Expect the Best and Get it - 1
"WHY DOES MY boy fail in every job he gets?" asked a puzzled father about his thirty-year-old son.
It was indeed difficult to understand the failure of this young man, for seemingly he had everything. Of good family, his educational and business opportunities were beyond the average. Nevertheless, he had a tragic flair for failure. Everything he touched went wrong. He tried hard enough, yet somehow he missed success. Presently he found an answer, a curiously simple but potent answer. After practicing this new-found secret for a while he lost the flair for failure and acquired the touch of success. His personality began to focus, his powers to fuse.
Not long ago at luncheon I could not help admiring this dynamic man at the height of his power. "You amaze me," I commented. "A few years ago you were failing at everything. Now you have worked up an original idea into a fine business. You are a leader in your community. Please explain this remarkable change in you."
"Really it was quite simple," he replied. "I merely learned the magic of believing. I discovered that if you expect the worst you will get the worst, and if you expect the best you will get the best. It all happened through actually practicing a verse from the Bible."
"And what is that verse?"
"If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth." (Mr 9:23) "I was brought up in a religious home," he explained, "and heard that verse many times, but it never had any effect upon me. One day in your church I heard you emphasize those words in a talk. In a flash of insight I realized that the key I had missed was that my mind was not trained to believe, to think positively, to have faith in either God or myself. I followed your suggestion of putting myself in God’s hands and practiced your outlined techniques of faith. I trained myself to think positively about everything. Along with that I try to live right." He smiled and said, "God and I struck up a partnership. When I adopted that policy, things began to change almost at once for me. I got into the habit of expecting the best, not the worst, and that is the way my affairs have turned out lately. I guess it’s a kind of miracle, isn’t it?" he asked as he concluded his fascinating story. But it wasn’t miraculous at all. Actually what had happened was that he had learned to use one of the most powerful laws in this world, a law recognized alike by psychology and religion, namely, change your mental habits to belief instead of disbelief. Learn to expect, not to doubt. In so doing you bring everything into the realm of possibility.
This does not mean that by believing you are necessarily going to get everything you want or think you want. Perhaps that would not be good for you. When you put your trust in God, He guides your mind so that you do not want things that are not good for you or that are inharmonious with God’s will. But it does definitely mean that when you learn to believe, then that which has seemingly been impossible moves into the area of the possible. Every great thing at last becomes for you a possibility. William James, the famous psychologist, said, "Our belief at the beginning of a doubtful undertaking is the one thing (now get that—is the one thing) that insures the successful outcome of your venture." To learn to believe is of primary importance. It is the basic factor of succeeding in any undertaking. When you expect the best, you release a magnetic force in your mind which by a law of attraction tends to bring the best to you. But if you expect the worst, you release from your mind the power of repulsion which tends to force the best from you. It is amazing how a sustained expectation of the best sets in motion forces which cause the best to materialize.
An interesting illustration of this fact was described some years ago by Hugh Fullerton, a famous sports writer of a bygone era. As a boy, Hugh Fullerton was my favorite writer of sports stories. One story which I have never forgotten concerned Josh O’Reilly, one-time manager of the San Antonio Club of the Texas league. O’Reilly had a roster of great players, seven of whom had been hitting over three hundred, and everybody thought his team would easily take the championship. But the club fell into a slump and lost seventeen of the first twenty games. The players simply couldn’t hit anything, and each began to accuse the other of being a "jinx" to the team.
Playing the Dallas Club, a rather poor team that year, only one San Antonio player got a hit, and that, strangely enough, was the pitcher. O’Reilly’s team was badly beaten that day. In the clubhouse after the game the players were a disconsolate lot. Josh O’Reilly knew that he had an aggregation of stars and he realized that their trouble was simply that they were thinking wrong. They didn’t expect to get a hit. They didn’t expect to win. They expected to be defeated. They were thinking not victory but defeat. Their mental pattern was not one of expectation but of doubt. This negative mental process inhibited them, froze their muscles, threw them off their timing, and there was no free flow of easy power through the team. It so happened that a preacher named Schlater was popular in that neighborhood at that time. He claimed to be a faith healer and apparently was getting some astounding results. Throngs crowded to hear him and most everybody had confidence in him. Perhaps the fact that they did believe in his power enabled Schlater to achieve results.
