CHAPTER SIX
WHEN IT'S TIME FOR ACTION
Everything you‘ve been through in the past has been a set up to get you to a place of power, to this place. Whatever you‘re going through at this moment is not some experience that‘s going to be wasted, it‘s actually a preparation for what you‘re about to become. You have learnt enough on the subject of thoughts and the use of imagination as a creative power to design your own life, but until imagination and your actions are blended together your life will remain the same because thoughts and imagination can‘t apply themselves.
When you take your imagination and blend it together with your actions a new reality is born. But your actions must be in harmony with your imagination. You cannot be recklessly doing your job and expect your imagination to single handedly grant you a promotion on your job.
Your acts must be in harmony with your thoughts. Remember: the world steps aside for the man who knows where he‘s going, but the man must be on his way to get there for the world to step aside or else why would the world step aside? To get there he must take one step at a time, each step taken perfectly.
Once you‘ve sorted out your thinking, none but right acts can follow the correct thinking and none but right life can follow correct thinking. You find people wanting to do great works but not realizing that they should have thought greatly first. You see, the thing is that the world is also made up of perfect little grains of dust, your body is made up of perfect little cells that are also made up of perfect little atoms. To read a book you go one word at a time, one sentence at a time. Everything you see around you was created in this same way, perfect little pieces brought together to form one complete object.
In this same manner, one million and one little tasks each day done perfectly and blended together will turn you into a great man or woman. No one can do one great deed in one go, greatness is the result of tiny little tasks done perfectly each day consistently. This book was written letter by letter, word by word, researched carefully until a few perfect chapters could be brought together to form one masterpiece. Each sentence had to carry with it enough insight and truth, every sentence had to inspire.
But the information of this book cannot change your life, it is in its application that power is found. The person who lives in a shack or is homeless has a hundred percent chance of moving to a life of luxury when this insights are applied than one with all the information in the world without application. It‘s done little by little, day after day, task after task, thought after thought, effort after effort.
Your success and your greatness lies behind the outer courts of the action you‘ll take henceforth. For a while you will linger in the process of doing all that you can day after day and task after task but only for so long as until your own imperfect understanding of great works is made perfect.
A man of little understanding and small thinking assumes that the little faults and reckless small actions are of no consequence. But a man of intellect and understanding questions the seemingly 'little faults‘:"what impact will this 'little‘ faults have on my career, health, finances and relationships in three years?".
Just because you were careless with your job today and it didn‘t get you into trouble doesn‘t mean if you do it for a week you won‘t get into trouble.
Here is a man who has a weak heart and doesn‘t take his medication today, at the end of the day he still feels fine and he thinks "this stuff doesn‘t make any difference". He stops taking his medication and a month later he suffers yet another heart attack. He should have been smarter and thought "what impact will this have in a few months?"
For the past six years he hasn‘t been watching what he eats and now is overweight, and then he blames his big bones without giving thought to the fact that he has not been to the gym in years and he says "I‘ve got no time". What‘s that supposed to mean? That those people who hit the gym have a privileged of 28 hours a day?. He‘s a heavy smoker, the doctor says "if you don‘t quit you‘re going to die", he looks at the doctor and says "you think it‘s easy? I‘ve been smoking for years", why not quit one cigar rate at a time? Why not try willpower?
The man that grew up being the best at what he does and reading all the books he could lay his hands on, later joined the company he‘s now working for a few years ago and he was known as the best in the industry. His future within the company was bright and promising until he stopped getting to work earlier than everybody else. Then he stopped reading the books on his profession, he stopped on the process of self development and threw away his student mentality. A few months later he wonders why his impact is not being felt anymore, he walks into a room full of people and nobody seems to notice him at all, he looses influence and respect: greater works no longer come to him asking to be done, he is no longer sought after. Younger men come after him and are given smaller responsibilities and they apply all their hearts and power on these small tasks that they‘ve been given and they pass him by to take care of larger responsibilities. And he becomes the man that‘s complaining of how unfair life is.
This kind of man should go back to his first love because every person that‘s always going to be growing is always going to be out of his comfort zone. If you‘re not growing then you‘re dying. Wherever you are, whatever you‘re doing, do it perfectly because anything that‘s worth doing is worth doing perfectly.
See that every passing second is powerful and purposeful. Give yourself entirely to every little task and duty because these are the fragments of your success, brought together piece by piece they‘ll determine your life. If you‘ve lived most of your life without this knowledge and you find yourself in a profession you never really anticipated or circumstances around you are trying and you feel like you‘re burdened by problems, it is because you need those circumstances for your growth and one way or the other you will evolve enough strength to meet them. You find those circumstances to be trying and they appear problematic because there is weakness within your thinking and they will continue to be trying until that weakness within your thinking is eradicated, so you should be made aware that the problem is not the circumstances, the problem is in your thinking.
