These short weekly messages from our company president, Bill Mansell, are filled with timely principles of success and motivation. They are designed to help you and your team stay motivated and sharpen your success skills and attitudes. Each takes only one minute to read, but the profound principles could fill an entire seminar. Why not take a weekly one-minute break from your hectic schedule to read and internalize each message.
Think of something amazing that you have done. Perhaps you built a successful business or created a work of art. Maybe you have made a difference in the life of a child or helped to save a struggling marriage, or written a book, or fought for a cause you believe in or remodeled a house or any of ten thousand other things that you may have done. Pick one thing that you are especially proud of.
Hold that thought in your mind and enjoy the feelings of satisfaction and accomplishment that come to your heart. Now, think of a word that brings this accomplishment back to your thoughts — one word that can help you immediately revive these positive emotions.
What would happen if next time you feel worthless or depressed or inadequate, you were to say this word to yourself and re-live these upbeat feelings? Wouldn’t it boost your confidence that you can accomplish great things in the future?
The story is told of James Whistler, the famous American artist, who painted a tiny picture of a spray of roses. The artistry involved was magnificent. Never before it seemed had the art of man been able to execute quite so definitely a reproduction of the act of nature.
The picture was the envy of the artists who saw it and the despair of the collectors who yearned to buy it for their collections, but whistler refused steadfastly to sell it. “For,” he said, “whenever I feel that my hand has lost it’s cunning, whenever I doubt my ability, I look at the little picture of the spray of roses and say to myself, ‘Whistler, you painted that. Your hand drew it, your imagination conceived the colors, your skill put the roses on the canvas.’ Then,” he said, “I know that what I have done, I can do again.”
About this story Sterling W. Sill said: “hang on the walls of your mind the memory of your successes. Take counsel of your strength, not your weakness. Think of the good jobs you have done. Think of the times when you rose above your average level of performance and carried out an idea or a dream or a desire for which you had deeply longed. Hang these pictures on the walls of your mind and look at them as you travel the roadway of life.”
I challenge you to do just that. Remember your successes to overcome discouragement today and to boost your confidence in the future.
