Psychology and Achievement | Page 2

in your present random methods of
operation.
How many foot-pounds of energy do you suppose you annually dump
into the scrap-heap of wasted effort? What does this mean to you in
dollars and cents? In conscious usefulness? In peace and happiness?
[Sidenote: The Means to Notable Achievement]
Individual mental efficiency is an absolute prerequisite to any notable
personal achievement or any great individual success. Your mental
energies are the forces with which you must wage your battles in this
world. Are you prepared to direct and deploy Achievement these forces
with masterful control and strategic skill? Are you prepared to use all
your reserves of mental energy in the crises of your career?
A Mighty and Intelligent Power resides within you. Its marvelous
resources are just now coming to be recognized.

Recent scientific research has revealed, beyond the world of the senses
and beyond the domain of consciousness, a wide and hitherto hidden
realm of human energies and resources.
[Sidenote: A Process for "Making Good"]
These are mental energies and resources. They are phases of the mind,
not of the "mind" of fifty years ago, but of a "mind" of whose
operations you are unconscious and whose marvelous breadth and
depth and power have but recently been revealed to the world by
scientific experiment.
In this Basic Course of Reading we shall lay before you in simple and
clear-cut but scientific form the proof that you have at your command
mental powers of which you have never before dreamed.
And we shall give you such specific directions for the use of these
new-found powers, that whatever your environment, whatever your
business, whatever your ambition, you need but follow our plain and
simple instructions in order to do the thing you want to do, to be the
man you want to be, or to get the thing you want to have.
[Sidenote: Inadequacy of Body Training]
If you have any thought that the control of your hidden mental energies
is to be acquired by mere hygienic measures, put it from you. The idea
that you may come into the fulness of your powers through mere
wholesome living, outdoor sports and bodily exercise is an idea that
belongs to an age that is past. Good health is not necessary to
achievement. It is not even a positive influence for achievement. It is
merely a negative blessing. With good health you may hope to reach
your highest mental and spiritual development free from the
harassment of soul-racking pain. But without good health men have
reached the summit of Parnassus and have dragged their tortured bodies
up behind them.
[Sidenote: Inadequacy of Business Specialization]

Nor does success necessarily follow or require long preparation in a
particular field. The first occupation of the successful man is rarely the
one in which he achieves his ultimate triumph. In the changing
conditions of our day, one needs a better weapon than the mere
knowledge of a particular trade, vocation or profession. He needs that
mastery of himself and others that is the fundamental secret of success
in all fields of endeavor.
[Sidenote: Futility of Advice in Business]
It is well to tell you beforehand that in this Basic Course of Reading we
shall be content with no mere cataloguing of the factors that are
commonly regarded as essential to success. We shall do no moralizing.
You will find here no elaboration of the ancient aphorisms, "Honesty is
the best policy," and "Genius is the infinite capacity for taking pains."
The world has had its fill of mere exhortations to industry, frugality and
perseverance. For some thousands of years men have preached to the
lazy man, "Be industrious," and to the timid man, "Be bold." But such
phrases never have solved and never can solve the problem for the man
who feels himself lacking in both industry and courage.
[Sidenote: The Why and the How]
It is easy enough to tell the salesman that he must approach his
"prospect" with tact and confidence. But tact and confidence are not
qualities that can be assumed and discarded like a Sunday coat.
Industry and courage and tact and confidence are well enough, but we
must know the Why and the How of these things.
It is well enough to preach that the secret of achievement is to be found
in "courage-faith" and "courage-confidence," and that the way to
acquire these qualities is to assume that you have them. There is no
denying the undoubted fact that men and women have been rescued
from the deepest mire of poverty and despair and lifted to planes of
happy abundance by what is known as "faith." But what is "faith"? And
"faith" in What? And Why? And How?

[Sidenote: Fundamental Training for Efficiency]
Obviously we cannot achieve certain and definite results in this or any
other