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Without attempting to stem the current, or to direct the bark of my life, I have been content to drift.

This habit of submission to tendencies is non-human. It belongs to the brute. Man has not yet left heredity behind. My humanity consists in my power to choose. My power to move, to think. He who does not exercise his power of choice is losing his opportunity of selfhood.

Habits are unconsciously formed. They grow while we are sleeping. They are born of our thoughts, and thoughts we take into our sleeping hours are most potent in controlling our lives.

For this reason mental habits have power over us. Mental habits are the only ones to cultivate, are the only habits that are good. Any habit of physical expression is bad, because it becomes a fetter. But a correct mental habit is based upon Principle, and leaves the individual free to act as he feels is right under all conditions.

Cultivate the habit of thinking pleasant thoughts and you will wear, as a habit, a smile. Take a pleasant thought to bed with you and you will smile all the next day.

The rain falls upon the newly plowed hill and makes a little streamlet down the field. The next shower fills the little channel and cuts it deeper. So does the next and the next, until the traveler of a later generation than the plowman, finds a deep gully or ravine. The water was trained to a habit of flowing in one place. So with thought. Thought is Power. The same thought repeated creates brain and nerve conditions, thus like the rain-fall, preparing for itself a