Orison Swett Marden Prosperity, How To Attract It

 

Chapter 1 – How We Limit Our Supply

“A man will remain a ragpicker as long as he has only a ragpicker’s vision.”

Why go thru life exhibiting the traits of an underling? If you are a real man, don’t go around looking like a beggar,, talking like a beggar, acting like a beggar.

Only by thinking prosperity and abundance can you realize the abundant, prosperous life.

Fixing limitation upon ourselves is one of the cardinal sins of mankind.

Prosperity flows only through channels that are wide open to receive it. Doubt, fear and lack of confidence close these channels.

A pinched mind means a pinched, limited supply.

Everything we get in life comes through the gateway of our thought. If that is pinched, stingy, mean, what flows to us will correspond.

WHAT would you think of a prince, the heir to a kingdom of limitless wealth and power, who should live in the condition of a pauper, who should go about the world bemoaning his hard fate and telling people how poor he was, saying that he didn’t believe his father was going to leave him anything, and that he might as well make up his mind to a life of poverty and limitations?

You would say, of course, that he must be insane, and that his hard conditions, his poverty and limitations, were not actual, but imaginary; that they existed only in his mind; that his father was ready to load him with good things, with all that his heart desired, if he would only open his mind to the truth and live in the condition befitting a prince, the son and heir of a great king.

Now, if you are living in pinching poverty, in a narrow, cramped, limited environment in which there seems to be no hope, no outlook for better things; if you are not getting what you want, though working hard for it, you are just as foolish as the prince who, believing that he was poor, lived like a pauper in the midst of his father’s limitless wealth. Your limitations are in your mind, just as the prince’s were in his. You are the child of a Father who has created abundance, limitless wealth, for all of His children, but your pinched, limited, poverty-stricken thought shuts you out from all this abundance and keeps you in poverty.

A Russian laborer named Mihok, living in Omaha, Nebraska, had carried a “luck” stone in his pocket for twenty years, never guessing that it had any monetary value. Time and again friends, who thought that it might be more than an ordinary stone, suggested that he have it examined by a jeweler. He obstinately refused until; finally, they became so insistent that he sent the stone to a Chicago jeweler, who pronounced it a pigeon-blood ruby, the largest of its kind in the world. It weighed 24 karats and was worth $100,000!

There are millions like this poor day laborer, living in poverty, thinking that there is nothing for them but hard work and more poverty who, without knowing it, are carrying in the great within of themselves possibilities of wealth beyond their dreams. Their wrong thinking is robbing them of their divine inheritance; shutting off the abundant supply provided for them by the Omnipotent Source of all supply.

The majority of people are in the position of a man who went out to water his garden, but inadvertently stepped on the hose, shutting off the water supply. He had a big hose and was very much annoyed, very much disappointed, because he was getting only a mere dribble of water when he had every right to expect — and should get: — a liberal flow. Water was at the source in abundance, ready to supply his needs; only one thing was at fault, the man himself was pinching his supply, limiting it to a miserable drizzle. He was standing on the hose and didn’t know it.

That is literally what all who are living in grinding poverty are doing. They are pinching their supply by stepping upon the hose through which plenty would come to them. They are stopping the flow of abundance that is their birthright, by their doubts, their fears, and their unbelief; by visualizing poverty, thinking poverty, acting as if they never expected to have anything, to accomplish anything, or to be anything.

Everything in man’s life, everything in God’s universe, is based upon principle — follows a divine law; and the law of prosperity and abundance is just as definite as the law of gravitation, just as unerring as the principles of mathematics. It is a mental law. Only by thinking abundance can you realize the abundant, prosperous life that is your birthright; in other words, according to your thought will be your life, your supply, or your lack. Your mental attitude will be flung back to you, every time, in kind. A poverty-stricken mental attitude will bring only poverty-stricken conditions to you.

We are the creatures of our convictions. We cannot get beyond what we believe we are; what we believe we have. Hence, if we think that we are never going to be strong or well like other people, or to be successful in our calling, we never will be. If we are convinced that we will always be poor, we will be. You can’t get away from poverty when you don’t expect to; when you don’t believe that you are going to.

Many of the people who are living in poverty today never really expect anything else. Their fixed belief that they can never become prosperous keeps them in poverty; that is, it keeps their minds negative, and the mind cannot create, cannot produce, in this condition. It is only the positive mind that can create prosperity; the negative mind is noncreative, nonproductive;it can only tear down, inhibit, prevent the inflow of the good things that we long for.

It is not so much what you do with your hands as what you do with your mind that counts. Everything that has been accomplished by the hand or brain of man had its birth in the mind. The universe itself is the creation of Divine Mind. A hard-working man who longs for prosperity, but is headed in the other direction mentally, who doesn’t believe he is going to be prosperous, is neutralizing his hard work by his negative, destructive thought; he is standing on the hose that connects with his supply.

When you limit yourself in your thought, you are limiting yourself outwardly in a way which corresponds with your mental attitude, because you are obeying a law which is unchangeable. You will notice that the man who puts a nickel in the contribution box, is not only stingy, close, and mean in all his money matters, but his face, his whole person, has a cramped, worried, pinched look. He is forever saving pennies, watching out for little things and never doing big things. No matter how much natural ability he has, his narrow, limited, poverty thought dwarfs him and cuts off his stream of supply. He cannot do big things because he never thinks big things. His warped mind will admit only a pinched supply instead of the big flow that is literally at his command. It is because we have not learned how to use our thought forces that most of us go about like paupers, never glimpsing the marvelous inheritance left us by the All supply, the All-good. Our parsimonious thought pinches our supply.

