Nothing
in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent.
Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the
world is full of educated
derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.
Calvin
Coolidge,Thirtieth President
1st
Corinthians, Chapter 12:
4
Now there are diversities of gifts but there is only one Spirit.
5
And there are diversities of ministries, but there is only one Lord.
6
And there are diversities of powers, but it is the One God who works
all things in all people.
7
But the manifestation of the Spirit is given to every person as help.
8
For to one is given by Spirit the word of wisdom; to another the word
of knowledge by the same Spirit.
9
To another faith by the same Spirit; to another gifts of healing by the
same Spirit;
10
To another the working of miracles; to another prophesy; to another the
means to distinguish the true Spirit; to another different languages; to
another the interpretations of languages.
11
But all of these gifts are wrought by that one and the same Spirit,
dividing to every one severally as he will.
12
For as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the
body, even though many, are one body, so also is Christ.
13
For all of us are baptized by one Spirit into one body, whether Jews or
Arameans, whether bond or free; and we have all received through the one
Spirit
14
The body is not one member, but many.
15
For if the foot should say, Because I am not the hand, I am not a part
of the body; is it therefore not a member of the body?
16
And if the ear should say, Because I am not the eye, I am not a part of
the body; is it therefore not a member of the body?
17
If the whole body were eyes, where would hearing be? And if the whole
were hearing, where would smelling be?
18
But now God has set every member in the body, as it has pleased him
19
If they were all one member, where would the body be?
20
But now they are many members, yet but one body.
21
The eye cannot say to the hand, I have no need of you; nor can the head
say to the feet, I have no need of you.
22
But rather those members of the body which are considered to be
delicate are necessary.
Persistence,
Courage and Responsibility:
The Three Primary Elements of Success
There
are three keys elements of success that can do more to guarantee your success in
life than anything else you might do. On the other hand, the absence of these
keys will be a sure guarantee of lost opportunities and almost continual
disappointment. These keys elements are RESPONSIBILITY, COURAGE, and
PERSISTENCE.
I’m
sure that this sounds like something your mother, or some high school teacher,
told you when she was being particularly irritating! Truths that we waltz by in
life have that kind of haunting quality, they keep coming back.
The truth about the truth is that it doesn’t change and it lingers on
through all our mistakes and eventually we see that it is not mocking us, it is
inviting us to a better life.
Responsibility,
in its widest sense, is extremely powerful and constructive. It means that YOU,
and nobody else, have dominion in your life. If you hold responsibility, then
YOU can change things. You have the power. It is not in somebody else's hands --
your spouse, the government, your parents, your boss, your accountant, nor is it
in your astrological chart. The power lies with you to respond to life as it is!
Responsibility
is not a popular principle. The ability to respond to life as it is from that
place within us that is true and whole, this is an innate ability within us and
it is our job to discover how it works and how to recognize accept its value.
We
live in a world is full of people who give away their power to others by
refusing to accept responsibility in their lives. They make excuses and find
someone else to blame for their misfortunes or failed dreams. Irresponsible
people can give an endless stream of reasons for why they failed to complete
what they first began or, worse still, never began in the first place. Indeed,
our culture sometimes seems to be set up to accommodate and encourage this
failure of character. It is possible to grow up and live an entire adult life
without learning this vital lesson so vital to our happiness.
The
tragedy about this failure of character is that while it seems to have a big
payoff in avoidance of difficulties, but, it really does not. Those who take
this low road may certainly get a sympathetic ear for a while. It makes for good
drama to have persistent troubles. If
we go this way we will find people who may even agree that we're quite right in
our assessment of the cause of our troubles. However, in refusing to own our
part in events, we give away our power. Who do we give our power? Everyone and
everything outside of ourselves. If we are not responsible for the various
events in our lives, then who is? The
answer: other people, enemies, random forces of nature, the stars in retrograde,
destiny or anything else we might care to blame.
Those
who avoid real thinking and responsibility in this way soon wind up with what is
often referred to as "learned helplessness" and become effectively
incapable of making a wholehearted effort to reach a worthwhile goal. They lose
the capacity to believe in themselves. As a consequence, they lose the vital
capacity for persistent effort towards a worthy goal. If they were sailing, the
first stiff breeze would easily blow them against the rocks. And then the
habitual shifting of the blame arises from the deep recesses of ego and points
to their latest disappointment and says, "You see? I told you!"
