Progress
Progress
Mental Understanding | Vital Attitudes |
| Physical Habits | Social Psychological Behaviour |
178) Boasting takes lots of energy. Accept a work demanding three times the energy and do it well. Boasting will go. You will rise. | 179) If a rule is relaxed for long, do not insist on that favour as of right. |
| 180) If a progress can be made in a certain time, make that progress in that time. Do not take ten years for a Ph.D. | 181) If all your contacts are alienated in the first day, still you can acquire 100 friends by a changed attitude. |
182) A learning opportunity is always around the corner as it is a growing force. Do not be stubbornly foolish to turn away from that. |
183) Enjoyment begins at the end of achievement. If started earlier, achievement stops. |
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184) Scrupulously fulfil physical tokens in every walk of life. |
185) If you are very forgetful, your memory can be sharpened by a checklist. |
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| 186) If you are an utterly spoilt child unable to take care of yourself, still by a decision, in one part of your life, you can be adored as an ideal. |
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187) If you are a source of nuisance to everyone and to yourself, a little introspection, can make you pleasant to everyone. |
188) If you are an adept in shirking responsibilities and clever in creating excuses, your progress will be 100-fold when you give up these traits. If you are unconscious of that, you can make 100 times the progress when you become conscious and feel shame for it.
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189) Convert great excess energies in one field into achievement in another, instead of dissipation or disuse. |
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190) If your tongue is sharp, a decision can make it sweet and change life utterly. |
191) Learn to know SYMBOLS of your greatest prosperity. There are such symbols at all levels and learn to honour them. | 192) Know the real source of your strength and foster it. Know your real weakness and avoid fresh projects in that area. |
| 193) When faced with a problem, examine whether you know a solution already. | 194) If a difficulty is removed and life turns around, do not reinstate the old cause that created the difficulty. |
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195) It is dignity and self-respect that raise man. Living on dole, cringing, shirking responsibilities are the worst forms of grave digging for self- respect. |
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196) Long rope given by the boss, institution, circumstances must be used for growth, and should not be taken advantage of. |
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197) SHAME: Review your life to see whether you feel ashamed of things in you. Recognition there releases the greatest energy. |
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198) To take greater rest than the body needs is to commit suicide. Learn to be ashamed of it. |
199) If you have a support but do not even thank them, again asking them for support, by regularising your behaviour you will get an opening. |
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200) SENSITIVITY; A greater energy than shame can be released if you come forward to shed (positively) sensitivities. Even negative sensitivities when shed can give greater energies than shame. |
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201) If you sorely repeat ideas, works, etc., stop and see. By stopping this behaviour you will rise ten-fold. |
202) Get feedbacks from all your contacts, you will know all your defects. It is the finest useful survey .
203 ) Do one kind turn to another periodically to yield good benefit. You will rise sky high. |
204) Examine whether you use ALL your knowledge for progress. |
205) If you endlessly borrow and do not return, you have a gold mine of possibilities when you change. |
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206) The silliest trick taken to fully and repeated like an automaton will raise you 5 times. (Mantras for Brahmins). Accept the highest formula you feel comfortable with under this head. |
207) Take good note of characteristics and always honour them.
208) After taking any decision, check whether your impulse is more than permissible. |
209) Try to understand 25% more every time you have to think. |
210) If you endlessly take obligations, you have a greater mine there. |
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211) Raise by 25% the efficiency of all items in your daily routine like washing, reading, cooking, typing, packing etc. |
212) Every real great opening you had in life is a sure possibility when pursued.
213) Stray information is not stray information but sure signs. |
214) Try to learn and remember ONE good idea or information from everything you read, every speech you hear. |
215) If your life is so arranged that it is one of long obligation, you can rise to the top by giving it up. If you are not conscious of it, and now you are, opening is the greatest. |
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216) Relating to a higher centre always opens new possibilities.
217) Insisting on sure dooms well-proven, ensures doom forever.
