Listen to episode 1132 of the Inspirational Living podcast: The Emotional Forces that Drive Success. Edited and adapted from How to Develop Your Will Power by Clare Tree Major.

Inspirational Podcast Excerpt: Self-control is emotional control. Like all forces inherent in human nature, the emotional forces work equally thoroughly in either direction, as builders or as destroyers. You are, whether you like it or not, dealing with forces, with laws, with energy, which must expend themselves, must carry out their predestined mission — forces as blind and as inevitable as the forces of electricity or the laws of gravitation. 

You must either be hurled to destruction by them, or you must control and use them. You cannot escape them. They are part of your nature. The more vital and intense your nature, the greater your possibilities of power. The fact that you are awake enough to be interested in self-development is sufficient proof of your own possibility of superseding in development the masses which make up the great average class of humanity. 

---------------------                                 

Get our popular 3 books of Life Lessons in paperback and e-book on Amazon. Go to: https://livinghour.org/books

Get our podcast with full transcripts and without ads by visiting: https://livinghour.org/patron 

Transform your life in 30 days with our MAJESTY meditation program: https://livinghour.org/majesty. Get 30% off with the coupon code: INSPIRATION

Listen to episode 1131 of the Inspirational Living podcast: How to Succeed in the Game of Life. Adapted from “If I Were Twenty-One” by Dr. Frank Crane.

Inspirational Podcast Excerpt:Never forget that anyone can be happy if they choose to be. Happiness does not depend on circumstance, but upon YOU. This is perhaps the greatest truth in the world, and the one most persistently disbelieved.

Happiness, said Thomas Carlyle, is as the value of a common fraction, which results from dividing the numerator by the denominator. The numerator, in life, is What We Have. The denominator is What We Think We Ought to Have. Humankind may be divided into two classes: the Fools and the Wise. The fools are eternally trying to get happiness by multiplying the numerator; the wise divide the denominator.

---------------------                                 

Get our popular 3 books of Life Lessons in paperback and e-book on Amazon. Go to: https://livinghour.org/books

Get our podcast with full transcripts and without ads by visiting: https://livinghour.org/patron 

Transform your life in 30 days with our MAJESTY meditation program: https://livinghour.org/majesty. Get 30% off with the coupon code: INSPIRATION

Listen to episode 1124 of the Inspirational Living podcast: Your Words as a Powerful Force. Edited and adapted from The Mental Cure by Warren Felt Evans.

Inspirational Podcast Excerpt: Your words are charged with the very life of you -- the vital force of your soul. They affect not only the mind, but they sink into the interior depths of our being. They are not like leaves loosened from the trees by an autumn wind, and strewn upon a lake to float upon its surface. They have spiritual gravity, which causes them to sink into the hidden depths of the spirit.

Words are the index of character. They enclose within them our thoughts, and the tone with which they are spoken indicates the state of our affections. The utterance of a single word can reveal the love, fear, or hate that lurks within it, and, as such, our life and character are laid open to public view. By the effect of our words, others can perceive the cause. The heart is the fountain; words are the stream. If the fountain is clear as crystal, the issuing spring will be the water of life. 

---------------------                                 

Get our popular 3 books of Life Lessons in paperback and e-book on Amazon. Go to: https://livinghour.org/books

Get our podcast with full transcripts and without ads by visiting: https://livinghour.org/patron 

Transform your life in 30 days with our MAJESTY meditation program: https://livinghour.org/majesty. Get 30% off with the coupon code: INSPIRATION

Listen to episode 1061 of the Inspirational Living podcast: Building Integrity & Self-Respect | Building Your Personal Brand. Edited and adapted from The Keys to Success by B.C. Forbes.

Inspirational Podcast Excerpt: Self-respect is one of the basic ingredients that go to make success. If we lose respect for ourselves, we will sooner or later lose the respect of others. Self-respect is not pride. It is not haughtiness. It is that hard-to-define "something" which prevents us from stooping to meanness, pettiness, harshness, bossiness; which resents every form of unfairness; which rebels against injustice; which compels us to have scrupulous regard for the rights and feelings of others. 

---------------------                                 

Get our popular 3 books of Life Lessons in paperback and e-book on Amazon. Go to: https://livinghour.org/books

Get our podcast with full transcripts and without ads by visiting: https://livinghour.org/patron 

Transform your life in 30 days with our MAJESTY meditation program: https://livinghour.org/majesty. Get 30% off with the coupon code: INSPIRATION

Listen to episode 1060 of the Inspirational Living podcast: Be of Good Cheer. Edited and adapted from The Blessing of Cheerfulness by James Russell Miller.

Inspirational Podcast Excerpt: Everyone carries an atmosphere about them. It may be healthful and invigorating, or it may be unwholesome and depressing. It may make a little spot of the world a sweeter, better, safer place to live in. Or it may make it harder for those to live worthily and beautifully who dwell within its circle. We are responsible for this atmosphere.

Our influence may be involuntary in its final effect. We cannot wholly change it from evil to good on any particular day by a mere volition. It is something that belongs to our personality. It is an emanation from our character; and our character is the growth of all our years, what has been built up in us by all the lessons, experiences, impressions, and influences of life, from childhood.

---------------------                                 

Get our popular 3 books of Life Lessons in paperback and e-book on Amazon. Go to: https://livinghour.org/books

Get our podcast with full transcripts and without ads by visiting: https://livinghour.org/patron 

Transform your life in 30 days with our MAJESTY meditation program: https://livinghour.org/majesty. Get 30% off with the coupon code: INSPIRATION

Listen to episode 1059 of the Inspirational Living podcast: You are Part of the Great Chain of Life. Adapted Edited and adapted from The Mind & Its Education by George Herbert Betts.

