Welcome to the Inspirational Living podcast.

Today's reading was edited and adapted from Success Through Thought Habit by Benjamin Johnson, published in 1908.

Your character represents the result of the habits you have formed. Your habits show your manner of thought.

Your manner of thought is in turn affected by your method of breathing.

Would you like to succeed?

Then breathe systematically, intelligently, and happily.

The air is filled with life-giving oxygen ready for you to use.

It is already yours, but you must give it space in which to do its work.

Unless you have the force of will necessary to breathe correctly,

not only once but many times a day, you have not

sufficient will to develop your mental faculties to their greatest capacity, hence your

thinking will be limited.

You have probably, like many other people, consider breathing as a natural process not worth bothering about.

And so, like many other people, you have starved certain organs of your body,

impoverished your brain, and then sought for some remedy to act as a tonic.

All the time the real remedy has been within your reach,

but you have willfully refused to acknowledge or use it.

You surely desire to succeed, don't you?

Then begin to work for success by realizing to the utmost your need of giving

to the lungs the greatest natural tonic and purifying agent for the blood, oxygen.

In order to take in the greatest amount of oxygen, all breathing exercises should be practiced

in the open air, or by an open window. Deep full breast should be inhaled through the nostrils,

...