PNTV: As a Man Thinketh by James Allen (#70)

Hey, this is Brian. Welcome to Philosopher's Notes tv. Today we've got another great book. As always, As a Man Thinketh by James Allen. This is actually five of his essays. We've actually got this essay. It's a tiny one on the website in the members section. You can download it for free and great book. James Allen is kind of an obscure teacher. 19th century dude. When did he live? He died in 1912, but he's deeply influenced a lot of people in the self development movement. Awesome writer. Kind of a mixture of a Ralph Waddell Emerson and a Wallace Wattles, who wrote Science of Being Great and Science of Getting Rich. Another obscure guy who's pretty cool. Super densely packed with wisdom. This book is, I say, my best Yoda voice, but just good stuff. He's all about dreaming and having this ultimate vision of our ideal lives. He's got some eloquent, beautiful quotes. I'll share with you one of them, he says this. The greatest achievement was at first and for a time, a dream. The oak sleeps in the acorn, the bird waits in the egg. And in the highest vision of the soul, a waking angel stirs. Dreams are the seedlings of realities. Awesome. I actually had that on the letterhead of my last business. Zods. This idea that dreams are seedlings of realities, right? The waking angel stirs in our dreams, right? It's just a beautiful, beautiful vision. Now, of course, dreams are only part of the process, right? We've got to combine our clear intention of what we want to see in our lives with consistent, impeccable action, a commitment to our ideals and a commitment to doing what it takes. Being the type of person, moment by moment and day by day, in order to bring that seed to fruition, to its actualization. So he talks about the importance of cherishing our visions, cherishing our ideals. And if we just hold on to them and live in integrity with them, they will come to fruition. Beautiful stuff. Again, super lyrical and poetic. You can check it out in the note and in the essay. You can also Google the essay. As a man thinketh. I think you'll find all kinds of free versions of it as well. If you're not a member yet. Mining for gold. He talks about the fact that only by much searching. I'll read this one to you as well. He says only by much searching and mining are gold and diamonds obtained. And man can find every truth connected to his being in. If he will dig deep into the mine of his soul isn't amazing. If he will dig deep into the Mine of his or her soul. Extraordinary. So I love the image of Zoolander. Right? Is that what it's called? Yeah, Zoolander, where Ben Stiller's character goes in and he's a miner for a day. Right. Supermodel dude. And he's all rocking it now. That isn't going to work. We've actually got a mine. We've got to actually seriously go in and. And mine our souls for the visions of our ideals. For the sense of who we are and how we're destined to give ourselves to the world. I just love that metaphor of truly mining and being willing to put in the effort to dig into our soul and discover what our destiny is and how we can fulfill it. I've got a bunch of questions in the note here that can help us in the process. And I talk about the importance of little squeaky there. I. I talk about the importance of doing these exercises. It's one thing to watch these videos or to read the notes and to get inspired and hopefully take more constructive action. It's also really important, I think, to take the time to do the exercises. It's not just a nice, oh, okay, cool. I'll think about it for two seconds and then go on with my life. But actually spend the time. Get out your journal. I've got mine near me all the time. And. And Rocket. I filled out dozens and dozens of these answering questions like what is my destiny? What are my greatest strengths and how can I give them in greatest service to the world? If I had all the time and all the money in the world, what would I do If I had $100 million in the bank, what would I do If I had six months to live, what would I do? And I've got a bunch more here. And I talk about a lot of these questions often. What's my highest goal? Who do I want to be when I die? How do I want people to remember me? These are just awesome questions. No one question is going to be the answer necessarily. But when we ask ourselves these questions, it's like the mining and the searching for the gold and the diamonds that we can do within our soul to make it more apparent what we're really here, what we're destined to do. Really cool idea. And it's just not going to happen again. If you go Zoolander style and you go mine for a day and then call it a job, then wonder why you don't have clarity. Well, it's just not quite how it works. I journal every morning. I remind myself what my highest Goal is, which is to connect to and express the divine within me as I have fun giving my greatest gifts and greatest service to the world. It's the first thing I write down in my journal every day. Now I call that entheos, living with God within me. My second thing I write down is I want to live with joy, love, appreciation, kindness, generosity, energy, enthusiasm, courage, creativity, wisdom. All of my signature strengths that I talk about in Authentic happiness. One of the notes here and my top values, the being values that are really important to me. I'm not writing down, I want to have this fast car and that thing. Those aren't the first things I write down. I write down who I want to be, how I want to show up in the world, and then I write down what I'm going to do in order to have that. The third thing I write down, by the way, is I want to have radiant mind, body, spirit, health. That's really important to me. Then I write down what I'm going to do to achieve those goals so I have my highest goal. And then I write down my number one now goal. What is my number one creative productive goal right now? Right now it's creating these philosopher's notes TV episodes. I'm creating a bunch of them a day right now because I want to complete them and be able to move on to the next project. I'm so excited about optimal living 101. So this combination of our highest goal and our number one now goal for me has been huge. And that mining, my point being the mining in the journal consistently is incredibly important for us to get that, I think to get that clarity and to continue to move in integrity with our values. Really cool stuff. I'm going to talk a lot more about that journaling and actually do some video, a lot of videos where I show you what I do and how to do it and hopefully inspire you to create your own journaling practice that means a lot for you. So the idea here is we need to exercise our mind, which is the next big idea I want to talk about briefly. He says, just as a physically weak person can build up strength by doing physical exercises, so can a mentally weak person that has negative thoughts all the time build up a strong mind by consistently exercising their mind. Really cool idea. If you have negative thoughts, you've got to practice in exactly the same way that you build muscle or build your heart and lungs to be stronger and breathe better so you can go out and run longer and farther, farther and faster, etc. Same thing with our minds so we've got to practice these ideas and strengthen our minds consistently. And as we do that, I know I've experienced incredible gains in how I see the world and how quickly I can get out of my negative states. Really cool stuff I talk about in this section. I go into detail on it and I'm not going to go into too much detail right now. Check out the note. But I talked about one of my experiences doing a 10 day silent Vipassana meditation retreat. You can learn more about that@dharma.org d h a m m a.org 10 days, 10 hours of meditation, total silence. You can't even look at people in the eye. No journals, no books, no cell phones, no computers. Just you. 10 hours of meditation, going to bed at like 8 or 9 o', clock, getting up at 4am Unbelievable experience. One of the most challenging things I've done in my life. And at the time I wasn't meditating. Now I've meditated for almost two years in a row. I every day. But at that point I hadn't meditated more than 10 hours total in my life. And now I was doing it every day for 10 hours. It was extraordinary. And I talk about some of the lessons I learned in that great training in the note that I think you might dig. I'm going to move on right now to the next big idea. He says 80% of success is showing up. 80% of success is showing up. So again, we've got this great vision. We can see the idea, we've got a vision board or whatever it is that we've done. But remember, 80% of success is taking that first step. It's showing up day by day by day. I mentioned to you that I have my number one now goal, right? Well, I have a commitment every day to move forward in the direction of that now goal. One more baby step. One more baby step. I show up every day now. When you show up diligently, patiently, persistently and playfully, you're bound to be successful. As you continue to move forward. There are amazing things happen. So 80% of success is just showing up. Super cool idea. My question for you is what's your ideal that you can cherish? What's your vision that really inspires you? Take some time, journal that out and then take your baby steps, show up day by day by day. So what is it that most inspires you and and what can you do to move in that direction Now? Go rock that. Hope you dug it. Look forward to sharing more with you soon. Have an awesome day see you.