Preface

The two absolutely necessary elements for your success of any kind are:

1. Desire

2. Power

As for desire, we all possess it in healthy abundance. You and I want to advance ourselves in whatever areas we fancy and in the shortest time possible. We all wish for more prosperity and prestige in our businesses and professions. As perfectly normal individuals we want greater achievement and satisfaction in affairs of love and sex. Every person hopes to command respect and popularity from those around them. Most importantly, we ask for a future rich in comfort and security.

All of these plus much more can be won by you — if you thoroughly understand the other side of the golden coin — that of Power. If your dreams are to come true, desire must be matched by the enabling energy. Without personal Power a man's wants and needs are painfully elusive, always disappointingly out of reach. The powerless man misses the mark — and consequently misses the pleasures of the luxurious life. Fortunately, no one, including you, need do without any longer. The Power Principles you are about to discover will see to that.

The purpose of this book is to show you how to turn your many rightful desires into possessed treasures.

The means by which you can achieve these miracles is through the discovery and use of your natural talents and skills and energies.

More Power to you! That is what you can expect to receive and actually win.

What, precisely, Do We Mean by Power?

Take as an example that universally admired character trait which is called daring. What fantastic worlds open magically before the man who dares! That force alone conquered fame and fortune for men like Andrew Carnegie, Mark Twain, Albert Einstein, Hernando Cortez. As you will see in following pages, the very same daring which won victories in their vastly different areas can guarantee your victory in your particular world.

Ever feel desperate and confused, as if it's just no use trying any longer? Within this book you will find some amazing ideas about the Power — yes, the Power of a desperate condition. You will be clearly shown the way to turn confusion itself into a weapon for triumph.

Thousands of others have vaulted skyward with this secret force and so can you.

It was the Power of a compelling personality that contributed largely to the world-wide prominence of heroes like Dwight D. Eisenhower and Winston Churchill. Rest assured that you will shortly be learning to use this force for your own prominence and enrichment.

A commanding personality holds enchanting authority over people and circumstances. That is a worthwhile reason why you should start right now to build your personality-power.

This is but a small portion of good things to come. Power for wondrous achievement will be a revealed secret, for it flows in abundance through the man or woman who takes but a bit of time to find it.

So ... from this page onward we will venture together toward the prize of more personal Power.



Some years ago, on a calm February morning, the 1,600-ton ship Red Rock set sail from Townsville, Australia. Her bow pointed toward the volcanic isle of New Caledonia in the southwest Pacific Ocean. It was apparently to be a routine voyage across the stretch of sea for the purpose of taking on a cargo of nickel ore. Had you stood on the Australian shore to watch the Red Rock disappear over the horizon you would have thought there was nothing unusual.

On the following June 7th a solemn-faced representative of the world-famous insurance firm of Lloyd's of London took the floor to make a grim announcement: The Red Rock was now more than 100 days overdue and must therefore be posted as officially missing. This was but another way of lamentably declaring that the vessel and her crew of 24 were considered lost forever to tragedy and mystery.

Lloyd's announcement was made with considerable reluctance and regret. The decision to declare any ship officially missing was made only when all hope for its safety seemed beyond reason or hope — and there was no reason to consider the Red Rock as anything but hopelessly lost.

She was written off as lost on June 7th.

Five days later she turned up safely and successfully at her intended port.

It was the first and only time in the entire history of Lloyd's of London that a ship officially posted as missing had ever reappeared. The Red Rock had made the fantastic voyage out of written-off past history back to the present day!

What had happened during that mysterious voyage? The Red Rock's hardy captain stood before a curious and admiring throng to tell a tale of conquest:

"From the very start the winds and currents whipped against us, driving us far off course. That alone was enough to lose us precious weeks of time. But not a man lost heart. No adverse gale could whip those powerful men on deck.

"Then there were the tricky and time-taking tasks of skirting the treacherous reefs of the Coral Sea. That was a challenge all right, but we outwitted the Sea by skillfully doing what we had to do.

"To top it off we sailed straight into the storms of the hurricane season. That left us with the choice of battling our way through or of turning back to Australia. We chose to fight it out. My crew flinched not even once — they heroically took the storms in stride.

"That's how we made it. Even though you gentlemen gave us up as lost. We may have been battling every moment but we never lost heart for a bare instant."

The perfect moral is, of course, don't give up the ship! Regardless of what your ship—your desire—may consist.

There is no need for anyone to consider himself as lost or as hopelessly adrift or as missing out on life's very best. Not as long as he is a perfectly powerful individual. That is exactly what you are, whether you know it or believe it or not.

Power!

Whatever you want, you have the power to attain it. The man or woman who calmly and matter-of-factly accepts this pronouncement at face value will soon find themselves working magical accomplishments far beyond that which they previously dreamed possible.

Dr. Gardner Murphy, one of America's foremost psychologists, declares, "Often in contemplating the amazing range of power set free in a person who is at once liberated from false assumptions, arrogant rigidities, or bland complacency, one is amazed to see how far the untethered mind can roam." *

*Human Potentialities (New York, Basic Books, Inc., 1958)

The fact is, you are ten times more powerful than you think you are!

