2006-5-9 05:09:00
My Friends,
Since I need to get back to working on my books, I am going to do the additional principles more briefly. These are by no means all the principles available, but are important ones that we have talked about one time or another.
In the near future I hope to expand on the list of principles and compile them into a book.
Whenever a person faces a decision, one choice will be easier than the other. The easier choice will be the path (or line) of least resistance. The majority will choose this path very consistently. If this is the only path chosen then disintegration of creation results.
Fortunately there are a few who are willing to go against the grain and make hard decisions and choose the building path of high resistance.
Just as it is easier to destroy than to build, the path of least resistance is always the easier choice.
Does this mean that the line of least resistance should always be avoided? No. The principle of Judgment must always come into play. Sometimes the easy choice is the correct one and other times the difficult one is. The man of courage will not shy away from the path of high resistance when necessary. Without those with courage to choose this path civilization would never move forward.
A quote by Robert Frost encapsulates the importance of the path of high resistance:
"Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I -- I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference."
Many people think that a thought has no power unless it is followed by action. I have discovered through my own life experience that thought by itself does indeed have power.
For most of my life I have been in business for myself yet have had a desire to write and do creative work. Time and time again when I have gotten a business on its feet I have diverted attention away from it and toward my other dreams.
Every time I have diverted my thought energy away from my business, even if the amount of work I do stays steady, it suffers loss.
This happened time and time again until I learned my lesson. I learned that if I were to have a successful business that I must keep thought and attention on it as well as action.
It has indeed been proven that thought works through a discharge of a small amount of electrical current. We must not be deceived about the power of thought because the current to send it is so low. Remember this. The pressing of a button can set off an atomic bomb. The original electrical impulse is very small, but the end result is cataclysmic. Even so it is with our thoughts. They can produce an end result that can create great good if positive, or great harm if negative.
While true that it takes a lot of thought, energy and attention to get a business or some other creative project off the ground, it is also true that an enterprise can eventually become self sustaining. I call this The Satellite Principle.
To put a satellite in orbit requires a tremendous amount of thrust, but then once a certain speed is reached no additional energy is required. The satellite will then speed along almost endlessly without slowing down or speeding up. If it were to speed up an additional amount of energy would be required.
Any enterprise works this way. It takes a great amount of energy, work and thought to get it off the ground, but once launched it takes on a life of its own and sustains itself as if in orbit. If growth is desired then more thought and energy need to be applied.
Most of us have seen the Movie Forest Gump, staring Tom Hanks. The interesting thing about Forest was that even though he was retarded he succeeded in everything he set his mind to do. He was much more successful than many who we consider to be near genius level.
This idea is not fiction for I have seen this at play in real life many times. I have worked for some time as a salesman calling on business in 20 different states. I have called upon many thousands of business owners and before I understood the Forest Gump Principle I was mystified over the fact that many successful business people didn't seem very bright. On the other hand, many who did seem intelligent were not very successful.
Now many who were successful were intelligent, but this did not seem to be the reason for their success. I'm sure it helped, but intelligence did not explain the success of the many successful Forest Gumps that I met in my work.
The answer to the riddle is revealed in studying Forest himself. You'll notice in the movie that when he set his mind to do something he directed all his energy and thought in one direction. Like a magnifying glass he focused what he had into one small endeavor that caused it to succeed.
Many more intelligent people let their intelligence get in the way. How is this? Because they get so many ideas that their focus is diverted in many directions. This means that the simple Forest Gump idea gets more energy than any single idea of the intelligent dreamer.
If you are a dreamer, such as I, then learn the Forest Gump principle and cease destroying your dreams through the shotgun approach. Pick one thing and apply yourself like Forest Gump.
This quotation, "As a man thinketh in his heart so is he." from the Bible represents a true principle that encapsulates the previous five principles.
"If the human mind was simple enough to understand, we'd be too simple to understand it."
-- Emerson Pugh
Copyright © 2006 by J.J. Dewey, All Rights Reserved