Environmental Management 101

This is a short one, I didn't feel many words were needed to talk about it.

-X

Magic of Thinking Big
David J. Schwatz
Chapter 7: Manage Your Environment: Go First Class

Outline

Just like your body, your mind is a culmination of it is fed. “Mind food is your environment – all the countless things that influence your conscious and subconscious thought.” (pg 117)

Since you are a product of your environment, your lack of success is because you were raised in an environment that was not conducive to success.

To overcome failure, the author suggests some steps starting on page 118 (This chapter seems very unorganized, I will summarize the best I can):

1. “Recondition yourself for success.” – The author claims that as children, we all had the purity to realize our dreams, but then ‘suppressive forces’ took over and dragged us down. He says that once people received the suppressive influences, they fell into three categories:
1. “Those who surrendered completely” (pg 119) – These people rationalize to the world why they are happy.
2. “Those who surrender partially” (pg 119) – These people go so far and then start to rationalize.
3. “Those who never surrender” (pg 120) – These people “live and breath success”

2. Watch your environment. There are negative people, termed “negators” that are everywhere and they “seem to delight in sabotaging the positive progress of others.” (pg 121) Under this topic, he suggests to study them and find out why they are failures. I particularly liked the quote: “I turned my negator friend into a personal experiment.”(pg 122) Gossip is a poison to the mind, so it should be avoided.
3. “Go first class: that is an excellent rule to follow in everything you do, including the goods and services you buy.” (pg 130) – The author claims that the only way to go is by doing and buying everything at the highest possible quality. This saves time and money in the end, thus the extra initial cost is worth it.

Christian Refutation

This chapter is again based on a sound biblical basis. Look at Philippians 4:8:

Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things.

The problem lays with conflict with another verse, the classical beat to death 1 John 2:15:

Do not love the world nor the things in the world; If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.

The book approaches a sound biblical point for an unholy purpose: to get material success, to impress people, to get ahead in this world.

I would like to comment in brief on the last point: Going only first class seems to conflict with our call to stewardship. As a good steward of the resources God has given to us, we must recognize that first class is not always better; in fact, it just tends to drain resources, especially if it is used to the degree talked about here. There is nothing ignoble about using dollar general brand items or things picked up at discount racks.