You started with a dream. That dream releases within you a power to create the things that you dreamed.

Man Can Create

When God made man, He made him in His image. He gave man the ability to create. It is not quite in the same way as the Creator, but in this world alone, man has a limited power to create.

Just look at the great artists, sculptors and musicians. Walk down a street and look at the buildings. Who made those? God created all the materials, but who constructed that building? Man did. Who designed that architecture? Man did.

A motor car rides past, and you ask,

"Who made that?"

Did it just appear? No, somebody made it. Man took what was available to him in this world and he made a creation. How did somebody go about creating that motor car? Somebody dreamed a dream and said,

"One day I won't have to walk anymore. One day I won't have to ride in a horse and buggy anymore."

Somebody dreamed a dream. Somebody set a goal, put a plan in motion and brought it to pass. But where did it start? It started with a dream.

You see it starts much deeper. It starts in those dreams and visions that come up from deep inside of us; from within the spirit of man. That is where your creative ability begins.

Speak it and Act it

As it comes up from your inward man, that creative ability begins to show itself in your mind and in your emotions, in your desires and in your feelings. And then, by an act of your will, you choose to release that dream into the world.

How do you do it? There are only two ways to do it.

If someone stands doing nothing, you cannot see his or her dreams. You cannot read his or her mind. You cannot tell until the person opens his or her mouth to speak.

Now if I start scratching myself, you know what I am thinking. I'm thinking, "I'm itchy." My action shows you what was going on in my mind.

Words and actions are the only ways we have of bringing out what is in our minds. They bring into reality what has just been a fantasy; a thought, a dream or a vision.

You have had your dream and you've set the goals. Can you see the actions already beginning to take place?

You have laid out a plan. Now you must put some kind of action into that plan, in order to reach the goal and to fulfill your dream.

Start Speaking Those Goals

So the two actions you need to carry out are words, and some kind of physical activity. Words are the most important to start with.

Words always come first. You must verbalize your plans before action can take place. You may wonder why. It is because words commit you to your goals. They are where you sign on the dotted line.

Up until now, your goals may have sat in your mind. But then you open your mouth and say,

"I will be wealthy by the age of 30."

The moment you do that people will say,

"Okay big deal, let's see you do it."

Some folks believe you should not tell others what your goals are, so that if they fail, nobody can condemn you.

That is an escape. The sooner you open your mouth and say what you plan to do, the sooner you commit yourself to follow it through.

Until you are prepared to say it, you will never do it. It is one of the keys to success.

Confession Keeps You Dreaming

Unfortunately many people have taken this confession idea to be a kind of magic wand that says,

"I will be wealthy one day".

"I am going to be a millionaire."

"I am intelligent."

"I am beautiful."

"I have a new car."

"I am... I have..."

You can confess these over repeatedly. But what exactly are you doing? You are just confessing your dreams. You are still staying in the realm of fantasy.

To move out of that realm you need to say something like,

"I will raise a million dollars within the next 10 years."

Now that's a commitment. Say it where people can hear you. But actually it doesn't start there. It starts by you talking to yourself. There is a term that athletes use. It goes like this:

Psyche Yourself Up

I remember in my early days in South Africa, they had an annual race called The Comrades' Marathon. This was an amazing race and many different people entered. The idea was to make it through by helping one another along the way. That's why they called it 'The Comrades'.

There was one person who won the race many years in a row. He was a man by the name of Bruce Fordyce. We used to sit and watch it on TV every year, just to see Bruce Fordyce win it again.

He was an amazing person who looked small and frail. He was nothing like you would have expected from a successful runner. He was just an ordinary 'nice guy'.

We would watch him gather with thousands of runners. The gun would fire, and off they'd go. You would see them all running - the ones at the front wanting to be on the television screen as the front-runners.

You would look for Bruce Fordyce and you couldn't see him. He was with the group near the back. In fact it took a long while before the crowd began to thin out and people started to fall out.

People started to fall back, and eventually you would see the steady front-runners beginning to come forward. You would look for Bruce Fordyce, and he was sitting at the back there somewhere.

Then it narrowed down even more, until you had three or four people at the front. And if you looked for Bruce, he was the fourth. You thought,

"Is this guy ever planning to win the race today, because he looks like he's dragging behind all the way?"

But you see he was doing something that we call 'psyching yourself up'. Have you ever heard that term? It is an English expression.

It means using the power of the soul; the psyche. He was getting himself geared for that final stint when he would win. And those runners who knew how to do that were the ones who always came out near the front.

When they started out, most of them perhaps had been doing the same amount of running. Probably all of them had about the same amount of physical fitness.

What is it that makes one person win? They have shown that sometimes a person can win by a microsecond. What is it that makes one person win over another? It depends on how well he psyches himself up.

Bruce knew how to do this, and he won the race for many years before someone finally took the record from him.

See it and Speak it

How do you psyche yourself up? You firstly see yourself carrying out the plan. You see it very clearly in your mind.

What is your dream and vision? See it in your mind. What is your goal? Can you see yourself reaching it? What is your plan? Can you see yourself following it? Can you see this clearly in your mind?

And then you begin to talk to yourself. No it is not the first sign of madness. You begin to mutter to yourself.

One of the terms used for this is meditation. I am not talking about TM (Transcendental Meditation) or getting into a spooky kind of state of mind. That is dangerous because you open your mind to influences that you shouldn't.

True meditation is largely actually muttering to yourself. God told Joshua to take the Scriptures that he had, and to speak them with his mouth and to meditate on them.

He said, "Keep these words in your mouth, and meditate on them day and night."

Joshua was a young man, who before was just his mentor's servant. Moses his mentor had died, and here he was, a little weakling taking over from his mentor. He was having a problem with all the people who were now saying,

"Well we know Moses was a good leader and we could follow him, but we don't know if we can trust you."

But Joshua took everything that Moses had written down. This made up, what to him at that time was the Scriptures. He began to speak it and mutter it, and see himself acting just like Moses.

And what happened? He became an even greater leader than Moses was. The people followed so strongly behind him, that when somebody tried to oppose Joshua they said,

"Let's put him to death. How dare he disobey Joshua. He's the man."

Mutter to Yourself

It starts with words. It starts with visualization and muttering to yourself. Do you know what the most important reason for muttering to yourself is? It is because each one of us needs to be told what to do.

It is very easy. You go to work and your boss says,

"I expect you to do this job by lunch time. And can I have the file on my desk by 1 o'clock please?"

Well that's pretty clear. You don't go onto the Internet and surf. You don't play games on the computer. You don't get sidetracked by chatting to people on the phone. You get down, you do the job and you finish it.

Who is in charge of telling you what to do with your life? Only one person is. You will find him in the mirror. It is you.

Who is going to tell you what to do? There is only one person in this world that can tell you what to do, and that's you. So when you mutter to yourself you are saying,

"Okay, listen here. You are going to do this now. You are going to push hard. You are going to cut down on all the calories and the food, and you are going to lose weight. You are going to go for long walks and run for a mile every day. You are going to do push-ups and push weights."

<-Chapter 3   Chapter 5->   Show Condensed Version

Post A Review For This Book