Prosperity begins in the mind and is impossible while the mental attitude is hostile to it. It is fatal to work for one thing and to expect something else, because everything must be created mentally first and is bound to follow its mental pattern.
No one can become prosperous while he really expects or half expects to remain poor. We tend to get what we expect, and to expect nothing is to get nothing.
When every step you take is on the road to failure, how can you hope to arrive at the success goal?
It is facing the wrong way, toward the black, depressing, hopeless outlook, even though we may be working in the opposite direction, that kills the results of our effort.
Most people do not face life in the right way. They neutralize a large part of their effort because their mental attitude does not correspond with their endeavor, so that while working for one thing they are really expecting something else. They discourage, drive away, the very thing they are pursuing by holding the wrong mental attitude towards it. They do not approach their work with that assurance of victory which attracts, which forces results, that determination and confidence which knows no defeat.
To be ambitious for wealth and yet always expecting to be poor, to be always doubting your ability to get what you long for, is like trying to reach East by traveling West. There is no philosophy which will help a man to succeed when he is always doubting his ability to do so, and thus attracting failure.
The man who would succeed must think success, must think upward. He must think progressively, creatively, constructively, inventively, and, above all, optimistically.
You will go in the direction in which you face. If you look towards poverty, towards lack, you will go that way. If, on the other hand, you turn squarely around and refuse to have anything to do with poverty,—to think it,—live it, or recognize it—you will then begin to make progress towards the goal of plenty.
Many of us work at cross purposes, because, while we would like to be rich, we believe in our hearts that we shall not become so, and our mental attitude, the pattern which the life processes follow, makes impossible the very thing we are working for. It is our penury attitude, our doubt and fear, our lack of self-faith and of faith in the all-abundant, infinite supply, that makes us poor.
You must not play the part of a poor man while you are exerting all your energy to make money. You must get into a prosperous mental attitude. As long as you carry about a poorhouse atmosphere with you, you will make a poorhouse impression; and that will never attract money.
There is a saying that every time the sheep bleats it loses a mouthful of hay. Every time you allow yourself to complain of your lot, to say, “I am poor; I can never do what others do; I shall never be rich; I have not the ability that others have; I am a failure; luck is against me,” you are laying up so much trouble for yourself, making it all the more difficult to get rid of these enemies of your peace and happiness, for every time you think of them they will go a little deeper and deeper into your consciousness.
Thoughts are magnets which attract things like themselves. If your mind dwells upon poverty and disease, it will bring you poverty and disease. There is no possibility of your producing just the opposite of what you are holding in your mind, because your mental attitude is the pattern which is built into the life. Your accomplishments are achieved mentally first.
If you are always thinking of poor business, preparing for it, expecting it, are always complaining about the times and conditions and fearing that business is going to be bad, it will be bad—for you. No matter how hard you may work for success, if your thought is saturated with the fear of failure, it will kill your efforts, neutralize your endeavors, and make success impossible.
The terror of failure and the fear of coming to want and of possible humiliation keep multitudes of people from obtaining the very things they desire, by sapping their vitality and incapacitating them, through worry and anxiety, for the effective, creative work necessary to give them success.
The habit of looking at everything constructively, from the bright, hopeful side, the side of faith and assurance, instead of from the side of doubt and uncertainty; and the habit of believing that the best is going to happen, that the right must triumph; the faith that truth is bound finally to conquer error, that harmony and health are the reality and discord and disease the temporary absence of it—this is the attitude of the optimist, which will ultimately reform the world.
Optimism is a builder. It is to the individual what the sun is to vegetation. It is the sunshine of the mind, which constructs life, beauty, and growth in everything within its reach. Our mental faculties grow and thrive in it just as the plants and trees grow and thrive in the physical sunshine.
Pessimism is negative, it is the darkened dungeon which destroys vitality and strangles growth.
A fatal penalty awaits those who always look on the dark side of everything, who are always predicting evil and failure, who see only the seamy, disagreeable side of life. They draw upon themselves what they see, what they look for.
Nothing has power to attract things unlike itself. Everything radiates its own quality, and attracts things which are akin. If a man wants to be happy and wealthy, he must think the happy thought, hold the abundance thought, and not limit himself. He who has a mortal dread of poverty generally gets it.