We often wonder why it is that certain people, in apparently no better circumstances than we are, get so much better things than we do; why they always insist upon and receive the best of everything. We never see them wearing cheap things — never see cheap things in their homes, or any pinching anywhere. They buy the best food, the best fruits and vegetables in the market, and everything else in accordance. We think they are extravagant when we compare what they pay for things with what we pay for things of the same kind, and we pride ourselves that we are economizing and saving what they are wasting. But, are we?

How does our manner of living compare with theirs? Does the enjoyment we get out of life measure up to what they get? Do the few dollars we save compensate for the great lack in our lives — the lack of good food, of proper clothing, of the little pleasure trips, the social enjoyments, the picnics and various diversions which make life pleasant, healthful, and above all, much more productive for the neighbors whose extravagance we condemn? As a matter of fact, our skimped, pinching policy leaves us poorer in the end.

Prosperity flows only through channels that are wide open to receive it. It does not flow through channels pinched by the poverty thought, by discouragement, doubt, or fear, or by a strangling narrow-visioned policy. A generous expenditure is often the wisest economy, the only thing that brings a generous success. If a great manufacturer like Henry Ford, a great merchant like John Wanamaker, a big railroad manager, or other business man, should lose his broad vision and wide outlook; should begin to skimp on necessary output; should substitute inferior goods and men and service for the best; should reverse his policy, changing from a broad, generous one to a narrow, stingy one, he would soon find his business dwindling away to nothing. There is no changing the principle of the law of supply.

Whatever your business, your profession or occupation, or your circumstances, your mental attitude will determine your success or failure. A pinched mind means a pinched supply. It means that you try to tap the great fountainhead of supply with a gimlet and then expect to get an abundant supply. That is impossible. Your mental attitude gauges the How of your supply.

Chapter 6 – If You Can Finance Yourself

Beware of little extravagances. A small leak will sink a big ship.— FRANKLIN.

Debt is like any other trap, easy enough to get into it, but hard enough to get out.—SHAW.

“The improvident man is a liability to the concern in which he is employed, the community in which he lives, his family and himself.”

A little money in the bank is a great friend both in time of need and in time of opportunity.

Many people completely fail in life or are forced to live in mortifying poverty, to struggle along perhaps under the curse of debt, miserable, and handicapped all their lives because they never learned how to finance themselves.

THERE is nothing more important to a human being than to be able not only to earn his living, but also to know how to use his money to the best advantage, for on this depends his power to make himself independent and consequently to do his best work in the world. The money sense, if not inherited, should be cultivated. Every child should be taught how to finance himself; he should know how to handle money, how to save money, how to spend it wisely for personal enlargement and for life enrichment. Every child should be trained in thrifty habits, should learn the true value of money and should be able to feel the backaches in every dollar. If we do not teach our children to know what money means, how can we expect them to show wisdom in handling money in their maturity?

The average man does not use anything like the good judgment, the good sense in spending, in investing his money, which he does in earning it. A self-made millionaire tells me that not more than three men out of a hundred who have made money are able to hold on to it. Multitudes of men die without an independence, without a home, without even having been able to support themselves.

I am constantly running across men in middle life or later who have worked hard for many years and tried to get on; but they have nothing to show for it, have nothing laid by; they have no ready cash to enable them to avail themselves of opportunities and no good, solid investments. They have never made any headway since they were young men, because they never learned how to finance themselves. They are like the frog in the well, which keeps jumping up only to fall back again to the bottom from where it started. There is no other one thing which will mean quite so much to you in after life, my young friend, as learning the art of handling money and knowing how to finance yourself wisely. If you cannot do this, you will always be an easy-mark for any smooth and oily promoter that happens along. Everybody will be aware of your gullibility and know that if you have any money it is not much of a trick to get it away from you.

Money is the slipperiest stuff in the world. The majority of people can’t hold on to it any more than they could hold on to an eel or a greased pig. It slips through their fingers and disappears through all sorts of leaks of the pocketbook. Scores of men can make money where only one can hold on to it. There is always somebody who needs money, always some temptation to spend it.

Most people take too much risk with the money they have; they are too greedy, too anxious to keep it at work. They dislike having a dollar on hand that is not earning something, and so they often make the most foolish investments.

There is one man of my acquaintance, an able business man in many respects, who has been in hot water most of his life because of this. He never has ready cash for any unusual opportunity or emergency. He is a fine chap, a popular man, and has much ability, but he cannot bear to keep money lying idle; it must be doing something; so he puts it into anything that offers, and then when good chances come he can’t avail himself of them, because his money is tied up in some wildcat scheme.

“Don’t take chances with your little savings,” is the advice of level-headed experts in financial matters. Making foolish investments, trying to make large profits has kept vast multitudes of people in poverty all their lives. There is nothing like taking a stand in your early career only to invest in sound, solid, substantial things. The rich man can afford to take chances because if he loses he does not feel it, but you can’t afford it. Go slow. The gambling instinct, the effort to make a fortune quickly, a lot of money with a little investment, is the cause of more unhappiness, of the poverty condition in more homes, than anything else I know of. It makes more disappointed lives, thwarts more ambitions, causes more people to die disappointed with their careers than any other thing.

One of the first steps in financing yourself properly is to keep a personal cash account. This is one of the best educators and teachers of economy and system. If the habit is formed when you are young in years it will never be broken. It will mean a competence in later life when otherwise there would have been none.

The world demands that every individual know how to take care of himself, how to be independent, self-reliant, how to finance himself wisely, how to make the most of his income.