The above is not merely a catchy sentence intended solely to make you feel good. It happens to be a scientifically-based truth. It should, however, make you feel good, even delightfully excited. By the time you are through with this book I have every confidence that you will have proved for yourself that you actually are a ten times stronger person who commands themselves, who directs and influences people and circumstances, and who builds fabulous fortunes.

Perhaps you say, "I feel that perhaps I could live a more powerful life if only my circumstances were a bit better or if I didn't get discouraged so easily."

I am saying to you, you now possess all the inner power you need for uplifting those poor circumstances; also, there is absolutely nothing in the whole wide world to prevent you from leading a thrilling life of courageous conquest.
Where do you need more power?

To attract more friends?
To experience a richer love life?
To solve nagging problems?
To carry through a self-improvement plan?
To expand your career or business?
To lick failure once and for all?
To free yourself from frustration?
To live an exciting life?
To build more all-around happiness?

For every need in your life you have a power which can satisfy it. Life is so constituted that every need is matched by a supply.

More power!

Every man and woman instinctively knows his or her need of it. Feeling confused and trapped, they constantly seek escape to their rightful freedom.

That freedom can be found in fresh power. Just as new discoveries in rocket fuel may enable man to escape the pressures of gravity, so can your new power-discoveries whisk you above the pressures of earthly existence.

Where do we find our fresh energies? As we shall see, in life itself. It has been with us all the time, awaiting those who dare to employ it.

Life offers to every man, "More power to you."

It is up to you to accept that offer.

Life-power Is Both Good And Necessary

Some folks hesitate to seize additional strength because they think it wrong or dangerous to be a powerful individual. Somehow they have acquired the false notion that tyranny or dictatorship or cruelty are the outcomes of a powerful personality. These characteristics are not power. They are weaknesses disguised as power.

It is not the strong who are dangerous to the world and to themselves. It is the weak and the inadequate who threaten — and sometimes destroy — mankind's peace and prosperity.

As Eric Hoffer states, "Hatred, malice, rudeness, intolerance, and suspicion are the fruits of weakness. The resentment of the weak does not spring from any injustice done to them but from the sense of their inadequacy and impotence." *

*The Passionate State of Mind (New York, Harper Brothers, 1955).

Genuine power is always good, beneficial, and necessary. That is just one reason why it is not only your right but your duty to seize every ounce of power available. Actually, there are ten thousand reasons why you should be strong, and not a single reason why you should not be.

There are countless historical examples of famous persons whose personal power not only insured their own success but benefited mankind enormously.

Baron Rothschild, of the financial empire known as the House of Rothschild, started off with the powers of daring enterprise and cool judgment. In time they gave him another power — that of a financial fortune which was to save England from bankruptcy during the Napoleonic era.

Ralph Waldo Emerson's principle power was that of a rebellious spirit. The great liberator of the human mind simply wouldn't stand for the nonsense of his day which sadly claimed man to be a slave to circumstances or to his own negativities. (We shall have more to say about this interesting power of rebellion in Chapter 9.)

Sometimes a great vision is strength enough. One day a young Frenchman sat in his shipboard cabin studying a map. He was thrilled at the possibility of cutting a canal between the Mediterranean and the Red Sea. The vision persisted until Ferdinand de Lesseps completed one of the greatest and most beneficial engineering feats of all time — the Suez Canal.

Your Limitless Sources Of Fresh Power

We want next to discover the sources of a man's strength and to identify clearly the strengths themselves.

Every power you will ever need for any purpose comes from two sources, though these two often overlap and intermingle:

1. From within yourself.

2. From exterior sources.

Your inner resources are those which arise from within your own network, such as thoughts, emotions, physical strength, nervous energy, your senses of sight and hearing. Also included are your powers of speech, your instinct for self-preservation, your urge for sexual fulfillment. All these and many more are wholly natural and healthy elements which we classify as inner powers.

Dr. Fritz Kunkel declares, "Immense hidden powers seem to lurk in the unconscious depths of even the most common man — indeed, of all people without exception. It is these powers ... that are responsible for all great creative efforts, whether in the form of a new technical invention or a work of art." *

*In Search of Maturity (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1943).

Your exterior forces are widely varied. They include everything beneficial that resides outside of yourself. Here are just a few examples: books, schools, teachers, scientific principles, money, mechanical tools of all kinds, music, electricity, friends, vehicles of transportation, and so on.

"It's astonishing," a man declared to me, "when you look upon these elements as powers for self-betterment. That's exactly what they are. When you realize how well-supplied a man actually is, I don't see how he can fail to achieve anything he wants!"

No man need at all fail to achieve what he wants — as long as he does realize how extraordinarily powerful he really is at the present moment. His realization is the switch that whirls his personal motors toward generating new energies in his behalf.

Emerson makes it clear, "Life is a search after power; and this is an element with which the world is so saturated — there is no chink or crevice in which it is not lodged — that no honest seeker goes unrewarded."

As you proceed with these pages you will be shown how to locate and employ expertly those particular powers which contribute the most to your special goals.

What, exactly, do we mean by power? For the purposes of this book we define power as any beneficial force. This includes all those we have just discussed, plus many more to he examined later on. Control of your inner forces guarantees mastery of the exterior ones.