O’Reilly asked each player to lend him his two best bats. Then he asked the members of the team to stay in the clubhouse until he returned. He put the bats in a wheelbarrow and went off with them. He was gone for an hour. He returned jubilantly to tell the players that Schlater, the preacher, had blessed the bats and that these bats now contained a power that could not be overcome. The players were astounded and delighted.
The next day they overwhelmed Dallas, getting 37 base hits and 20 runs. They hammered their way through the league to a championship, and Hugh Fullerton said that for years in the Southwest a player would pay a large sum for a "Schlater bat." Regardless of Schlater’s personal power, the fact remains that something tremendous happened in the minds of those ballplayers. Their thought pattern was changed. They began thinking in terms of expectation, not doubt. They expected not the worst, but the best. They expected hits, runs, victories, and they got them. They had the power to get what they wanted. There was no difference in the bats themselves, I am quite sure of that, but there was certainly a difference in the minds of the men who used them. Now they knew they could make hits. Now they knew they could get runs. Now they knew they could win. A new thought pattern changed the minds of those men so that the creative power of faith could operate.
Perhaps you have not been doing so well in the game of life. Perhaps you stand up to bat and cannot make a hit. You strike out time and again and your batting average is lamentably low. Let me give you a suggestion. I guarantee that it will work. The basis for my assurance is the fact that thousands of people have been trying it with very great results. Things will be very different for you if you give this method a real trial.
Start reading the New Testament and notice the number of times it refers to faith. Select a dozen of the strongest statements about faith, the ones that you like the best .[1]then memorize each one. Let these faith concepts drop into your conscious mind. Say them over and over again, especially just before going to sleep at night.
By a process of spiritual osmosis they will sink from your conscious into your subconscious mind and in time will modify and reslant your basic thought pattern. This process will change you into a believer, into an expecter, and when you become such, you will in due course become an achiever. You will have new power to get what God and you decide you really want from life.
The most powerful force in human nature is the spiritual-power technique taught in the Bible. Very astutely the Bible emphasizes the method by which a person can make something of himself. Faith, belief, positive thinking, faith in God, faith in other people, faith in yourself, faith in life. This is the essence of the technique that it teaches. "It thou canst believe," it says, "all things are possible to him that believeth." (Mr 9:23) "If ye have faith . . . nothing shall be impossible unto you." (Mt 17:21) "According to your faith be it unto you." (Mt 9:29) Believe-believe-so it drives home the truth that faith moves mountains.
Some skeptical person who has never learned this powerful law of the effect of right thinking may doubt my assertions regarding the amazing results which happen when this technique is employed.
Things become better when you expect the best instead of the worst, for the reason that being freed from self-doubt, you can put your whole self into your endeavor, and nothing can stand in the way of the man who focuses his entire self on a problem. When you approach a difficulty as a personal unity, the difficulty, which itself is a demonstration of disunity, tends to deteriorate.
When the entire concentration of all your force—physical, emotional, and spiritual—is brought to bear, the consolidation of these powers properly employed is quite irresistible.
Expecting the best means that you put your whole heart (i.e., the central essence of your personality) into what you want to accomplish. People are defeated in life not because of lack of ability, but for lack of wholeheartedness. They do not wholeheartedly expect to succeed. Their heart isn’t in it, which is to say they themselves are not fully given. Results do not yield themselves to the person who refuses to give himself to the desired results.
A major key to success in this life, to attaining that which you deeply desire, is to be completely released and throw all there is of yourself into your job or any project in which you are engaged. In other words, whatever you are doing, give it all you’ve got. Give every bit of yourself. Hold nothing back. Life cannot deny itself to the person who gives life his all. But most people, unfortunately, don’t do that. In fact, very few people do, and this is a tragic cause of failure, or, if
not failure, it is the reason we only half attain.