However you make your living, whether by the work of your hand or of your brain, in a trade or in a profession, at home or in the shop, whether your income be small or large, you will always be placed at a disadvantage, unless you know how to finance yourself successfully. This is not to be “close,” mean, or stingy, but to know how to make the most out of your income; not to expend the margin you should save in silly extravagances or to make foolish investments. There is one thing that should be indelibly impressed upon every youth’s mind, and that is the tragic consequences of debt, especially when incurred in early life. It has ruined many of the most promising careers. The youth should be so trained that under no consideration could he be induced to complicate his life by financial obligations. He should be shown that his success in life, the realizing of his ambition will depend very largely upon keeping his ability free from any sort of entanglement, and that he must keep this freedom at all costs. He should be taught that his unclouded enthusiasm and his zeal are very precious assets, and that nothing will kill these more effectively than the consciousness of being in a trap, the consciousness of being tied hand and foot by the curse of debt. The youth should be taught that to mortgage his future prospects would be fatal.

I have known quite a number of very promising young men to run in debt for automobiles. Many men have even mortgaged their little homes in order to get an automobile, trying to justify themselves by what it would mean to the health and pleasure of their wife and children.

Of course it would mean a lot to them, but, on the other hand, to a young man who is just starting out for himself, the purchasing of that which he cannot afford may handicap him for many years. No one can be happy, no matter how optimistic, who is forever in the clutches of poverty, of harassing debt. I know a man who has literally lived in shame for many years because of early debts which he contracted when he had good credit. When he lost his business he had to struggle with this debt, until the interest doubled and trebled, and sometimes quadrupled. Nothing could have persuaded him to put his head in such a noose if he had realized what the result would be.

“To be broke is bad,” says Dr. Frank Crane. “It’s worse; it’s a crime. It’s still worse, for it’s silly. Crimes can be pardoned and sins forgiven, but for the plumb fool there is no hope.” Now, the young man who puts nothing by for a rainy day or an emergency is a “plumb fool.” And there are so many of them! As the late Marshall Field said, “the present-day tendency to live beyond their incomes brings disaster to thousands.”

Many people live beyond their means because they cannot bear to have other people think that they cannot afford this and cannot afford that, that they cannot keep up appearances, their social standing. But it is better to be unpopular than to be embarrassed, better to be unpopular than to be in a hole, as someone suggests.

I AM—?

I am your best friend in time of need.

I can do for you what those who love you most are powerless to do without my aid.

I am the oil that smooths the troubled waters of life. I straighten out difficulties and remove obstacles that will yield to nothing else.

I am a supporter of faith, a spur to ambition, a tonic to aspiration, an invaluable aid to people who are struggling to make their dreams come true.

I give a man a fine sense of independence, a feeling of security in regard to the future, which increases his strength and ability and enables him to work with more vigor and spontaneity.

I am a stepping-stone to better things; a hope builder; an enemy of discouragement, because I take away one of the greatest causes of worry, anxiety, and fear.

I increase self-respect and self-confidence, and give a feeling of comfort and assurance that nothing else can give. I impart a consciousness of power that makes multitudes, who otherwise would cringe and crawl, hold up their heads and carry themselves with dignity.

I open the door to many opportunities for self-culture and to social and business advancement. I have enabled tens of thousands of young men, who made sacrifices to get me, to take advantage of splendid opportunities which those who did not have me were obliged to let go by.

I increase your importance in the world and your power to do good.

I make people think well of your ability, increase their confidence in you; give you standing, capital, an assured position, influence, credit, and many of the good things of life that without me would be unattainable.

I am a shock-absorber for the jolts of life, a buffer between you and the rough knocks of the world. The man or woman who doesn’t make an honest, determined effort to get me is lacking in one of the fundamental qualities that make for the happiness, the prosperity and well-being of the whole race.

Millions of mothers and children have suffered all sorts of hardships and humiliations because husbands and fathers lacked this practical quality, which would have saved themselves and those dependent on them so much suffering and misery.

Multitudes have spent their declining years in homeless wretchedness, or eked out a miserable existence in humiliating dependence on the grudging charity of relatives, while other multitudes have died in the poorhouse, because they failed to make friends with me in their youth.

I am one of the most reliable aids in the battle of life, the struggle for independence; ever ready to help you in an emergency—sickness in your family, accident or loss, a crisis in your business— whatever it may be. You can always rely on me to step into the breach and do my work quietly, effectively, without bluster.

I AM . . . A LITTLE READY CASH

Chapter 7 – How to Increase Your Ability

Our ability is as sensitive to our moods, our feelings, our mental attitudes, as the mercury is to the changes of the weather or a weather-vane is to the currents of air.

The perpetual taunting and haunting of unsatisfied ambition, the consciousness that one has the ability to do the bigger thing, but is obliged to do the lesser because one did not early in life persist in following the path that led to the bigger; to feel cramped and limited in a little seven-by-nine situation in middle life or later, when one knows that he has the natural ability to fill an infinitely bigger place, is a hell on earth.

Hope, self-confidence, assurance, faith in one’s mission, enthusiasm in one’s work, optimism, courage, joy, open up the ability accordion wonderfully. Fear, anger, envy, prejudice, jealousy, worry, smallness, meanness, selfishness, close it.

Happiness in our work, the consciousness that we are doing our best, looking our best, and making a good impression on others— these are tremendous enlargers of ability, because they increase one’s self-respect and self-appreciation. They give one assurance, confidence, and confidence gives a marvelous impetus to initiative and executive ability.