Inspirational Podcast Excerpt: Each individual, busied with their own affairs and blinded by their own interests, is likely to take themselves for granted and forget that they are a part of a great, unbroken procession of life, which began at the beginning and will go on till the end. Strange indeed would it be if all the generations who have lived, struggled, and died before us, and whose blood flows in our veins had left no impression upon us. 

We are a part of all that has gone before, and all that comes after us will be a part of us. Each generation receives, through heredity, the products of the long experience through which their ancestors have passed. The generation receiving the gift today lives its own brief life, makes its own little contribution to the sum total, and then passes on as millions have done before. 

---------------------                                 

Get our popular 3 books of Life Lessons in paperback and e-book on Amazon. Go to: https://livinghour.org/books

Get our podcast with full transcripts and without ads by visiting: https://livinghour.org/patron 

Transform your life in 30 days with our MAJESTY meditation program: https://livinghour.org/majesty. Get 30% off with the coupon code: INSPIRATION

Listen to episode 1058 of the Inspirational Living podcast: The Gospel of Good Living | Agnostic Spirituality. Adapted from “What Must We Do to Be Saved” by Robert G. Ingersoll.

Inspirational Podcast Excerpt:I believe in the gospel of cheerfulness; the gospel of Good Nature; the gospel of Good Health. Let us pay some attention to our bodies. Take care of our bodies, and our souls will take care of themselves. 

I believe the time will come when the public thought will be so great and grand that we will no longer perpetuate disease with our bad habits. I believe the time will come when we will not fill the future with cancer and insanity. I believe the time will come when we will study ourselves, and understand the laws of health and then we will say: “We are under divine obligation to put the flags of health in the cheeks of our children.”

---------------------                                 

Get our popular 3 books of Life Lessons in paperback and e-book on Amazon. Go to: https://livinghour.org/books

Get our podcast with full transcripts and without ads by visiting: https://livinghour.org/patron 

Transform your life in 30 days with our MAJESTY meditation program: https://livinghour.org/majesty. Get 30% off with the coupon code: INSPIRATION

Listen to a sample episode of Our Sunday Talks, edited and adapted from Love’s Way by Orison Swett Marden, published in 1918. This series has over 200 episodes, and deals with topics related to spirituality. Gain access to more episodes (ad-free) by becoming our patron for as little as $3 a month.

By becoming a patron, you'll also gain access to our entire archive of Inspirational Living podcasts, plus full transcripts. Learn about the benefits our patrons receive by going to https://livinghour.org/patron. Thank you.

Inspirational Podcast Excerpt: How little do the majority of us realize that everything that is desirable is so only because of its cost in effort! Supposing the Creator had provided everything full grown, ready made for our use, and that every human being had been college educated when born; supposing every wish could be gratified without any effort on our part, who would want to live in such a backboneless, jellyfish world, where there was no stamina, no initiative, no grit, no resolution, no incentive to activity, and consequently no stalwart manhood, no strong sweet womanhood, — because you know that all these things would be impossible without the constant struggle to attain. 

Listen to episode 1057 of the Inspirational Living podcast: The World is Calling You | Uplifting Podcasts. Adapted from Beginning Right (How to Succeed) by Nathanial C. Fowler.

Inspirational Podcast Excerpt: The monument of success is but a collection of little successes, a gathering together of small things well done. If you stand in the majesty, and dignity, and glory of your personality, with your feet planted upon the material earth and your eyes looking into the sky of opportunity, fail not to realize that (so long as the sun shines or the rain descends, so long as there is day or night) you, not others, are in command of your wonderful majesty.

---------------------                                 

Get our popular 3 books of Life Lessons in paperback and e-book on Amazon. Go to: https://livinghour.org/books

Get our podcast with full transcripts and without ads by visiting: https://livinghour.org/patron 

Transform your life in 30 days with our MAJESTY meditation program: https://livinghour.org/majesty. Get 30% off with the coupon code: INSPIRATION

Listen to episode 1056 of the Inspirational Living podcast: The True Meaning & Power of Freedom. Edited and adapted from Where Dwells the Soul Serene by Stanton Davis Kirkham.

Inspirational Podcast Excerpt: To explore the unknown regions of the mind, to seek that shining land where dwells the Soul, serene — here is a work worthy of the true explorer's mettle. Let us explore this world of thought; let us blaze a path and wear a trail up over the mountains; let us recount our escape from the wilderness, and leave a record of our journey from bondage to freedom.

It is the royal privilege of every person to so live that their life and example shall be an inspiration; to so walk erect and free that others shall be obliged to inquire as to the means of our freedom. 

---------------------                                 

Get our popular 3 books of Life Lessons in paperback and e-book on Amazon. Go to: https://livinghour.org/books

Get our podcast with full transcripts and without ads by visiting: https://livinghour.org/patron 

Transform your life in 30 days with our MAJESTY meditation program: https://livinghour.org/majesty. Get 30% off with the coupon code: INSPIRATION

Listen to episode 1055 of the Inspirational Living podcast: The Power of Cheerfulness. Edited and adapted from A Gentle Heart by James Russell Miller.

Inspirational Podcast Excerpt: Cheerfulness is a prime secret of health. It keeps one well. It keeps one young. It is one of the secrets of youth.

The philosopher Swedenborg once said that in heaven the oldest angels are the youngest. All life there is toward youth. One reason must be that all life there is cheerful and joyous. If the people in heaven still fretted, and complained, and got discouraged, and went about with heavy hearts and long faces (cheerless and despondent, as so many people do here) — they would get very old by the time they had been a few millenniums in heaven. But being always of good cheer, they keep always young, growing ever towards youth.