Stop thinking trouble if you want to attract its opposite. Stop thinking poverty if you want to attract wealth. Do not have anything to do with the things you have been fearing. They are fatal enemies to your advancement. Cut them off. Expel them from your mind. Forget them. Think the opposite thoughts just as persistently as you can, and you will be surprised to see how soon you will begin to attract the very things for which you long.
The menial attitude which we hold toward our work or our aim has everything to do with what we accomplish. If you go to your work with the attitude of a slave lashed to his task, and see in it only drudgery; if you work without hope, see no future in what you are doing beyond getting a bare living; if you see no light ahead, nothing but poverty, deprivation, and hard work all your life; if you think that you were destined to such a hard life, you cannot expect to get anything else than that for which you look.
If, on the other hand, no matter how poor you may be today, you can see a better future; if you believe that some day you are going to rise out of humdrum work, that you are going to get up out of the basement of life into the drawing-room, where beauty, comfort, and joy await you; if your ambition is clean-cut, and you keep your eye steadily upon the goal which you hope to reach and feel confident that you have the ability to attain, you will accomplish something worthwhile.
Keeping the faith that we shall some time do the thing which we cannot now see any possible way of accomplishing, just holding steadily the mental attitude, the belief that we will accomplish it, that somehow, some way, it will come to us, the clinging to our vision, gets the mind into such a creative condition that it becomes a magnet to draw the thing desired.
I have never known a man who believed in himself and constantly affirmed his ability to do what he undertook, who always kept his eye constantly on his goal and struggled manfully toward it, who did not make a success of life. Aspiration becomes inspiration and then realization.
Try to keep your mind in an uplifting, upbuilding attitude. Never allow yourself for an instant to harbor a doubt that you are finally going to accomplish what you undertake.
These doubts are treacherous, they destroy your creative ability, neutralize ambition. Constantly say to yourself, “I must have what I need; it is my right and I am going to have it.”
There is a great cumulative, magnetic effect in holding in your mind continually the thought that you were made for success, for health, for happiness, for usefulness, and that nothing in the world but yourself can keep you from it.
Form a habit of repeating this affirmation, this faith in your ultimate triumph; hold it tenaciously, vigorously, and after a while you will be surprised to find how the things come to you which you have so longed for, yearned for, and struggled towards.
I have seen a man, when all the results of half a lifetime of struggle and sacrifice had been swept away by financial disaster, when he had nothing left but his grit and determination, and a great family of hungry mouths to feed, who would not even for an instant admit that he would not get on his feet again. There was no use talking discouragement to that man! You might as well have tried to discourage a Napoleon. With clenched fists, and a determination which did not recognize defeat, he kept his eye resolutely on his goal and pushed on. In a few years he was on his feet again.
A man was not intended to be a puppet of circumstances, a slave to his environment, he was intended to make his environment, to create his condition.
Nothing comes to us without cause, and that cause is mental. Our mental attitude creates our condition of success or failure. The result of our work will correspond with the nature of our thoughts, our habitual mental attitude. To produce, the mind must be kept in a positive, creative condition. A discordant, worrying, despondent, poverty-facing mental attitude will quickly render the mind negative, and will produce a troop of mental enemies that will effectually bar our way to success and happiness.
Our mental faculties are like servants. They give us exactly what we expect of them. If we trust them, if we depend upon them, they will give us their best. If we are afraid, they will be afraid.
Negative characters wait for things to happen. They have a feeling that somehow things are going to happen anyway, and that they cannot do much to change them.
It is the positive constructive mental attitude that has accomplished all of the great things in the world. It is the creative, aggressive, pushing, stimulating power that is back of all achievement. A strong, vigorous character creates a condition that will force things to happen. Knowing that nothing will move of itself, he is always putting into operation forces that do things.
Many positive minds become negative by influences which destroy their self-confidence. They gradually lose faith in themselves. Perhaps this begins through the suggestion of incompetence from others, the suggestion that they do not know their business or are not equal to the position they hold. After a while, through this subtle suggestion, initiative is weakened; the victims do not undertake things with quite the same vigor as formerly; they gradually lose the power of quick decision, and soon fear to decide anything of importance. Their minds become vacillating. Thus, instead of the leaders they once were, they become followers.