It's
a vicious cycle. However this cycle is easily interrupted and broken. The
solution is to take responsibility, as a conscious co-creator with God, for
EVERYTHING that takes place in your life. Even if you cannot see how you
possibly could be responsible, it is still a far more powerful approach to be in
possession of responsibility than to deny it. Also, from a Spirit-centered view
of our universe, there are many more levels to existence than merely the
physical. And so there are more ways in which we may actually BE responsible for
events without our limited and local consciousness knowing about it. We may be
very willing to “own” responsibility when things turn out as we planned.
However,
most of us look beyond ourselves for someone else to share the credit when
things go wrong. The approach of those who achieve mastery in life is to be
responsible for ALL that happens. In doing so, they awaken to the fact that they
are co-creators of their destiny; not merely dry leaves being tossed in the
wind.
Here's
an example from my own experience. When I worked for attorneys I often got calls
from those who had employed attorneys to do some legal work for them that had
not met their needs or solved their problem. Often they had wanted to use
someone else who specializes in a particular area of legal practice. But
instead, they went to their brother-in-law’s attorney, or to the lawyer that
had done their divorce, to see their neighbor the lawyer, and these lawyers
accepted their cases and insisted they could do the job just as well, and often
they would beat the quoted price that a specialist would give by a drastic
amount. Invariably, it was a disaster. They were every bit as lacking in
expertise as originally suspected. It cost months in wasted time and always a
fair amount of money.
Whose
responsibility was this? Many would blame the lawyer. After all, he or she was
incompetent! No doubt about it.
However,
the responsibility lies with the client. The choice was 100% theirs. They could
have chosen consciously to hire someone else from the start. Or, as things began to go wrong, they
could have terminated the relationship instead of carrying on. Each failed to properly inform
themselves to begin with, or second-guessed their initial intuition. By taking
responsibility for this, by seeing the sequence of the choices that led to the
unwanted situation, each could reassert their own power to cause results and
make the correct decision the next time. By
refusing to do so, we give our power away to the people involved in our unhappy
situation. So it could happen again. It is obvious which is the better strategy
for life!
Whenever
something happens in your life, for good or ill, tell yourself, "I am
responsible." Then ask yourself, "How am I going to handle this?"
However bad a situation may be, if you repeat to yourself as an affirmation,
"I am responsible", then you begin to look to yourself for the way out
instead of to external forces. In truth, you are looking in the right direction.
You ARE the true manifestor of your own destiny.
This
is the way to take control of your life instead of leaving it in the hands of
blind forces. It may sound hard or callous at times. However, it is not. You are
not saying, "It's all my fault." Rather, you are saying, "I have
the power to affect my life -- for good or ill -- and I choose to consciously
exercise that power and take responsibility for whatever consequences I
attract." How much better than blaming the stars, or your boss!
Once
you take responsibility for everything that happens, you build a firm foundation
upon which to build your long-term success. Leave the excuses for someone else.
Set your face firmly in the direction of excellence.
Courage:
Open Your Own Door To Success!
Measurable
success requires us to accept responsibility. The one qualities that all
successful people have is their ability to take on responsibility, and to
persist in their efforts courageously. You must courageously choose the thoughts
and actions that will lead you on to success. Nothing will happen by itself. It
can all come your way, once you understand that you have to make it come your
way, by your own exertions. Remember well that nothing can bring you success
that doesn’t being within yourself.
Find
your pathway to success and begin your journey. Your life will be what you make
of it. We hear it said all the time that the golden opportunity you are seeking
lies within you. Appreciate the heart within you that can empower that faith!
This is what courage is, listening to the voice of truth within oneself
when it is speaking as soft as a whisper, sometimes as loud as thunder when we
are stubborn, and having the courage to act upon it, knowing that God is always
there to support us.
Success
is not in your environment; it is
not in luck or chance, or the in the help you receive from others, your success
lies within yourself alone. While opportunity is all around you, it matters not
if you do not create a place of acceptance within yourself. This takes courage when there is no evidence apparent for you
to have any faith that things will turn out in the way you intuitively saw that
it would.
Sometimes
it appears that the “door of opportunity” is closed to us.
We must keep on knocking on it, and keep on knocking on it until it
opens. We develop our opportunities by courageously applying persistence to the
possibilities we envision. Success won't come to you, if you sit still and wait,
you must go to it, just as you go to the door to knock upon it or to open it. Be
an opener of doors. This doesn’t mean that all the effort is ours alone, but
that the slightest step toward God is rewarded tenfold.