A famous Canadian athletic coach, Ace Percival, says that most people, athletes as well as non-athletes, are "holdouts," that is to say, they are always keeping something in reserve. They do not invest themselves 100 per cent in competition. Because of that fact they never achieve the highest of which they are capable. Red Barber, famous baseball announcer, told me that he had known few athletes who completely give themselves.
Don’t be a "holdout." Go all out. Do this, and life will not hold out on you. A famous trapeze artist was instructing his students how to perform on the high trapeze bar. Finally, having given full explanations and instruction in this skill, he told them to demonstrate their ability.
One student, looking up at the insecure perch upon which he must perform, was suddenly filled with fear. He froze completely. He had a terrifying vision of himself falling to the ground. He couldn’t move a muscle, so deep was his fright. "I—can’t do it! I can’t do it!" he gasped.
The instructor put his arm around the boy’s shoulder and said, "Son, you can do it, and I will tell you how." Then he made a statement which is of inestimable importance. It is one of the wisest remarks I have ever heard. He said, "Throw your heart over the bar and your body will follow."
Copy that one sentence. Write it on a card and put it in your pocket. Place it under the glass on your desk top. Tack it up on your wall. Stick it in your shaving mirror. Better still, write it on your mind, you who really want to do something with life. It’s packed with power, that sentence. "Throw your heart over the bar and your body will follow."
Heart is the symbol of creative activity. Fire the heart With where you want to go and what you want to be. Get it so deeply fixed in your unconscious that you will not take no for an answer, then your entire personality will follow where your heart leads. "Throw your heart over the bar" means to throw your faith over your difficulty, throw your affirmation over every barrier, throw your visualization over your obstacles. In other words, throw the spiritual essence of you over the bar and your material self will follow in the victory groove thus pioneered by your
faith-inspired mind. Expect the best, not the worst, and you will attain your heart’s desire. It is what is in the heart of you, either good or bad, strong or weak, that finally comes to you. Emerson said, "Beware of what you want for you will get it."
(From Power of Positive Thinking by Norman Vincent Peale)
"WHY DOES MY boy fail in every job he gets?" asked a puzzled father about his thirty-year-old son.
It was indeed difficult to understand the failure of this young man, for seemingly he had everything. Of good family, his educational and business opportunities were beyond the average. Nevertheless, he had a tragic flair for failure. Everything he touched went wrong. He tried hard enough, yet somehow he missed success. Presently he found an answer, a curiously simple but potent answer. After practicing this new-found secret for a while he lost the flair for failure and acquired the touch of success. His personality began to focus, his powers to fuse.
Not long ago at luncheon I could not help admiring this dynamic man at the height of his power. "You amaze me," I commented. "A few years ago you were failing at everything. Now you have worked up an original idea into a fine business. You are a leader in your community. Please explain this remarkable change in you."
"Really it was quite simple," he replied. "I merely learned the magic of believing. I discovered that if you expect the worst you will get the worst, and if you expect the best you will get the best. It all happened through actually practicing a verse from the Bible."
"And what is that verse?"
"If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth." (Mr 9:23) "I was brought up in a religious home," he explained, "and heard that verse many times, but it never had any effect upon me. One day in your church I heard you emphasize those words in a talk. In a flash of insight I realized that the key I had missed was that my mind was not trained to believe, to think positively, to have faith in either God or myself. I followed your suggestion of putting myself in God’s hands and practiced your outlined techniques of faith. I trained myself to think positively about everything. Along with that I try to live right." He smiled and said, "God and I struck up a partnership. When I adopted that policy, things began to change almost at once for me. I got into the habit of expecting the best, not the worst, and that is the way my affairs have turned out lately. I guess it’s a kind of miracle, isn’t it?" he asked as he concluded his fascinating story. But it wasn’t miraculous at all. Actually what had happened was that he had learned to use one of the most powerful laws in this world, a law recognized alike by psychology and religion, namely, change your mental habits to belief instead of disbelief. Learn to expect, not to doubt. In so doing you bring everything into the realm of possibility.