A PROMINENT business man says that the best contract he ever got was one he lost. Why? Because it set him to investigating the cause of the loss, to investigating himself, to finding the weak places in himself and in his business methods. It was the lost contract that led him to the discovery that he was not using more than half the ability he actually possessed. Most people rob themselves of success and fortune by mistaken ideas about their ability.

They are like a young stenographer who told me that if she had the ability to become an expert in her line, she would go to evening school, study nights, and do everything she could to improve her education and to develop herself in all possible ways. But as she was sure that she had only a very moderate share of ability, she was convinced that there was no use in trying, and that she must be satisfied with an ordinary position. In other words, she believed that her ability was a fixed quantity; something which could not be enlarged or diminished, which she could not change in any respect any more than she could change the color of her hair or of her eyes. Now, the idea that our ability is an invariable quantity, fixed by heredity, or by some immutable law which we can neither understand nor control, is one of the most unfortunate that could take possession of anyone’s mind. And nothing could be farther from the truth, for, as a matter of fact, human ability is a very variable and a very elastic quantity. It can be expanded almost indefinitely, or contracted, in a great many ways.

It is like an accordion, which the player sometimes draws out to its full extent, and again closes completely. For instance, you can close up your accordion by wrong thinking until but a mere fraction of your possible ability is available, or you can open it up by right thinking and make every bit of it count in making your work, your life, a grand success.

Multitudes of people go through life with their actual ability so cramped, so muzzled and suffocated by their negative, destructive mental attitude, their doubts, fears, worries, superstitions and preconceived ideas, their lack of courage, their lack of faith in themselves and in their mission, that they make but a very small percentage of it count in their life work, even when they make a supreme effort to do so. Everywhere we see men and women, hard workers, who do not accomplish a tithe of what they could accomplish, with half the effort and half the time they now expend, if they would only keep their minds in a positive, creative condition, and face life in the right way. While the development and sharpening of the different mental faculties is the first essential to the increase of our natural ability, it is a mistake to think that all of our ability expansion is dependent on this. It doesn’t matter what amount of natural ability you have, if it is unavailable, bottled up by your pessimism, your doubts, your fears, your cowardice and lack of faith, it is useless to you. If you had a valuable gold mine on your property, and, instead of clearing away all obstructions to get at the ore you should add a lot more, your gold mine wouldn’t add one particle to your available wealth. Potentially you had an immense fortune, but so far as you were concerned it might just as well not be there, for you derived no benefit from gold you could not get at and exchange for the good things of fife that you desired. It is just the same with your ability.

If instead of doing everything in your power to make it available, to give it outlet, you shut it up within you, covering it over with all sorts of mental obstructions, it will never expand,” will never yield you anything.

Many of us think if we only had some other person’s talent or opportunities; if we only had the advantages of some other fellows near us; if only we were superbly equipped with facilities for our particular work, that we would do wonderful things.

Now, the Creator never sent anyone into this world without equipping him with just the tools required for the job He meant him to do, the job which He qualified him in every respect to do. He didn’t sharpen the tools for us, because if He had done that He would have deprived us of the very thing that is designed for our expansion and growth. It is by drawing out all that is in us, by bettering our work each day, by overcoming obstacles, clearing away the rubbish and mental debris that evoke our growth, and always reaching up to the attainment of our highest ideal, that, day by day, we unfold layer after layer of the wealth of ability that is enfolded in every human being, no matter what his apparent disabilities or handicaps.

Helen Keller is, perhaps, one of the most remarkable examples the world has ever seen of the power of the determined soul to overcome everything that stands in the way of its complete development. Deaf, dumb, and blind at the age of eighteen months, what opportunity was there for a human being so handicapped to do anything of value in the world; to become anything other than despair to herself, a hopeless, helpless burden on her relatives? Yet out of her world of darkness the indomitable spirit within evolved a being of such remarkable ability and power that there are few to-day who are rendering greater service to humanity than this woman who, apparently, at the outset of life was hopelessly handicapped. She is a wonderful illustration of the truth that there is no limit to man’s development, and no insuperable obstacles to his development except those he himself puts in his way.

The eagle is the mightiest and most powerful of all the feathered tribe. It can fly higher and remain longer on the wing than any other bird. Yet if this monarch of the air were held captive, tied by one of its feet to a huge ball or heavy weight, it could not fly as high as a barn-yard fowl. No matter how strong its natural instincts to soar into the heavens, it could not move from the earth.

Now, like the eagle, man was made to fly high, to do great things, but multitudes of people spend their lives doing little things instead of the big things they are capable of doing because of something which chains their ability and holds them down in an inferior position. There is a vast amount of unproductive ability in the great failure army to-day, which was never given an opportunity to fulfill the purposes for which the Creator meant it. Some of the most pitiable instances of spoiled lives I know of are those of men and women of middle age who really have the ability to do something large and grand, but who have failed to do so because of their unwillingness to make sacrifices in youth for the sake of their ambition. Love of ease enchained their faculties and held them prisoners until their ambition died and they lost even their desire to fly.

Some people are tied down by bad physical or mental habits, which make it impossible for them to put their best selves into their work.

There is a constant leakage of energy and vital force, resulting from preventable causes, which hinders their progress at every step and makes their ability unavailable. Others are held down by character traits or peculiarities of disposition which handicap all their success qualities and neutralize their efforts to advance. A quick temper, a jealous, envious disposition, lack of faith and self-confidence, vacillation, bashfulness, timidity, carelessness, inaccuracy and a host of other faults and weaknesses seriously hamper the development of their ability and act like weights in holding them down when they are eager to go up higher.

