Mark Bell's Power Project - Mark Bell's Spoken Word: An Iron Will

Starting point is 00:00:00 An Iron Will by Orison Swett Marden. I wanted to share this with people today because I feel that your mindset is what separates us out from every single creature on this planet and I think we oftentimes don't lean into it enough and hard enough and passage, this book called An Iron Will by Orison Swett Marden, I'm going to read a passage from it. I'm going to read a small chunk of it to you guys today, just so you're exposed to this type of information. Recently, my mother has died. And while it was sudden and final, I do not, I no longer view these things as necessarily being things that have to quote unquote make me sad. Obviously, there has been a lot of crying going on over here on my part and on the family's part. There's some heartache and there's some hurt for sure.

Starting point is 00:01:01 But we focus in on the way that my mom lived and we focus in on the way that my brother lived as well all this brother Mike dying over a decade ago it's the same thing I'm not gonna focus in on why he died how he died I'm gonna focus on you know what I thought he lived for what I thought he represented and same thing with my mother what did she represent what was her purpose what was her? What did she teach me? What did I learn from her? What did I learn directly from her? What did I learn indirectly from her? Both good and bad. What are some good characteristics and traits that she had that I love, that I enjoy, that I want to live through me and what are some bad traits that she had that I would love to

Starting point is 00:01:47 you know trim away trim off of my body and make sure that I don't you know kind of fall into some of those same pitfalls but I believe that the I believe that this type of thinking and this kind of mindset from people like Orison Swett Marden, who is one of the founders of Success Magazine in the late 1800s. Magazine is still around today. He was also an owner of hotels and a very successful person. I think a mindset from people like this,

Starting point is 00:02:16 from our past, can really teach us how to move forward into the future, maybe in a more powerful and different way than we ever even thought was possible. An Iron Will by Orison Swett Marden. Training the will. The education of the will is the object of our existence, says Emerson. Nor is it putting it too strongly if we take into account the human will in its relations to the divine. This accords with the saying of J. Stuart Mill that a character is a completely fashioned will.

Starting point is 00:02:52 In respect to mere or mundane relations, the development and discipline of one's willpower is of supreme moment in relation to success in life. No man can ever estimate the power of will. It is a part of a divine nature, all of a piece with the power of creation. We speak of God's fiat, fiat flux, let light be. Man has his fiat, will.

Starting point is 00:03:19 The achievements of history have been the choices, the determinations, the creations of the human will. It was the will, quiet or prognacious, gentle or grim, of men like Wilberforce and Garrison, Goodyear and Cyrus Field, Bismarck and Grant, that made them indomitable. They simply would do what they planned to do. Such men can no more be stopped than the sun can be or the tide. Most men fail not through lack of education or agreeable personal qualities, but from lack of dogged determination, from lack of dauntless will. It is impossible, says Charmin, to look into the conditions under which life's battle is being fought without

Starting point is 00:04:06 perceiving how much really depends upon the extent which the willpower is cultivated strengthened and made operative in the right directions young people need to go into training for it we live in an age of athletic meats. Those who are determined to have athletic willpower must take for it the kind of exercise they need. Mental discipline. The athlete trains for his race, and the mind must be put into training if one is to win life's race.

Starting point is 00:04:42 It is, says Professor Matthews, only by continued strenuous efforts repeated again and again, day after day, week after week, month after month, that the ability can be acquired to fasten the mind to one subject,

Starting point is 00:04:58 however abstract or naughty, to the exclusion of everything else. The process of obtaining this self-mastery, this complete command of one's mental powers, is a gradual one, its length varying the mental constitution of each person, but its acquisition is worth infinitely more than the utmost labor it ever costs. Perhaps the most valuable result of all education, it was said by Professor Huxley, is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do

