Are You Awash In Noise?

The pink kind? The kind of background noise that is ever-present, flooding your thoughts? Billboards and TV voices, ever-present radio sounds and text messages? Napoleon Hill stated, there is only one thing we really can have control over - OUR THOUGHTS.

When Henley wrote the prophetic lines, "I am the Master of my Fate, I am the Captain of my Soul," he should
have informed us that we are the Masters of our Fate, the Captains of our Souls, because we have the power to
control our thoughts.

He should have told us that the ether in which this little earth floats, in which we move and have our being, is a
form of energy moving at an inconceivably high rate of vibration, and that the ether is filled with a form of
universal power which ADAPTS itself to the nature of the thoughts we hold in our minds; and INFLUENCES
us, in natural ways, to transmute our thoughts into their physical equivalent.

Reduce Your Noise To Find Your Path

We look for resources off the beaten path to help us on our own path. One for your consideration is Napoleon Hill. Not familiar with him? Look him up. Perhaps his biggest gift to the world was the book, Think and Grow Rich, written from the White House in the middle of the great depression, when he woked for President Roosevelt for $1 a year.

You can download it for free from many places. Here's a free PDF download. Perhaps better, invest $7.99 and buy your own copy of the book, Think and Grow Rich, or get the Kindle edition for $.89, Think and Grow Rich. If you prefer, you can listen in 10-minute segments on Youtube. Or for $5.99, download the MP3 of Think and Grow Rich - Narrated By Napoleon Hill

Now, turn off this computer, your phone, TV, radio, and all other interruptions, and read carefully.

Select The Thoughts You Want To Consider Adopting

The easiest thing in the world to do is to accept someone else's statement as your truth. We do it from childhood on. Our parents' religion becomes our own.

It's the first rule of advertising. Tell the people what you want them to think.

Are you ready to think for yourself? Choose what you listen to, watch, and read. Of the thousands of sources we analyze monthly, one of our favorites is a monthly eLetter by Brian Paxton, Managing Director, Mbendi Information Services, Cape Town, South Africa. Each month, Mr. Paxton writes a personal observation, titled "The World After 2020." You can subscribe here.

Here are his November 2010 observations.

THE WORLD AFTER 2020 - BACKWARD THINKING

As our only planet hurtles inexorably into its overcrowded, overheated, overpolluted future, I sometimes find myself playing a little game. It's one you might try next time you're caught in a traffic jam. Imagine being teleported back to the most perfect age to be alive on this planet along with ten possessions from today. When would you choose and why and what would you take? In case you think it would be nice to be Aristotle or Ghengis Khan or Cleopatra, the only rule is that you have to be one of your own ancestors.

At school, we were taught man started as a primitive hunter-gatherer, then graduated to domesticating animals, planting seeds and trees and finally advanced triumphantly to build temples and pyramids, power stations and belching steel plants. Recent research has shown our early ancestors actually lived a good life in sync with nature. Collecting food only took a fraction of their time, leaving hours for socialising, singing, dancing and painting fantastic pictures on cave walls. I'm not sure they would have welcomed me if I arrived in their midst complete with iPod and a motor cycle with an empty fuel tank. Besides, it seems they practiced infanticide to avoid overpopulation and I wouldn't have liked to take the risk.

Moving the dial forward by centuries, I still don't find myself too enchanted by the lifestyle of my forebears. Much as I would like them to have been wealthy aristocrats lording it over the masses, the reality is that they were farm labourers and fisherfolk who lived a pretty hand to mouth existence. The official records show illiteracy was rife and infant mortality frequent. I imagine them living in smoky, squalid cottages and working outdoors in all kinds of weather. Fortunately for me, none was tempted to the slums and sixty hour work weeks at the coalface or loom. It's hard to know what ten things from today would have comprehensively improved my lot then along with theirs.

For me, the second half of the twentieth century, coinciding my own lifetime would have been the best bet. The major wars in which my parents and grandparents fought or were refugees were past. I lived in a nice climate, the gap between rich and poor seemed reasonable, we enjoyed a comfortable lifestyle and benefited from a sound education. Strangely enough, there's not a lot of today's goods and chattels I would take back with me. I thought about the Internet but decided that would mean taking spam back too. However, for many millions, living under communism or in vicious regimes, those decades must have been hell in comparison to the idyllic life I led. I wonder what age would have been their choice?

One thing I do know. I would not like to make a mistake and propel myself fifty or a hundred years into the future. Clever as we humans like to think ourselves, I don't have the confidence that the leaders of today have the imagination, the intellect and the determination to make the world we leave our children and grandchildren a better one than that we inhabit. Nonetheless, maybe it's time we stopped escaping into the past, even as we idly wait in the jam with our engines churning out fumes, and channelled our energies into using the present and the best of the past to make a future paradise for all.

Create Your Own World After 2020

Yes, you are trying to pay this week's bills, and ten years into the future seems such a long way off. But how quickly did the last ten years go?

Radio and TV stations sell advertising. but what they are really selling is time. Once that available inventory has passed, it is gone forever, no longer available to sell. Your most important asset is your time. Use each moment wisely.

Let us know how you are doing.

Spotlight Jobs is a carefully selected series of resources to help you find your path - the reason you came here, the career(s) that will help you fulfill your purpose, and the job(s) that will help you build your career. It is written by David VanAmburg.