Self-control is strength. Right thought is mastery. Calmness is power.
Interpretation
Self-control and calmness empower us, while right thinking leads to mastery over ourselves.
This quote by James Allen emphasizes the importance of self-discipline and clear thinking in achieving personal mastery and inner strength. It suggests that true power lies in our ability to maintain calmness and focus our thoughts positively, rather than letting external circumstances dictate our reactions and emotions.
In practice
During a motivational speech on personal development, to emphasize the role of self-control in success.
A man becomes calm in the measure that he understands himself as a thought-evolved being. For such knowledge necessitates the understanding of others as the result of thought, and as he develops a right understanding, and sees ever more clearly the internal relations of things by the action of cause and effect, he ceases to fuss, fume, worry, and grieve. He remains poised, steadfast, serene.
The body is the servant of the mind. It obeys the operations of the mind, whether they be deliberately chosen or automatically expressed.
Work joyfully and peacefully, knowing that right thoughts and right efforts inevitably bring about right results.
Man is made or unmade by himself. In the armory of thought he forges the weapons by which he destroys himself. He also fashions the tools with which he builds for himself heavenly mansions of joy and strength and peace.
They who have conquered doubt and fear have conquered failure.
Good thoughts and actions can never produce bad results; bad thoughts and actions can never produce good results … We understand this law in the natural world, and work with it; but few understand it in the mental and moral world—although its operation there is just as simple and undeviating— and they, therefore, do not cooperate with it.
Never assume the obvious is true.
Skill is successfully walking a tightrope between the twin towers of New York's World Trade Center. Intelligence is not trying.
Rich honesty dwells like a miser, Sir, in a poor house; as your pearl in your foul oyster.
Humility has nothing to do with depreciating ourselves and our gifts in ways we know to be untrue. Even "humble" attitudes can be masks of pride. Humility is that freedom from our self which enables us to be in positions in which we have neither recognition nor importance, neither power nor visibility, and even experience deprivation, and yet have joy and delight. It is the freedom of knowing that we are not in the center of the universe, not even in the center of our own private universe.
There is no point in apportioning blame. What is done, is done.
If people find that controversial then I would just refer them to the Sermon on the Mount.
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