces its own, blossoming sooner or later into act and bearing its own fruit into opportunity and circumstance. Good thoughts bear good fruit. Bad thoughts, bad fruit. The outer world of circumstance is shaped by the inner world of thought, and both pleasant and unpleasant external conditions are factors which make for the ultimate good of the individual. As the reaper of his own harvest, man learns both by suffering and bliss, following the inmost desires, aspirations, thoughts by which he allows himself to be dominated. Pursuing the will of the wisps of vapid imaginings or steadfastly walking the highway of strong and high endeavor, a man at last arrives at their fruition and fulfillment in the utter conditions of his life. The laws of growth and adjustment everywhere play. A man does not come to the almshouse of a jail by the tyranny of fate or circumstance, but by the pathway of global thoughts and base desires, nor does a high-minded man fall suddenly to crime by stress of any mere external force. The criminal thought had long been secretly fostered in the heart when the hour of opportunity revealed its gathered power. Circumstance does not make the man, it reveals him. No such conditions can exist as descending into vice and its intended sufferings apart from precious inclinations, or ascending into virtue and its happiness without the continued cultivation of virtuous aspirations. A man, therefore, as the lord and master of thought, is the maker of himself, the shaper and author of environment. The soul comes to its own. Through every step of exerted privilege it attracts those combinations of conditions which reveal itself, which are the reflections of its own virtue and vice, its strength and weakness. Men do not attract that which they say they want, but that which they are. Their whims, fancies, and ambitions are thwarted at every step, but their inmost thoughts and desires are fed with the food of their own choosing. The divinity that shapes our ends is in ourselves, it is our very self. Man is manacled only by himself. Thought and action are the jailers of fate, they imprison, they invade. They are also the angels of freedom, they liberate, they noble. Not what he wishes and prays for does a man get, but what he justly earns. His wishes and prayers are only gratified and answered when they comport with his thoughts and actions. In the light of this truth, what then is the meaning of fighting against circumstances? It means that a man is continually revolting against an effect without, while all the time he is nourishing and preserving its cause in his heart. That cause may take the form of a conscious vice or an unconscious weakness, but whatever it is, it stubbornly retards the efforts of its possessor and thus calls aloud for remedy. Men are anxious to improve their circumstances, but are unwilling to improve themselves. They therefore remain bound. A man who does not shrink from self-sacrifice can never fail to accomplish the object upon which he is trying to set. This is as true of material as of spiritual things. Even a man whose sole object is to acquire wealth must be prepared to make great personal sacrifices before he can accomplish his object, and how much more so he would realize a happy, joyful life. Here is a man who is wretchedly poor. He is extremely anxious that his surroundings and home comforts should be improved, yet all the time he shakes his work and considers he is justified in trying to deceive his employer on the ground of the insufficiency of his wages. Such a man does not understand the simplest rudiments of those principles which have a basis of true prosperity, and is not only totally unfit and derives out of his wretchedness, but is actually attacking to himself a still deeper wretchedness by dwelling in and acting out indolent, deceptive, and unmanly thoughts. Here is a rich man who is the victim of a painful and persistent ill health as the result of gluttony. He is willing to give large sums of money to get rid of it, but he will not abandon his gluttony. He wants to gratify his taste for rich and harmful violence and have his health as well. Such a man is totally unfit to have health, because he has not yet learned the first principles of a healthy life. Here is an employer of labor who adopts crooked measures to avoid paying a regulation wage and, in the hope of making larger profits, reduces the wages of his work people. Such a man is altogether unfitted for prosperity, and when he finds himself bankrupt both with regard to reputation and riches, he blames circumstances, not knowing that he is the sole author of his conditioning. I have introduced these three cases merely as illustrative of the truth that man is the causer, though nearly always unconsciously, of his circumstances, and that while aiming at a good end, he may continually frustrate his accomplishment by thoughts and desires which cannot possibly harmonize with that end. Such cases could be multiplied and varied almost indefinitely, but this is not necessary as you can, if you so desire, trace the action of the laws of thought in your own mind and life, and attune to this. Mere external facts are not likely to persuade you. Circumstances, however, are so complicated, thought is so deeply rooted in the conditions of happiness, very so with individuals, that a man's entire condition, although it may be known to himself, cannot be judged by another from the external aspect of his life alone. A man may be honest in certain directions, yet suffer privations. A man may be dishonest in certain directions, yet acquire wealth. The conclusion usually formed, however, that the one man fails because of his particular honesty, and that the other prospers because of his particular dishonesty, is the result of his superficial judgment, which assumes that the dishonest man is almost totally corrupt, and the honest man almost entirely virtuous. In the light of a deeper knowledge and wider experience, such judgment is found to be erroneous. The dishonest man may have some admirable virtues which the other does not possess, and the honest man obnoxious vices which are absent in the other. The honest man roots the good results of his honest thoughts and acts. He also brings upon himself the sufferings which his vices produce, and the dishonest man likewise garners his own sufferings and happiness. We'll continue thoughts and circumstances on the second cassette. This is the end of side two. Side one is already cleared up for your listening.