---------------------                                 

Get our popular 3 books of Life Lessons in paperback and e-book on Amazon. Go to: https://livinghour.org/books

Get our podcast with full transcripts and without ads by visiting: https://livinghour.org/patron 

Transform your life in 30 days with our MAJESTY meditation program: https://livinghour.org/majesty. Get 30% off with the coupon code: INSPIRATION

Listen to episode 1054 of the Inspirational Living podcast: Motivation for a Beautiful Life. Edited and adapted from The Royal Path of Life by T.L. Haines & L.W. Yaggy.

Inspirational Podcast Excerpt: Beautiful lives have blossomed in the darkest places, just as pure white lilies full of fragrance do on the slimy, stagnant waters. No possession is so productive of real influence as a highly cultivated intellect. Wealth, birth, and official station may (and do) secure to their possessors an external, superficial courtesy; but they never did, and never can, command the reverence of the heart. It is only the men and women of large and noble soul (who blend a cultivated mind with an upright heart) who earn the tribute of deep and genuine respect.

---------------------                                 

Get our popular 3 books of Life Lessons in paperback and e-book on Amazon. Go to: https://livinghour.org/books

Get our podcast with full transcripts and without ads by visiting: https://livinghour.org/patron 

Transform your life in 30 days with our MAJESTY meditation program: https://livinghour.org/majesty. Get 30% off with the coupon code: INSPIRATION

Listen to episode 1053 of the Inspirational Living podcast: The Art of Public Speaking | Success Talks. Edited and adapted from the book Self-Investment by Orison Swett Marden, published in 1911.

Inspirational Podcast Excerpt: It does not matter whether you want to be a public speaker or not. A person should have such complete control of themselves, should be so self-reliant and self-poised, that they can get up in front of any audience, no matter how large or formidable, and express their thoughts clearly and distinctly.

Self-expression in some manner is the only means of developing mental power. It may be in music; it may be on canvas; it may be through oratory; it may come through selling goods or writing a book; but it must come through self-expression. Self-expression in any legitimate form tends to call out what is in us, our resourcefulness and inventiveness. But no other form of self-expression develops us so thoroughly and so effectively, and so quickly unfolds all of our powers, as speaking before an audience.

---------------------                                 

Get our popular 3 books of Life Lessons in paperback and e-book on Amazon. Go to: https://livinghour.org/books

Get our podcast with full transcripts and without ads by visiting: https://livinghour.org/patron 

Transform your life in 30 days with our MAJESTY meditation program: https://livinghour.org/majesty. Get 30% off with the coupon code: INSPIRATION

Welcome to Our Sunday Talks. Today’s talk was edited and adapted from The Magic Word by Robert Collier. Gain access to more episodes (ad-free) by becoming our patron for as little as $3 a month.

By becoming a patron, you'll also gain access to our entire archive of Inspirational Living podcasts, plus full transcripts. Learn about the benefits our patrons receive by going to https://livinghour.org/patron. Thank you.

Inspirational Podcast Excerpt: In an old pamphlet written by Don Blanding, he tells of a time during the trying years of the Great Depression, when he found himself financially, mentally and physically "broke." He was suffering from insomnia and from a physical lethargy amounting almost to paralysis. Worst of all, he had a bad case of "self-pity," and he felt that the self-pity was fully justified.

He was staying at a small Art Colony, trying to rebuild his wrecked life and wretched body. Among those at the Colony was Mike, a Hawaiian boy. Mike seemed to be always cheerful, always prosperous. And, naturally, Blanding wondered why.

---------------------                                 

Get our popular 3 books of Life Lessons in paperback and e-book on Amazon. Go to: https://livinghour.org/books

Get our podcast with full transcripts and without ads by visiting: https://livinghour.org/patron 

Transform your life in 30 days with our MAJESTY meditation program: https://livinghour.org/majesty. Get 30% off with the coupon code: INSPIRATION

Listen to episode 1052 of the Inspirational Living podcast: The Master Mind | Napoleon Hill’s Keys to Success. Edited and adapted from Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill.

Inspirational Podcast Excerpt: POWER is essential for success in the accumulation of wealth—in any form. PLANS are inert and useless, without sufficient power to translate them into ACTION. Today I will describe the method by which any individual may attain and apply power. 

Power maybe defined as "organized and intelligently directed KNOWLEDGE." Power, as the term is here used, refers to ORGANIZED effort, sufficient to enable an individual to transmute DESIRE into wealth (whatever that may be). 

---------------------                                 

Get our popular 3 books of Life Lessons in paperback and e-book on Amazon. Go to: https://livinghour.org/books

Get our podcast with full transcripts and without ads by visiting: https://livinghour.org/patron 

Transform your life in 30 days with our MAJESTY meditation program: https://livinghour.org/majesty. Get 30% off with the coupon code: INSPIRATION

Listen to episode 1051 of the Inspirational Living podcast: Life is the Great School. Edited & adapted from “The School of Life” by Henry van Dyke.

Uplifting Podcast Excerpt: Life itself is the great school. Facts are teachers. Experiences are lessons. Friends are guides. Work is a master. Love is an interpreter. Teaching itself is a method of learning. Joy carries a divining rod and discovers fountains. Sorrow is an astronomer and shows us the stars. What I have lived I really know, and what I really know I partly own; and so beginning with what I know and what I own, I move through my curriculum, elective and required, gaining nothing but what I learn, at once instructed by every duty and every pleasure.

---------------------                                 

Get our popular 3 books of Life Lessons in paperback and e-book on Amazon. Go to: https://livinghour.org/books

Get our podcast with full transcripts and without ads by visiting: https://livinghour.org/patron 

Transform your life in 30 days with our MAJESTY meditation program: https://livinghour.org/majesty. Get 30% off with the coupon code: INSPIRATION

Listen to episode 1041 of the Inspirational Living podcast: Building Your Self-Confidence. Edited from adapted from “Success Through Thought Habit” by Benjamin Johnson.