Starting point is 00:05:32 when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not. It is the first lesson which ought to be learned, and however early a man's training begins, it is probably the last lesson which he learns thoroughly doing things once when henry ward beecher was asked how it was that he could accomplish so much more than other men he replied i don't do more but less than other people they do all their work three times over once in anticipation once in actuality once in rumination i do mine in actuality alone doing it once instead of three times this was by the intelligent exercise of mr beecher's willpower in concentrating his mind upon what he was doing at a given moment

Starting point is 00:06:26 and then turning to something else. Anyone who has observed businessmen closely has noticed this characteristic. One of the secrets of a successful life is to be able to hold all of your energies up upon one point to focus all the scattered rays of the mind upon one place or thing centralizing force the mental reservoir of most people is like a leaky dam which we sometimes see in the country where the greater part of the water flows out without going over the wheel and doing the work of the mill the habit of mind wandering of worrying about this and that genius that power which dazzles mortal eyes is oft but perseverance in disguise many a man would have been a success had he continued his fragmentary efforts, spasmodic, disconnected attempts without concentration, uncontrolled by any fixed idea,

Starting point is 00:07:35 will never bring success. It is continuity of purpose alone that achieves results. that achieves results. Learning to swim. The way to learn to run is to run. The way to learn to swim is to swim. The way to learn to develop willpower is by the actual exercise of willpower in the business of life. The man that exercises his will, says an English essayist makes it stronger and more effective force in proportion to the extent to which such exercise is intelligently and perseveringly maintained The fourth pudding of willpower is a means of strengthening willpower The will become strong by exercise to stick to a thing till you are a master is a test of intellectual discipline and power.

Starting point is 00:08:28 Dr. Kyler It is astonishing, says Dr. Theodore Kyler, how many men lack this power of holding on until they reach the goal. They can make a sudden dash, but they lack grit. They are easily discouraged. They get on as long as everything goes smoothly, but when there is friction, they lose heart. They depend on stronger personalities for their spirit and strength. They lack independence or originality. They only dare to do what others have done.

Starting point is 00:09:02 They do not step boldly from the crowd and act fearlessly. The big trees. What is needed by him who would succeed in the biggest degree possible is careful planning. He is to accumulate reserve power that he may be equal to all emergencies. Thomas Starr King said that the great trees of California gave him his first impression of the power of reserve it was the thought of reserve energies that had compacted into them he said that really stirred me the mountains had given them their iron and rich stimulants the hills had given them their soil the clouds had given them their rain and snow and a thousand summers and winters had poured forth their treasures about their vast roots.

Starting point is 00:09:48 No young man can hope to do anything above the commonplace who has not made his life a reservoir of power on which he can constantly draw, which will never fail him in any emergency. him in any emergency. Be sure that you have stored away in your powerhouse the energy, the knowledge that will be equal to the great occasion when it comes. If I were 20 and had 10 years to live, said a great scholar and writer, I would spend the first nine years accumulating knowledge and getting ready for the tenth. I will. There are no two words in the English language which stand out in bolder relief like kings upon a checkerboard, to great an extent as the words, I will. There is strength, depth and solidity, decision, confidence and power, determination, vigor and individuality

Starting point is 00:10:47 in the round ringing tone which characterizes its delivery. It talks to you of triumph over difficulties, of victory in the face of discouragement, of will to promise and strength to perform, of lofty and daring enterprise, of unfettered aspirations, and of the thousand and one impulses by which man masters impediments in the way of progression. As one has well said, he who is silenced is forgotten. He who does not advance falls back. He who does not advance falls back. He who stops is overwhelmed, distanced, and crushed. He who ceases to become greater becomes smaller.

Starting point is 00:11:35 He who leaves off gives up. The stationary is the beginning of the end. It precedes death. To live is to achieve, to will without seizing. And that's it, class. That's an iron will. And I can't read or write, but I got an iron will to do this shit so you guys can get some really cool information.

Starting point is 00:11:59 Catch y'all later.

Mark Bell's Power Project - Mark Bell's Spoken Word: An Iron Will

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