EMOTIONAL ENERGY IN BUSINESS
[Sidenote: _Ideas that Stimulate_]
It is a recognized fact of observation that _Every idea has a certain
emotional quality associated with it, a sort of "feeling tone."_
If ideas of health and triumphant achievement are brought into
consciousness, we at the same time experience a state of energy, a
feeling of courage and capability and joy and a stimulation of all the
bodily processes. If, on the other hand, ideas of disease and death
and failure are brought into consciousness, we at the same time
experience feelings of sorrow and mental suffering and a state of
lethargy, a feeling of inertia, impotence and fatigue.
THE LAW
_Exalted ideas have associated with them a vitalizing and energizing
emotional quality. Depressive memories or ideas have associated with
them a depressing and disintegrating emotional quality._
[Sidenote: _Pivotal Law of Business Passion_]
The wise application of this law will lead you to vigorous health
and material prosperity. Its disregard or misuse brings deterioration
and failure.
The distinction between wise use and misuse lies in _whether
disintegrating or creative thoughts, with their correspondingly
energizing or depressing emotions or feelings, are allowed to hold
sway in consciousness._
[Sidenote: _Energizing Emotions_]
When we speak of _energizing_ emotions or feelings we mean love,
courage, brightness, earnestness, cheer, enthusiasm. When we speak of
_depressing_ emotions or feelings we mean doubt, fear, worry, gloom.
No elements are more essential to a successful business or a
successful life than the right kind of emotional elements. Yet they
are rarely credited with the importance to which they are entitled.
To the unthinking the word "emotion" has the same relation to success
that foam has to the water beneath. Yet nothing could be farther from
the truth. Emotion, earnestness, fire, enthusiasm--these are the very
life of effort. They are steam to the engine; they are what the
lighted fuse is to the charge of dynamite. They are the elements that
give flash to the eye, spring to the step, resoluteness to the languid
and certainty to effort. They are the elements that distinguish the
living, acting forces of achievement from the spiritless forces of
failure.
[Sidenote: _Cross-Roads of Success or Failure_]
No man ever rose very high who did not possess strong reserves of
emotional energy. Napoleon said, "I would rather have the ardor of my
soldiers, and they half-trained, than have the best fighting machines
in Europe without this element."
Emotional energy of the right kind makes one fearless and undaunted
in the face of any discouragement. It is never at rest. It feeds on its
own achievements. It is the love of an Heloise and the ambition of an
Alexander.
[Sidenote: _The Life of Effort_]
It is this emotional energy that makes business passion, that makes
men love their business, that brings their hearts into harmony with
their undertakings, and that gives them splendid visions of commercial
greatness.
[Sidenote: _The Motive Power of Progress_]
Through all the ages great souls have drowsed in spiritless
acquiescence until some tide of emotional energy swept over them, "as
the breeze wanders over the dead strings of some Aeolian harp, and
sweeps the music which slumbers upon them now into divine murmurings,
now into stormy sobs." And then, and then, these Joans of Arc, these
Hermit Peters, these Abraham Lincolns, these Pierpont Morgans, these
warriors, statesmen, financiers, business men, salesmen, these
practical crusaders and business enthusiasts, have sent out their
influence into measureless fields of achievement.
Emotional energy generated on proper lines, and based on the support
of a fixed intent, is a force that nothing can withstand, and we tell
you that every idea that comes into your mind has its emotional
quality, and that by the intelligent direction of your conscious
"_thinking_" you can call into your life or drive out of it these
powerful emotional influences for good or evil.
[Sidenote: _The Value of an Idea_]
As Mr. Waldo P. Warren says, "Who can measure the value of an idea?
Starting as the bud of an acorn, it becomes at last a forest of mighty
oaks; or beginning as a spark it consumes the rubbish of centuries.
"Ideas are as essential to progress as a hub to a wheel, for they form
the center around which all things revolve. Ideas begin great
enterprises, and the workers of all lands do their bidding. Ideas
govern the governors, rule the rulers, and manage the managers of all
nations and industries. Ideas are the motive power which turns the
tireless wheels of toil. Ideas raise the plowboy to president, and
constitute the primal element of the success of men and nations.
