Unchain The Giant Within | Motivational Podcasts

Podcast Transcript: Welcome to the Inspirational Living podcast, brought to you in part by Book of Zen, makers of inspirational fashion and gift ideas. Visit them online at BookofZen.com. Today’s podcast has been edited and adapted from New Thought Healing Made Plain by Kate Atkinson Boehme, published in 1918.

Several years ago I was greatly impressed by an article written by Professor William James of Harvard University, in which he made some astonishing statements regarding the possible renewal of Energy. In the article, he used the term ”Second Wind” to describe a well-known phenomenon or psychic law.

You may know that it often happens in athletic sports that a contestant will be prostrated by fatigue, even to the point of acute distress. The breath will come in short, painful gasps and the physical state be one of utter exhaustion, but let a sudden excitement occur, such as the cheering for another contestant, and a strange thing sometimes happens.

The exhausted person will get their second wind, and this second wind will be better than the first, for it is a great spurt of energy and usually means victory. After repeated observation of this phenomenon, Professor James came to the conclusion that not only is a second wind possible, but a third, a fourth, or even more.

Now to me this is very inspiring, for it confirms what I have long believed, that each one of us is the possessor of unlimited power. Beyond the fatigue limit, where one seems completely spent, there are higher levels of energy waiting to be tapped, and what is needed to tap them is the sharply pressing edge of a persistent purpose, the mental act of PUSHING ON.

But let me enter a word of caution. I would not advise you to push beyond the fatigue point physically, until you are prepared for it mentally, for if you do there is danger of utter collapse or even death.

You must first become fully convinced that you CAN tap higher levels of Energy. There must first be the mental ACT of pushing on, and it must be made a habit before you can safely try to physically PUSH beyond the fatigue point. You must establish within yourself a steady, unconquerable purpose to push on.

Professor James has described the various excitements that produce the second wind, and ultimately they are either thoughts or emotions. He explains that there need be no external excitement, that the determination to push on is often quite enough.

He says: “On normal occasions we make a practice of stopping an occupation as soon as we meet the first effective layer of fatigue. We have then walked, played, or worked enough, so we stop. This amount of fatigue is an effective obstruction upon which our usual life is cast. But if an unusual necessity forces us to press onward, a surprising thing occurs. The fatigue gets worse up to a certain, critical point, when gradually or suddenly it passes away and we are fresher than before.

We have evidently tapped a level of new energy, masked until then by the fatigue obstacle usually obeyed. There may be layer after layer of this experience. A third or fourth wind may be found. Mental activity shows this phenomenon as well as the physical, and in exceptional cases we may find beyond the very extremity of fatigue, amounts of ease and power that we never dreamed ourselves to own, sources of strength habitually not taxed at all, because habitually we never push through the obstruction, never pass those early critical points.”

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