TGIR: It’s Just About… Life

Yes, you could say TGIF, after all it’s Friday. But it is also simply one of the seven days in each week, another day to attempt to make something happen, something which reminds you why you’re alive and how you could do things better.

For the past few years I have become an avid reader, books which I have poured into trying to elevate my mind and learn from the best ideas of other people. There are only so many ideas rolling around in my own brain, I need to learn from the inspiration and be motivated by the perspiration of others who have achieved magnificent goals.

So today, this Friday, I also celebrate TGIR: Thank God I Read.

What I have come to understand is “thoughts are things”, and you had better find a way to make those thoughts meaningful and purposeful, or else other thoughts, especially the self-defeating conversations we have with ourselves can overcome and cloud all other higher thinking.

So as I opened the book Think and Grow Rich, a book I listened to on CD many years ago, but never held in my hands to actually read the words – there they were in the first paragraph of Chapter One: “Truly, thoughts are things, and powerful things at that, when mixed with purpose, persistence and a burning desire for their translation into riches…”

Not only did that affirm what I have come to believe about “thoughts” these past few years, but there it is at a time in my life when I need to see it… and to latch onto the power of a burning desire.

Chapter Two is actually called Desire. What Napolean Hill says is perhaps the most important chapter in the whole book. So as I begin my weekend, (TGIF), I hope you too will be inspired by this excerpt from Desire, because as I have come to understand life can be elevated, our minds can expand and look for opportunity and growth if you too celebrate TGIR as well.

There is a difference between wishing for a thing and being ready to receive it. No one is ready for a thing until he believes he can acquire it. The state of mind must be belief, not mere hope or wish. Open-mindedness is essential for belief. Closed minds do not inspire faith, courage or belief.

Remember no more effort is required to aim high in life, to demand abundance and prosperity, than is required to accept misery and poverty. A great poet has correctly stated this universal truth through these lines:

I bargained with Life for a penny,
And Life would pay no more,
However I begged at evening,
When I counted my scanty score.

For Life is a just employer,
He gives you what you ask,
But once you have set the wages,
Why, you must bear the task.

I worked for a menial’s hire,
Only to learn, dismayed,
That any wage I had asked of Life,
Life would have willingly paid.