Mind Over Matter...

​There are many great people in the world. They achieve success in their lives in many ways.
Some do it with commercial success, some with kindness, some with tenacious will, some with exemplary living, there are many, many, views of success. Work out your own. What does it mean to YOU?

Then bring it to the forefront of your mind, and, keeping it there, take what steps you feel are necessary to achieve it.

Do you believe that? It's important that YOU know whether or not you believe it.
Henry Ford reputedly put it well when he said, 'Whether you think you can, or you think you can't, you're right.' 

And I don't know if it was him or not, but the weight of that statement must lie heavily on the mind of anyone who has ever thought about achieving anything.
The importance of attitude cannot be denied in any undertaking. It isn't just Henry who has verbalised this.

Around 100 AD, Epictetus, the Turkish philosopher, offered the observation, 'If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid.'
I think that he had his finger on the pulse there; our biggest fear is often ridicule, isn't it? We fear looking, sounding, being considered, ridiculous.
Many people have a bigger fear of ridicule than anything else, the fear of loss, of failing, of illness, even of death. 

That's where the matters of Mind applied to Intention become relevant.

Here's a statement I came across 60 years ago. It inspired me to achieve something at a young age that I, and everyone else who knew me for that matter, considered beyond my reach, so dismally had I applied myself to my early preparation for a particular task.
However, inspired by this thought, I applied myself above and beyond what I'd ever asked of myself before , and achieved what I'd set out to do.

Here, then are the words that brought that event to a happy conclusion:

'The greatest things in daily life are achieved, not so much by the extraordinary powers of genius or intellect, as they are by the extraordinary application of simple means and ordinary powers.'
Samuel Smiles 1859. 

Nice, isn't it?