What we vigorously resolve to do, believe in with all our heart, confidently expect, the mental forces tend to realize. The very intensity of expectation enlists the vigor of all the mental processes in trying to accomplish things. In other words, all the forces of the mind fall into line with our expectation and resolution.
Our expectancy, our determination to achieve the thing on which we have set our heart, forms a pattern, a working model, which the mind endeavors to reproduce in reality. It is the mental picture which is used as the model for the creative forces.
The man who is endowed with great expectancy and is determined to reach his goal, let what will stand in his way, by his very resolution gets rid of a lot of success enemies which trip up the weak and the irresolute.
There is a mysterious power in the Great Within of us which we cannot explain, but which we all feel to be there, which tends to carry out our commands, our resolves, whatever they may be.
For example, if I persist in thinking and affirming that I am a nobody, that I am “a poor worm of the dust,” that I am not as good as other people, I shall after a while begin really to believe this, and then a fatal acceptance will be registered in my subconsciousness, and the mental machinery will begin to reproduce the “nobody” pattern. If I radiate the thought of lack and of weakness, of inefficiency, the pattern will, of course, be woven into my life, and I shall express weakness, failure, poverty.
But, on the other hand, if I stoutly affirm that I am heir to all the good things in the universe and that they belong to me as my birthright, if I firmly declare my faith in my kingship and constantly assert that I am able to carry out superbly the great life purpose which is indicated in my bent, assert that power is mine, that health is mine, that I will have nothing to do with sickness, with weakness, with discord, I then make my mind so positive, so creative in its assertive attitude that, instead of destroying, it produces, instead of tearing down, it is building up for me the very thing for which I long.
Constructive thinking means health and prosperity. Our faculties were intended to be producers. Negative thinking means wretchedness, disease, suffering of all kinds. Constructive thought is man’s protector, his savior from all discord, poverty, disease. The people in the great failure army are negative thinkers, while those in the successful ranks are positive, constructive thinkers.
A vigorous, positive mental attitude IS the best possible self-protection.
It is when we are negative that we say “yes” when if we had been positive—normal—we should have said “no.” It is when we are negative, because our judgment is then defective, that we make bad bargains, poor investments, and do all sorts of foolish things. A negative mind is not in a position to take important steps. When we make our slips, our bad breaks and our unfortunate ventures and bad decisions, we are in a more or less discouraged, despondent, unbalanced state and are willing to do almost anything to get into a comfortable position, an attitude of assurance, anything to get rid of our fears and anxieties for the moment, for when our minds are negative we are always cowards.
While we are holding the positive thoughts and creating something, the negative, discouraging, sickly, haphazard thoughts do not get a chance to act upon us. It is in our non-producing moments that negatives, such as fear, worry, anxiety, hatred, and jealously get in their destructive work. While positive energy is busy creating something, we are not troubled with the destructive negative thoughts. It is negative people who are victims of“ the blues,” extreme mental depression.
The normal mind acts under law. The mental faculties will not give up their best unless they are marshaled by order. They respond cordially to system, but they rebel against slipshod methods. They are like soldiers. They must have a leader, a general, who enforces order, method.
The strength and persistency of our habitual thought-force measure our efficiency. The habitual thought-force in many people is so feeble and spasmodic that they cannot focus their minds with sufficient vigor to accomplish much.
We can quickly tell the first time we meet a person whether his thought-force is constructive or weak, for every sentence he utters will partake of its quality.
It is the positive man who carries force. Some men are so positive, so constructive in their mentality, and carry such a power of conquest in their very presence, that the ordinary person instinctively follows. The world makes way for the robust character. He radiates power. His presence commands men. His very words carry the force of conviction.
People do not stop to analyze the reason for following a strong character. They instinctively obey superior mentality. Some strangers we meet at once impress us as producers. They make a positive, aggressive impression; we instantly feel their qualities of leadership, feel that such persons will certainly succeed in their undertakings, that things must go their way. Other people make a weak, negative, indifferent impression upon us and we say they are failures; they do not blaze their own path. To make people feel your power, the positive faculties must dominate.
The art of all arts is to make one’s life a perpetual victory, and this would not be difficult if we were properly trained. As it is, the mind is much of the time in a negative, non-creative condition; instead of causing things, acting, it is acted upon.
