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 HOUDINI
loved magic tricks from the time he was a boy, and spent a huge
portion of his time learning to amaze people. It was tremendously
fun for him. As he started to perform, he didn’t make much
money. It’s a difficult business to succeed at. But he eventually
did succeed. He had a motivation he could not forget: The vow
he made when he was young to his dying father to financially
support his mother for the rest of her life.
He worked unbelievably hard to keep that
vow. It was a powerful motivation. His mind was on his purpose
every minute of the day.
Consider the patience, persistence, and
commitment required to learn just one skill: The ability to swallow
something only halfway to the stomach and hold it there, and
be able to bring it up again to your mouth. A Japanese performer
showed Houdini the trick, and it took Houdini hundreds of hours
of practice to master it, but it enabled him to do his most famous
stunts.
He would “swallow” lock-picking
tools, but nobody knew this. He dared the finest jails to search
him head to toe and lock him up. When he was all locked up, he
brought his tools out and escaped from the jail — sometimes
making it to the front gate before the jailers did!
Why did he try so hard and work so diligently?
Because he had a good reason.
Nietzsche said, “He who has a why
to live for can bear with almost any how.”
Think about your own why. With a
good enough reason, you can easily and even joyously bear with
any suffering, hardship, difficulty, or tediousness that your
goal requires.
And as you’re thinking, your mind
will be electrified with earnest intention and will generate
ideas. Eric Hoffer wrote, “We are told that talent creates
its own opportunities, but it sometimes seems that intense desire
creates not only its own opportunities, but its own talents.”
But thinking about a purpose is only what
to do with your mind when it is idle and when you can’t
actually work on your purpose. Or what to do when you feel demoralized
by setbacks. Re-ignite your motivation by thinking about the
reason you really want to accomplish your goal. Make those motivations
into slotras
(thoughts you practice thinking), and practice thinking them
every day.
And thinking about your goals is not the
same as talking about them. I tend to agree with Earl
Nightingale, who certainly knew something about accomplishment.
He said:
I’ve always felt that glibness
is a serious danger to accomplishment. Like a steam valve, if
we talk at great length about what we are going to do, we seem
to lose just that much steam when it comes to actually doing
it.
Make statements about what you will do.
This is not only positive, it is future-oriented, so it will
bring you up, and it focuses your mind on a definite purposeful
action.
The article above is a chapter from a book
entitled, Slotralogy. Click
here to check it out on Amazon.
Read the next chapter: When
You Backslide
This article is part of a series on Slotralogy.
Read the first section here: Slotralogy
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