 CHAPTER 19
In essence every phase of contact in human society is a sale. If you apply for and secure a position you sell yourself to the employer, who buys your services in competition with many others. If you are the leader of a great reform movement, carrying the ideal of that reform to the masses of people and winning them to support it, you are selling your ideals to them. Of course there are business sales, for every phase of business operation and management is a sale of things, ideas, ideals of services. The process of selling is always the same. Any sale you desire to make -any sale you have in mind as an ideal -can be made a reality; but every “idea” you have of a sale may fall through. If you idealize the value of that which you wish to sell, you give it additional selling value. If you idealize the process of selling it, you discover new means of selling. If you idealize all kinds of possible buyers of that which you have for sale, you discover a buyer capable of perceiving the additional value you have given your product and a buyer capable and willing to pay for that value. A Case for Illustration: A man owned a tract of land near Pasadena, California; on this there was a $10,000 mortgage; he had bought it on a shoestring, planning soon to sell it, -for it was expected that a building boom would make it a desirable residence site long before the $10,000 was due. Conditions at End of Six Months: The building boom had not materialized; the mortgage was due in ten days; real estate men refused to take it up; those holding the mortgage refused to extend it; the bankers wouldn't touch it. Cause for Refusal: The land was in a hollow; real estate men and bankers were convinced no one would buy it until every other residence site near it had been sold; that might be years hence. The Owner's First Efforts: When, at the end of the first three months, the boom failed to boom, he recognized abundant supply, and faithfully and persistently and confidently affirmed “God IS ALL Abundance” and “All is God.” Three months went by. The money did not drop from the heaven; but something else dropped -the corners of his banker's mouth. What was the trouble? Faithfully and confidently the owner affirmed the truth: “God Is the Source of Abundant Supply.” Why then the failure? Because God is Spirit; and consequently as long as he continued merely to affirm God as Abundant Supply, -the supply continued in a spiritual state. This the bankers refused to cash; they wanted certified checks. After a failure of more than two and a half months, the owner tried Idealizing the Process. First, he idealized the land in all its details. And at once a new thought came: If this land is not now valuable as a residence site, certainly there are other uses for it; and since God knows all uses, the idea of another use will come to me. Second, he idealized the changes in its condition at different seasons of the year and -hurrah -another new thought he had not thought before: Since the land was in a hollow and the moisture of the surrounding land drains into it, it is green many more months a year than surrounding land -an important condition in dry California -and hence it is ideal for truck-gardening. Third, he idealized his activities in relation to it and to the bankers. Since God is all Process, He must know many ways of convincing a banker's mind. Hence a third new thought: Many people talk to bankers about the value of their lands; I'll do something besides talk to make my banker realize the value of this land as a truck-garden plot. So, in one day, he called upon three different owners of truck-gardens, and got three separate offers to buy his land, although the best price offered was less than the owner wished to accept. But as the sum offered was much more than the mortgage, it made the banker himself take new notice and even he had a new thought -a very difficult operation for a banker -his new thought was: Even if this land is not valuable for a residence site at present, it must be valuable for a truck-garden plot, if three prominent truck-gardeners want to buy it; and if they are willing to pay what they've offered, a $10,000 mortgage is certainly safe. So the deal was closed. Two and a half months had been spent in Idealizing the Thing Desired, and at the end of the time it was still “desired”; three days were spent in Idealizing the Process, and at the end of the seventy-two hours the thing was done. Idealizing the Thing Desired leads you to repeat old thoughts; Idealizing the Process leads you from one new thought to another new thought. |
|||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|||||
|
|
|||||