Whatever causes in harmony in the mind robs us of power and hinders our advancement. If you would gain control of all your resources and increase your ability, avoid as you would poison everything that tends to make you negative, — worry, anxiety, jealousy, envy, fear, cowardice, the whole family of depressing, despondent thoughts. They are all confessions of

weakness, and may be summed up as power destroyers. Every fit of the blues, every unhappy thought, every feeling of discouragement, of despondency, every doubt, every fear, is a crippler of ability. In other words, our ability is extremely sensitive to our moods, to our mental condition generally. When we don’t feel like it, when we are out of sorts, when for one reason or another we feel blue, discouraged, despondent, full of doubt and anxiety, our ability is very much contracted. On the other hand, when we are in good trim, when our minds are harmonious, not anxious or worried about anything, it is enormously, expanded. That is, all the positive, uplifting, encouraging, cheerful emotions and feelings expand or increase our ability, while all of the negative, depressing, discouraging, gloomy ones contract or lessen it.

This shows that after we have done everything in our power to increase our ability by education, by training for our special work, by sharpening and improving our natural gifts and faculties in every possible way, we can yet so contract or expand it by our mental attitude, that it is safe to say nine-tenths of its availability depends upon our state of mind at any given time. We all know how it is enlarged by a sublime self confidence, an unwavering faith, and how it is contracted by the lack of faith in ourselves, by self-depreciation, by timidity, and lack of courage. You know how much bigger a man you are, how much more capable of planning and doing things, when your courage is up and you believe in yourself, than when you are blue and discouraged. You know from experience that your consciousness of ability expands so you feel as though you could tackle almost anything. Make this your habitual state of mind and your ability will always be available, always at its maximum.

On the other hand, hold a poor opinion of yourself, refuse to assume responsibility, always berate yourself and belittle your powers, and if you had the natural ability of a Plato you would never amount to anything. This sort of mental attitude holds down more real ability, keeps more deserving merit in mediocre positions, than perhaps any other handicap in the gamut of human disabilities. Multitudes who have excellent mental endowments and splendid traits of character remain practically nobodies all their lives because of timidity, a sense of inferiority, a doubting, self-depredating attitude toward themselves. Others with half their natural ability forge ahead, make fortunes, attain places of power and influence, while they remain in poverty and obscurity. Everywhere in life the timid, retiring, self-effacing man is placed at a tremendous disadvantage, mentally, socially and in a business and professional way. People may be sorry for him, they may pity him, and his friends may say he has great ability and splendid traits of character; but this is not enough. Lacking selfconfidence, push, assurance, the courage to demonstrate his ability to the world, he will not win out in anything in a large way. His mean opinion of himself will neutralize a large percentage of his real ability.

Every man has more ability than he thinks he has, more than he ever uses ordinarily. Under the impulse of a strong motive, a new stimulus to exertion, or having a great responsibility thrust upon us, being put in a situation where we must either sink or swim, there isn’t one among us that wouldn’t respond to the demand and unfold an amount of ability which we never before dreamed we possessed. Some men’s ability lies so deep that they are never at their best except in a great crisis. Then the giant in them is unshackled, and great powers, of which they themselves were ignorant, are unlocked within them.

Responsibility is a great ability developer. We often see a good example of this when a young man is taken into partnership in a large concern. His initiative, his executive force, his courage, all the ability-expanding qualities, are so strengthened by the stimulus of promotion that he goes ahead and does things that he did not dream he could ever accomplish when he was an employee. Now, taking him into partnership did not add to his latent ability at all, but it gave him more confidence in himself, and the fact that he is put on his mettle to make good in the new position compels him to draw on his ability to the limit, and he does make good. Never sidestep a responsibility. It is throwing away an opportunity to enlarge your ability.

If an Edison should invent an instrument by means of which it would be possible for men and women to increase their natural ability fifty per cent, there is no price we would not be willing to pay for such an instrument. Yet there isn’t a man or woman, a boy or girl, living today who can’t do this by right thinking, facing life the right way, and using the opportunities that are at hand. Right where you are, no matter what your environment, whatever your disadvantages or handicaps, you have enough ability to make you a success in whatever you desire to do; to lift you out of lack and poverty and make you a millionaire. Expand your ability; do everything that will enable you to stretch your accordion to its limit, and you will be amazed at what you can accomplish.

Chapter 8 – Look Like a Success

You have no more right to go about among your fellows with a vinegar expression an your face, radiating mental poison, spreading the germs of doubt, fear, discouragement and despondency among them, than you have to inflict bodily injuries on them.

To be a conqueror in appearance, in one’s bearing, is the first step toward success.

Walk, talk, and act as though you were a somebody, and you are much more likely to become such.

Let victory speak from your face and express itself in your manner, your conversation, your bearing.

Never show the world a gloomy, pessimistic face, which is an admission that life has been a disappointment to you instead of a glorious triumph. • When a man feels like a king he will look kingly. Majesty more regal than ever sat on a throne will look out of his face when he has learned how to claim and express the divinity of his birthright.

WHEN Frank A. Vanderlip, former president of the National City Bank, New York, was a reporter on the Chicago “Tribune,” he asked his chief to tell him what he thought would be the greatest help to a man struggling to succeed. “Look as if you had already succeeded” was the prompt reply.

This made a great impression upon young Vanderlip and completely changed some of his ideas on the subject, especially in regard to dress. From that time he began to spruce up, to be more particular about his general appearance. His chief had opened his eyes to the great value of appearances, especially in making a first impression. He became convinced that if a man did not look prosperous, people would think he did not have the right ambition or the ability to succeed; that there must be something the matter with him or he would dress better and make a better appearance.