The graduate who goes into the world without training in what constitutes a positive and a negative mental attitude is liable to be ruined in a very short time. His doubts, fears, and lack of confidence, his timid and negative mental picture, the effect of his discouraged emotions, may utterly ruin his natural, positive, productive mind by making it negative, and this change may be accomplished wholly unconsciously.
It is of infinitely more value for a student or youth to know how to keep his mind up to its maximum creative power, by keeping it positive and avoiding everything which would make it negative and unproductive, than to learn all the Latin and Greek and philosophies in the world.
We often see college graduates fail because their minds have become negative and incapable of producing, creating. A few months of training the mental faculties and building up the weak, deficient ones by scientific right thinking would be worth more to them than a whole college course without it.
A positive thought develops constructiveness, and this is the most important of all mental qualities. If your mind is inclined to be negative, if you lack initiative, you can soon increase your constructiveness wonderfully by forming a habit of holding the positive, creative mental attitude towards everything.
This is true even when you are enjoying recreation. It is always weakening to hold the negative thought. It is infinitely better, in fact, to hold the mind absolutely passive, for there is a great difference between the passive mind, the mind at rest, and the negative mind.
The mental loom weaves whatever pattern we give it. It reproduces the ideal, whether of discord or harmony, error or truth, courage or cowardice. The characteristics of the model are very quickly transferred to the subject.
You will find a tremendous help in constantly affirming that you are the person you wish to be; not that you hope to be, but that you actually are now. You will be surprised to see how quickly the part which you assume will be realized in your life, will be out pictured in your character.
What magnificent characters we could build up by holding persistently in the mind that pattern which we wish woven into the life web, forming the health pattern, the pattern of wholeness, completeness, the pattern of the perfect man, the man God intended, the ideal man without spot or blemish!
What we need do is to keep the dominant qualities always in the ascendancy, to discourage and kill the opposites, the enemies of all constructiveness.
The moment the building-up process—the chemical force in the soil, in the atmosphere, in the sunshine, in the rain—ceases to operate upon the plant, upon the fruit, upon the tree, the injurious elements set in, and decay and destruction are certain. So, the moment the building-up and creative principles in man cease to dominate, the moment he loses confidence in them, the tearing down and destructive elements begin their work.
The right mental attitude has a powerful influence in protecting the mind from the influence of bad suggestions. For instance, if you constantly deny the power of the evil which you are compelled to hear and see in a vicious environment this denial will have a great counteractive influence upon it.
On the other hand, if your attitude of mind is that of responsiveness, receptiveness to the evil, if you encourage it, welcome it, enjoy it, it will have a very strong influence over you.
There is everything in keeping the mind saturated with one’s aim until it becomes a life habit, in setting the life currents and all of the forces within us towards the goal of our ambition. This will after a while create a sort of tide which will tend to float things our way.
We must look out for the cross currents which bring discord—the thought currents of hatred, jealousy, envy, or unkind feelings towards others, the thought currents of revenge, of malice—for all these are enemies which sap our energies and handicap our progress.
Anything which produces discord cripples our effort. We must have harmony, peace of mind, freedom of thought, to get efficiency. In other words, all the thought currents must be creative instead of destructive. Currents of courage, confidence and determination—these are the electrical mental forces which bring success.
A great many people who are comparative failures would succeed if they could only keep the failure thought currents out of their mind. It is a great art to learn to clear the mind of rubbish, of fear, anxiety, and all of the things that hinder, and to fill it with vigorous, hopeful, uplifting thoughts. This is what puts the mind into the producing, creative attitude.
We radiate our mental attitude, our hopes or our fears; and our reputation and others’ estimate of us have a great deal to do with our success. If others do not believe in us, if they think we are weak and timid because our mental radiation is negative, weak, and timid, we shall not be put forward for positions of importance or responsibility.
There is everything in radiating a confident, courageous, fearless impression; in carrying the confident air which accompanies the conquering habit.
People will think that if we are in the habit of conquering we are much more likely to win in the future than those who are in the habit of losing or who radiate an impression of weakness or inferiority.
In other words, it is nearly as important to make others believe in us as to believe in ourselves; and to do this we must carry a confident, victorious air.
There is a great difference between a man who lives like a victor, who goes about the world as a conqueror, and one who carries a submissive, vanquished air, who always acts as though he had been defeated in the great life race.
