by Napoleon Hill
Available in 122 free installments
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If you want to be energetic, act energetic. But make sure, of course, that your energy is expended to a good and useful purpose.
Dawn Fraser of Australia gives us a wonderful case in point. Born on the "wrong side of the tracks" in Bal-main, a waterside suburb of Sydney, Dawn had an anemic body. But she had a king-size determination to become a great swimming champion. She became the world's fastest woman swimmer. She was good. But sometimes she wasn't quite good enough to satisfy herself.
While flying home from the Cardiff Empire Games, she read a book. It was Think and Grow Rich. "I found Napoleon Hill's formulas for success most inspiring," she says. "I began thinking about our defeat by the English girls in the medley relay when, in the freestyle leg, I swam 60.6 seconds. That was six-tenths of a second faster than my own world record, but still not good enough to give us the 12-yard start we needed.
"I wondered whether I had given everything in me on that final lap."
Dawn Fraser began thinking about the dream she'd had for so long ? to become the first woman to swim 100 meters in less than 60 seconds. "The Magic Minute," she called it.
"If I could have made that final leg in the magic minute, we might have won," she thought.
"From that moment the old hope of cracking the minute became a burning desire with me. Call it a controlled obsession if you like. I made it my major ambition and formed a plan of positive action with the magic minute as my goal. As Mr. Hill advises, I decided to go the extra mile ? mentally as well as physically."
In addition to training her body, Miss Fraser now conditions her mind as well. Although she has yet to achieve her "Magic Minute" as of this writing, she has cracked record after record. Athletic coaches throughout Australia have been attracted to study Napoleon Hill's teachings, according to Thomas H. Wyngard, an Australian newspaperman.
"Top coaches, in their search for methods that will give their champions just that little bit extra over and above their regular scientifically devised training program, are finding new inspiration in the doctrines of the great American expert," Wyngard says.
"They are adapting Napoleon Hill's technique of mental approach to what is, essentially, a physical problem. Some have taken the PMA Science of Success course so they may apply the principles correctly."
Is it time for you to recharge your battery? Have yon now begun to apply the principles presented in Success Through a Positive Mental Attitude? Are you ready to become a champion? If so, you will want to learn how you can enjoy good health and live longer ? the subject of our next chapter.
PILOT NO. 16 Thoughts to Steer By
1. How is your energy level at this moment?
2. What is your most important source of physical, mental, and spiritual energy?
3. How can you apply the principles Dr. Thomas Kirk Cureton taught to Roger Bannister so that you'll have extra energy to achieve your own goals?
4. Do you push to the limit of your endurance-then rest and try again?
5. Is it time to recharge your battery?
6. How can you avoid or neutralize fatigue?
7. Are most of your meals based on well-balanced diets?
8. Do you take spiritual and mental vitamins daily by reading inspirational material or listening to inspirational tapes or records?
9. Is your energy being directed toward useful channels? Or is it being short-circuited and wasted?
10. "A failure uses up as much energy in his work at failing as a successful person uses in winning success."
11. "God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference."
12. When is the emotion of fear justified? Unjustified?
13. To be energetic, act energetically!
INCREASE YOUR ENERGY LEVEL THROUGH PMA!
CHAPTER 17
You Can Enjoy Good Health and Live Longer
Positive Mental Attitude plays an important role in your health and your day-to-day energies and enthusiasms for your life and your work. "Every day in every way, through the grace of God, I am getting better and better," is no pie-in-the-sky jargon for the man who recites the sentence several times each day upon awakening and again before going to bed.
In one sense, he is putting PMA forces to work for him. He is using the forces which attract the better things of life to him. He is using the forces which the authors of Success Through a Positive Mental Attitude want you to use.