Be rather glad that the Universe is helping you become wiser, stronger and better. A young woman would like to overcome a selfish and hateful heart, at that same period that the desire is born some difficulty or perplexity arises. By the time she has dealt with the difficulty, the selfish and hateful heart has been eradicated. Difficulties and perplexities might be the doing of your own thinking but once you‘ve dealt with them you find yourself in an era that would have never occurred without them.
Being faced by a perplexity, difficulties or confusions is a clear indication that an era you‘re on is about to end and a new reality is about to be born.
Once an idea or a flash hits your mind, don‘t waste time. Write it down and act on it.
Imagination is not a matter of life and death... it‘s far more serious than that but it needs you to act while the idea is still hot, while the emotion is still high and while the vision is still clear. There‘s something inside of you and you know it now but the question is 'what‘s next?‘. Do what you can, where you are with all that you have and watch everything fall into place. When you start applying this system and act on it you won‘t wonna go to sleep, the day will seem too short and you‘ll wait for each new day with so much love and passion because you‘ll be living your wildest dreams and your reality will be better than your dreams.
As an example, if your dream is to build a supermarket but you have no means or the capital, then put a stand and sell newspapers or something but make certain to hold the vision of your stand as just a beginning of greater things.
Don‘t despise the day of small beginnings.
And take care of that newspaper stand as best as you can, serving your customers with respect. It doesn‘t matter how small your beginning is, you should act on your present business with the vision of a better business in mind and in that way the cosmic intelligence, the formless substance, the quantum ocean, will could itself after the image in your mind. Don‘t go around looking for some great venture to embark in, it will come to you when you‘re ready. Start where you are, doing all the small tasks perfectly and as great as you can then greater ventures will come to you.
It will sound funny if you tell everyone about your newspaper stand as just a corner of your supermarket so rather keep it to yourself and let them see it happen, going around discussing your vision with people who are not involved in your master-mind team is like scattering your powers, so keep it to yourself. All self made millionaires started off broke, many of them come from average families if not poor. You don‘t become a millionaire and then start saving. You start saving a few cents a day and just like a snow ball that starts off as just a drop of water and later becomes an unstoppable and destructive force your few cents will start accumulating enormous power and you find yourself saving thousands and before you know it you‘ll be resting comfortably on seven to ten figures.
There are doors that only discipline can open, the best education can‘t do nothing in this case so let‘s get to it:
DISCIPLINE
Your goal is not to sell a product, your goal is to create a product that sells and that product is you. One great and successful day is not enough to make your mark in the world. One single day that you did the best you can in every single task is a good sign that you‘re moving in the right direction but it takes consistent application on a daily basis. There are a dozen things that will make all the difference in your life, the difference between triumphant success or bitter failure lies in the degree of commitment and discipline to seek, study, and apply those dozen things I‘m talking about. Learn to be happy as you were instructed at the beginning of the book because happiness is activity with purpose, it‘s love in practice and it‘s both a grasp of the obvious and the mysterious.
Discipline yourself. Discipline is the most crucial ingredient for you to succeed, it‘s the master key to your hidden treasures and happiness, it‘s the glue that binds inspiration to achievement and a bridge between imagination and accomplishment.
Any person can stay disciplined for one day, but it takes a really disciplined individual to do it everyday but you see the thing is, when you practice the simple disciplines like reading a chapter of a book everyday, eating an apple a day, one hour of a day or whatever discipline you‘d like to create, in a few days that discipline will become a habit and no-one can tell what you can do when such a habit has been formed.
In the beginning you‘ll have to work hard to build a habit and stay disciplined but in return the habit will work harder to build your character.
Today you may not complete everything you set out to do; you may not finish every task on your to-do list but that doesn‘t mean you‘re not disciplined, what is it that you did not complete? Forget about what you couldn‘t do. The question is what is it that you did complete? Take time and celebrate that in spite of all the obstacles placed in your way you woke up this morning and set out to complete something. Yes you can do better than that but isn‘t it worth celebrating that something was done?
When your life is on a course and driven towards a certain definite purpose you cannot do things just because you feel like it, your steps have been ordered and each step is meant to bring you closer to your vision. Thinking positive thoughts today and negative thoughts tomorrow will only cause your life to deteriorate. Success leaves tracks everywhere and if you want to become successful you have to follow the tracks of success. You don‘t become successful by creating your own trails or tracks, only after you‘ve followed through the proven tracks that you can create your own.
There are no effects that cannot be traced back to their causes and by knowing the cause you can easily know what to do. Nobody is so smart that you cannot do what they also did. If you do what other successful people do you‘ll also get what they get, it‘s the law of cause an effect.
You‘re on your way to greatness and I know this how? Because you have read this book thus far.
Imagination will show you your potential and action will unlock that potential.
