As A Man Thinketh
Assessment by Yohannes Belayneh Bekele (Ethiopia)
1. What is the main idea that the author is trying to convey in the book?
As A Man Thinketh is all about the power of thought and the way it influences the human character through his life whether he is rich or poor, young or old, man or woman. The book describes how thought determines the character of a person as man is the master of his thought that he can build or demolish himself by his thought. It stresses the fact that having positive thoughts in your mind can create the positive effect whereas negative thought is reflected as a negative value in life. Through this power of thought we can also change the circumstances that happen in our life and use the negative or destructive circumstances to produce a positive effect and vice-versa.
It also describes the effect thought has not only on mental accomplishments but also on health and body as our body is managed by our brain and the negative thoughts that we have in our mind are reflected as disease or weakness on our physical body. So as we can easily attract our health by positive and clean thoughts.
Additionally it describes the idea of thought linked with purpose for a best achievement in life as there will be no accomplishment unless we have a legitimate purpose in our heart and set out towards it for success. In addition to this, the idea of the thought factor is also given in the book as a man is what he thinks so in order to have both the intellectual and spiritual achievements, he has to think towards them by building positive environment that will lead to the needed goal.
Finally the book describes the power visions and ideals have in achieving success. A man has to have a vision that promises what he shall be one day and an ideal which he will unveil at last when he reaches his goal. Without these two things having a thought in mind is nothing but a nightmare. It also shows how calmness helps in realizing all the thoughts we have in mind and reach our goal whether we are in hard situations or excitingly special moments. Staying calm is one of the factors that will help us convert our dream into reality.
2. What were the seven ideas which were personally most important to you and why? List these seven ideas followed by an explanation after each one as to why it was important to you. Use personal examples from your own life.
a. As a Man Thinketh in his heart so is he: every human being is the reflection of his own thought. The successful people that the world knows and the unsuccessful ones are all the reflection of their thoughts. Personally I had so many experiences in my life in which when I realize them after their occurrence are like miracles but at that time all I think was accomplishing those tasks and I were successful in that. The failures I faced in the past are mostly because of my initial mind setup that I can’t achieve what is needed so that however hard I tried to do them, I were not successful.
b. A man’s mind may be likened to a garden: as a man’s thoughts reflect on who he is, if he think of bad things or ideas he will fail in his path. Whereas if he thinks of good things or ideas, he will be successful in his path. This is anonymous to a garden in which if you sow a rotten seed or preserve the garden correctly, you can’t get good product at the end of the season. But if you sow a good seed and preserve the garden throught the season, you will get a good product at the end.
c. Until thought is linked to purpose there is no intelligent accomplishment: everyone has to have a purpose in life in general or in the task he is trying to accomplish in particular. Purpose is the main thing that we need to realize our dreams because when we have purpose we can set our goal clearly, see the problems we will face and the opportunities we have in working towards that goal before they actually happen, solve those problems and use them constructively by right thinking towards our goal. In my personal life I always have purpose for every task I do. When I was in school I had a goal of graduating and helping myself, my family and the society and I am doing that and now I have the purpose of marrying and having children. These purposes helped me to have a clear goal and work towards it.
d. As he thinks, so is he; as he continues to think, so he remains: this statement is one of the statement that has a very big idea in it. For me everything is the reflection of what I think. In my personal life all the things that I thought of are becoming a reality and now also I think of things I want to happen in my life and the person I want to be and all these are taking place in me and reflecting in my environment.
e. He who would accomplish little need sacrifice little, he who would achieve much must sacrifice much: the man’s achievement depends on the strength of the effort he put on the idea or thing he want to accomplish. In my personal life the things I sacrifices most like my study in college are the most successful achievements in my life as their result has also a big impact in my day to day life and those things I had been less concerned with are in fact having little effect in my life.
f. Dreams are the seedlings of realities: first of all everything starts from a dream, a dream that tells you what it is, a dream that tells you how to do it and a dream that tells you what you will achieve after you realize your dream. As a seed grows to a full plant and give its fruit after a long period of harvest and tiresome work of cultivation, so is our dream. In my personal life I had dreams and I have also dreams now. With these dreams I work towards success, to see the fruit of my dreams.
g. Calmness of mind is one of the beautiful jewels of wisdom: this statement describes the need of calmness in life even if we are carrying out the most exciting things in our life. With calmness we will have a clear understanding of how things are going and how to tackle problems as opposed to excitement with everything that leads mostly to wrong decisions and failure.
3. How will these ideas or lessons help you in a practical way, both in your daily personal life and in helping you to create a better world? If so, how?