We
tell the universe what we expect when we are persistent and courageous in
accomplishing our goals. We
cannot on Monday say we want some particularly great result and on Tuesday give
way to a whim that runs counter to accomplishing what we have said we are
committed to! And if we have found
that we have fallen prey to a whim, we must in the moment of our recognition
reawaken to what we have said is our goal and begin anew. This is true of
spiritual growth, it is true of the development of any skill or talent. These things do not develop without our responsible,
persistent, and courageous acts in conformity with that to which we have given
our creative word.
Our
word is always creative and can guide each and everything we do,
but we must persistently, in consciousness, resolve to live a life that conforms
to our deepest desires, to our wish to know God, to listen and respond to God. To exemplify and glorify the Spirit that is within us is a
mystical act of faith. To have
faith in the power of ones word is to say that one knows that God speaks through
us an individuals. Just as it is
easy to take credit when the results are good, it is easy to fall by the way
side in the midst of difficulty.
We cannot let the little
tests nor even the greatest tests stand between us and the power of our word for
long. Perhaps the measure of how
long we might need to let anything stand between us and that which we seek is in
the first moment of awareness. The moment when you know something is not working, do you
keep doing it because it seems familiar? If
you have any question about whether your word has any power, all manner of
challenges will come your way. This
is natural. This does not mean that
you will not succeed, it merely means that you must keep working spiritually, at
all times creating an identical relationship between your words and what you do
in life. Eventually that which you seek will take form before you.
If
you wish for peace, you cannot be rude to the grocery clerk, nor to the
impatient driver who cuts you off in traffic, or the litterbug who drops trash
along the road on the way to whatever is their destination.
It is your spiritual growth and the realization of whatever you have
given your word to that is at stake. Whatever
another does, it is what we do in response that determines our character and
informs life of what our most deeply held beliefs truly are.
We must practice seeing the perfection at the heart of each and every
being, each and every situation, there is no alternative.
Anything less is a disturbance in the divine as it is expressed within
us.
Now
this sounds like a terrible big deal, it sounds so serious, and nearly
impossible, but I know that it is not. It
is challenging, but with faith in the good of life we move forward, ever more
elevated, in expressing a kind of Love that takes form only through our word.
Our word is given in every thought, every utterance and in every prayer.
It works this way because that is the way that God set it up.
Have you ever known someone whose
word was way out of line with reality? It’s
rough living that way, trying to keep track of ones lies, trying to stay ahead
of the curve one has thrown. And it
isn’t possible. The truth always
rises to the top.
My mother was a very gregarious
woman who deeply wanted others to like and approve of her:
much like any of us, if we tell the truth at least to ourselves. Now we can choose to live and speak from our innate spiritual
motivation, and in so doing we increase the strength and ease with which we
express our lives as entirely spiritual, whole, loving, and complete.
We can do that, and we all know exactly how rare it truly is to live in
that way all of the time. Or we can take the same road my mother took.
Mom always wanted a fabulous life with fabulous people as friends, she
wanted to be well-known and well-loved but she never seemed clear about the
basis on which this all was supposed to happen.
So, she turned to “telling stories.”
This was our family euphemism for lying.
Mom told stories all her life, particularly, she was adept at
embellishing the truth until it was nearly unrecognizable.
I know that sounds like an awful thing to say about my own mother, but I
am sure she would tell you the same if she could come back and retrospectively
tell the truth about her life. She
died a good woman.
Before she died, she spent the
last ten years of her life living with the effects of a major stroke that was
followed by a number of small strokes. She
was indomitable. The Spirit within
her was as persistent as it had ever been.
Strokes did not stop her, but she was changed forever. She became
completely confused between the stories she had told, and what her life really
had been like. She could no longer
distinguish the Truth, at least as it had occurred in the past.
She could remember addresses from 60 years ago, and yet, she could not
remember the truth about how she had lived her own life. It had been tough and
it was as if, for the last years of her life, she was allowed to live within the
fantasy world she had created.
For a while my family tried to get
her to remember. You know how we
all think of the elder members of our families as the oral library of family
history. But she couldn’t really
remember. What she remembered more
clearly were the lies that she had told through the years, and she remembered
them now as if they had all been true. For
the most part, they were the truth of how she wished it had been.
In effect, since she could no longer tell the difference, they were now
true. There was no point in trying to set the record straight, it had become
irretrievably changed.
