Penguin Audio Break: Be Your Best Self

Penguin.com selected four audio titles to help readers become their best selves.  Two of their selections are from Tarcher.  Check out the audio excerpts below.

Thursday Inspiration: Enthusiasm

Enthusiasm is a driving force that not only gives greater power to the one who has it, but also is contagious and affects all whom it reaches.  Enthusiasm over the work in which one is engaged takes the drudgery out of that work. It has been observed that even laborers engaged in the toilsome job of ditchdigging can take the drabness out of their work by singing as they work.

- Napoleon Hill in The Magic Ladder to Success

THURSDAY THOUGHTS FOR SUCCESS

You can so act upon the environment in which you are now, as to cause yourself to be transferred to a better environment.

Hold with faith and purpose the vision of yourself in a better environment, but act upon your present environment with all your heart, and with all your strength, and with all your mind.

Do not spend any time in day dreaming or castle building; hold to the one vision of what you want, and act NOW.

Do not cast about seeking some new thing to do, or some strange, unusual, or remarkable action to perform as a first step toward getting rich.

- Wallace Wattles in The Science of Getting Rich

THURSDAY INSPIRATION

“Because everything has a value, that which is freely given is gained with accumulation. He who gives up the lesser happiness of selfishness, gains the greater happiness of unselfishness. The universe is just, and its justice is so perfect that he who has once perceived it can no more doubt or be afraid, he can only wonder and be glad.”

- James Allen in ‘Light on Life’s Difficulties’, as featured in Tarcher’s How to Prosper in Hard Times compilation

THURSDAY THOUGHTS FOR SUCCESS

Whenever you do fall into old ways of thought, correct yourself instantly; for when you are in the competitive mind, you have lost the cooperation of the Mind of the Whole.

Do not spend any time in planning as to how you will meet possible emergencies in the future, except as the necessary polices may affect your actions today. You are concerned with doing today’s work in a perfectly successful manner, and not with emergencies which may arise tomorrow; you can attend to them as they come.

Do not concern yourself with questions as to how you shall surmount obstacles which may loom upon your business horizon, unless you can see plainly that your course must be altered today in order to avoid them.

- Wallace D. Wattles, in The Science of Getting Rich: The Proven Mental Program To A Life of Wealth

THURSDAY THOUGHTS FOR SUCCESS

Every day is a fresh beginning;

Every morn is the world made new.

Ye who are weary of sorrow and sinning,

Here is a beautiful hope for you,

A hope for me and a hope for you.

Do not dwell upon the sins and mistakes of yesterday so exclusively as to have no energy and mind left living rightly today, and do not think that the sins of yesterday can prevent you from living aright today. Begin today right with the world, and aided by the accumulated experiences of all your past days, live it better than any of your previous days; but you cannot possibly live it better unless you begin it better. The character of the whole day depends upon the way it is begun.

-Right Beginnings from Mind Is The Master by James Allen

Thursday Thoughts For Success

The Lord is my banker; my credit is good.
He maketh me lie down in the consciousness of omnipresent abundance;
He giveth me the key to His strongbox,
He restoreth my faith in His riches;
He guideth me in the paths of prosperity for His name’s sake.
Yea, though I walk in the very shadow of debt, I shall fear no evil for Thou art with me;
Thy silver and Thy gold, they secure me.
Thou preparest a way for me in the presence of the collector;
Thou fillest my wallet with plenty; my measure runneth over.
Surely goodness and plenty wil follow me all the days of my life,
And I shall do business in the name of the Lord forever.

- Charles Fillmore’s prosperity treatment of the 23rd Psalm from Prosperity

THURSDAY THOUGHTS FOR SUCCESS

They do me wrong who say I come no more
When once I knock and fail to find you in;
For every day I stand outside your door
And bid you wake, and rise to fight and win.
Wail not for precious chances passed away!
Weep not for golden ages on the wane!
Each night I burn the records of the day–
At sunrise every soul is born again!
Laugh like a boy at splendors that have sped,
To vanished joys be blind and deaf and dumb;
My judgments seal the dead past with its dead,
But never bind a moment yet to come.
Though deep in mire, wring not your hands and weep;
I lend my arm to all who say “I can!”
No shame-faced outcast ever sank so deep
But yet might rise and be again a man!
Dost thou behold thy lost youth all aghast?
Dost reel from righteous Retribution’s blow?
Then turn from blotted archives of the past
And find the future’s pages white as snow.
Art thou a mourner? Rouse thee from thy spell;
Art thou a sinner? Sins may be forgiven;
Each morning gives thee wings to flee from hell,
Each night a star to guide thy feet to heaven.

- Opportunity, by Walter Malone

For more inspiration, read The Law of Success: The Master Wealth-Builder’s Complete and Original Lesson Plan forAchieving Your Dreams.

THURSDAY THOUGHTS FOR SUCCESS: The Power of Meditation

At the outset, meditation must be distinguished from idle reverie. There is nothing dreamy and unpractical about it. It is a process of searching and uncompromising thought that allows nothing to remain but the simple and naked truth. Meditating in this way, you will no longer strive to build yourself up in your prejudices, but forgetting self, you will remember only that you are seeking the truth. And so you will remove, one by one, the errors that you have built around yourself in the past and will patiently wait for the revelation of truth that will come when your errors have been sufficiently removed. In the silent humility of your heart you will realize that,

There is an inmost center in us all
Where truth abides in fullness; and around,
Wall upon wall, the gross flesh hems it in;
This perfect, clear perception, which is Truth,
A baffling and perverted carnal mesh
Binds it, and makes all error; and to know,
Rather consists in opening out a way
Whence the imprisoned splendor may escape,
Than in effecting entry for a light
Supposed to be without.

- James Allen, As A Man Thinketh