Ideas form the fire that lights the torch of progress, leading
on the centuries. Ideas are the keys which open the storehouses
of possibility. Ideas are the passports to the realms of great
achievement. Ideas are the touch-buttons which connect the currents of
energy with the wheels of history. Ideas determine the bounds, break
the limits, move on the goal, and waken latent capacity to successive
sunrises of better days."
Even without our telling you, you know that whenever a man makes up
his mind that he is beaten in some fight his very thinking so helps
on the fatal outcome.
[Sidenote: _The Hard Work Required to Fail_]
The truth is, _It takes just as much brain work to accomplish a
failure as it does to win success_--just as much effort to build up
a depressive mental attitude as an energizing one.
[Sidenote: _Creative Power of Thought_]
Take for granted that you have the courage, the energy, the
self-confidence and the enthusiasm to do what you want to do, and
you will find yourself in possession of these splendid qualities
when the need arises.
Consciously or unconsciously, you have already trained your mind to
discriminate among sense-impressions. It perceives some and ignores
others. For each perception it selects such associates as you have
trained it to select. Have you trained it wisely? Does it associate
the new facts of observation with those memory-pictures that will make
the new ideas useful and productive of fruitful bodily activities?
[Sidenote: _Conscious and Unconscious Training_]
If not, it is time for you to turn over a new leaf and habitually and
persistently direct your attention to those associative elements in
each new-learned fact that will make for health and happiness and
success. Train your mind deliberately, and day by day, to such
constant incorporation of feelings of courage and confidence and
assurance into all your thoughts that the associated impulses to
bodily activity will inevitably influence your whole life.
At the outset of every undertaking you are confronted with two ways of
attacking it. One is with _doubt and uncertainty_; the other is with
_courage and confidence_.
[Sidenote: _Two Ways of Attacking Business Problems_]
The first of these mental attitudes is purely negative. It is
inhibitory. It is made up of mental pictures of yourself in direful
situations, and these mental pictures bring with them depressing
emotions and _muscular inhibitions_.
The second attitude is positive. It is inspiring. It is made up of
mental pictures of yourself bringing the affair to a triumphant issue,
and these mental pictures bring with them stimulating emotions and the
impulses to those bodily activities that will _realize your aims_.
You have only to start the thing off with the right mental attitude
and hold to it. All the rest is automatic. Think this over.
Put this same idea into your business. Analyze your business with
reference to its _mental attitude_. Of course, you know all about its
organization, its various departments, its machinery and equipment,
its methods, its cost system, its organized efficiency. But what about
its mental attitude? Every store, every industrial establishment has
an air of its own, an indefinite something that distinguishes it from
every other. This is why you buy your cigars at one place instead of
at another.
[Sidenote: _Cutting into the Quick_]
Look behind the methods and the systems and all the wooden machinery
of your business and you come to its throbbing life. There you find
the characteristic quality that governs its future. There you find the
attitude, the mental attitude, that pulls the strings determining the
conduct of clerks and salesmen, managers and superintendents, and
this attitude is in the last analysis a reflection of the mental
attitude of the executive head himself--not necessarily the nominal
executive head, but the real executive head, however he be called.
[Sidenote: _Executives Real and Sham_]
Does the truckman whistle at his work? Is the salesman proud of his
line and his house? Does he approach his "prospect" with the confident
enthusiasm that brings orders? Does the shipping clerk take a
delighted interest in getting out his deliveries? They must have this
mental attitude, or you will never win. Are you yourself "making good"
in this respect? Remember that, whether you know it or not, your
inmost thoughts are reflected in your voice and manner, your every
act. And all your subordinates, whether they know it or not, see these
things and reflect your attitude.
[Sidenote: _Mental Attitude of One's Business_]
Therefore, in all you do, and in all you think, do it and think it
with courage and with unwavering faith, fearing nothing.
Later on we shall instruct you in specific methods that will enable
you to follow this injunction. For the present we must be content with
emphasizing its importance.
[Sidenote: _Psychological Engineering_]
In what follows in this book we shall bring forth no new principle
of mental operation, but shall illustrate those already learned by
reference to certain practical uses to which they can be applied. Our
purpose in this is to impress you with the immense practical value of
the knowledge you are acquiring, and to show you that this course
of reading has nothing to do with telepathy, spiritism, clairvoyance,
animal magnetism, fortune-telling, astrology or witchcraft, but,
on the contrary, that in its revelation of mental principles and
processes it is laying a scientific basis for a highly differentiated
type of efficiency engineering.