I love Thursday Throwback posts on the Self Help Blog. As a book lover, I get a special thrill out of reaching back into the distant past and retrieving a piece of brilliance left for us. When they wrote these wonderful words, the authors, no doubt, hoped that the words would reach as many people as possible. That’s why I LOVE to see others doing their best to keep old books that are in the public domain alive and well. Riches untold lie in the books that are lying around in attics and musky used book stores. The authors would want their words dusted off, revived, and put in front of a whole new generation.
Whenever I type in one of these articles or excerpts from great authors of the past, I always imagine them walking the earth today. I try to imagine what they’d make of our dress, the way we talk, our hairstyles, and cars! Can you imagine what’d they’d think of today’s cars? I’m obsessed with the idea of bringing these great men and women back to teach and inspire us, because they have so much to teach us. Even if their words and expressions are different from our own, their knowledge is priceless.
It’s a special joy for me to share excerpts from my personal favorite authors like Grenville Kleiser. The following article appeared in one of Kleiser’s books (from 1917), Inspiration and Ideals. As always with Thursday Throwbacks, I’ll remind you that I”m typing the words in just as they are written in the book in 1917.
Put Your Ideas Into Practice
by Grenville Kleiser
Make more positive resolutions regarding the things you ought to do. Bring every available reinforcement to bear upon such resolutions. Write down on a card the special things you resolve to do, and read it several times a day. Repeat it aloud at frequent intervals. Assert in vigorous tones of voice the thoughts you wish to establish as unconscious habits of your life. The best means of impressing new resolutions upon your mind is by concentration, iteration, and vigorous assertion.
At the close of every day review your thoughts and actions, and know precisely what you have done with your new resolutions. It is a great thing to conceive a great idea, but it is still greater to put it into execution.
– From Inspiration and Ideals by Grenville Kleiser, 1917
It’s funny, isn’t it. When we think of the word RESOLUTIONS, we think of New Year’s Day. Yet, resolutions are simply things we’ve resolved to do or keep from doing. We can (and certainly should) make resolutions all year – not just at the first. If we, as Kleiser suggests, wrote these resolutions down on index cards and confronted them several times a day (as opposed to writing them down at the fist of the year, and never looking at them again!), we’d stand a much better chance of turning them from resolutions into reality.
Resolutions, or goals, should be made often and confronted daily. The Grenville article above was plucked from a book in which he gave advice and motivation for each day of the year – much like devotions. This particular one actually fell on the date March 7 – far removed from New Year’s Day. Just a reminder that we need to think about self improvement and growth every day of the year, not just the first one.
“The best means of impressing new resolutions upon your mind is by concentration, iteration, and vigorous assertion.” – Grenville Kleiser
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