Success / Fear
From:

Pots and Pans and Millions by Edith Mae Cummings
Washington D.C.
National School of Business Science for Women, 1929

1929: Make Success Visible

Many women form the chronic habit of indulging in fits of depressing that we call the 'blues.' They allow the 'blues' an easy entrance to their minds, in fact are always at home to them and are susceptible to every form of discouragement that comes along. Every little setback, every little difficulty, sends them into the 'blues' and they will say 'what's the use?' As a result their work is poor and ineffective, and they do not accomplish the things they desire.

Every time you give way to discouragement, every time you are blue, you are going backward, your destructive thoughts are tearing down what you have been trying to build. One fit of discouragement ~ visualizing failure or poverty ~ will rapidly destroy the result of much triumphant thought building. Your creative forces will harmonize with your thoughts, your emotions and moods; they will create in sympathy with them.

Saturate your mind with hope, the expectation of better things, with the belief that your dreams are coming true. Be convinced that you are going to win out; let your mind rest with success thoughts. Don't let the enemies of your success and happiness dominate in your mind or they will bring to you the condition they represent.

I know of nothing that gives more satisfaction than the consciousness that we have formed the habit of winning, the habit of victory, the habit of carrying a victorious mental attitude, of walking, acting, talking, looking like a winner. That sort of attitude always keeps the dominant, helpful qualities to the fore ~ always in the ascendancy.

One of the most obstinate of habits in life, and one fatal to efficiency, is the habit of feeling defeated.
 1929: Fear

How easy it is for us to deplete our strength and lessen our chances for success by lying awake nights, worrying over our problems of tomorrow! And if we will analyze the things we have worried about in the past, we can see now how little alarming they really were. Worry never adds anything to our income, our health or our comfort, and fear never solves our problems or helps us in any way, and we all know, if we will stop to think about it, that the greatest secret of success and happiness is to have faith to face life with courage and confidence, and not to anticipate trouble.

Scientists tell us that fear may be conquered, that it has at last become possible for large numbers of people to pass from the cradle to the grave without ever having a pang of genuine fear. There is no doubt that fear and worry, those terrible evils that have so long cursed mankind and held back the development of the race, can be absolutely driven out of our lives. And you will not get very far, my friend, nor climb very high, until you rid yourself of your fears and doubts, of the worry and discouragement which are blighting lives, strangling aspirations and obscuring ideals. Many really able women are struggling along, barely making a living, getting nowhere near the realization of their dreams, because they listened to the whisperings of those traitors, the fears and doubts and worries which held them back from doing what they were sent into the world to do!

Instead of picturing trouble and misfortune ahead, brooding over the difficulties that confront you, and fearing you will never be able to get past them, flood your mind with success thoughts, with the thought of the power that is stored in the great within of you, always wanting to be used, always more than a match for the giant fear that tries to frighten you with unrealities that have no existence outside of your troubled imagination.