The whiff of coffee quickened me to a whole new realm of possibilities this beautiful morning.

A couple of chapters from a beautiful book top the excitement and assurance of waking up to yet another morning.

Reading gives a new perspective on life. It lets you see the world from an author’s eye, challenges your perceptions, gives you hope, and wakes you from dogma, among other things. About 26 books a year should be the goal of a busy person—say you’re reading one every two weeks.

So what did I learn today? I learned How to be a Rebel, I learned that humans are in constant rebellion against failure and unhappiness. That is good. It indicates a desire for freedom.

But because of unclear thinking, most men utterly waste their powers of healthy rebellion. A man rebels against the wrong things. By directing his protests against external conditions, he misses the point entirely. It is not his exterior world that needs his attention; it is himself.

A man falls into a self-made trap whenever he thinks that by replacing his politics or his sex partner or residence or religion that he has really changed anything. In truth, he has merely replaced one prison cell to another—and deep down in his heart he desperately knows it. But by not facing that truth, he is desperately driven to Rebel again and again against some exterior condition—with the same empty results.

What, then, should we rebel against? What is the logical and profitable target?

We have one thing and one thing only to rebel against: our own negative or unrealistic or unworkable state of mind. In that lies complete freedom, and nowhere else. When a man makes right his mental processes, every exterior condition effortlessly rights itself!