Foundation Seven: Formulate a Plan
From The Science of Success (1914) by Julia Seton.
This next, all important, essential is Order. Order is God’s first law and man’s first law is obedience to this law; order is expressed in the form of a plan. “Have a plan,” this is the second fundamental of success, for without a plan the human side of life must be always out of order and man himself adrift like a rudderless boat.
The whole failure world has this law of the lack of order somewhere in operation. There are thousands of planless, aimless, purposeless people everywhere. You can ask them “What do you want?” and they tell you that they have a profound idea of what they want to do and believe in their power to accomplish: but when you say, “Well how, do you propose to do this?” they answer, “That’s just it, I don’t know.” And after they have aimlessly drifted from pillar to post, accomplishing nothing of true worth or value, we may ask them, “How did this happen?” “Why didn’t you do things differently?” And they answer again in the same hopeless strain, “I don’t know.”
The failure world is heaped high with those who “don’t know.” They glut the marts of trades and professions; still, there are positions calling insistently and constantly to the one who does know, knows that he knows, and knows how to express what he knows.
Have a Plan, is the slogan of all success, from the man who breaks rocks to the master builder. The plan is the fulcrum that lifts the formless into form. Until one has a plan of life, his world is void [and he drifts aimlessly, waiting for life to happen]. He has to learn to say, “Let there be light” on his own pathway [and let me create it!]—and the plan is the ray of light that [guides him on his way, focuses his creative energies, and] leads him unto ultimate perfection. . .
You can know what you want, how you want it, and what you are going to do about getting it, this hour, this day, and we know that whatever we put into time (today) we build into eternity (tomorrow).
The individual who hopes for success must become that success in his own mind, all at once. He must build his plan as perfectly as a draftsman draws the pictured house or the sculptor sets his sketch. Nothing can ever pass into form that has not first been projected in consciousness. Everything must live first in the brain of the master builder. It does not matter what the desire is, it must eventually come out into manifestation.
No matter what we want to do, we must work it all out in our mind just exactly as we want it to be. We must not allow our minds to accept one single idea that links us with less than the perfect. We must know what we want, how we want it and what we are going to do to get it, and then, have every day be more and more insistent in our demand.
The one who hopes to go on from good, to better, to best can only do so to the degree in which he brings the perfected vision of thought and action into unity.
Have a plan—then day and night live in the full realization of this plan: think, speak, and be the thing itself. Do not accept anything less than all you desire; think it out to the smallest detail, for aimless drifting and formless drifting can take no part in the life of the one who desires success.
Success by any other law than that of conscious, spiritual direction and control is built upon the law of change. If you accidentally drift into success you can accidentally drift out of it again but the success gained through the law of self knowledge and conscious obedience to God’s Universal law of order—through the perfected spiritual arrangements and placing of our own human desires—is success for ever, because it is the at-one-ment of human design with Universal intelligence.
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From The Science of Success (1914) by Julia Seton.
This next, all important, essential is Order. Order is God’s first law and man’s first law is obedience to this law; order is expressed in the form of a plan. “Have a plan,” this is the second fundamental of success, for without a plan the human side of life must be always out of order and man himself adrift like a rudderless boat.
The whole failure world has this law of the lack of order somewhere in operation. There are thousands of planless, aimless, purposeless people everywhere. You can ask them “What do you want?” and they tell you that they have a profound idea of what they want to do and believe in their power to accomplish: but when you say, “Well how, do you propose to do this?” they answer, “That’s just it, I don’t know.” And after they have aimlessly drifted from pillar to post, accomplishing nothing of true worth or value, we may ask them, “How did this happen?” “Why didn’t you do things differently?” And they answer again in the same hopeless strain, “I don’t know.”
The failure world is heaped high with those who “don’t know.” They glut the marts of trades and professions; still, there are positions calling insistently and constantly to the one who does know, knows that he knows, and knows how to express what he knows.
Have a Plan, is the slogan of all success, from the man who breaks rocks to the master builder. The plan is the fulcrum that lifts the formless into form. Until one has a plan of life, his world is void [and he drifts aimlessly, waiting for life to happen]. He has to learn to say, “Let there be light” on his own pathway [and let me create it!]—and the plan is the ray of light that [guides him on his way, focuses his creative energies, and] leads him unto ultimate perfection. . .
You can know what you want, how you want it, and what you are going to do about getting it, this hour, this day, and we know that whatever we put into time (today) we build into eternity (tomorrow).
The individual who hopes for success must become that success in his own mind, all at once. He must build his plan as perfectly as a draftsman draws the pictured house or the sculptor sets his sketch. Nothing can ever pass into form that has not first been projected in consciousness. Everything must live first in the brain of the master builder. It does not matter what the desire is, it must eventually come out into manifestation.
No matter what we want to do, we must work it all out in our mind just exactly as we want it to be. We must not allow our minds to accept one single idea that links us with less than the perfect. We must know what we want, how we want it and what we are going to do to get it, and then, have every day be more and more insistent in our demand.
The one who hopes to go on from good, to better, to best can only do so to the degree in which he brings the perfected vision of thought and action into unity.
Have a plan—then day and night live in the full realization of this plan: think, speak, and be the thing itself. Do not accept anything less than all you desire; think it out to the smallest detail, for aimless drifting and formless drifting can take no part in the life of the one who desires success.
Success by any other law than that of conscious, spiritual direction and control is built upon the law of change. If you accidentally drift into success you can accidentally drift out of it again but the success gained through the law of self knowledge and conscious obedience to God’s Universal law of order—through the perfected spiritual arrangements and placing of our own human desires—is success for ever, because it is the at-one-ment of human design with Universal intelligence.
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