Compare the influence of a man like Theodore Roosevelt, who radiates force from every pore and gives an impression of great vigor and superb power, with that of a timid, retiring, self-effacing, apologizing man, who radiates weakness and shows inefficiency and the lack of a bold, vigorous nature. The world likes a man who has the bearing of a conqueror, who gives the impression that he is in the habit of winning and always expects to succeed.
It is the affirmation of force that carries the conviction, that gives the impression of power. If your attitude does not suggest power, you will never gain the reputation of being a positive force in the world.
Some people wonder that they amount to so little, that they cut so little figure and carry so little weight in their community. It is because they do not think and act like conquerors. They do not hold the constructive, victorious attitude; they give the impression of weaklings. No person can be magnetic until he learns the secret of radiating force. The positive character is magnetic; the negative repellent. Victors are always victorious mentally first.
There are people who give us the impression that they never expect to win out; all they desire is a chance to make a fairly comfortable living. They never expect anything but hard work. They start out with the idea that life at best is going to be a grind, when it should be a perpetual delight, a glory. The life properly lived is a continual growth, and the very knowledge of constant enlargement, the knowledge that we are pushing farther out on our mental horizon, should give a sense of satisfaction that nothing else can bestow. There is nothing that will take the place of a sense of victoriousness, a consciousness of perpetual winning.
One thing that should be instilled into a child’s very being is that he was born for victory, born to conquer; that he is victory organized, and not failure—organized, as many people seem to think they are. Nobody is organized for failure.
If children were trained always to hold the victorious attitude, to have great respect for themselves and unlimited faith in their possibilities, failure would be a very rare thing. The time will come when children will be taught to radiate force, to express vigor and hold the victorious attitude, and when this will be considered a most important part of their education and upbringing.
The mental life must be right before the physical can be harmonious. You must bear a healthy relation to your fellow men; you must stand right with your brothers before you can stand right with yourself or be truly healthy or happy.
If we would have the victorious attitude, we must eliminate all thoughts of jealousy, hatred, and revenge that may rankle in us, and cultivate that peace of mind and serenity of soul which is characteristic of the really great.
The whole philosophy of efficiency and happiness consists in the vigorous, consistent affirmation of the thing we are trying to be, and trying to do.
A young man starting out in life, anxious to succeed, must not say to himself, “I would like to succeed, but I do not believe I am really fitted for the part I have assumed. My profession or my vocation is so crowded, there are so many who can not get a decent living in this field, so many people out of employment, that I believe I have made a mistake; but I will work away the best I can. Perhaps I will come out somewhere.” The young man who talks so, thinks so, does so, will come out somewhere. It will be at the “little end of the horn,” out of pocket, out at the elbow, and out of a job.
The fact is, others estimate us by what we are, not by what we say. We must radiate our realities. We can say almost anything we wish, but people judge us by that intangible impression which our radiation makes upon them, because that is the reality of us. You cannot keep your real thought, your real estimate of another from him, no matter how honeyed or flattering your words. If you have a grudge in your heart, if you are envious or jealous, if you are uncharitable or antagonistic, he will feel it. We may deceive another with our words, but we cannot change our radiation unless we change our whole mental attitude towards him.
Think of a man trying to create wealth when his whole mental attitude, when his very face seems to say, “Keep away from me. Prosperity. Do not come near me. I would like to have you, but you were evidently not intended for me. My mission in life is a humble one, and, while I wish I could have the good things which the more fortunate enjoy, I really do not expect them.”
Abundance cannot get near a person holding such a mental attitude. The mind that fears and doubts repels prosperity.
Of course, men do not mean to drive opportunity, prosperity, abundance away from them; but they hold the mental attitude filled with doubts and fears, and, lacking faith and self-confidence, they repel without knowing it.
Many people go through life neither successes nor failures, neither rich nor poor. They live most of their lives balanced between lack and a little, because part of the time their minds are productive, creative, and part of the time negative—hence unproductive. So these people oscillate like a pendulum.
When they get a little courage, hope, enthusiasm, they produce a little, because their minds are creative. When they lose heart, become discouraged, are filled with doubts and fears, their minds become negative, uncreative, non-producing, and they slide back again to want.
The time will come when we shall be able to keep our minds in a productive, creative attitude all the time. Then our lives will be filled with an abundance of all that is good.
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