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218) YOUR MAXIMUM SCOPE FOR MENTAL PROGRESS WILL ALWAYS LIE IN THE HIGHEST IDEAL YOU HAVE ONCE VALUED. |
219) YOUR MAXIMUM PROGRESS IN VITAL SUCCESS WILL ALWAYS LIE IN THE BEST THING YOU ONCE ADORED. |
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220) YOUR GREATEST SKILL IN WORKS WILL HIDE BEHIND THE ONCE NOTICED POS-SIBILITY DURING WORK. |
221) When blessings come from one person, you give it to another. This is a sure way of losing it. Give the man his due. |
222) Examine the reach of your mental interest in thinking, knowing, reading, books, magazines and know the scope. Certainly you would not have exhausted that potential. |
223) Examine how jealous you are of your family, friends, etc. Removal lifts you up. |
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224) Your physical energy admits of a certain maximum limit to acquire skills, habits, capacities, talents, manners, behaviour, character. Examine whether you have exhausted it. If not, exhaust it. |
225) If an opportunity repeats, there is a vast world behind it.
226) Such opportunities coming from parents, community, alma mater, i.e. one's own background, are far greater in dimension. |
227) World has not exhausted the knowledge Socrates gave. In your world, you have left unused a great good bit. Determine the scope and area, and begin to use it. |
228) Vital irritability in human contacts shows possibility of growth when you shed it. Similarly examine the scope for vital progress and exhaust it. |
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229) You have energy to achieve. |
230) Review your social background by birth, early life, present job, and know the possibilities are never exhausted by most. Exhaust them now. |
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231) Recall a bankrupt man regaining his wealth and see how he struggles. You are capable of that much but are resting. Gear yourself into activity. |
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232) What you do out of external authority, convert into one of inner authority. |
233) What you do for society's sake, learn to do for conscience's sake. |
234) Out of mental inep- titude if you believe in good ideals, convert them into intelligent understandings. |
235) If you obey (or do anything) out of fear, convert it into obedience out of understanding. |
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If you decide to make progress and are enamoured of the idea and have made a decision of it, you can make a formula like "I do want to progress" and repeat it as a mantra day in and day out. Its power of effectuation is enormous. On its strength you will achieve the progress. Make the repetition silent in mind, non-verbal mental aspiration, give your emotions to it and feel the sensation of its future possibility. Let it move down to the very physical to become an articulate and later silent aspiration of the cells, almost as subconscient as the instinct to protect life. Accomplishment is instantaneous.
The stages are:
Decision -- Fullness of decision -- Being enamoured of the decision -- Formula-making giving the decision a form -- Oral repetition -- Silent mental articulation -- Non-verbal, non-articulated mental fullness of repetition, i.e. constant, full, mental preoccupation -- Emotional consent -- Articulation of mind becoming aspiration of the heart -- Sensational preoccupation -- Senses aspiring for it -- Body's acceptance of the ideal -- Physical preoccupation -- Instinctive innate yearning of the physical consciousness when the ideal is more than, "It is my life and breath." |
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If you have an endowment in physically perfect form, learn it vitally; if in vitally perfect form, learn it mentally; if mental perfection, learn its higher human essence. E.g. if a work fails seven times and without frustration you repeat it, its vital essence is patient nerves. Now if you get the essence, your present ability confined to one work will spread to all works thus raising you.
Tension: Tension in any area will release power later. Physical tension releases physical power etc. Do not get upset over tension. Learn to benefit by it. Tension is created by trying to do more than the present organisation of a part of the being admits. When accomplished, what started with tension ends in power. An executive who has 5 works in a day but does not systematize them is overwhelmed by their random arrival and is tense. Accomplishment of it in spite of tension generates an unconscious organisation which relieves tension, offering the power of organisation. Organisation emerging in life unconsciously generates tension. When you become conscious of the situation and introduce organisation tension is replaced by power. |
236) List our your ruling opinions and see how many are unthinking stupidities. Get rid of them by the dozens and emerge into daylight. | 237) Superstition: There are hundreds of superstitions, unconsciously honoured. Spot as many of them as possible and examine and get rid of them. |
| 238) The list of habits, unwanted habits may be a 100 long or even several thousands. Start shedding them by bunches. | 239) Social conformity: in a thousand ways the society lords over us. Take a hundred or even ten, examine them, and see whether you can overcome them. |
240) Read the great men and see whether you can emulate them even in one area. Maybe a dozen small good things can be located. |
241) Is there any known bad habit constantly destroying your life which you are allowing it to continue? Remove it with hurricane speed. |
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242) Take your linguistic skill. Raise it on all sides to its maximum. You will feel transformed. |
243) If breaking conformity releases power, honouring conformity in levels of life higher can also release power. |
244)Examine whether any single stupidity has spoiled a great project. Remove it permanently. |
245) Examine whether any foolish behaviour has spoiled a good work and remove it forever |
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246) Examine whether lack of any one primary skill has spoiled a great work. Remove it at once. |
247) Examine if any lack of single manners destroyed a social opportunity and remove it at once forever. |
248) Your earlier social origins would have left in your mind substantial beliefs of that stratum. Now they will restrict your progress. |
249) Do you come from a very low level? Then some habits would stick. Remove them.
