PROMISE YOURSELF
TO BE SO STRONG
that nothing can disturb your peace of mind.
To talk health, happiness,
and prosperity to every person you meet.
To make all your friends
feel that there is something in them.
To look at the sunny side of everything
and make your optimism come true.
To think only of the best,
to work only for the best,
and to expect only the best.
be just as enthusiastic about the success
of others as you are about your own.
To forget the mistakes of the past and press on
to the greater achievements of the future.
To wear a cheerful countenance at all times and give every living creature you meet a smile.
To give so much time
to the improvement of yourself
that you have no time to criticize others.
To be too large for worry, too noble for anger,
too strong for fear, and too happy to permit the presence of trouble.(Optimist International creed ends here.)
To think well of yourself
and to proclaim this fact to the world,
not in loud words, but in great deeds.
To live in the faith
that the whole world is on your side,
so long as you are true to the best that is in you.
Christian Larson (1866– 1955) was an American New Thought leader and teacher, as well as a prolific author of metaphysical and New Thought books. He is credited by Horatio Dresser as being a founder in the New Thought movement. Many of Larson’s books remain in print today, more than 100 years after they were first published, and his writings influenced notable New Thought authors and leaders, including Religious Science founder Ernest Holmes.
Early in the career of Ernest Holmes, Larson’s writings so impressed him that he abandoned Mary Baker Eddy‘s Christian Science textbook Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures for them. Ernest and his brother Fenwicke Holmes took a correspondence course with Larson, and in his biography of his brother, Ernest Holmes: His Life and Times, Fenwicke elaborates on the influence of Larson’s thought on Ernest, ranking Larson’s The Ideal Made Real (1912) with Ralph Waldo Trine‘s In Tune with the Infinite in its influence over him.
In 1918, Larson joined the staff of Science of Mind Magazine as an associate editor and frequent contributor. He was on the permanent faculty of Ernest Holmes’ Institute of Religious Science as a teacher.
In 1912 Larson published a poem that eventually became the Optimist Creed, which in 1922 was adopted by Optimist International, better known as the Optimist Clubs.
| ReplyForward |