"Think the Things You Want"

WE ARE NOW READY to chart our course and set sail. This is very important for without a destination we cannot hope to arrive. The wind never blows fair for that sailor who knows not to what port he is bound.

When the football goal-posts are down, the game is over. The same holds true for the game of life.

Whatever a man's advantages may be, with no aim, or a low one, he is weak. Without some definite object before us, some standard which we are earnestly striving to reach, we cannot expect to attain to any great height, either mentally or morally.

It is not enough for success to have ability, education, and health. Hundreds of thousands have all these and still fail, or live in mediocrity, because they do not put themselves in an attitude of condition for successful achievement.


There are two kinds of goals: The Long-range goal or goals, and Short-range goals.

Your long-range goals should be the end result that you are shooting for in this life. In other words, what is your highest ambition in life? Picture yourself ten years from now; twenty years from now; or if you are just now beginning your normal working span of forty years, then picture yourself at the end of the forty years. What great height do you want to reach?

In this connection, let me caution you about a few matters of importance. When we get on the subject of goals the first thing that usually pops into a person's mind is "a million dollars." The only thing wrong with this proposition is that a million dollars is not the real object of your desires. It may be a means, but in most cases it is not an end.

In this chapter you will learn a three-step formula for the attainment of your wishes. The first step in this simple formula is to select a long-range goal. There is more to the first step, which we will cover, but we have got to be sure that we understand what that goal is to be.

One of the means for carrying out step number one is to forever keep before you a mental picture of your long-range goal. It must burn incessantly. It must be your lighthouse—your guiding beacon.

Knowing this, then, don't just say that your goal twenty years from now is to possess a million dollars because you would then have to have as your mental picture to carry around with you all the time, a picture of yourself surrounded with filled money bags containing such a sum of money.

Secondly, it's not the money that you really want. You can't eat money. It, of itself, will not shelter you from the weather. It would make a poor bed for you to rest upon. Let's admit then, it is not the money that we really want. It is the things that such a sum of money would provide for us and the medium, possibly, by which we could help our fellow man, or otherwise help to make this world a better place in which to live.