Discipline will keep the energy and the power of your potential flowing at all times. Your goal should be to unlock the potential that‘s seen in your imagination and keep it flowing so as to take you from where you are to where you want to be.
Jaroldean Asplund Edwards shares her story below about how she came to understand the power of discipline on doing daily what must be done:
Several times my daughter had telephoned to say, "Mother, you must come and see the Daffodils before they are over". I wanted to go, but it was a two-hour drive from Laguna to Lake Arrowhead. Going and coming back took most of a day-and I honestly did not have a free day until the following week. "I will come next Tuesday" I promised, on her third call.
Next Tuesday dawned cold and rainy. Still I had promised, and so I drove the length of Route 91, continued on I-215, and finally turned onto Route 18 and began to drive up the mountain highway. The tops of the mountains were sheathed in clouds, and I had gone only a few miles when the road was completely covered with wet, gray blanket of fog. I slowed to a crawl, my head pounding. The road becomes narrow and winding toward the top of the mountain.
As I executed the hazardous turns at a snail‘s pace, I was praying to reach the turnoff at Blue Jay that would signify I had arrived.. when I finally walked into Carolyn‘s house and lugged and greeted my grandchildren I said, "forget that Daffodils, Carolyn! The road is invisible in the clouds and fog, and there is nothing in the world except you and these darling children that I want to see bad enough to drive another inch!"
My daughter smiled calmly, "We drive in this all the time, mother". "Well, you won‘t get me back on the road until it clears-and then I‘m leaving for home!" I assured her.
"I was hoping you‘d take me over to the garage to pick up my car. The mechanic just called, and they‘ve finished repairing the engine", she answered.
"How far will we have to drive?" I asked cautiously. "Just a few blocks", Carolyn said cheerfully. So we buckled up the children and went out to my car. "I‘ll drive", Carolyn offered."I‘m used to this". We got into the car, and she began driving. In a few minutes I was aware that we were back on the Rim-of-the– world Road heading over the top of the mountain. "Where are we going?" I exclaimed, distressed to be back on the mountain road in the fog. "This isn‘t the way to the garage!" "We‘re going to my garage the long way", Carolyn smiled, "by the way of the Daffodils". "Carolyn", I said sternly, trying to sound as if I was still the mother and in charge of the situation, "please turn around. There is nothing in the world that I want to see enough to drive on this road in this weather". "It‘s alright, mother" She replied with a knowing grin. "I know what I‘m doing. I promise, you‘ll never forgive yourself if you miss this experience". And so sweet, darling daughter who had never given me a minute of difficulty in her whole life was suddenly in charge-and she was kidnapping me! I couldn‘t believe it. Like it or not, I was on the way to see ridiculous Daffodils—driving through the thick, gray silence of the mist-wrapped mountain top at what I thought was risk to life and limb.
I muttered all the way. After about twenty minutes we turned onto a small gravel road that branched down into an oak-filled hollow on the side of the mountain. The Fog had lifted a little, but the sky was lowering, gray and heavy with clouds.
We parked in a small parking lot adjoining a little stone church. From our vantage point at the top of the mountain we could see beyond us, in the mist, the crests of the San Bernadino range like the dark, humped backs of a herd of elephants. Far below us the Fog-shrouded valleys, hills and flatland stretched away to the desert.
On the far side of the church I saw a pine-needle-covered path, with towering evergreens and manzanita bushes and an inconspicuous, lettered sign "Daffodil Garden".
We each took a child‘s hand, and I followed Carolyn down the path as it went through the trees. The mountain sloped away from the side of the path in irregular dips, folds, and valleys, like a deeply creased skirt.
Live oaks, mountain laurel, shrubs, and bushes clustered in the folds, and in the gray, drizzling air, the green foliage looked dark and monodramatic. I shivered. Then we turned a corner of the path, and looked up and gasped. Before me lay the most glorious sight, unexpectedly and completely splendid. It looked as though someone had taken a great vat of gold and poured it down over the mountain peak and slopes where it had run into every crevice and over every rise. Even in the mist-filled air, the mountainside was radiant, clothed in massive drifts and waterfalls of daffodils. The flowers were planted in majestic, swirling patterns, great ribbons and swaths of deep orange, white, lemon yellow, salmon pink, saffron, and butter yellow.
Each different-colored variety (I learned later that there were more than thirty-five varieties of Daffodils in the vast display) was planted as a group so that is swirled and flowed like its own river with its own unique way.
In the center of this incredible and dazzling display of gold, a great cascade of purple grape hyacinth flowed down like a waterfall of blossoms flamed in its own rock-lined basin, weaving through the brilliant Daffodils. A charming path wound throughout the garden. There were several resting stations, paved with stone and furnished with Victorian wooden benches and great tubs of coral and carmine tulips. As though this were not magnificent enough, Mother Nature had to add her own grace note---above the Daffodils, a bevy of western bluebirds flittered and darted, flashing their brilliance. These charming little birds are the color of sapphires with breasts of mag enter red. As they dance in the air, their colors are truly like jewels above the blowing, glowing daffodils. The effect was spectacular.
