29 Jan Living a Purpose Driven Life | Motivational Podcasts
Motivational Podcast Transcript: Welcome to the Inspirational Living podcast, brought to you in part by Book of Zen, makers of wearable inspiration for a better world. Today’s podcast has been edited and adapted from the book The Architects of Fate by Orison Swett Marden, published in 1896″¦
It is a great purpose which gives meaning to life, it unifies all our powers, binds them together in one cable; makes strong and united what was weak, separated, scattered.
To succeed today a person must concentrate all their faculties of mind on one unwavering aim, and have a tenacity of purpose, which means death or victory. Every other inclination which tempts you from your aim must be suppressed.
An individual may starve on a dozen half-learned trades or occupations, but grow rich and famous upon one trade thoroughly mastered, even though it be the humblest.
Do not struggle to do two things at once. Throw your entire strength upon whatever you do. An intense energy should characterize everything you undertake, even your recreation.
Genius is intensity—developing a power of concentration which makes you oblivious of everything outside your aim. For example, Victor Hugo wrote his masterpiece “Notre Dame” during the revolution of 1830, while the bullets were whistling across his garden. He shut himself up in one room, locking up his clothes, lest they should tempt him to go out into the street, and then spent most of that winter wrapped in a big gray comforter, pouring his very life into his work.
Those who push themselves to the front of the world’s stage are not the shallow players who impersonate all parts. They are the men and women who choose a specialty and master it completely. A one-talent individual who decides upon a definite object accomplishes more than the person with 10 talents, who scatters their energy and never knows exactly what to do.
The weakest human being, by concentrating their powers upon one thing, can accomplish something. While the strongest, by dispersing their energy over many goals, may fail to accomplish anything. Drop by drop, continually falling water can wear a passage through the hardest rock.
A great purpose is cumulative; and, like a great magnet, it attracts all that is kindred along the stream of life. It is the individual of intense purpose, directed toward a single idea, who turns neither to the right nor to the left, though a paradise tempt them, who cuts their way through obstacles and forges to the front. Concentration is the keynote of every success story.
We ALL have the ability enough to succeed; the rays of our faculties, taken separately, are all right, but many of us are powerless to collect them, to bring them all to bear upon a single spot. Versatile individuals, universal geniuses, are often weak, because they have no power to concentrate their talents upon one point, and this makes all the difference between success and failure.
One talent utilized in a single direction will do infinitely more than ten talents scattered. The worst scholar in school or college often has, in practical life, success that far outstrips the valedictorian, simply because what ability they have, they employ for a definite object, while the other, depending upon their general ability and brilliant prospects, never concentrates their powers.
What a sublime spectacle it is to see a person going straight toward their goal, cutting their way through difficulties, and surmounting obstacles which dishearten others, as though they were stepping-stones.
It is, of course, fashionable these days to ridicule the person of one idea, but those who have changed the world have been the men and women of a single aim. No person can make their mark on this age of specialties who is not a person of one idea, one supreme aim, one master passion.
The individual who would make themselves felt on this bustling planet must focus all of their attention on a single point. A wavering aim, a faltering purpose, has no place in the 21st century. “Mental shiftlessness” is the cause of many a failure. The world is full of unsuccessful people who spend their lives sending empty buckets down empty wells…..
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