Charles W. Eliot, President-emeritus of Harvard, said that much of one’s success would depend on others’ opinion of him, of those to whom he, perhaps, had never spoken a word, had never even seen. One’s reputation travels by various routes in every direction and, according to its nature, will have a big influence on one’s career. It is a great thing to form a habit of going through the world giving the impression to everybody that you are a winner, that you are bound to be somebody — to stand for something worthwhile in the world. Let this idea stand out in everything you do, in your conversation, your appearance. Let everything about you make the world say, “He is a winner; keep your eye on him.”

If you are anxious to win out in a large way, cultivate the bearing of success, the appearance of a successful man. If you carry about with you a defeated, poorhouse atmosphere; if your appearance suggests slovenliness, slipshodness, the lack of system and order, the lack of energy, of push, of the progressive spirit, you can’t expect others to think you are an efficient, up-to-date person, pushing to the front. Of course every employer knows that it sometimes happens that a shabbily dressed man, with baggy trousers and soiled linen, may have a lot of good stuff in him, but they don’t expect it. The chances of finding a very valuable employee with such an advertisement of himself is so small that most men won’t take the risk. Your dress, your bearing, your conversation, your conduct, should all square with your ambition. All of these things are aids to your achievement, and you cannot afford to ignore any one of them. The world takes you at your own valuation. If you assume the victorious attitude toward it, it will give you the right of way.

One reason why it is so difficult for many young people to get a start, to get on, comes from the fact that they do not create in others the impression of power, of the force that achieves, that does things. They do not realize how much their reputation has to do with their getting on in the world. They do not realize that other people’s confidence is a tremendous force.

A great physician or lawyer gets his reputation largely from the impression which he makes upon people, not only in the way he performs the duties of his profession, but also in his general attitude. We weigh, measure, and estimate people by the impression they make upon us, everything considered. The victorious attitude inspires confidence in others as well as in oneself. Its psychological effect is compelling. Walk, talk, and act as though you were already the man you long to be, and you are unconsciously putting into operation unseen forces that bend circumstances to the accomplishment of your will. Let your air be that of a winner, of a man who is resolved to make his way in the world— to make himself stand for something. Put energy and life into your step; vim, force, vitality, pep into every movement of your body. Look straight forward; never wince. Don’t apologize for taking up room on the earth which might be filled to better advantage by another; you have just as much right here as any other human being, if you are making good, and if you are not making good you should be.

No matter what comes to you, defeat, threatened failure, never lose your victorious consciousness. Let people read this declaration in your bearing, in your life generally: “I am a winner; I have not shown the white feather. I have not shirked; I have done my part; I have not been a sneak; I have not been a thief or a cheat, wearing and using what others have earned and giving nothing back in return. I have done my part and can hold up my head and look the world in the face!”

The more trying your situation, the harder the way looks to you, the darker the outlook, the more necessary it is to carry that victorious consciousness. If you carry the down-and-out expression, if you confess by your very face that you are beaten, or that you expect to be, you are a goner. The victorious idea of life, not the failure idea; the triumphant, not the thwarted, ambition is the thing to keep ever uppermost in the mind, for it is this that will lead you to the goal you aspire to reach. Have faith in your God-given power to succeed in a worthy ambition. Concentrate your efforts on its realization, and nothing on earth can keep you back from success. Such a mental attitude will make you a winner from the start, because you always head toward your thought, toward your conviction of yourself. The conviction that you are born to win is a tremendous creative force in your life, just as the conviction that you are a failure will keep you down till you change the model of yourself.

Life is not a losing game. It is always victorious when properly played. It is the players who are at fault.

God did not make a man to be a failure. He made him to be a glorious success. The great trouble with all failures is that they were not started right. It was not drilled into the very texture of their being in youth that what they would get out of life must be created mentally first, and that inside the man, inside the woman, is where the great creative processes of all that we realize in our careers are carried on. Most of us depend too much upon the things outside of us, upon other people, when the mainspring of life, the power that moves the world of men and things, is within us. Think what it would mean to the world today if all the people who look upon themselves as nobodies and failures, dwarfs of what they might have been and ought to be, would get this triumphant idea of life into them! If they could once get a glimpse of their own possibilities, and would assume the victorious, the triumphant, attitude, they would revolutionize the world.

How many people form the chronic habit of indulging in frequent fits of depression! They allow the “blues” an easy entrance to their minds, in fact, are always at home to them, and are susceptible to every form of discouragement that comes along. Every little setback, every little difficulty, sends them into the “blues” and they will say “What’s the use!” As a result their work is poor and ineffective, and they do not attract the things they desire. Every time you give way to discouragement, every time you are blue, you are going backward, your destructive thoughts are tearing down what you have been trying to build. One fit of discouragement, visualizing failure or poverty-stricken conditions, will rapidly destroy the result of much triumphant thought building. Your creative forces will harmonize with your thoughts, your emotions and moods; they will create in sympathy with them.

Saturate your mind with hope, the expectation of better things, with the belief that your dreams are coming true. Be convinced that you are going to win out; let your mind rest with success thoughts. Don’t let the enemies of your success and happiness dominate in your mind or they will bring to you the condition that they represent. Destroy the thoughts, and emotions and convictions which tend to destroy your hope, your ambitions, to tear down the results of your past building. If you don’t they will create more failure, more poverty. If you want to realize success, think creative, successful conditions.