It did not matter that the sun was not shining. The brilliance of the daffodils was like the glow of the brightest sunlit day. Words, wonderful as they are, simply cannot describe the incredible beauty of that flower-bedecked mountain top.
Five acres of flowers!(This too I discovered later when some of my questions were answered.) "But who has done this?" I asked Carolyn. I was overflowing with gratitude that she brought me-even against my will. This was a once-in-a- lifetime experience.
"Who?" I asked again, almost speechless with wonder, "And who, and why, and when?"
"It‘s just one woman", Carolyn answered. "She lives on the property. That‘s her home". Carolyn pointed to a well-kept A-frame house that looked small and modest in the midst of all that glory. We walked up to the house, my mind buzzing with questions. On the patio we saw a poster. "Answers to the Questions I Know You Are Asking" was the headline. The first answer was a simple one. "50 000 bulbs", it read. The second answer was, "One at a time, by one woman, two hands, two feet, and very little brain". The third answer was, "Began in 1958".
There it was. The Daffodil Principle.
For me that moment was a life-changing experience. I thought of this woman whom I never met, more than thirty-five years before, had begun-one bulb at a time-to bring her vision of beauty and joy to an obscure mountain top. One bulb at a time.
There was no other way to do it. One bulb at a time. No shortcuts-simply loving the slow process of planting. Loving the work as it unfolded. Loving an achievement that grew so slowly and that bloomed for only three weeks of each year. Still, just planting one bulb at a time, year after year, had changed the world. This unknown woman had forever changed the world in which she lived. She had created something of unimaginable magnificence, beauty, and inspiration.
The principle of Daffodil garden taught is one of the greatest principle of celebration: learning to move toward our goal and desires one step at a time- often just one baby-step at a time-learning to love the doing, learning to use the accumulation of time.
When we multiply tiny pieces of time with small increments of daily effort, we too will find we can accomplish magnificent things. We can change the world.
"Carolyn", I said that morning on the top of the mountain as we left the haven Daffodils, our minds and hearts still bathed and bemused by the splendors we had seen, "It‘s as though that remarkable woman has needle-pointed the earth! Decorated it. Just think of it, she planted every single bulb for more than thirty years. One bulb at a time! And that‘s the only way this garden could be created. Every individual bulb had to be planted. There was no way of short- circuiting that process. Five acres of blooms. That magnificent cascade of hyacinth!
All, all, just one bulb at a time".
The thought of it filled my mind. I was suddenly overwhelmed with the implications of what I had seen. "It makes me sad in a way", I admitted to Carolyn. "What might I have accomplished if I had thought of a wonderful goal thirty-five years ago and had worked away at it 'one bulb at a time‘ through all these years.
Just think what I might have been able to achieve!"
My wise daughter put the car into gear and summed up the message of the day in her direct way. "Start tomorrow", she said with the same knowing smile she had worn for most of the morning. Oh, profound wisdom!
It is pointless to think of the lost hours of yesterdays. The way to make learning a lesson a celebration instead of a cause for regret is to only ask, "How can I put this to use tomorrow?" And now I ask you dear reader, my chosen vessel of honor; instead of thinking of the lost hours of all the yesterdays, why don‘t you start applying the simple disciplines now? Success is a result of the simple small steps taken perfectly everyday. Don‘t overwhelm yourself by trying to do some great work, start where you are, right now, in your home and street and be known as great. You can do this. You‘re awesome, you‘re magnificent, you can bring joy to the world, I know this for sure because no man or woman was born with what you don‘t have as well. Stop searching for a miracle, you are the miracle of life.
When you start doing all the small tasks in a great way, the Universe will back you up and difficult situation will change, unexplained miracles will occur, unexpected events will take place and big tasks will come to you, asking to be done.
Open yourself up to the depth of the Universal power that lies within you, simply do all that you can do in a great way, no words are necessary, just visualize! In the position you‘re in right now you‘re power in motion and you can possess anything you want at once. You have but to claim it, to visualize it, to bring it into the world of form and it‘s all yours for the taking. You have nothing to be anxious or afraid of, you have the Universe on your side so breath in define peace... out tension and worry.
Do little things in a great way everyday. Work towards being your very best, regardless. A person with no vision competes with the others, but the one with a vision competes with himself. Study, practice, simulate every thought and move, everyday-many times. Be better today than you were yesterday because I don‘t want the day to come when people talk about you and say "You should have seen [your name here] ten years ago when s/he was really terrific" I‘d rather like to hear them say "Yes [your name here] was terrific ten years ago; but you should see him/her now, s/he just keeps getting better, wiser and stronger".