Inspirational Podcast Excerpt: Have confidence in yourself. Believe in your ability to do big things. Only by having faith in yourself, can you compel others to have faith in you. Think big thoughts and back them up with big deeds. You can, if you will. And you will.

Many a little seed has longed to develop and send a little shoot up toward the sunshine. But growth has always been delayed until suddenly the outer wall that limited its growth is burst apart! Many lives are in the same condition: the wall of thought that limits them must be burst before real growth can occur.

---------------------                                 

Get our popular 3 books of Life Lessons in paperback and e-book on Amazon. Go to: https://livinghour.org/books

Get our podcast with full transcripts and without ads by visiting: https://livinghour.org/patron 

Transform your life in 30 days with our MAJESTY meditation program: https://livinghour.org/majesty. Get 30% off with the coupon code: INSPIRATION

Listen to a sample episode of Our Sunday Talks, edited and adapted from Levels of Living by Henry Frederick Cope.This series has over 200 episodes, and deals with topics related to spirituality. Gain access to more episodes (ad-free) by becoming our patron for as little as $3 a month.

By becoming a patron, you'll also gain access to our entire archive of Inspirational Living podcasts, plus full transcripts. Learn about the benefits our patrons receive by going to https://livinghour.org/patron. Thank you.

Podcast Excerpt: Make life happier and you will make it holier. Make it full of pleasure (and not that of a fool's paradise). Make it that of peace with heaven's plans, with the joy of knowing that over all is infinite love, with the strength that comes from knowing right is invincible, with the tender and sweet joys that spring up at the touch of human love. Go your own way to make them paths of gladness, to show love shining through sorrow, to give love generously to all, and yours shall be a religious life of service indeed.

Listen to episode 1040 of the Inspirational Living podcast: Concentration and Meditation. Edited and adapted from Concentration and Meditation by Swami Paramananda.

Inspirational Podcast Excerpt: WE all possess the faculty of concentration, but with the majority it is instinctive and automatic, not conscious. Even among the animals, we see how a lion or tiger will gather their strength by a moment of absolute stillness before they spring upon their prey. That automatic, instinctive power of concentration is embedded in every living creature. But until we can gain conscious command over our mental and spiritual forces, we can never have complete concentration.

---------------------                                 

Get our popular 3 books of Life Lessons in paperback and e-book on Amazon. Go to: https://livinghour.org/books

Get our podcast with full transcripts and without ads by visiting: https://livinghour.org/patron 

Transform your life in 30 days with our MAJESTY meditation program: https://livinghour.org/majesty. Get 30% off with the coupon code: INSPIRATION

Listen to episode 1039 of the Inspirational Living podcast: Timeless Wisdom to Meditate Upon. Edited and adapted from Adventures in Common Sense by Dr. Frank Crane.

Inspirational Podcast Excerpt: You want to know you can get the most out of life? How you can keep from having that sense of dissatisfaction when going to bed at night? How you can have, instead, that feeling of contentment, that the past twenty-four hours were worthwhile? Well, this hint may help: The Secret of Permanent Pleasure Lies in Cultivating Ever Higher Forms of Pleasure... 

---------------------                                 

Get our popular 3 books of Life Lessons in paperback and e-book on Amazon. Go to: https://livinghour.org/books

Get our podcast with full transcripts and without ads by visiting: https://livinghour.org/patron 

Transform your life in 30 days with our MAJESTY meditation program: https://livinghour.org/majesty. Get 30% off with the coupon code: INSPIRATION

Listen to episode 1038 of the Inspirational Living podcast: The Inspirational Wisdom of Aristotle. Edited and adapted from a classic book of essays by Stephen Paget.

Inspirational Podcast Excerpt: This much I remember of Aristotle, that he calls Wonder the beginning of the love of Wisdom. To have a right judgment of our surroundings, we must wonder at them, and be surprised that they and we are met together. So long as we exercise this quickening sense of wonder, there is hope for us, and some justification of our presence here on earth---because we all are on the road that leads toward wisdom: and they alone are incorrigible fools to whom Nature comes natural. 

---------------------                                 

Get our popular 3 books of Life Lessons in paperback and e-book on Amazon. Go to: https://livinghour.org/books

Get our podcast with full transcripts and without ads by visiting: https://livinghour.org/patron 

Listen to episode 1037 of the Inspirational Living podcast: Success & The True Test of Character. Adapted from The Power of Purpose by William George Jordan.

Inspirational Podcast Excerpt: The great test of individual character is not struggle, but attainment; not failure, but success; not adversity, but prosperity. When Nature wants to put you through the third degree, she places near you the laurel wreaths of victory. She megaphones to you the world's plaudits of success. She parades stacks of newspaper clippings and magazine articles with your portrait. She clinks money-bags in your ears, and she tells you confidentially of the world-changing power of your influence. 

---------------------                                 

Get our popular 3 books of Life Lessons in paperback and e-book on Amazon. Go to: https://livinghour.org/books

Get our podcast with full transcripts and without ads by visiting: https://livinghour.org/patron 

Listen to a sample episode of Our Sunday Talks. This series has over 200 episodes, and deals with topics related to spirituality. Gain access to more episodes (ad-free) by becoming our patron for as little as $3 a month.

By becoming a patron, you'll also gain access to our entire archive of Inspirational Living podcasts, plus full transcripts. Learn about the benefits our patrons receive by going to https://livinghour.org/patron. Thank you.

Podcast Excerpt: What shall we do when we have prayed for a time and our prayer appears to be unanswered? Shall we cease to call upon God? Shall we let it go? 

Some people pray for a time and then accept whatever comes to them or happens as a result of their prayer. They accept misfortune or adversity, if it comes after they have prayed, as an answer to their prayer. They believe that if they have prayed in some fashion or other, whatever comes to them is God's will, even though that which comes is obviously evil. 