This does not mean that by believing you are necessarily going to get everything you want or think you want. Perhaps that would not be good for you. When you put your trust in God, He guides your mind so that you do not want things that are not good for you or that are inharmonious with God’s will. But it does definitely mean that when you learn to believe, then that which has seemingly been impossible moves into the area of the possible. Every great thing at last becomes for you a possibility. William James, the famous psychologist, said, "Our belief at the beginning of a doubtful undertaking is the one thing (now get that—is the one thing) that insures the successful outcome of your venture." To learn to believe is of primary importance. It is the basic factor of succeeding in any undertaking. When you expect the best, you release a magnetic force in your mind which by a law of attraction tends to bring the best to you. But if you expect the worst, you release from your mind the power of repulsion which tends to force the best from you. It is amazing how a sustained expectation of the best sets in motion forces which cause the best to materialize.
An interesting illustration of this fact was described some years ago by Hugh Fullerton, a famous sports writer of a bygone era. As a boy, Hugh Fullerton was my favorite writer of sports stories. One story which I have never forgotten concerned Josh O’Reilly, one-time manager of the San Antonio Club of the Texas league. O’Reilly had a roster of great players, seven of whom had been hitting over three hundred, and everybody thought his team would easily take the championship. But the club fell into a slump and lost seventeen of the first twenty games. The players simply couldn’t hit anything, and each began to accuse the other of being a "jinx" to the team.
Playing the Dallas Club, a rather poor team that year, only one San Antonio player got a hit, and that, strangely enough, was the pitcher. O’Reilly’s team was badly beaten that day. In the clubhouse after the game the players were a disconsolate lot. Josh O’Reilly knew that he had an aggregation of stars and he realized that their trouble was simply that they were thinking wrong. They didn’t expect to get a hit. They didn’t expect to win. They expected to be defeated. They were thinking not victory but defeat. Their mental pattern was not one of expectation but of doubt. This negative mental process inhibited them, froze their muscles, threw them off their timing, and there was no free flow of easy power through the team. It so happened that a preacher named Schlater was popular in that neighborhood at that time. He claimed to be a faith healer and apparently was getting some astounding results. Throngs crowded to hear him and most everybody had confidence in him. Perhaps the fact that they did believe in his power enabled Schlater to achieve results.
O’Reilly asked each player to lend him his two best bats. Then he asked the members of the team to stay in the clubhouse until he returned. He put the bats in a wheelbarrow and went off with them. He was gone for an hour. He returned jubilantly to tell the players that Schlater, the preacher, had blessed the bats and that these bats now contained a power that could not be overcome. The players were astounded and delighted.
The next day they overwhelmed Dallas, getting 37 base hits and 20 runs. They hammered their way through the league to a championship, and Hugh Fullerton said that for years in the Southwest a player would pay a large sum for a "Schlater bat." Regardless of Schlater’s personal power, the fact remains that something tremendous happened in the minds of those ballplayers. Their thought pattern was changed. They began thinking in terms of expectation, not doubt. They expected not the worst, but the best. They expected hits, runs, victories, and they got them. They had the power to get what they wanted. There was no difference in the bats themselves, I am quite sure of that, but there was certainly a difference in the minds of the men who used them. Now they knew they could make hits. Now they knew they could get runs. Now they knew they could win. A new thought pattern changed the minds of those men so that the creative power of faith could operate.
Perhaps you have not been doing so well in the game of life. Perhaps you stand up to bat and cannot make a hit. You strike out time and again and your batting average is lamentably low. Let me give you a suggestion. I guarantee that it will work. The basis for my assurance is the fact that thousands of people have been trying it with very great results. Things will be very different for you if you give this method a real trial.
Start reading the New Testament and notice the number of times it refers to faith. Select a dozen of the strongest statements about faith, the ones that you like the best .[1]then memorize each one. Let these faith concepts drop into your conscious mind. Say them over and over again, especially just before going to sleep at night.
By a process of spiritual osmosis they will sink from your conscious into your subconscious mind and in time will modify and reslant your basic thought pattern. This process will change you into a believer, into an expecter, and when you become such, you will in due course become an achiever. You will have new power to get what God and you decide you really want from life.
