In past years, perhaps in past ages, you have held with emotion the mental pictures of these very conditions. Hence their creation. But these pictures have grown old, as people grow old, and are ready to be laid away and dissolved in ashes. Every single day and hour you are dwelling with emotion upon more mental pictures which are to take their place, both inside of you and out. So I bid you take special hours for holding with enthusiasm the sort of pictures you want to create; instead of letting your mind perpetuate the same old things over again. And I bid you put into this Ideal picturing all the emotion you can summon, to the end that you the more quickly and vitally create what you want.

Of course this is not at first easy to do. Conditions will come in between you and your Ideal -- conditions which arouse fear; which is emotion, remember -- your creative energy. Your emotion has habitually gone out to conditions, recreating them. And when you picture your Ideal it seems cold, dead and unreal.

But here is another place where practice makes perfect. Repeated efforts will soon switch emotion into new channels, permitting the old mental pictures to shrivel. And conditions will follow.

And the more regular the efforts the more quickly will energy acquire the habit of flowing in the new directions. There is enormous power in rhythm of effort. One soon gets into the swing of a new thought and it fairly does itself. By rhythmic effort one soon creates through the Ideal a heart-throb. The Ideal passes the period of gestation and comes forth into the actual.

Make light of the actual. Do not permit it to play upon your emotions. But exalt the Ideal. Glorify it. Accord it all power. Rejoice in it and give it your most loving thought. Return to it at regular intervals, and always enthuse over it. To yourself.

As to other people, keep mum. Many a man’s Ideal is still­born because he wastes his energy in talk; and because he draws to himself the opposition or contempt of others. Be still; make no noise, except when there is something to be gained by it. Noises of all sorts use up your mental energy. In stillness power is generated. Be still.

After a few days of faithful practice at gazing upon your Ideal