Positive Thinking

You can if you think you can

I have just been reading of the death of W. Clement Stone, aged 100; an American who believed that you could achieve what ever you wanted to achieve by P M A, a Positive Mental Attitude. I have had one of his books now for many years called, 'The success system that never Fails'. Clement Stone was only three when his Father died and as a child, to support himself and his mother, he went out on to the streets selling newspapers. He later started the Combined American insurance Company and built that up to be valued at some Two Billion Dollars. He is reported to have given away over Two Hundred and Seventy Five Million Dollars to different Charities and when in his nineties he was still a most energetic ballroom dancer. His attitude was, 'You can if you think you Can'.

I have always been a great believer of 'It's all in the Mind'. I very much go along with the thinking that the glass isn't half empty, it's half full. I am convinced that I now go regularly to Chapel every Sunday, after not going for some 50 years; not because of some new found Religious beliefs, but because I see so much that can be done. There is no law, which tells us the congregation has to be no more than a dozen or that the paint has to peel off the walls. These things happen because we have no desire, no ambition, to change them. It is what goes on in your mind that really matters, not what goes on outside it.

You shouldn't seek material things; as soon as you have a new car you then want a new settee, new carpets, you are travelling down the wrong road. Of course you can't go through this world without material things, but you should buy them for a reason and that shouldn't be to impress the neighbours. There is only one person you should want to impress, and that should be you. You try helping someone, however little you think that might be, and you get that inner feeling of satisfaction. All of that is in the mind. Most people you know, and I'm no different, do today what we did yesterday. We all do the same old thing day after day; we do nothing new. What destroys us is routine, that's a Killer. It could be said that if you pursue that theory then you would have a new wife every six months. Well, as Captain Maiwaring of Dad's Army used to say, to Corporal Jones, "You are now entering the world of fantasy". A new wife every six months? No I'm on about the real world, not paradise.

A friend of mine did say to his long-suffering wife one day, "Let's try something different tonight dear." Or at least that is what I thought he said; anyway, he has a black eye to prove it!

Les Lawrence