---------------------                                 

Get our popular 3 books of Life Lessons in paperback and e-book on Amazon. Go to: https://livinghour.org/books

Get our podcast with full transcripts and without ads by visiting: https://livinghour.org/patron 

Listen to episode 1036 of the Inspirational Living podcast: The Secret of Life. Adapted from work by Elbert Hubbard that appears in The American Bible by Alice Hubbard.

Inspirational Podcast Excerpt: The secret, which I am about to tell you, is the most valuable and far-reaching of any known to human kind. It is the key to health, happiness, wealth, power, success. It is the open sesame to Paradise, here and now. A secret is something known only to a few. But often the best way to retain a secret is to let others help you to keep it. Just as the only way to retain love is to give it away — art and religion the same.

This secret, which I am about to impart, will cause no thrill, save in the hearts of those who already know it. And all I can do for you, anyway, is to tell you the things you know, but which possibly you do not know you know until I tell you.

So, here, then, is the secret.......

---------------------                                 

Get our popular 3 books of Life Lessons in paperback and e-book on Amazon. Go to: https://livinghour.org/books

Get our podcast with full transcripts and without ads by visiting: https://livinghour.org/patron 

Listen to episode 1123 of the Inspirational Living podcast: Making the Most of Your Life. Adapted from the book The Art of Being Alive by Ella Wheeler Wilcox.

Inspirational Podcast Excerpt: LIFE means action, from the cradle to the grave. There are limitless possibilities in this life to bring into realization whatever hopes or aspirations we desire. If we only but begin…

There is no such thing as inaction during this life. We are continually going forward or backward. You are either stronger or weaker this year than you were last year.

You are braver or more cowardly. You are more hopeful or more pessimistic. You are more capable mentally or less so. You have better or poorer command of your forces. You have more efficiency or not as much. You are nearer your goal or farther from it. You are a better human being or not as good.

---------------------                                 

Get our popular 3 books of Life Lessons in paperback and e-book on Amazon. Go to: https://livinghour.org/books

Get our podcast with full transcripts and without ads by visiting: https://livinghour.org/patron 

Transform your life in 30 days with our MAJESTY meditation program: https://livinghour.org/majesty. Get 30% off with the coupon code: INSPIRATION

Listen to episode 1035 of the Inspirational Living podcast: Becoming the Person You are Meant to Be. Adapted from the book Your Forces and How to Use Them by Christian D. Larson.

Inspirational Podcast Excerpt: Life is growth and the object of right thinking is to promote that growth. Give less time trying to change the opinions of others, and more time trying to improve your own life. Life becomes the way it is lived; and we may live the way we want to live when we learn to think what we want to think.

Create your own thought and you become what you want to become because your thought creates you. We all know that we are as we think. Then we must think only such thoughts as tend to make us what we wish to be. The secret of right thinking is found in always keeping the mind's eye fixed upon the greater and the better in all things.

---------------------                                 

Get our popular 3 books of Life Lessons in paperback and e-book on Amazon. Go to: https://livinghour.org/books

Get our podcast with full transcripts and without ads by visiting: https://livinghour.org/patron 

Listen to a sample episode of Our Sunday Talks. This series has over 200 episodes, and deals with topics related to spirituality. Gain access to more episodes (ad-free) by becoming our patron for as little as $3 a month.

By becoming a patron, you'll also gain access to our entire archive of Inspirational Living podcasts, plus full transcripts. Learn about the benefits our patrons receive by going to https://livinghour.org/patron. Thank you.

Podcast Excerpt: The concept of a process of development carries with it the idea, not of a finished but of an unfinished world. It interprets history not as a record of people and events separate from the stage upon which they appear, but as the story of the influence of an unfinished world upon an undeveloped people, and of the marvelous unfolding through which the hidden powers and qualities of the material, and the worker, are brought into play. Work becomes, therefore, not only a continuation of the divine activity in the world, but a process entwined with the very constitution of that world.

---------------------                                 

Get our popular 3 books of Life Lessons in paperback and e-book on Amazon. Go to: https://livinghour.org/books

Get our podcast with full transcripts and without ads by visiting: https://livinghour.org/patron 

Listen to episode 1034 of the Inspirational Living podcast: The Secret of Successful Artists & Writers. Adapted from the book “Work” by Hugh Black.

Inspirational Podcast Excerpts: The place of habit in life can hardly be overestimated. Habit works a groove for us into which we fall easily, and in which we move swiftly, so that the great bulk of our actions are done automatically, and the whole trend of our life is established. Habit cuts a pathway from the brain through the nerve-centers, until after a time a thing is done almost mechanically. 

We do not stop to think how we will walk when we want to go anywhere. We have laboriously acquired the art of walking, till it is done without any conscious attention. This law extends its sway over every region of life. We have gone on doing acts and making judgments along a certain line till it could be foretold what we will do on any. 

---------------------

Get our popular 3 books of Life Lessons in paperback and e-book on Amazon. Go to: https://livinghour.org/books

Get our podcast with full transcripts and without ads by visiting: https://livinghour.org/patron

Listen to episode 1033 of the Inspirational Living podcast: The Courage to Be Successful. The Power of Mental Demand, and Other Essays by Herbert Edward Law.

Motivational Podcast Excerpt: COURAGE is the fundamental fact of success. It makes us strong in doing what we have resolved upon. Courage gives persistence, banishes weakness, displaces vacillation with steadiness of purpose, resolves doubt. It makes hesitancy and irresolution impossible. It sends us armed with confidence on our road to success. 

Confidence and the expectation of success draw to us all the qualities and mental forces which contribute to success. Courage, therefore, is the vital element of success. A lack of courage creates mental difficulties; it constructs obstacles and barriers; it makes that seem impossible which, with the exercise of courage, will be entirely possible. 