The ideas I mentioned above, I can say, will become the basic pillars in my personal life in order to contribute all the positive things to myself and the society. Starting from the title, “As A Man Thinketh”, everything in the book are good procedural presentations on how to carry out ideas and dreams and realize them as a success story in life. I personally were using some of the concepts in the book knowingly or unknowingly in my past life and achieved success in the things I had done.
I also got new ideas in the book that will help me change my life style for the benefit of both the world and myself. Ideas like the effect of thought on health and body and the thought factor in achievement were the ideas I want to have a deep knowledge in order to use them in my daily life and this book gives me the opportunity to have a better understanding of them.
I have so many ideas and dreams in my life. I did realize some of these ideas and dreams into reality and in some I was failed. Now I look back to these failures and I thought that the first thing that made me fail was the idea that I can’t make this was in my mind and from this book I mainly learn that in order to realize a dream and having a good personality in general the first thing to do is to have a positive and clear thought about things. From now onward I will stick to this idea and I am sure will help me realize my dreams which are helpful to the society and to myself.
In addition, these ideas gave me the opportunity to realize how little things and thoughts can become great success stories in life. How the mind setup of an individual changes the whole of his character and his achievements in order for him to contribute his part in the society. These lessons also gave me the opportunity to dig up how much potential I have in me and make me exploit my ideas and change them to reality.
4. Quotes: Are there any statements which the author made that particularly got your attention? If so, please quote them and comment as to why they were important to you.
“ He who has conquered doubt & fear has conquered failure”: this statement has a special meaning to me because it states the exact human nature in every sphere of life as I know so many people who with fear and doubt failed to achieve success and their contribution to the society and them selves was blocked by their doubt and fear. I think in order to achieve success, the first thing that a human being has to do is to overcome fear of failure, doubt of failure and have a strong hold towards his ideas. After that every dream he has can be realized with the concepts the book taught.
5. Is there anything in the book that you do not understand or are unclear about, or are there ideas which you disagree with and, if so, why?
No.
6. Did the book contain exercises for the reader to complete? If so, did you complete all of the exercises and did you find them helpful?
No.
7. Was there anything you read in the book that you would like to comment on that was not covered in the previous questions? If so, please comment.
No.
Please rate the following questions on a scale from 1 to 10. Ten is good and one is poor.
A. How interesting was it to read? 10
B. How helpful were the contents? 10
C. How easy was it to understand? 10
D. Would you recommend it to others? 10
E. What is the overall rating you would give it? 10
Jonathan Livingston Seagull
Assessment by Yohannes Belayneh Bekele (Ethiopia)
1. What is the main idea that the author is trying to convey in the book?
In this book, Jonathan Livingston Seagull, the author tries to convey two main ideas in my opinion.
The first one is the idea of how much you will pay to work towards your dreams. Jonathan was a simple seagull as all the others are but in his mind there is an idea of flying and it is above everything for him in this world. He started to change his dreams in to reality but there comes the problems that everybody in the real world also faces because he has an idea that he want to realize and it is out of the custom social trend. He was outcast from the society, he lost his family and everything to make his dream a reality. This was his first challenge. Then he went to practice by himself, and taken to the place where there are seagulls like him who are outcast because of their dreams and he passed so many obstacles before he become a professional flying seagull.
This is I think the exact reflection of what happens with the ones who have an idea that shows there is also another purpose in life to live for rather than the simple customary way of living and in order to realize it they have two problems, the norm in the society and the difficulty of the idea itself. In the first two parts the book shows how much you have to go in order to make your dreams reality even if it can cost you your family, your position in the society, your fortune and everything and tackling all the problems that you face. In addition to this it also shows how much it costs , in addition to losing everything, whether it is physical or mental value in order to reach to a goal. This is shown by the failures Jonathan has faced before he become a perfect flying seagull and even a trainer. These are the two obstacles that everybody faces when he tries to realize an idea which is not in the custom norm of the society.
The second main idea the book tries to convey is whatever harm someone did to you, how much you can forgive and forget it and even help him to realize what mistakes he had done. This is shown in the third part of the book where Jonathan returned back to his flock even if they outcast him before and everybody was against him because of his flying idea but he still wants them to see the beauty behind flying and succeeded in teaching the youth to fly and become again masters and believe in him more than everything. In real life also, especially people who were rejected by the society because of their ideas, are seen to be on revenge finally and they don’t want to contribute to their society after wards even if their idea can dramatically change things.
These people always think of a revenge plan for the society who rejected them rather than teaching what their idea was and forget everything. From this book we can learn that after a very long and tiresome set of obstacles, everyone’s idea can have followers and finally he can be accepted again in his society even with a better status so that he has to forgive and forget everything. After going through a lot of difficulties, someone can also suggest and show others the easiest way of doing the task which is beneficial to both the society and the individual who is willing to acquire that skill. In this way he can have so many to follow his idea and change it into a reality for their individual benefit or the benefit of the society or for the world at large.
