PRACTICE.  When you are at leisure, and are able to indulge in “day dreams” without injury to your affairs of life, call your imagination into play and endeavor to picture yourself as being possessed of the qualities indicated by the words named.  Picture yourself under the most trying circumstances, making use of the desired qualities, and manifesting them fully.  Endeavor to picture yourself as acting out your part well, and exhibiting the desired qualities.  Do not be ashamed to indulge in these day-dreams, for they are the prophecies of the things to follow, and you are but rehearsing your part before the day of the performance.  Practice makes perfect, and if you accustom yourself to acting in a certain way in imagination, you will find it much easier to play your part when the real performance occurs.  This may seem childish to many of you, but if you have an actor among your acquaintances, consult him about it, and you will find that he will heartily recommend it.  He will tell you what practice does for one in this direction, and how repeated practice and rehearsals may fix a character so firmly in a man’s mind that he may find it difficult to divest himself of it after a time.  Choose well the part you wish to play—­the character you wish to be yours—­and then after fixing it well in your mind, practice, practice, practice.  Keep your ideal constantly before you, and endeavor to grow into it.  And you will succeed, if you exercise patience and perseverance.

But, more than this.  Do not confine your practice to mere private rehearsal.  You need some “dress rehearsals” as well—­rehearsals in public.  Therefore, after you get well started in your work, manage to exercise your growing character-habits in your everyday life.  Pick out the little cases first and “try it on them.”

You will find that you will be able to overcome conditions that formerly bothered you much.  You will become conscious of a growing strength and power coming from within, and you will recognize that you are indeed a changed person.  Let your thought express itself in action, whenever you get a good chance.  But do not try to force chances just to try your strength.  Do not, for instance, try to force people to ask for favors that you may say “No!” You will find plenty of genuine tests without forcing any.  Accustom yourself to looking people in the eye, and feeling the power that is back of you, and within you.  You will soon be able to see through their personality, and realize that it is just one portion of the One Life gazing at another portion, and that therefore there is nothing to be afraid of.  A realization of your Real Self will enable you to maintain your poise under trying circumstances, if you will but throw aside your false idea about your personality.  Forget yourself—­your little personal self—­for a while, and fix your mind on the Universal Self of which you are a part.  All these things that have worried you are but incidents of the Personal Life, and are seen to be illusions when viewed from the standpoint of the Universal Life.