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250) Examine for the continued presence of physical habits of lower social stratum, like slang or eating habits.
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251) Earlier social behaviour and values will restrict your scope, dampen effort and be destroying your projects. Become aware of all of them and remove them fully, forever.
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252) Get from literature facts about the general life and comfort of your compeer in another part of your country and in another country. If it is higher than yours, you too can rise to it. | 253) Sentiments for outmoded values are a hindrance to your progress. |
| 254) Examine if your dress can be changed to serve your present status better. | 255) If your double standard (of neglecting others' work) does not hurt you visibly, review all your work and locate where it hurts you most powerfully. |
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256) Do you nourish ancient grudges? If so, come out of it.
257) If you are presently ostracized by your community, know there are ways of getting out of it now and escaping its effects in future. |
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258) Whatever you believe in and act upon, raise the intensity of mental belief to one more level (from conviction to belief to faith to trust, etc.) |
259) If you have knowledge that your present ways hinder future prospects and you persist, study the phenomenon in literature. |
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260) Unthinking clumsiness leads to mishaps, like keeping nail polish in eye lotion. If such a thing has happened to you, look for that trait in 100 places now. |
261) If you are a very dutiful person, extend your dutifulness to uncovered areas of your personality. |
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262) Those who have an ego trip wherever possible, but not permissible, have a great opening to progress, by restraining themselves. |
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263) Do you try to cross authority, however small it is? If so, restrain yourself. Are there wishes to cross authority? Remove them. |
264) Learn to send a thank you note on every suitable occasion. |
265) Look at any idea like, "I am not after money" and you may really be after it. Educate yourself to rise to the level of your belief and it will raise you. |
266) If you have been enjoying results without responsibilities, now accept all those responsibilities. |
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267) Stupidity: Have you ever missed seeing the connection between two incidents important to you? Have you ever assumed a non-existing connection? If so, that will pervade your life. |
268) While in public, exercise yourself how society can be thoughtful in its service. (Japan's note and pencil at the phone.) And see whether there is any such thing you can do in your personal or professional life. |
269) ACCEPT EVEN AS A MERE FORM THE CONCEPTS OF A HIGHER GROUP. |
270) ADOPT THE EXTERNALS OF A CULTURED COMMUNITY. |
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271) ADOPT THE MEREST MANNERS AND PHYSICAL HABITS OF A HIGHER COMMUNITY. |
272) ADOPT THE OUTER WAYS OF A MORE CIVILISED, MORE PROSPEROUS LAYER OF SOCIETY. |
273) Each time you accomplish something, teach yourself to trace that success to the truth in your mental convictions.
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274) Look at your emotional ideals like "I am affectionate, loyal, etc." Maybe the opposite is true. Make your belief real.
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275) Learn to detect yourself subconsciously. Honour the subconscious motives fully. They are powerful. |
276) Increase your harmony at all points of contact with the society. |
277) Exercise your mental ideals, vital attitudes, physical habits, social, psychological behaviour and harmonise them at some level.
278) An age-old 'good' habit based on an idea may rule your life. Now examine it to overcome it.
| 279) Reluctance to acknowledge help must be replaced by generous gratitude. |
| 280) After each accomplishment of yours, teach yourself to fully discover the social infrastructure that makes it possible. | 281) Find out any area where you are overdoing for society's sake and bring it to normality.
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282) ‘Borrowing is bad' and 'borrowing is income' are ideas to be given up.
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283) Have you been resourceful at any time? Have you extended it to any other area? Now, try to extend it to every area of your work.