2. What were the seven ideas which were personally most important to you and why? List these seven ideas followed by an explanation after each one as to why it was important to you. Use personal examples from your own life.
a. The first idea is how anybody can think of ideas that are not thinkable or acceptable in the society but can make him happy and after wards can become a genius in those ideas. This is like the invention of something new which is not part of the society’s custom. These ideas may one day become the corner stones of the society’s beliefs and cultures. A good example for this was the idea of the earth being round not flat which raised anger among many except few individuals who stick to it till the end and finally proved to be right.
b. The next idea is how much sacrifice one has to pay on his way to realizing his idea. These problems can be as hard as being prosecuted but someone has to stick to his beliefs till the end. In this process of sticking to a plan everybody faces problems and the biggest thing is not going back because of these problems. Because of so many reasons the society may not like the idea we have in us and try to realize. The main reason is the cultural norm the society has that has been kept for many years and after these years this norm has become a reality so that if some idea is against that norm it is considered as being against the reality.
c. The third idea is the age difference in the society even in the family. As a youngster everything seems to be an idea that can be realized into reality and anything is possible because on that age there is a youth power that seems unbeatable so that everyone is eager to do anything at that age but when it comes to elderly, they will see an idea from every direction before they make it a reality so as to check if it matches with everything around them so this arises a conflict between the two parties. But the bottom line is if someone has strong courage and definite plan in carrying out his dreams he will be successful.
d. Another idea is how someone has to struggle after he changed his dream into reality , to make his idea the idea of not only his but of the community’s and the world’s if it is a helpful and life changing idea. In this process also someone faces obstacles and has to come to a solution which can solve them and after that his idea may even become the noblest idea of the society.
e. In addition another idea of what someone faces in his struggle towards perfection made me see how much it takes to master what someone took as a profession or a hobby. Even if there is a failure on the way someone has to always think of also there is a success. Reading this book makes me remind one statement that Thomas Alva Edison said when he is asked about his failure for 99 times during his invention of the light bulb. Edison said that he didn’t failed but he discovered 99 ways that can’t be used to build a light bulb. So that if someone has a dream and he started to make it a reality, he has to exhaust all possibilities before he say “I gave up, I can’t do this” or “I am not capable of doing this” as there is always a natural potential in us that makes us strong enough to do whatever we have in our dream.
f. The only difference between successful people and those that are not in every aspect of life is exploiting that potential and the courage and how far they can go to realize their dream into a reality.
g. After going through a lot of difficulties, someone can also suggest and show others the easiest way of doing the task which is beneficial to both the society and the individual who is willing to acquire that skill. In this way he can have so many to follow his idea and change it into a reality for their individual benefit or the benefit of the society or for the world at large.
3. How will these ideas or lessons help you in a practical way, both in your daily personal life and in helping you to create a better world? If so, how?
These ideas help me in different aspects of my life as the problems and realities that face Jonathan as a seagull are the problems that everybody faces in his life course as a human being.
Sometimes I may have ideas that have a very good impact in changing my personal life and the world at large. But because of the fear that if I put forward this idea that my friends or my family and in large the society will discriminate me makes me to have the idea but hinders me back from realizing it. From this book I learned that ,whatever it takes to realize it, if I have an idea that can have a positive impact over the society and myself, I will try to make it a reality. On this process I may face difficulties in dealing with my friends or family and others but I will keep in mind that at last they will realize how positive my idea is and beneficial to them also.
The other is that, after I realized my idea and changed it into reality, rather than hatred and revenge to my friends and family or the society, it is better to let them see what good is in my idea that makes me loose everything I have with them and stick to it. After that I will try to make them believe in it and even practice it rather than seeing me as an ideal person.
4. Quotes: Are there any statements which the author made that particularly got your attention? If so, please quote them and comment as to why they were important to you.
The statements which contain the ideas I mentioned above got my attention and I described above how they will help me in my day to day life.
5. Is there anything in the book that you do not understand or are unclear about, or are there ideas which you disagree with and, if so, why?
No.
6. Did the book contain exercises for the reader to complete? If so, did you complete all of the exercises and did you find them helpful? There are no exercises in the book.
No.
7. Was there anything you read in the book that you would like to comment on that was not covered in the previous questions? If so, please comment.
No.
Please rate the following questions on a scale from 1 to 10. Ten is good and one is poor.
A. How interesting was it to read? 10
B. How helpful were the contents? 9
C. How easy was it to understand? 9
D. Would you recommend it to others? 9
E. What is the overall rating you would give it? 9