Out Of Nothing!

First comes thought; then organization of that thought, into ideas and plans; then transformation of those plans into reality. The beginning, as you will observe, is in your imagination. – Napoleon Hill, American author who was one of the earliest producers of the modern genre of personal success literature.

Ex Nihilo is a Latin term that translates to “out of nothing.” Albeit the term is used in many different references, it struck a chord with me recently conjuring up relations to the work of both Napoleon Hill and Dr. Maxwell Maltz. Hill was truly the modern day creator of the self improvement industry through his incredible 20 year study of the greatest minds of his era culminating in his seminal work, The Law of Success. He is also very well known for his book Think and Grow Rich with its mantra “what the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve.” Dr. Maltz, certainly influenced by the work of Hill, takes us from the theoretical to a real “how to” approach when it comes to actually programming our mind to create something from nothing.

In other words, we often sit and daydream about what we really want to do with our lives and as previously discussed, we sit on the sidelines and marvel at the seemingly impossible accomplishments of others and ask: “how did they do it?” Well the truth is those great achievers are in fact magicians, but only to a certain extent. You see the magician makes us feel that he has created something from nothing by making a dove appear from his sleeve, a rabbit from his hat or a quarter from your ear. The truth be told, it’s actually easy for the magician to fool us because we want to believe. We want to have the faith that anything is possible so we hold up the magicians of life and marvel. But let’s stop for minute and really think about how anybody makes something from nothing. Consider Edison, one of Napoleon Hill’s favorite subjects…how did he really make the light bulb appear from nothing? Well if you know anything about this achievement you have learned that Edison failed over 10,000 times before producing the electric light. But the magic happened in his mind. Since there never was an electric light before, the concept had to be created from nothing…an image in the mind of Edison…worked on and refined until he had made enough infinite distinctions to produce his magic!

So why can’t you do this? What is stopping you from tapping into your imagination where many things are created from nothing? You have the ability to create your own “something from nothing.” Maybe it’s a “new you!” But something is keeping you back and all seems hopeless…but here’s the good news! It’s not beyond your reach! Magic is easy! It starts with you dreaming with new images of you becoming whatever it is that you want. Then Maltz shows us that those new images become the seedlings of a new subconscious or automatic mechanism that drives us in the direction of that success we desire so eagerly! But wait! It gets even better…this does not take forever! You can literally turn it all around on a dime…but you first have to believe just like Hill says. I know it’s easy to dream, but you have to really believe it to make it happen! It’s time to pull that rabbit out of your own hat and let the world marvel at you for a change!