Set your character and your whole life towards triumph, towards victory. Hold the victorious thought towards yourself, towards your future, towards your career; it will tend to create the conditions favorable to the carrying out of your ambition, the fulfilling of your desires. “Go boldly, go serenely, go augustly; Who can withstand thee then!” I know of nothing that gives more satisfaction than the consciousness that we have formed the habit of winning, the habit of victory, the habit of carrying a victorious mental attitude, of walking, acting, talking, looking like a winner, a conqueror. That sort of attitude always keeps the dominant, helpful qualities in the fore, always in the ascendancy. One of the most obstinate habits to overcome in mature life, and one fatal to efficiency, is the habit of being defeated. Never allow yourself to fall into it. You may learn a lesson from every defeat that will make a new stepping-stone to your ambition.

Success is every human being’s normal condition; he was made for success; he is a success machine, and to be a failure is to pervert the intention of his Creator. Every youth should be taught to assume a triumphant attitude towards life, to carry himself like a winner, because he was made to win. No child is really educated until he has learned to live a victorious life. That is what real education spells, victory. The habit of winning out in whatever we undertake can be formed almost as easily as the habit of being defeated, and every victory helps us to win other victories.

From the cradle a child should be taught that he is divine, a god in the making, and that he should hold up his head and go forth with confidence, because he is destined for something superb. Teach the child that he came to the earth with a message for mankind, and that he should deliver it like an ambassador. Show him that wrestling with difficulties is like practicing in a gymnasium where every victory over his muscles makes him so much stronger, and makes the next attempt so much surer and easier. Let him fully understand that every problem solved in school, every errand promptly and courteously performed, every piece of work superbly done is just so much more added to, his winning power, to the strength of his success possibilities.

The great prizes of life are for the courageous, the dauntless, the self-confident. The man who is timid and hesitating, who stops to listen to his fears, lets many a good opportunity pass beyond his reach.

If you find you are inclined to be timid; if you lack courage and initiative; if you are too bashful to speak or express your opinions when it is desired; if you blush, and stammer, and are awkward when you would appear calm and self-possessed, you can overcome your defects and build up the qualities you lack by training your subjective self to be courageous, unembarrassed, at your ease in any surroundings. Constantly suggest courage and heroism to this inner self. Stoutly deny that you are timid, cowardly, afraid to speak or to be natural in public or before anyone. Assert that you are brave, that you are not afraid to do anything that it is right and proper you should do.

Practice walking about among your fellows as though you were brave, courageous, selfconfident, perfectly sure of yourself, as capable of carrying on a conversation creditably, or of entering a room gracefully as you are of discharging your daily duties.

Hold the triumphant thought towards your future, towards your ideal, your dream. Carry the atmosphere of the victor. Learn to radiate power. Let everything about you bespeak confidence, strength, masterfulness, victory. Let everybody who has anything to do with you see that you are a born winner.

You must not go about as though life had been a disappointment, as though you had no special ambition in life. If you want to stand for anything unusual; if you want to carry weight in the world; if you want to make your neighbors proud that you live near them, you must brace up in every respect. Keep yourself up to standard. Don’t go about like a failure, like a nobody. Don’t go about in a sloppy, slovenly way. Dress up, brace up, look up, struggle up. Let the world see, as you walk about, that you think well of yourself, and that there is a reason for it. Let people see that you are conscious you are on a superb mission, playing a superb part in the great life game.

You will soon begin to see the thing you are looking for instead of the thing you are afraid of, and will find your dreams coming true.

Chapter 13 – How to Make Yourself Lucky

Believe with all your heart that you can and will do what you were made to do.

The “lucky” man never waits for something to turn up.

“Luck is the ability to recognize an opportunity and take advantage of it.”

To make yourself lucky, choose the vocation nature fitted you for and then fling your life into it. Be all there.

Self-confidence and industry are the friends of good luck. • Good luck follows good sense, good judgment, good health, a gritty determination, a lofty ambition, and downright hard work. It follows the man who cultivates tact, courtesy, courage, self-confidence, will power, optimism, health, and goodwill to all men.

A NEW YORK broker not long ago committed suicide because he thought luck,which had been a dominant factor in his life creed, had forsaken him. He had such faith in the fetish, luck, that, when he met with a series of Wall Street losses, he believed there was no further use in struggling against his destiny. Luck had turned its back on him, he declared, and he had nothing more to live for. His dying words to his wife were, “Good luck to you.” Many a man, though he may not go so far as this Wall Street broker did, limits himself by a superstitious belief in good or ill luck. He is convinced that there is some fate or destiny, something beyond his control which determines the extent of his achievement, and that if this mysterious power fights against him, he will fail; if it helps him, he will succeed. Nothing is so fatal to achievement as the belief in a blind destiny, in the fallacy that an effect can be brought about without a sufficient cause. Yet how many able-bodied people are waiting around for luck to solve their problems, waiting to get a lift from that mysterious, indefinable something which helps one man on and keeps another back, regardless of his own efforts. One might as well wait for luck to solve mathematical problems as to wait for it to solve any of his own life problems. Man is master of his own destiny. The power to solve his problems is right inside of him. He makes the fate which downs him or lifts him up. Life is. not a game of chance.

The Creator did not put us here to be the sport of circumstances, puppets to be tossed about by a cruel fate, which we could not control. He has given man a free will, an unfettered mind, and — “Man makes his fate according to his mind; The weak, low spirit Fortune makes her slave, But she’s a drudge when beckoned by the brave. If Fate weave common thread I’ll change the doom And with new purple weave a nobler loom.”