---------------------

Get our popular 3 books of Life Lessons in paperback and e-book on Amazon. Go to: https://livinghour.org/books

Get our podcast with full transcripts and without ads by visiting: https://livinghour.org/patron

Listen to episode 1032 of the Inspirational Living Podcast: Conquering Your Self-Doubt. Edited and adapted from Personal Power by Keith J. Thomas.

Motivational Podcast Excerpt: Doctors say that the human frame is never called upon to suffer more pain than it can bear. If the pain grows beyond the limit of human endurance, we lapse into unconsciousness. The same is true of the mind. Nothing is asked of us in this world that we are not capable of giving.

As the mind will feed upon doubt, so it will feed upon hope. When doubt comes into the mind, throw it out. Do not admit any consideration other than that it has no business there. Say, “I can do this — I will do it,” and you will succeed. But so long as you admit the slightest possibility of failure, just so long will there be an influence in your mind that is preventing you from putting all your energies into your task.

---------------------

Get our popular 3 books of Life Lessons in paperback and e-book on Amazon. Go to: https://livinghour.org/books

Get our podcast with full transcripts and without ads by visiting: https://livinghour.org/patron

Listen to episode 1031 of the Inspirational Living Podcast: The Power of Purpose. Edited and adapted from Pushing to the Front by Orison Swett Marden.

Inspirational Podcast Excerpt: The woman and man who knows one thing, and can do it better than anybody else (even if it only be the art of raising turnips), receives the crown they merit. If they raise the best turnips by reason of concentrating all their energy to that end, they are a benefactor to the race and are recognized as such.

If a salamander be cut in two, the front part will run forward and the other backward. Such is the progress of those who divide their purpose. Success is jealous of scattered energies. No one can pursue a worthy object steadily and persistently with all the powers of their mind and yet make their life a failure.

---------------------

Get our popular 3 books of Life Lessons in paperback and e-book on Amazon. Go to: https://livinghour.org/books

Get our podcast with full transcripts and without ads by visiting: https://livinghour.org/patron

Listen to episode 1030 of the Inspirational Living podcast: A Great Life is Beckoning You. Edited and adapted from Out Into Life by Douglas Horton.

Inspirational Podcasts: At school you have studied sections of life — its literature, its science, its history, etc. — but now you must look at life as a whole. You must ask yourself the colossal question which marks the entrance into true adulthood: ‘‘How can I live a really great life?”

This life toward which you look — what an amazing, splendid sight it is! Its thousand motions, lights, and colors fascinate the dullest eye. It is full of loves, hates, and prides; crime, guilt, and cunning; arresting heroism, beauty, and temptations — all the virtues and all the vices.

---------------------

Get our popular 3 books of Life Lessons in paperback and e-book on Amazon. Go to: https://livinghour.org/books

Get our podcast with full transcripts and without ads by visiting: https://livinghour.org/patron

Listen to episode 1029 of the Inspirational Living podcast: Say Goodbye to Procrastination. Edited and adapted from A Book of Cheerful Counsel by Nixon Waterman.

Inspirational Podcast Excerpt: "If I had the time!" That is the sorry cry coming from the lips of tens of thousands unhappy persons of all classes and ages. But the saddest feature of it all is, that they have the time and do not know it. Or, if they do know it, they still go on trying to deceive themselves and others by repeating the same old, threadbare excuse the world has always offered as the reason why it has not made the progress it should have. 

Now, stop for a moment, and honestly think it over. Haven't you the time? Isn't it the desire to make the most of your opportunities that is lacking? How much time did you waste yesterday? How much time are you going to waste today? 

---------------------

Get our popular 3 books of Life Lessons in paperback and e-book on Amazon. Go to: https://livinghour.org/books

Get our podcast with full transcripts and without ads by visiting: https://livinghour.org/patron

Listen to episode 1028 of the Inspirational Living podcast: The Qualities of Genius | Success Podcasts. Edited and adapted from A Book of Cheerful Counsel by Nixon Waterman, published in 1909.

Inspirational Podcast Excerpt: Helvetius, the famous French philosopher, says: "Genius is nothing but a continued attention," and Buffon tells us that "genius is only a protracted patience." William Turner, the great landscape painter, when asked how he had achieved his great success, replied: "I have no secret but hard work. This is a secret that many never learn, and they do not succeed because they do not learn it. Labor is the genius that changes the world from ugliness to beauty." 

---------------------

Get our popular 3 books of Life Lessons in paperback and e-book on Amazon. Go to: https://livinghour.org/books

Get our podcast with full transcripts and without ads by visiting: https://livinghour.org/patron

Listen to episode 1027 of the Inspirational Living podcast: The Supreme Value of Skeptics & Free Thinkers. Edited and adapted from All’s Right with the World by Charles B. Newcomb.

Inspirational Podcast Excerpt: The word "skeptic" is from the Greek. Its root meaning is "one who is looking for the truth," "who is thoughtful," "who considers," "an inquirer after facts." Yet we are often warned against falling prey to "skepticism," just as long ago the skeptic was viewed as a criminal because they would persist in declining to accept as truth, without inquiry, what the public considered facts, embodied in religious dogmas — which today have been replaced by social dogmas.

---------------------

Get our popular 3 books of Life Lessons in paperback and e-book on Amazon. Go to: https://livinghour.org/books

Get our podcast with full transcripts and without ads by visiting: https://livinghour.org/patron

Listen to episode 1122 of the Inspirational Living podcast: Let a Great Purpose Be Your Guiding Star. Edited & adapted from the motivational work of James Allen.

Inspirational Podcast Excerpt: Until your thoughts are linked with purpose there is no intelligent accomplishment in life. The majority of us simply allow our thoughts to "drift" aimlessly upon the ocean of life, which is why we so often unexpectedly crash against a rocky shore.

