Summary: Listen to episode 285 of the Inspirational Living podcast: Success Through Self-Reliance | How to Succeed. Edited and adapted from The Keys to Success by B.C. Forbes. Inspirational Podcast Excerpt: Welcome to the Inspirational Living podcast. We’ve had such a positive response to our MAJESTY meditation and e-books promotion that I’ve decided to extend the special until the end of the month. To get our Majesty meditation, plus the e-book Evergreen: 50 Inspirational Life Lessons, plus the e-book Everest: 50 Motivational Life Lessons, all for the one low price of $9.99, please visit LivingHour.org/majesty. Thank you. Today’s reading was edited and adapted from The Keys to Success by B. C. Forbes, published in 1918. Without self-reliance no one can succeed in the largest way. Self-reliance breeds courage, faith, determination, never-say-dieness. Self-reliance inspires a person to do the best that is in them. Without self-reliance, the difficulties that are common to forging ahead cannot be fought and overmatched. Self-reliance is a well-spring of hope and inspiration and courage. It strengthens the will, the brain, the arm. It is as a strong pole by which you can vault over obstacles. Lose self-reliance, and you become weak, wobbly, vacillating. You balk at even the shadow of difficulty. Admit the danger of defeat, and you are already half defeated. Archimedes is credited with the declaration: "Give me a lever of sufficient length and a fulcrum to rest it upon, and I would move the world." Our modern Archimedes sets about making the needed lever and fulcrum. They do not wait to have something handed to them: they go after it, and either finds it or makes it. If you have no faith, no reliance in yourself, how can you expect others to place faith or reliance in you? Aim high and you may hit high. Aim low and you are little likely to hit high. Don't be a Uriah Heep. Strive rather to cultivate something of the Napoleonic mind — Napoleon not only had self-faith, but he inspired among others such confidence that his presence at a battle was accounted to be worth a hundred thousand men.
