posted September 29, 2003 05:48 PM              

Today I shed my old skin that has suffered so long the contusiones of failure and the wounds of mediocrity. Today I am born anew and my birthplace is a vineyard where there is fruit enough for all. Today I harvest grapes of success from the tallest and most abundantly laden vines, because these were left behind by the wisest of my trade, come before me generation after generation.

Today I taste the goodness of grapes, fresh off the vine, and truly I will swallow the seed of success enclosed in each one, restoring life within me anew.

The path I have chosen is replete with opportunity, and at the same time, filled with anguish and desperation, and the bodies of those who have failed, if they were stacked one on top of the other, would cast a shadow over every pyramid in the world. Surely I will not fail like the others, because in my hands I hold the charts that will guide me through dangerous waters, to the shores that only yesterday, seemed to be a dream.

Failure will not be the payment for my struggles. Just as nature did not make my body to suffer pain, neither was my life designed to suffer failure. Failure, like pain, is not required in my life. In the past, I accepted failure as I accept pain.

Today I reject failure and prepare to embrace success and the principles that will free me from shadow, placing me in the resplendent light of achievement, with advancement and happiness beyond my wildest dreams, until the golden apples of Hesperides seem nothing less than my just reward.

Time teaches all things to him that lives forever, but I cannot give myself the luxury of eternity. Without question, within the time alotted me, I should practice the art of patience, because nature does not respond to pressure.

To grow the olive, king of trees, takes 100 years. An onion is aged after 9 weeks. I have lived my life as an onion. But I have not been content with this. Today, I would be the greatest of olive trees, and in reality, I would be the greatest person that I can be.

And how will I do this? I have neither the knowledge nor the experience to reach greatness, and I have tripped over my ignorance and fallen into the mire of self pity. The answer is simple: I will begin my journey without the baggage of unnecessary thought or the disadvantage of experience bereft of purpose. Nature has given me knowledge and instinct far superior to that of any animal in the forest, and experience has given it an exaggerated value, especially for old men who nod wisely with their heads and speak stupidly.

In reality, experience teaches systematically, and without question, her classroom devours a man's years so that the value of the lessons taught diminish with the time needed to aquire their special knowledge. In the end, they have been wasted on dead men. What's more, experience is like fashion. An action or measure that had success today, becomes unworkable, or impractical tomorrow.

Only principles last and I have these, because the laws that will lead me to greatness, figure into the words in these lectures. They will teach me to avoid failure, rather than teaching me to gain success, because what is success, but a state of mind? What two persons among a thousand scholars would define success with the same words? Yet without question, failure is always described in the same way:

Failure is man's inability to reach his goals in life, whatever they might be.

The truth is, that the only difference between those that have failed and those that have succeeded resides in the differences in their habits. Good habits are the key to all success. Bad habits are an open door to failure. For this reason, then, the first law for change that I will obey, and from which will spring all others, is this:

I will form good habits and become the servant of THOSE habits.

When I was a child, I was slave to my impulses, now I am slave to my habits, like all adults. I have given my freewill over to years of accumulated habits, and my past actions have indicated a road that threatens to imprison my future. My actions are governed by appetite, passion, prejudice, avarice, love, fear, my environment and habits; the worst of these oppressors is habit. For now, if I must be a slave to habits, let me be a slave to good habits. Bad habits should be destroyed, and new furrows prepared for good seed.

"I will aquire good habits and I will become their servant."

And how will I realize this difficult enterprise? I will do it by means of these lectures, because each one contains a principle that will remove a bad habit from my life and replace it with one that brings me closer to success. There is another law of nature that says that a habit may only be dominated by other habits. So then, that these written words may accomplish the task for which they were designed, I should discipline myself and aquire the first of my new habits which is the following:

I will read each lecture for 30 days in the prescribed manner, before moving on to the next lecture.

First, I will read the words in silence when I wake up in the morning. Later, I will read them after my midday meal or at that time of day. Finally, I will read the words again before going to sleep at night, and more importantly, at that time I will read them aloud.

The following day I will repeat this procedure, and continue in this manner for 30 days. Then, I will start the next lecture and repeat the process for another 30 days. I will continue in this way until I have lived with each of these lectures for 30 days, and my daily lectures have each become habits.

And what will I gain from this first habit? Here is the hidden secret to all of man's achievements. By repeating words daily, they are tranformed quickly into an integral part of the conscious mind, but even more importantly, these words filter down into my other mind, that mysterious fountain that never sleeps, from which spring my dreams, and which frequently causes me to act in ways which I do not understand.

As these words are absorbed into my subsconscious mind, I will begin to awaken with a vitality that I have never known. My energy will grow, my enthusiasm will increase, my desire to face the world will dominate all of the fears that used to assail me upon waking, and I will be happier than I could have ever thought possible in this world's struggles and pain.

Finally, I will discover that I will react to each situation that I face as these lectures have instructed me to react, these actions and reactions quickly becoming easier to realize, because all acts become easier with practice.

In this way, new, good habits are born. Because when an action becomes easier through constant repetition, it becomes a pleasure to perform, and if it is a pleasure to perform, it is human nature to accomplish it often. When I do something with frequency, it becomes a habit and I become it's slave and since it is a good habit, that is MY bidding.

Today I begin a new life.

And to myself I pledge a solemn oath that nothing will slow the growth of my new life. I will not interrupt these lectures, because the day that I lose I cannot get back, nor can I replace it with another. I should not interrupt, I will not interrupt this habit of reading daily lectures, and in reality, the few moments that I spend each day in this new habit will prove a small price to pay for the happiness and success that will be mine.

As I read and reread the words of these coming lectures, I will not let the brevity of each lecture nor the simplicity of their words lead me to treat their message lightly. Thousands of grapes are pressed to fill a single bottle of wine, and the skin and pulp are scattered for the birds. That is how it is with these ageless grapes of knowledge. Much has been filtered out and scattered to the winds. Only the purest distilled truth will be found in these words. I will drink as per the instructions and not spill a single drop. And success's seed will take hold in me.

Today my old skin has returned to dust. I will walk upright among men and they will not know me, because today I am a new person, with a new life."