Those who have no central purpose in life fall an easy prey to petty worries, fears, troubles, and self-pity, all of which are indications of weakness that lead to failure, unhappiness, and loss, for weakness cannot persist in a power evolving universe.

---------------------                                 

Get our popular 3 books of Life Lessons in paperback and e-book on Amazon. Go to: https://livinghour.org/books

Get our podcast with full transcripts and without ads by visiting: https://livinghour.org/patron 

Transform your life in 30 days with our MAJESTY meditation program: https://livinghour.org/majesty. Get 30% off with the coupon code: INSPIRATION

Listen to episode 1026 of the Inspirational Living podcast: How to Develop Your Memory to Achieve Success. Edited and adapted from Secrets of Mental Supremacy by W. R. C. LATSON.

Inspirational Podcast Excerpt: THE value of any person to themselves and to the world at large depends in great degree upon their memory — upon your ability to recall and to use at any desired moment the recollection of what you have seen, heard, experienced, or thought. Memory is really the stock in trade of our mental life. Our perceptions bring to us a vast mass of experiences — things that we have seen, heard, touched, tasted, and smelled — our thoughts and experiences. But these things are valuable only when they are held in the memory. For, unless they are remembered they cannot be used. 

---------------------

Get our popular 3 books of Life Lessons in paperback and e-book on Amazon. Go to: https://livinghour.org/books

Get our podcast with full transcripts and without ads by visiting: https://livinghour.org/patron

Listen to episode 1025 of the Inspirational Living podcast: Albert Einstein: Inspirational Wisdom and Quotes. Edited and adapted from the writings of Albert Einstein.

Inspirational Podcast Excerpt: “A human being is a part of the whole called by us the universe, a part limited in time and space. We experience ourselves, our thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of our consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”

---------------------

Get our popular 3 books of Life Lessons in paperback and e-book on Amazon. Go to: https://livinghour.org/books

Get our podcast with full transcripts and without ads by visiting: https://livinghour.org/patron

Listen to episode 1024 of the Inspirational Living podcast: Our Duty to Be Happy. Edited and adapted from the book Happiness by Hugh Black, published in 1911.

Inspirational Podcast Excerpt: The duty of happiness becomes clearer when we see how it affects others. It is the merry heart that makes the cheerful countenance, and it is the cheerful countenance that spreads cheer to make other hearts merry. The sunny soul brings sunshine everywhere. A bright and happy temperament is a great social asset, adding to the happiness of the world. 

---------------------

Get our popular 3 books of Life Lessons in paperback and e-book on Amazon. Go to: https://livinghour.org/books

Get our podcast with full transcripts and without ads by visiting: https://livinghour.org/patron

Listen to episode 1023 of the Inspirational Living podcast: Life Hacks: Turning Bad News Into Good. Edited and adapted from Working With God by Gardner Hunting.

Inspirational Podcast Excerpt: Bad news is what seems to upset us most in our efforts to live a triumphant life. We try to fulfill the conditions of what we think is our destiny, and then we begin to look forward to receiving the fruits of our labors. When the particular thing we hope for does not materialize at the particular time we hope to get it, we get disappointed and disheartened, rebellious or frightened, and in a panic we turn away from our faith and grasp at doubt — as if doubt were a refuge when faith fails!

---------------------

Get our popular 3 books of Life Lessons in paperback and e-book on Amazon. Go to: https://livinghour.org/books

Get our podcast with full transcripts and without ads by visiting: https://livinghour.org/patron

Listen to episode 1022 of the Inspirational Living podcast: Rewire Your Brain for Optimism and Success. Adapted from the book Success is For You by Dorothy Quigley.

Inspirational Podcast Excerpt: Try to see how the laws of nature work and be an optimist. Be a liberal, tolerant one. The jokester says, “A pessimist is one who has met an optimist.” That's a fine hint not to make your optimism too ill-advised, too belligerent. You will hear the unreflecting say, “The optimist is a fool. The pessimist understands life; gets below the surface of things; hears the ceaseless murmur of woe through all the immemorial years.” Sing back to them: “No, the optimist is the wise person. The pessimist is the fool.” 

---------------------

Get our popular 3 books of Life Lessons in paperback and e-book on Amazon. Go to: https://livinghour.org/books

Get our podcast with full transcripts and without ads by visiting: https://livinghour.org/patron

Listen to episode 1022 of the Inspirational Living podcast: Overcoming Your Pain & Sorrow. Edited & adapted from The Path to Prosperity by James Allen.

Inspirational Podcast Excerpt: Is there no way of escape from pain and sorrow? Are there no means by which bonds of evil may be broken? Is permanent happiness, secure prosperity, and abiding peace a foolish dream?

No, there is a way, and I speak it with gladness, by which evil can be slain forever; there is a process by which disease, poverty, or any adverse condition or circumstance can be overcome; there is a method by which a permanent prosperity can be secured, free from all fear of the return of adversity, and there is a practice by which unbroken and unending peace and bliss can be partaken of and realized.

---------------------

Get our popular 3 books of Life Lessons in paperback and e-book on Amazon. Go to: https://livinghour.org/books

Get our podcast with full transcripts and without ads by visiting: https://livinghour.org/patron

Listen to episode 1020 of the Inspirational Living podcast: The World as Looking Glass. Edited and adapted from The Palace of Mirrors and Other Essays by Joseph Frank Thompson.

Inspirational Podcast Excerpt: The world is full of looking-glasses in which we behold our own reflection. Any given mirror may be cracked or otherwise defective (so that the image fails to do us justice), but, more or less, the thing reflected is the thing that is. 

The material world abounds in such mirrors....

