Chapter 12 The process that makes ideals come true

Process is the way of doing things. There are several ways of doing things, but the idealized way is the only way that guarantees success.

The non-idealized processes are: mere doing; purposeful doing; planned or thought-out doing.

The fourth process is the idealized process.

Mere doing never leads to success, -for back of it there is no ideal of the process, no desire to improve it, no thought-out plan, and no ideal. In mines and stores and factories and offices, there are millions of good workers. They learn to do one thing -they learn to do it well -and then, forever afterwards, they merely do. They drudge, or toil, or labor but they do not work; and -they do not succeed. You yourself may do your work perfectly -merely doing it; you may be always at it; others may be able to depend upon you doing your work exactly, with no loss of time, not missing a stroke. But all these do not lead to attainment, -why, even a hay-press does those things!

Purposeful doing is one step in advance of mere doing. It is based upon an idea of progress and is stimulated by a desire. But that is not sufficient. Why, the bank-robber has a purpose in robbing; he may succeed now and then in getting what he wants and he always succeeds in making himself a useless member of society, -yet, his life is not successful and he is not a success. Even well planned, carefully thought-out doing leads to thousands of failures. Many a young man, intelligent, enthusiastic, hardworking and earnest -starts in business for himself and fails, -even after he has planned and thought out his entire problem. When he begins, he sees success -big success -within two or three years at most. But in six months the sheriff may close him up as a failure. Even planned doing, based upon ideas, desires and thought-out processes, fails unless the process is idealized. It is only an idealized aim, process and attitude that always win.

Some time ago an additional main subway was opened in New York City. It necessitated a new routing of passengers. More than seven million people had to learn to travel by new routes. For days before its opening the papers were full of the new system and how to get from one point to another. At least nine out of every ten of the millions of adults in New York must have read the directions previous to the opening, although probably not one in a hundred thousand -when they read the directions over and over again -idealized the new route, nor idealized themselves going about the city or to and from work on it. The Result of Not Idealizing the Process on the day of the opening, intelligent men and women crowded and jammed each other, went where they did not wish to go, even got lost, though many of them had known New York all their lives. The confusion and jamming of the mob at two transfer stations were so great that scores of women fainted, and many were seriously hurt. More than a million people lost their heads -more than a million were confused for weeks. It was necessary to close the cross-town subway for a month to prevent accidents -actually to prevent people killing themselves and each other, because of their confused mob action. And all of this confusion, trouble, injury and delay could have been prevented if each of the seven million people who use the subways had spent but five minutes previous to its opening in Idealizing the Process of traveling on it.

How I Idealized the Process in this Case: I took a description of the routes from a newspaper; read it carefully. Then I quietly visualized the new routes. Next, I idealized action, -Idealized myself using the new route from my home to my office, picturing myself on the cars, changing where the description said changes must be made; idealizing every bit of the journey to my office door. Next I idealized one trip after another to other parts of the city, until I had myself mentally used every new and old route. After this, it was impossible to be confused; impossible to make a mistake in using the subway.

Millions of others thought of the new routes, but certainly very few consciously idealized themselves traveling on them. Yet every individual in New York could have done it in five minutes if they had only been in the habit of Idealizing the Process of Doing Things. Others had ideas of the new route, of where they wanted to go, and of how to get there. I turned my ideas into ideals. Idealizing the process of doing the thing, included more than the re-seeing of the mental picture of the new route. I did more than visualize it. I put into it an element of action. I kept my “clutch” in so that the picture became movement. That is always essential in attaining that which you desire.