Welcome to the Inspirational Living Podcast.

Today's reading was edited and adapted from Youth and Opportunity by Thomas Tapper, published in 1912.

Education is the result of that process which liberates the power within us.

With this power we work in our environment,

and to the degree that we conquer environment itself, we succeed.

For no person may be said truly to succeed who,

instead of mastering the world, is overcome by it.

Education has to do with mind power, and how spiritually to direct it into forms of activity

that are enduring.

The real individual must, to secure the highest experience in life, submit their mind to a stern training.

You must make it exercise itself in such a way that you, its master, may drive yourself out

into more and yet more valuable experience.

This does not imply that success in life comes from great scholarship alone, for aside from

the education of schools, which is the first step everyone may find in their environment,

the inspiration for a remarkable training in the University of Life.

There are many steps to be taken while a little child grows into the adult who succeeds in the profession of their choosing.

In that time there is an infinite number of lessons to be learned.

Every one of these lessons has its single purpose, to make the mind act, and by action to gain strength,

and by gaining strength to be able to store up power. Education is not complete when your school days are

passed. The lessons are not ended, and you are not free. As a matter of fact, the greatest book

in the world is about to be open to you, the book of life. The most difficult lesson is now before you,

how to live divinely. Be you rich and idle, or poor and industrious. The responsibility

...