199“It’s just one thought,” he said. “Motivational teach-
ers repeat it many different ways, but it’s just one
thought: It’s a binary system. Are you on or are you off?”
Are you positive or are you negative? Are you creat-
ing or are you reacting? Are you on or are you off? Are
you life or are you death? Are you day or are you night?
Are you in or are you out? “Is you is or is you ain’t?”
And there’s nothing more motivational to flip your
binary switch to “on” than a clear vision of what it is
that you really want. What do you want to bring into
being? It doesn’t matter what that vision is or how of-
ten it changes. It only matters what that vision does.
If your vision isn’t getting you up in the morning,
then make up another one. Keep at it until you develop
a vision that’s so colorful and clear that it puts you in
action just to think about it.
96. Build your power base
Knowledge is power. What you know is your power
base—it’s the battery you run on. You need to charge it
constantly and consciously.
Who do you want to be in charge of what you know?
News directors? Radio disc jockeys? The office gossip? Tab-
loid newspaper editors? A pessimistic family member?
Unless we consciously decide to build our own knowl-
edge base, with a sense of direction to it, then we will
be programmed, totally, by random input.
Feeling miserable and alienated from life is caused
by not being in control of what we know.
“Misery and alienation are not laid upon us by fate,”
wrote Colin Wilson. “They are due to the failure of the
ego to accept its role as the controller of consciousness.
All our experiences of happiness and intensity force the
Build your power base