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284) Unhealthy vital curiosities are found in hundreds in anyone. You can begin the exercise of grouping yours under a dozen heads. From each group shed one. Having shed one, you are potentially capable of shedding all. |
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285) If you are generally alert in your personal affairs but lax in important affairs which do not touch you for the moment personally, take effort to extend this alertness to such affairs. Learn that as a must. |
286) If your lax behaviour is seen in the society as something permissible, take efforts to give it up, even though the social compulsion is not there and in so doing, you will see energy equivalent to that social weight is available for you to make personal progress. |
Any act consists of mental, vital, physical components. To gain control over it we proceed by overcoming the mental first, vital next and physical last. This is the surest way to obtain mastery over an act we want to shed without getting frustrated. E.g. we get angry and lose our temper when another person defeats our purpose. It is obvious to the mind that anger at another's strength is unwise. If the mind accepts that explanation, it can slowly withdraw. Still the vital anger continues to rise. With no support from mind, it will be less forceful. The vital force here is out of habit and can be more easily controlled by a mental decision. After that is conquered, one can see the very physical movements running their course without releasing anger. Similarly, to acquire full mastery of a desirable new skill the process is -- mind understands the constituents fully. This is the first step. The vital follows and the physical comes last. After the physical takes over the skill, the mind is relieved of its conscious part, later vital. Now the very physical possesses the skill on its own. At this stage the skill becomes perfect. Any further progress in that skill is to enlarge its dimensions and at a mature stage its depth in our personality.
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| WITH EACH SUCCESSIVE ADDITION OF FRESH DIMENSION OR DEPTH TO THE ORIGINAL SKILL, THE SKILL GROWS IN PRECISION, PERFECTION, WIDTH, FORCE, AMPLITUDE AND GENERATES BY ITS PROLONGED LIFE A GENERAL CAPACITY IN THE PERSONALITY WHICH WHEN CULMINATED IN THE NEXT STEPS GENERATES SPECIAL TALENTS IN THIS PARTICULAR AREA, SAY VIOLIN MUSIC. THE PROCESS IS: SKILL IN VIOLIN -- CAPACITY FOR MUSIC -- TALENT IN VIOLIN.
If you are honest enough to acknowledge your deficiency and your evil at the mental and physical levels , the progress you can make is great. Dishonesty, unreliability, evil thoughts, ill will, lying, treachery, offensive organised stupidity are some of them. The great majority of people have one or the other of these in one or the other relationship. Honesty is to acknowledge them and take efforts to reverse them. Some major expressions: |
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287) Belief that monetary gain justifies any MEANS. |
288) Great ill will towards good people, even benefactors. |
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289) Work is anathema |
290) Wealthy smuggler is respectful. Healthy social behaviour, like attending functions, is disregarded. |
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291) If you look down upon several people because you are endowed with one superior quality (of negotiation), know you do not have several other skills they have. Proper thing for you is to compare yourself with superiors and rise. |
292) If you decide to make progress and see your job is the centre of that progress, you have to give your best to it from now. Before that, assess the ‘extra' time and energy you now have which you are using randomly on many things. Fully divert this energy to this centre and you will make that progress. |
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293) If you are oppressed because of lack of an endowment another has, tell yourself you do not need it and you have what you need. |
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294) THERE WERE OCCASIONS WHEN EVENTS FORCED US TO THINK. IN FUTURE LEARN TO THINK ON YOUR OWN WITHOUT BEING FORCED BY EVENTS. |
295) WE OBEY, ARE REASONABLE, EVEN REVERSE OUR INTRANSIGENCE WHEN COMPELLED BY SUPERIOR FORCES. DO THE SAME THING OUT OF GOODNESS. |
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296) OVERCOME BY IRRESISTIBLE FORCES, WE OFTEN CHANGE DEEP-SEATED HABITS WHICH WE ARE QUITE UNWILLING TO GIVE UP. GIVE THEM UP YOURSELF VOLUNTARILY. |
297) SOCIETY FORCES MAN TO BE SHAPED ACCORDING TO ITS DICTATES. MAN SIMPLY OBEYS UNRESISTING. IN IT THERE IS A PART ONE CAN INTELLIGENTLY ACCEPT. ACCEPT THAT PART. |
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298) Maybe you are one who does not understand the fundamentals of your profession. If you are, learn them. If you are not, learn to refer your activities constantly back to the fundamentals. |
299) Do you know when and how your energies are released? If you don't, observe and learn. It is an asset. If you already know, relate your activities to that phenomenon. |
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300) Do you know the fundamental components of your basic skills? Learn them. Learn to think of every activity from that point of view. |
301) Know your deepest, rather most basic relation with the society and relate every act to that.
