Mastering Your Life(摘录自 work with passion)

Above you have read the stories of people who have learned to master their lives. As you read, you no doubt concluded that this mastery takes a great deal of hard work, faith, belief, and imagination. Faith is the strongest and most productive of all our emotions. Faith is a state of mind; it is emotional muscle that gets stronger with each risk you take. Skepticism, or disbelief, is the opposite of faith, but it is part of our internal warning system. Used properly, skepticism keeps us from making mistakes of judgment. As your faith grows, your negative beliefs are replaced with an optimistic outlook on life. As a result, you are quick to let go of behavior that does not work.

Unless you act you remain a passive receiver, living a vicarious existence through others’ excitement. Think of all the money people pay to watch and listen to others work with passion, at concerts, in movies and videos, on television and CDs, and during sports events. It’s wonderful to enjoy top performers, they can be inspiring and uplifting, but why not be one yourself? You were not designed to just watch others having fun and making money. That is like owning a Porsche and only driving it to and from the grocery store once a week! Your mind is a rich resource, the creator of your experience of life. You have what no Porsche has: imagination, the source of art, music, science, business, and all ideas.

All your choices are good if you learn from them. You are in control, even when your life appears to be out of control. For example, if you believe, as Cynthia did, that you do not have what it takes to succeed, you make choices that minimize risk. You go for what is safe. Then you feel frustrated and envious of others’ success. The lesson is don’t hold back from life, since that will force the hand of your creative self who wants to take risks, as Cynthia discovered. Remember that if you hold back your desire to experience life, your emotions will take revenge on you through mood swings, illness, and prolonged depression. But if you jump into life with your whole heart and soul, your future is unlimited.

Cynthia and David show how self-defeating beliefs restrict your experience of life. David believed that he had to be ready to fight for what he wanted, that competitors always lurked around the corner, ready to attack. It was as if he were still living in a war zone. His defensive posture was useful in his early years in helping him to endure a repressive system. But as an adult, in a different environment, he needed to drop his defenses.

Beliefs are subtle. To identify them, look at your life circumstances. Ask yourself what beliefs brought these circumstances into your life? If you want new circumstances, what beliefs would that require? What do you need to do today to achieve those goals? In addition, our emotions — both positive and negative — are integral to directing our choices. Take a look at both the positive and the negative emotions listed in Napoleon Hill’s book Think and Grow Rich.^[6] See how they affect your ability to focus and take action.

The Seven Major Positive Emotions

1. Desire

2. Faith

3. Love

4. Sexual desire

5. Enthusiasm

6. Romance

7. Hope

8. The Seven Major Negative Emotions

1. Fear

2. Jealousy

3. Revenge

4. Greed

5. Suspicion

6. Anger

7. Hatred

Both sets of emotions cannot occupy your mind at the same moment. One state of mind will dominate, depending on how much you practice it. The world is full of people who work very diligently at negativity. Think about how many thoughts it takes to maintain a depressed state of mind. Experts have estimated that we think at least fifty thousand thoughts a day!

How many of your fifty thousand thoughts a day focus on the seven positive emotions? How much of your life is given over to passivity, acceptance of the status quo? How many of your thoughts are trapped in negativity?