---------------------

Get our popular 3 books of Life Lessons in paperback and e-book on Amazon. Go to: https://livinghour.org/books

Get our podcast with full transcripts and without ads by visiting: https://livinghour.org/patron

Listen to episode 1019 of the Inspirational Living podcast: The Success Habits of Money & Time. Edited and Adapted from Success and How to Win It by B.F. Austin.

Inspirational Podcast Excerpt: The vast majority of people who have risen from obscurity to power, and from power to affluence, have done so by careful and systematic improvement of the spare moments of their lives. "Time is money," it is said. But this very inadequately expresses the truth. Time is infinitely more than money. Time is, when improved: education, knowledge, enjoyment, skill, talent, and character. 

The way you spend your spare hours shows the world what you are. 

---------------------

Get our popular 3 books of Life Lessons in paperback and e-book on Amazon. Go to: https://livinghour.org/books

Get our podcast with full transcripts and without ads by visiting: https://livinghour.org/patron

Listen to episode 1018 of the Inspirational Living podcast: The Million Dollar Lecture Pt. 3 | Success Habits & Incentives. Edited and adapted from The Million Dollar Lecture by Professor Erwin Haskell Schell.

Inspirational Podcast Excerpt: When it comes to building good habits, don’t overlook the habit of success. Yes, there is such a thing. Make it a customary habit to surmount difficulties, even in little things. Perhaps the winning, in itself, will not be worth the effort, but in the strengthening of the habit, its value is immeasurable.

The world has a place for the women and men who finish that which they undertake. I wish that I could burn that point into your minds so that it would always be before you.

---------------------

Get our popular 3 books of Life Lessons in paperback and e-book on Amazon. Go to: https://livinghour.org/books

Get our podcast with full transcripts and without ads by visiting: https://livinghour.org/patron

Listen to episode 1017 of the Inspirational Living podcast: The Million Dollar Lecture Pt. 2 | MIT Lectures. Edited and adapted from The Million Dollar Lecture by Professor Erwin Haskell Schell, delivered to the 1920 graduating class of MIT.

Inspirational Podcast Excerpt: Having talked with you about the importance of finding, making, and keeping friends, the next resource that I want to see upon the asset side of your personal balance sheet is ability in the art of cooperation. This is a characteristic in which the technically trained person is often found to be lamentably weak. But I think that the weakness may be readily explained and improved upon.

---------------------

Get our popular 3 books of Life Lessons in paperback and e-book on Amazon. Go to: https://livinghour.org/books

Get our podcast with full transcripts and without ads by visiting: https://livinghour.org/patron

Welcome to Our Sunday Talks. Today’s talk was edited and adapted from Byways of Blessedness by James Allen, published in 1904. Gain access to more episodes (ad-free) by becoming our patron for as little as $3 a month.

By becoming a patron, you'll also gain access to our entire archive of Inspirational Living podcasts, plus full transcripts. Learn about the benefits our patrons receive by going to https://livinghour.org/patron. Thank you.

Inspirational Podcast Excerpt: There is great power in the words of a wise woman or man, but their silence is more powerful still. The greatest people teach us most effectively when they are purposely silent. The silent attitude of the great teacher (perhaps noted by only one or two disciples) is recorded and preserved through the ages; while the flamboyant words of the merely clever talker — heard by thousands, and at once popularized — are neglected and forgotten in, at most, a few generations.

---------------------                                 

Get our popular 3 books of Life Lessons in paperback and e-book on Amazon. Go to: https://livinghour.org/books

Get our podcast with full transcripts and without ads by visiting: https://livinghour.org/patron 

Transform your life in 30 days with our MAJESTY meditation program: https://livinghour.org/majesty. Get 30% off with the coupon code: INSPIRATION

Listen to episode 1016 of the Inspirational Living podcast: The Million Dollar Lecture Pt.. Edited and adapted from The Million Dollar Lecture by Professor Erwin Haskell Schell, delivered to the 1920 graduating class of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

Inspirational Podcast Excerpt: We should also cultivate in ourselves a heightened taste for the pleasure which results from kindness. Someone has said, “The more you put into life, the more you get out of it,” and we may paraphrase this by saying, “The more you invest in kindness, the more you will gain in friends.” 

---------------------

Get our popular 3 books of Life Lessons in paperback and e-book on Amazon. Go to: https://livinghour.org/books

Get our podcast with full transcripts and without ads by visiting: https://livinghour.org/patron

Listen to episode 1015 of the Inspirational Living Podcast: The Science of Being Great. Edited and adapted from a book by the same title by Wallace D. Wattles.

Motivational Podcast Excerpt: Remember that poise and power are inseparably associated. The calm and balanced mind is the strong and great mind. The hurried and agitated mind is the weak one.

Whenever you fall into a mental state of hurry, you may know that you have lost the right viewpoint; you are beginning to look upon the world, or some part of it, as going wrong. At such times, consider the fact that nothing is going wrong; nothing can be wrong. Be poised, be calm, be cheerful....

---------------------

Get our popular 3 books of Life Lessons in paperback and e-book on Amazon. Go to: https://livinghour.org/books

Get our podcast with full transcripts and without ads by visiting: https://livinghour.org/patron

Listen to episode 1014 of the Inspirational Living podcast: Meditation: The Qualities of Great Leaders | Leadership Podcasts. Edited and adapted from Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill.

Inspirational Podcast Excerpt: Broadly speaking, there are two types of people in the world. One type is known as a leader and the other are followers. Decide at the outset whether you intend to become a leader in your chosen calling, or remain a follower. The difference in compensation is vast. The follower cannot reasonably expect the compensation to which a leader is entitled, although many followers make the mistake of expecting such pay.

-----------

Transform your life in 30 days with our MAJESTY meditation program: https://livinghour.org/majesty. Get 30% off with the coupon code: INSPIRATION

Get our podcast with full transcripts and without ads by visiting: https://livinghour.org/patron