If
a steamship lost its rudder, in mid-ocean, and began circling around,
it would soon exhaust its fuel supply without reaching shore, despite
the fact that it would use up enough energy to carry it to shore and
back several times.
The
man who labors without a definite purpose that is backed up by a
definite plan for its attainment, resembles the ship that has lost
its rudder. Hard labor and good intentions are not sufficient to
carry a man through to success, for how may a man be sure that he has
attained success unless he has established in his mind some definite
object that he wishes?
Every
well built house started in the form of a definite purpose plus a
definite plan in the nature of a set of blueprints. Imagine what
would happen if one tried to build a house by the haphazard method,
without plans. Workmen would be in each other's way, building
material would be piled all over the lot before the foundation was
completed, and everybody on the job would have a different notion as
to how the house ought to be built. Result, chaos and
misunderstandings and cost that would be prohibitive.
Yet
had you ever stopped to think that most people finish school, take
up employment or enter a trade or profession without the slightest
conception of anything that even remotely resembles a definite
purpose or a definite plan? In view of the fact that science has
provided reasonably accurate ways and means of analyzing character
and determining the lifework for which people are best fitted, does
it not seem a modern tragedy that ninety-five per cent of the adult
population of the world is made up of men and women who are failures
because they have not found their proper niches in the world's work?
If
success depends upon power, and if power is organized effort, and
if the first step in the direction of organization is a definite
purpose, then one may easily see why such a purpose is essential.
Until a man selects a definite purpose in life he dissipates his
energies and spreads his thoughts over so many subjects and in so
many different directions that they lead not to power, but to
indecision and weakness.
With
the aid of a small reading glass you can teach yourself a great
lesson on the value of organized effort. Through the use of such a
glass you can focus the sun-rays on a definite spot so strongly that
they will bum a hole through a plank. Remove the glass (which
represents the definite purpose) and the same rays of sun may shine
on that same plank for a million years without burning it.
A
thousand electric dry batteries, when properly organized and
connected together with wires, will produce enough power to run a
good sized piece of machinery for several hours, but take those same
cells singly, disconnected, and not one of them would exert enough
energy to turn the machinery over once. The faculties of your mind
might properly be likened to those dry cells. When you organize your
faculties, according to the plan laid down, and direct them toward
the attainment of a definite purpose in life, you then take
advantage of the cooperative or accumulative principle out of which
power is developed, which is called Organized Effort.
