Embodiment · “Being Precedes Having”
Releasing the Power Within
Deliberately generate a confident, positively charged mental state and declare your capacity, to release inner energy toward a goal instead of leaking it to doubt.
Name the moment you’re charging for.
- Set down the “I can’t” first.
- Declare, with feeling: “I can, I will.”
- Make it a body-state, not just words.
- Move into the action while the charge is live.
What it is
The signature move of TNT: The Power Within You (the title stands for the explosive “power within you”): before you act, you deliberately work yourself into a confident, emotionally charged positive mental attitude and declare your capacity — the inner stance Sherman and his co-author Claude Bristol compress into the spirit of “I can, I will.” The idea is that most people leak their available energy into doubt, fear, and worry; the practice is to reverse that, summon a felt sense of confident determination, and let it “release the forces inside you” toward what you want.
It is less a verbal formula than a state you switch into, with the declaration as the trigger.
The Method
- Name the goal or moment you’re charging up for — a call, a task, a fear you keep flinching from.
- Drop the negative load first. Notice the worry/“I can’t” running underneath and consciously set it down; the charge cannot build on top of active doubt.
- Declare your capacity. State, with feeling, that you can and you will — “I can, I will” — said as a settled decision, not a hope.
- Feel it in the body. Stand or sit upright, breathe, and let the words become an actual state of confident determination. The state, not the syllables, is the point.
- Hold it for a beat, then move. Carry the charged attitude straight into the action while it’s live. Re-fire it the instant doubt creeps back. (Sourcing note: “I can, I will” renders the book’s confident-attitude core in short paraphrase; the “release the forces inside you / power within” language is the book’s own framing. Short fair-use reference.)
Source & Lineage
TNT: The Power Within You (1954), co-authored with Claude M. Bristol (author of The Magic of Believing). Sherman supplies the practical, attitude-and-action voice; the book sits squarely in the New Thought mind-power tradition that runs from Coué’s autosuggestion through Bristol’s “believing” to mid-century positive-attitude self-help.
Common refinements
Chanting words over live doubt. If “I can” sits on top of an un-dropped “I can’t,” it rings hollow. Set the doubt down first, then charge.
- Charge without action. The state is fuel; with no task to spend it on it just dissipates. Always move while it’s hot.
- Forcing a state you flatly reject. If “I will” feels like a lie, scaffold it (“I can learn to…”, “I’m willing to try…”) rather than asserting what you don’t believe.
- Treating it as magic causation. A charged attitude improves your performance and persistence; it does not, by itself, rearrange external events.