Which Will You Choose?
Which Will You Choose?
by Napoleon Hill
There are two things which nature discourages and severely penalizes:
(a) A vacuum (emptiness) and
(b) Idleness (lack of action).
Remove any muscle of the body from active use, and it will atrophy (waste away) and become useless. Tie an arm to your side and remove it from action and in time it, too, will wither and become useless. The same law which governs other portions of the body governs the brain, where the vibrations of thought are organized and released.
A positive mind finds a way it can be done; a negative mind looks for all the ways it can’t be done.
You either use your brain for controlled thinking in connection with things you want, or nature steps in and uses it to grow a crop of negative circumstances you do not want. You have a choice in this situation: You can take possession of your thought power, or you can let it be influenced by the stray winds of chance and circumstances you do not desire. But you cannot sit idly by and thus free yourself from the influence of these two sealed envelopes.
Nature allows you to fix your mind on whatever you desire. Nature also allows you to create your own plan for attaining your desire. She crowns all your efforts with those benefits which come in the sealed envelope labeled Rewards. But she discourages idleness and penalizes it wherever it exists.
Out of this truth has grown the saying: Success attracts more success while failure attracts more failure – a truth which you may have observed many times although you may not have analyzed why it happens this way.
If you put your mind to work with a positive mental attitude and believe in success as your right, your belief will guide you unerringly toward whatever your definition of success may be. If you adopt a negative mental attitude and fill your mind with thoughts of fear and frustration, your mind will attract to you the penalties of these undesirable thoughts.
Or you may make no attempt to control and direct your mind, opening it wide to every influence with which you come in contact, and it will yield you the things listed in the second sealed envelope, which are the Penalties you must pay for your neglect to possess and direct your mind.
Now let us open these two sealed envelopes and see what they contain:
REWARDS
(For those who take possession of their minds and direct them toward desirable objectives.)
- The privilege of placing yourself on the success beam which attracts only the circumstances which make for success.
- Sound health, both physically and mentally.
- Financial independence.
- A labor of love in which to express yourself.
- Peace of mind.
- Applied faith which makes fear impossible.
- Enduring friendships.
- Longevity and a well balanced life.
- Immunity against all forms of self-limitation
- The wisdom to understand yourself and others.
PENALTIES
(To be paid by those who neglect to take possession of their minds and direct them toward desirable objectives.)
- Poverty and misery all your life.
- Mental and physical ailments of many kinds.
- Self-limitations which bind you to mediocrity all the day of your life.
- Fear, in all its destructive forms.
- Dislike of the occupation by which you earn a living.
- Many enemies, few friends.
- Every brand of worry known to mankind.
- A victim of every negative influence you encounter.
- Subjection to the influence and control of other people at their will.
- A wasted life which gives nothing to the betterment of mankind.
These lists comprise the catalog of Rewards and Penalties. Which of these lists will you choose as your lot in life?
Source: PMA Science of Success Course. Pgs. 221, 222, 223 and http://www.naphill.org/