One of the things that we believe
in New Thought is that there is a mental equivalent for each and every thing
that happens in our lives. I wonder
what the equivalent for my mother might have been?
A stroke is seen by some
metaphysicians as the mental equivalent of an avoidance of responsibility.
My mother had so much old-fashioned burden-based responsibility that I
can well imagine that she was sick and tired of it.
When was the break from her labors supposed to come? The stroke supplied the break.
She couldn’t really tell me, she didn’t remember! She forgot her
troubles, she forgot her lies, and while she could no longer drive, she no
longer had to work or worry about anything.
Everything was simpler in the end. She
had a good secure home not far from the beach, without the risk of not being
able to afford the rent, a lovely room, lovingly prepared meals, family holidays
and nights out playing bingo with a friend and when we went out to eat, it was
not a concern who would pay anymore. Her generous nature was finally met in kind. That is a
powerful mental equivalent!
Victor
Hugo, the great writer, wrote this “Have
courage for the great sorrows in life, and patience for the small ones; and when
you have laboriously accomplished your daily task, go to sleep in peace.
God is awake.” We
have to do what we can and then let go, release the outcome to God, and allow
our selves the experience of peace that is earned by living in harmony with ones
own word.
Now
here I am at the end of my talk and I have not told you why I read from
Corinthians. It is most important
that in our efforts to live our lives successfully that we remember that we are
all given certain divine gifts and it is up to us to discover and express these
gifts. God is in all of these gifts
just as we are all living and moving within God, and in some divine way we are
all connected in this Unity of Spirit. This
reading from Corinthians concludes: “But rather those members of the body
which are considered to be delicate are necessary.” This means that our
weaknesses and frailties are necessary to the whole of our being! These are a part of the ways in which we serve one another.
It is in the entirety of God’s expression that we find ourselves whole
and complete. This is another way
for us to know our mystical connection with the Divine, that God is all that
there is and that we are, each of us, some integral part of the whole. We cannot
fail for we are each an important part of the only thing that is. We can stop
trying to pry and deny the warts. These
too are divine!
Courage,
persistence and responsibility are not gifts that are given to only select ones
of us, and not others, like perfect pitch or a photographic mind. These are innate abilities that are elemental within each of
us. We each possess these elements
and it is in the development of our own character that they are realized.
These are all wonderful subject matter for our prayers and meditations. See
yourself as God sees you. When you look in the mirror, don't ask if you're
gifted. Ask what your gifts are. You are already capable, unique and blessed
with these three key elements. Use
them. And as Thomas Edison said: “Be courageous! Have faith! Go
forward.”
Thank
you for being here today!
Handouts:
For
This One Hour
For
this one hour I can be grateful.
I can thank God for life
itself, for opportunities,
For friends, and for a
hundred other blessings and
Privileges to be counted,
cherished, and enjoyed.
For
this one hour I can be cheerful.
Equipped with a smile, a
song, and a sunny
disposition, I can transform
the atmosphere,
enrich my environment, and
brighten the day
for others.
For
this one hour I can be optimistic.
Striking a happy medium
between the pessimist and
the Pollyanna, I can
realistically and confidently
Expect good things to happen
to me and through me.
For
this one hour I can spend some time in prayer.
I can pause to recharge my
spiritual batteries,
renew my mental
perspectives, refresh my physical
energies, and replenish my
faith in God and
my fellowman.
For
this one hour I can be unselfish.
I can take the Golden Rule
off the shelf, dust it,
unwrap it, and put it to
work in my thoughts, words
and actions right now.
For
this one hour I can look for the best in others.
It may take some diligent
searching, patient
seeking, and careful
screening, but I will work at
it, even as I want others to
look for the best in me.
For
this one hour I can help make someone happy.
I can do it through a word
of encouragement or
comfort, or perhaps by a
helping hand, an
understanding touch, and
empathetic look, a
telephone call, a letter, or
a visit.
For
this one hour I can be forgiving.
I can leave the lowlands of
resentment, grudges and
bitterness, and rise to the
highlands of understanding,
love and forgiveness.
For
this one hour I can be generous.
I can listen quietly and
attentively when others want
to talk.
I can look for opportunities to give a
well-deserved compliment to
someone who needs it most.
For
this one hour I can live the present.
Now is the only time I have,
and I can use this hour
wisely as a personal and
precious gift from God.
William
Arthur Ward
Emerson
Center for
