The Man Who Seeks to Move a Mountain...

I recently read Shoe Dog by Phil Knight, and The Art of War written by Chinese Military General and Philosopher Sun Tzu. It got me thinking deeply about the way that success and victory, which are of course all subjective to the individual, can be achieved in day-to-day life. Here is what I came up with.

Ambition. It seems as though it is the driving force behind some of the greatest of minds and the most innovative of ideas. It seems as though it is essential for the growth of the individual tomorrow beyond that which they are today. For many of us, it is something on which we set our objectives and on which we strive to mould our behaviour.

Ambition holds different truths in one man than it does in another. For one mind is set on changing the world while another is set on making it though that day. One mind is set on the defeat of his enemies while the other is set on the conquering of his fears. One mind thinks with the sun and the other, with the night.

The mind is imperative. For it is the driving force of all which we seek to be. Of our ambition. The mind knows where strength is super abundant and where it is deficient. To concentrate on the development of one's thinking is to hone their ambition, their thirst for the reaching of their objective, into an appropriate behaviour or set of behaviours.

All men can see the tactics whereby we conquer. But what none can see is the strategy out of which victory is evolved. He who can modify his tactics in relation to his ambition and thereby succeed in winning may be called a heaven-born captain. This is why thinking is of the utmost importance.

Confucius said: He who seeks to move the mountain must start by removing the smallest of stones.

The honing of thought is the removal of the stones. The objective unto which your ambition is driving you is the mountain that you seek to move. You must start by honing your thought. By disciplining your mind. By becoming an active thinker. The man who wins the battle makes many calculations beforehand. The man who loses the battle makes but few calculations beforehand. Thus do many calculations lead to victory and few calculations to defeat. How much more, no calculation at all.

It is by attention to this point that we can foresee who will win and who will lose. Who will achieve their goals and who will not. Who will move the mountain and who will go around it.

Those who discipline their mind to think about the course that they must take before they take it, are those who are capable of removing the stones. Those who begin on their course and seek to control it as they undertake it are those who will stumble.

When you have disciplined yourself to control your mind you can use it as a tool to sculpt any future you wish for yourself. You can use it as the force with which you will defeat whichever enemy it that you seek to defeat, or succeed in whichever field you seek to succeed in.

Those who allow their minds to control their own self will fail. Those who give in to the impulse of ease before embracing the fruits of ambition will not defeat their enemies and will not succeed in their fields.

The mind moves the stones, your actions move the mountains.

Do not attempt to do the latter, before you do the former.