Text of the meditation
The person is the all-important factor. A person imagines they could do great things if they were not hampered by circumstances: by want of money, want of time, want of influence, and want of freedom from family ties. In reality they are not hindered by these things at all.
In their mind they ascribe to them a power they do not possess, and they submit not to them but to their opinions about them, that is, to a weak element in their nature. The real "want" that hampers them is the want of the right attitude of mind. When they regard their circumstances as spurs to their resources, when they see that their so-called drawbacks are the very steps by which they are to mount successfully to their achievement, then their necessity gives birth to invention, and the "hindrances" are transformed into aids.
Whoever complains of their circumstances has not yet become a person of substance.
James Allen (1864–1912), Book of Meditations for Every Day in the Year (1913) – public-domain text, gently modernised.
The original 1913 text is in the public domain.
