You know from past experiences that whenever you have been driven to the wall, or thought you were, you have extricated yourself in a way which you never would have dreamed possible had you not been put to the test. The trouble is that in your everyday life you don't go deep enough to tap the divine mind within you.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes that challenges can lead to personal growth and discovering inner strength.
Orison Swett Marden's quote speaks to the transformative power of adversity. It suggests that challenges push us to discover abilities and solutions we might not have imagined in times of ease. By reflecting on past difficulties, we understand that we have the potential to overcome obstacles, yet in our daily lives, we often fail to delve deep into our own capabilities and creativity, restricting our growth.
In practice
In a motivational speech to inspire students facing exams.
Opportunity is latent in the very foundation of human society. Opportunity is everywhere about us. But the preparation to seize upon the opportunity, and to make the most of it, is to be made by every one for himself ... he will be self-made or never made.
We lift ourselves by our thought, we climb upon our vision of ourselves. If you want to enlarge your life, you must first enlarge your thought of it and of yourself. Hold the ideal of yourself as you long to be, always, everywhere - your ideal of what you long to attain - the ideal of health, efficiency, success.
You cannot measure a man by his failures. You must know what use he makes of them. What did they mean to him. What did he get out of them.
Something greater than wealth, grander even than fame — that manhood, character, stand for success, and that nothing else really does.
Many a man has finally succeeded only because he has failed after repeated efforts. If he had never met defeat he would never have known any great victory.
If our dreams are sincere desires to achieve, not mere pipe-dreams, there is something deep within ourselves which comes out to meet them and helps to make them realities.
I still feel like my best surfing is ahead of me.
Progress begins with the belief that what is necessary is possible.
Nobody's going to do your life for you. You have to do it yourself, whether you're rich or poor, out of money or raking it in, the beneficiary of ridiculous fortune or terrible injustice. And you have to do it no matter what is true. No matter what is hard. No matter what unjust, sad, sucky things befall you. Self-pity is a dead-end road. You make the choice to drive down it. It's up to you to decide to stay parked there or to turn around and drive out.
The block of granite which was an obstacle in the pathway of the weak, became a stepping-stone in the pathway of the strong.
What we can or cannot do, what we consider possible or impossible, is rarely a function of our true capability. It is more likely a function of our beliefs about who we are.
When you once get an idea in which you believe with all your heart, work it out.
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