302) When something good comes to you but is elusive, know an opportunity hides behind it. |
303) When a habit of dissipation stops, your academic performance rises from C to B; when social recognition comes, your vital energies surge up and you get up fresher an hour early; when a friction in emotional relationship dissolves, your physical skill of repairing becomes more perfect. So, you must consciously make experiments in winning social recognition, correcting a wrong skill, and forging a happier emotional relationship. Endeavour to acquire great clarity of mind and observe its effects on every other faculty. This will be rewarding. Being satisfied thus, you have to make an exhaustive list of such items in your life and receive their full benefits directly and indirectly. |
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304) When you want to raise your comprehension one level, it will be possible if you aim at the highest known acme. That is the practical way of life. |
305) When you want to restrain yourself 10%, aim at 100% perfection. |
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306) When you want to do a skill 10% better, aim at winning an award in it. |
307) When you want a 10% greater success in society, aim at being the Mayor of the place. |
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308) Make a list of all points where your control slips from you. All of them are possible points of progress. |
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309) You can now try every skill you once gave up as not possible. |
310) Have you ever acted in society as less than a primitive man? That is a point of progress. |
311) If you are willing to make the greatest possible effort in pursuit of doubling your prosperity and accept 5 or 10 or 50-fold as it comes, address the greatest point of unwillingness and change it into its opposite, the greatest weakness in skill into a perfect one and the greatest point of confusion into one of greatest clarity.
312) Generally, "full faith leads to full success" is true. |
313) In general, if your hope is the greatest, chances of fulfilment are greatest. |
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314) Perseverance is always granted its due. |
315) If your reliance on society is full, real, one of hope and trust, society will always stand by you. |
316) Go back in life and examine the IDEALS you have accepted and cherished from family, school, church, etc. If they are not fully followed, make them good now. |
317) The tendency is to start an effort and in the course of it to increase the concentration. Increase the concentration to the maximum level first and then release the effort. |
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318) The tendency is to start doing a work and learn it in the process. Learn the process fully and then start the work. |
319) We act in society as it comes to us and manage the situation as it develops. Reverse this. Observe the social situation and wait till you are sure of listening or attention, and then act. |
320) Is there anything generally appreciated which is loathsome to you? That is a door. |
321) Are you capable of being negative in act, word or thought? That is a great point to work on. |
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322) Is there a very necessary work in daily life or your life which is detestable to you? Work on it. |
323) Is there a universally admired person whom you dislike? That is a point of progress. It applies to universally admired manners too. |
324) In your ethnic back ground and religious upbringing are there spiritual ideas coming down the line and in your blood just now which when converted into mental quests can yield great academic laurels, even if in a lower field? The lower the field in which it is converted, the higher is the yield. |
325) Study your and your parents' educational background and see whether there is an inspiring idea for your present life-flowering inherited and lying dormant below the surface. |
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326) Study of Indian geography may lead to discovering food grain production potential in the Gangetic valley. Study your physical assets and think what life potentials they can open up. Endeavour to exploit them fully. |
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327) If any good idea, an intense aspiration, an admirable skill, a great personage, a substantial opportunity ever comes your way and you have forgotten it since then, there is an untapped potential between what you are and what it pointed at. |
| 328) INHERITED POTENTIALS OF POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE NATURE: Exhaust the positive potentials and go ahead. Examine the negative potentials and free yourself from them till the last physical symptom drops. Children do not fully use up the potentials of religious training of obedience, goodness, discipline, etc. Negative potentials linger as a mental conviction, emotional attitude or even as a physical symptom of back pain. | |||
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329) Examine your higher aspiration against your lower opportunities.
