You can be inspired by a new light, and you can generate a new force enabling you to realize your hopes and make all your dreams come true. Decide now to make your life grander, greater, richer and nobler than ever before.
"The Power of Your Subconscious Mind," by Joseph Murphy
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His brother was older, bigger and better. He worked harder. He ran every day, even if the family was on vacation, even if it was snowing, even when his body begged him to stay in bed. Steven told his younger brother, "Thomas, you must work harder."
Thomas Dooley said, "Yes, I must set a goal." He wanted to be like his brother. He wanted to be like the third-division soccer player who was the hero of his small German town. Both players could run, so Thomas would run, too.
His goal became to run from his town to the next, uphill, three miles. The first day he ran along the road for one mile and couldn't go on. Tomorrow, he thought, my goal is to go 100 meters farther.
For three weeks Thomas tried running to the next town, each day getting closer. He set his goal at running to the sign denoting the city limits.
"I will never forget this," Thomas Dooley said. "The last 200 yards I saw the sign. My legs were dead. I thought, 'I am so tired but I have to go on.' I hit the sign and I said, 'Yeah! I got my goal.' It was like Rocky in the movie."
It's a fitting reference for a man who grew up in Germany yearning for America, whose personal philosophy so well meshes with the American notion that if you work hard, then you can begin to achieve your dreams.
Dooley, a new American citizen and the most experienced player on the U.S. World Cup soccer team, is living his dream every day. His dream's edges have been pushed to places where he willed them and his goals--ever changing--are met daily with a headlong rush of enthusiasm.
His life has been so profoundly altered that he can't even see where he came from, only where he wants to go.
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\o7 Change your thoughts and you change your destiny.\f7
"The Power of Your Subconscious Mind"
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Something was missing and Thomas Dooley was troubled by the loss. He was 17 and he had been dutifully doing what was expected of him all his life. He was moving, but he had no direction.
"My brother and I were playing on a team in the worst league, the 11th division," he said. "Every Friday and Saturday night we went to a discotheque and drank beer and smoked. It's normal, but the next day we had a game. We talked about this and decided no more drinking and no more smoking. I have to work. I need more training. I need a plan."
He planned to get out of the life he was in. He was a highly skilled toolmaker, working from 6 a.m. until 2:30. Then he went home and watched television and played soccer. At that rate, he was going to do, for the rest of his life, what his uncles and his stepfather had done: What was expected, day after monotonous day.
Something was missing. One day a friend called Dooley to his office and sat him down.
"Is this what you are going to do with your life, work at a factory?" his friend asked. "Don't you want more?"
He handed Dooley a small paperback book, "The Power of Your Subconscious Mind," by Joseph Murphy.
Dooley read the book. And re-read it. He carried it with him and read certain parts during the day. He had found a plan. He had a goal. He would change his life. He would quit the factory and go to the university and study architecture and he and Steven would move up to a higher soccer league, where there were good fields to play on and real linesmen.
He changed the way he saw his world and the way he thought about it.
Along the way, inevitably, he saw that his world had changed. He began to notice that those around him always talked about what they couldn't do, what was not possible and how they had failed. Dooley only wanted to be around positive-thinking people. He became aware that his infectious good nature was at odds with the manner of the majority, those who would not look one another in the eye and brooded on their bad luck.
"In America, anything is possible," Dooley said, sitting in the bright sunshine of the U.S. team's training complex in Mission Viejo. "In Germany, most people look only one way. They say, 'I can't do that.' I say, 'Why can't you do that? You can do everything. You only have to believe in it and you have to do something.'
"Germany is a small country and a good business country. The business leaders are guys like Americans--they think positive. They have goals. I changed my mentality. I began to think that way."
With his book as his guide and a head full of goals, Dooley set out on his new life. He had dreamed of playing in a higher division and soon he and Steven were sold to a third-division club. Then he moved to FC Homburg in the second division.
