Inner Journey

Early on, Les Brown says you can't control which thoughts arrive, but you can control which ones you dwell on. When a thought drifts in, you observe it and don't buy into it, or you answer it with "I am at peace." The idea is that you are the one watching the thinking, so you can choose who you listen to.

The questions strip away the usual excuses so you can hear what you actually want. He also asks how you see yourself in one, five and ten years, and what you'd change if your time were short. The point is to notice what you've been putting off and who may have talked you out of it.

He asks you to name the part of yourself you can't carry into the future: a habit, belief or way you've been standing in your own way. Only you know what it is. He ties it to the line that to do something you've never done, you have to become someone you've never been.

He calls it the breath of life and says it reflects how you show up. You begin by listening to it, and near the end he says meditating on the breath is the key. In daily life, when something happens, you take a deep breath and respond rather than react.

It leans spiritual. Les Brown speaks of the spirit and breath of God, angels, and being chosen for a mission. He also quotes Elizabeth Barrett Browning's "imprisoned splendor" and Einstein on imagination as a preview of what's to come. If that language doesn't suit you, the questions and the visualization can still be used on their own terms.

He suggests setting aside time each day, around twenty minutes, to hold the vision of your dream and the person you must become to reach it. You also repeat the closing affirmation: I have greatness within me, and I must choose to live from that greatness. He says returning to this journey gets easier each time.