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330) If, born as a watchman's son, you retired as Dean of a University, plan your soul's career in that light. |
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331) Try to think of your work in terms of your family, caste, tradition, etc. |
332) Relate your career to a wider field. |
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333) Recollect and review the good advice you have received all through your life. See what benefits you have received and which advice you have neglected. Use all the neglected advice. |
334) Life refuses what you seek, gives what you do not seek. Indira's Prime Ministership was unsought by Nehru. She sought Sanjay's career. |
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335) Subject to strong scrutiny all hours of your leisure and, if you find dull hours, change them into interesting ones, not so interesting ones and exciting ones. |
336) Examine your deepest relations with society. You will see many irksome points. All of them must be made to become harmonious. |
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337) If you believe that attending to your own work or neglecting your duty will pay you well, better reverse it because that will lead you to attend to the less important work at the expense of more important ones. |
338) Work on your talents, teach yourself not to seek. Greater riches will sail towards you. |
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339) If you have any talent fully out of your way, find out the fittest field by experimenta-tion and use it fully to your advantage. |
340) Are you conscious of your social superiority? Now if you give it up, you will rise to be a socially superior person. |
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341) Working on converting sources of ill-will enables you to release higher energy. |
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342) Is there one circumstance or a potential physically around you which you are not availing of? Discover it. |
343) Have you grown cynical and thereby lost high contacts that are of value to you? Revive them after reversing the cynicism. |
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344) If you know you assert your mental opinion, cull out the places where you know it may not be permissible. Examine and eliminate. If possible, discover the value of the opposite view. |
345) If you are one who boasts, list out events where your boasting has hurt you and now reverse that attitude. |
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346) In your mental sphere or social atmosphere, list out persons who have risen very high. Examine yourself against them. You may qualify under one or the other. |
347) If you have started low and another has started high, know you too can reach his height if you can make up with some other talents. |
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| 348) Have you ever mortally offended anyone by your vituperative tongue? If so, you have a great opportunity for progress when you realise it and reverse it. |
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349) Is there a PERSON whom you can visit with benefit around you and whom you have not visited so far? Visit him now. |
350) If you go over all your friends and change in your mind from ill will to good will, from low opinion to high opinion, at the end you will be at a different level. |
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351) Each time there is an impulse to imitate a neighbour, stop and see whether you can be innovative. |
352) If you can start your life at a socially superior stratum (however low it is,) you can be placed higher in life than one who started at the height of a lower level. |
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353) By study of facts relevant to your progress, you can make as much progress as one who after 40 years looks back. Study has that value for one who wishes to benefit by that study. |
354) If you are conscious of condescension, discover there is really none and learn an open behaviour. |
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355) PERFECTION: if you conceive all your present duty and work and decide to raise it to the level of perfection, in one sense this entire discipline is fulfilled. Next best is to choose one part of your work, major or minor, and do it perfectly perfect. Its perfection can be extended later to all areas of your work. |
356) Desire for social conformity is the greatest known force for social development. Examine where you are below par from your social peers. Try to make yourself a victim of the social urge to equal peers. |
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357) Make a detailed list of all the qualities you have disliked in others since childhood. All of them will be in you. Come forward to eliminate as many as possible. |
358) Think of every pleasant, nice, successful behaviour you have admired in others. Your very admiration is a sign you can acquire them. |
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359) Imagine all the great skills you have admired in others. You can acquire all of them. |
360) If you can do a great good to yourself consider whether you can rise above social conformity even a little. However small it is, the progress will be greatest. |
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361) ACCEPT IN MIND ONE HIGHER VALUE (GREATER TRUTH OR HONESTY) TILL YOU ARE LOST IN THAT THOUGHT, THE POINT AT WHICH THE ENTIRE MIND ACCEPTS THE IDEA. |
362) ACCEPT A HIGHER VALUE TILL IT BECOMES A PASSION IN YOU. PASSION IS THE STATE WHERE THE ENTIRE VITAL GIVES ITSELF TO THE VALUE. |
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363) ACCEPT A HIGHER VALUE TILL IT BECOMES A POSSESSION. THAT IS THE POINT WHEN THE BODY OVERCOMES THE MIND. |
364) ACCEPT A HIGHER VALUE TILL YOU COME TO TOTALLY DISREGARD THE SOCIETY WHEN IT CROSSES THAT VALUE. AT THAT POINT YOU WILL VALUE THAT VALUE MORE THAN THE SOCIETY. |
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365) Do you have a concept that serves as ‘I need an ideal to believe in'? That is a point which helps your progress if you examine it and update it. |
366) Do you have someone who plays the role of ‘I need someone to love'? If so, your relationship with him is a touchstone for your progress. |
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367) Do you have a work that fills the gap, ‘I need something to do'? Getting over it helps you to progress a lot. |
368) Do you have habits that play the role of ‘I need to fit into society'? That will hold a world of progress if examined. |
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369) Do you have someone who fills the role, ‘I need someone to hate'? Your relationship with him is an ideal aspect for study. |
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THE TWO ENDS OF PERSONALITY:
Real progress of man comes at the high end of consciousness which determines the nature and structure of character. At the lowest end is the physical skill, vital behaviour or mental outlook. The best method for anyone at any level is to catch himself at both ends but act only at the low end. At the higher end he should recognise and desire a change. This applies to the greatest of personalities as well as the lowliest.