The most powerful force in human nature is the spiritual-power technique taught in the Bible. Very astutely the Bible emphasizes the method by which a person can make something of himself. Faith, belief, positive thinking, faith in God, faith in other people, faith in yourself, faith in life. This is the essence of the technique that it teaches. "It thou canst believe," it says, "all things are possible to him that believeth." (Mr 9:23) "If ye have faith . . . nothing shall be impossible unto you." (Mt 17:21) "According to your faith be it unto you." (Mt 9:29) Believe-believe-so it drives home the truth that faith moves mountains.
Some skeptical person who has never learned this powerful law of the effect of right thinking may doubt my assertions regarding the amazing results which happen when this technique is employed.
Things become better when you expect the best instead of the worst, for the reason that being freed from self-doubt, you can put your whole self into your endeavor, and nothing can stand in the way of the man who focuses his entire self on a problem. When you approach a difficulty as a personal unity, the difficulty, which itself is a demonstration of disunity, tends to deteriorate.
When the entire concentration of all your force—physical, emotional, and spiritual—is brought to bear, the consolidation of these powers properly employed is quite irresistible.
Expecting the best means that you put your whole heart (i.e., the central essence of your personality) into what you want to accomplish. People are defeated in life not because of lack of ability, but for lack of wholeheartedness. They do not wholeheartedly expect to succeed. Their heart isn’t in it, which is to say they themselves are not fully given. Results do not yield themselves to the person who refuses to give himself to the desired results.
A major key to success in this life, to attaining that which you deeply desire, is to be completely released and throw all there is of yourself into your job or any project in which you are engaged. In other words, whatever you are doing, give it all you’ve got. Give every bit of yourself. Hold nothing back. Life cannot deny itself to the person who gives life his all. But most people, unfortunately, don’t do that. In fact, very few people do, and this is a tragic cause of failure, or, if
not failure, it is the reason we only half attain.
A famous Canadian athletic coach, Ace Percival, says that most people, athletes as well as non-athletes, are "holdouts," that is to say, they are always keeping something in reserve. They do not invest themselves 100 per cent in competition. Because of that fact they never achieve the highest of which they are capable. Red Barber, famous baseball announcer, told me that he had known few athletes who completely give themselves.
Don’t be a "holdout." Go all out. Do this, and life will not hold out on you. A famous trapeze artist was instructing his students how to perform on the high trapeze bar. Finally, having given full explanations and instruction in this skill, he told them to demonstrate their ability.
One student, looking up at the insecure perch upon which he must perform, was suddenly filled with fear. He froze completely. He had a terrifying vision of himself falling to the ground. He couldn’t move a muscle, so deep was his fright. "I—can’t do it! I can’t do it!" he gasped.
The instructor put his arm around the boy’s shoulder and said, "Son, you can do it, and I will tell you how." Then he made a statement which is of inestimable importance. It is one of the wisest remarks I have ever heard. He said, "Throw your heart over the bar and your body will follow."
Copy that one sentence. Write it on a card and put it in your pocket. Place it under the glass on your desk top. Tack it up on your wall. Stick it in your shaving mirror. Better still, write it on your mind, you who really want to do something with life. It’s packed with power, that sentence. "Throw your heart over the bar and your body will follow."
Heart is the symbol of creative activity. Fire the heart With where you want to go and what you want to be. Get it so deeply fixed in your unconscious that you will not take no for an answer, then your entire personality will follow where your heart leads. "Throw your heart over the bar" means to throw your faith over your difficulty, throw your affirmation over every barrier, throw your visualization over your obstacles. In other words, throw the spiritual essence of you over the bar and your material self will follow in the victory groove thus pioneered by your
faith-inspired mind. Expect the best, not the worst, and you will attain your heart’s desire. It is what is in the heart of you, either good or bad, strong or weak, that finally comes to you. Emerson said, "Beware of what you want for you will get it."
(From Power of Positive Thinking by Norman Vincent Peale)
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