Progress is a measure of one's control over oneself. Each man has this at some level. To come forward to raise this level a little, is the effort called for here. The principle is that by raising oneself at this point to one level more makes his material prosperity, vital joy and mental ability double. So we have enumerated here the minutest details at which one can improve himself a little at the million points of his personality and life interactions so that his personality may progress.
Those who come forward to increase their concentration (physical, vital, mental), their aspiration for the ideal (doubling prosperity) in life, their willingness to surrender that part of their ego which stands in the way and to sacrifice other aspects of life to this seeking, their capacity to lose themselves in achieving it, their capacity for perfection, equality, and faith, can be sure that all the above details are inclusive in this approach.
It amounts to saying that having accepted this ideal, perfecting the mind for this purpose can be achieved through equality and faith of the balanced personality.
Convert all your negative strengths into positive endowments. E.g. obedience to boss out of fear |
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If you fail in a physical skill like learning car driving or typing and have given it up, now look at all other similar skills you have. This means you can acquire this abandoned skill, but you must persevere. It is not as if you do not have any other skill of equal intensity. Repeat this for the vital and mental fields. If you have given up reading a book on Russell or you forget public speaking after the first failure, it is worth re-examining them.
Mind, etc. exists in several layers. Man's prosperity depends on that level. Each time he tries to rise to a higher level, the constituents of his existing level activate themselves and absorb that excess energy. Invariably that effort fails in the vital or physical. It is possible to pause and make that growth, defeating the usual mechanism of the old intensities. E.g. when one decides to take a higher degree, expand his agriculture or trade or acquire a perfect skill in his violin playing, the excess energy he releases meets with the above disaster. One method of progress is to rise to the higher level with determination.
The STRUCTURES that make our dynamism possible, rather prevent our higher dynamism, exist at various levels for each type of act and for each act. The inherited catholic belief is a deeper structure in man than the ardent belief he has acquired from his political party to serve the poor. One who seeks progress should locate in himself for each act, each type of act, each part of being, the structure that stands in the way. Locating it exactly is half the effort. Then it can be dissolved |
with effort. At the physical level, it is to change from adding to using a calculator; at the vital level it is to change from sympathy to the poor to duty; and at the mental level it is to change from data to inspiration.
Many men value the landmarks in their lives and constantly refer their present decisions to that. This is a great asset. Those who do have this practice will vastly benefit their terms of reference to several other landmarks in their lives brought about by their parents, boss, and friends. There is one more: the landmarks brought about by Life. As you have analysed threadbare the landmarks you know, set about analysing these landmarks of Life. If you are not such a person who values landmarks, learn to now locate them, analyse them and be benefited by them.
Many times MAN starts practicing a work before the skill for that work is completely acquired, unless it is required by law or job. Many speakers can say today that they have learnt the skill on the platform. Below the top items in our life and work there are at least a 100 things we do in our daily life. Out of them we would have acquired some formal training for 10 or 15 items. Let us give the FULL training necessary for as many items as possible till the 100 are covered.
What applies to skill and practice fully applies to concentration and action. Ordinarily man begins to act after a little concentration, not realising that full concentration for work must be first generated before action commences. |
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