“Why art thou cast down, oh, my soul!” There is that within you, my good friend, which is a great deal more than a match for anything that can try to down you. You have inherited a power from your Divine Parent which infinitely more than matches any defect or deficiency you may think you have inherited from your earthly parents, or any handicap in your environment. There is something of omnipotence in you, for you are the child of Omnipotence, and you must have: inherited the qualities of your Creator. No matter what happens to you, remember there is something in you bigger than any fate, something that can laugh at any cruel destiny, for you are your own fate, your own destiny.

There is: a God in you, my friend. Assert your divinity. All you have to do is to tap the Eternal Mind, the great cosmic energy, and all power is yours. You are at the very source of the All- Supply.

“Luck is the ability to recognize an opportunity and take advantage of it,” says Beatrice Fairfax, and if we accept her definition we must admit that there is such a thing as luck.

Perhaps you have heard of the young man who happened to be the only physician present in a crowd which gathered around a king’s carriage when he was stricken with a fit in a street in London. The young doctor pressed through the crowd and said he could relieve the king by blood letting. The king revived and this incident was a great stepping-stone to the marvelous career of Ambrose Pare.

It sometimes happens that in a railroad wreck or some other great catastrophe an unknown man leaps into notoriety by some simple act which thousands of others could have performed as well. But the ability to seize the opportunity, and do the needed thing promptly and accurately, is due to the cultivation of one’s initiative, the daily development of promptness and precision in caring for business affairs. What you, my friend, may right now be calling your hard luck, may be the result of some weakness, some bad habit, which is thwarting your efforts, keeping from you the prosperity you desire. You may have peculiarities, objectionable traits, which are bars to your progress, stumbling-blocks in your path. Your bad luck may be lack of preparation, a poor education, insufficient training for your special work. Your foundation may be too small for any sort of a respectable life structure. Or, your bad luck may be indolence, a love of ease and pleasure, a desire to have a good time first of all, no matter what happens.

Good luck is the very opposite of all this. Every successful man knows that good luck follows the strong will, the earnest, persistent endeavor, good hard work, thorough preparation, the ambition to excel and a dead-in-earnest purpose. The “lucky” man is the man who has been a closer thinker, a harder worker, than his “unlucky” neighbor. He is more practical, his life has been ruled by system and order.

Luck is like opportunity, it comes to those who work for it and are ready for it. Make the best possible use of your time, this will make you lucky. If you are handicapped by the lack of an education you can get a fair equivalent of a college education, no matter how busy your life may be. Read and study during your spare moments. A multitude of men and women are educating themselves in this way every day, and are climbing up in the world in spite of a thousand obstacles and handicaps which you have never known. If we should examine the careers of most men who are called “lucky,” we should find that their success has its roots way back in their early youth, and that it has drawn its nourishment from many a battle in the struggle for supremacy over poverty and opposition. We should find that the “lucky” man is not a believer in luck, but in himself; that he has never waited for things “to turn up,” or for luck to come his way.

He has gone to work and turned things up, made luck come his way. My experience has been that the men who are made of winning material do not talk of hard luck or cruel fate; they do not talk of being” kept back by others. If a man has yeast in him he will rise; nothing can keep him back. Clear grit will attract more good luck than almost any other one thing I know of. It is usually the lazy, the indolent, the pleasure-loving good-for-nothings, the weaklings, who are the firmest believers in luck. The mere fact that a man is always talking about his “hard luck,” blaming his non-success, his defeats on someone else, or on unfortunate circumstances, is an admission that he is a weak man. It shows that he has not-developed independence or strength of will, the mental fiber which overcomes obstacles. There is everything in forming this habit of thinking of yourself as lucky, fortunate, of always seeing yourself as you would like to be, not as one who is inefficient and always blundering. Talk about yourself and of things as you wish they were, otherwise you will drive away what you long for and attract things which you wish to get rid of.

A business man whom I have known for some years has formed what might be called “the hard luck habit.” If he invests in anything, be will say: “Of course, I’m sure to lose. It is just my luck. When I buy the market always begins to fall. The good things fly away when I purchase.” He always thinks he is going to get the worst of it in whatever he undertakes. If he starts something new in his business, he immediately begins to talk gloomily about it. “It won’t go, I have a feeling that it won’t win out,” he declares. :

He is always talking “hard luck,” predicting that things are going to the bad, and that “it will have to be worse before it is better.” This man hasn’t nearly as much money as he had several years ago, and his losses have come largely from his sour mental outlook, his lack of confidence in his judgment, his perpetual anticipation of loss and evil, and his belief in an unkind fate.

There are multitudes of hard-working people who are continually driving away from them the very thing they are trying to get, because they do not hold the right attitude of mind. They lack the enthusiastic man’s optimism, his faith and self-confidence,—all friends of good luck.

If you persist in looking and acting like a failure, or a very mediocre or doubtful success; if you keep telling everybody how unlucky you are, and that you do not believe you will win out, because success is only for a favored few, those who have a pull, someone to boost them, you will be as much of a success as the actor who attempts to impersonate a certain character while looking, thinking, and acting exactly like the opposite.

Our thoughts and words are real forces which build or tear down. Who sees only failure is never a winner. It is the man who never sees anything but victory, who never acknowledges the possibility of defeat, that wins out. The man who tries to excuse his failure on the ground that he was doomed from the start by the bad cardsfate dealt him, that he had to play the game with them, and that no amount of effort on his part could have materially altered the results, deceives himself.

I know a man who, whenever he misses a train, says, “I knew I wouldn’t catch it! It was just my luck to miss it! I must have been born late.” If he makes a blunder or an unfortunate mistake he will say, “I am unlucky about everything. I might have known it would turn out bad. If I bought gold dollars to-day they wouldn’t be worth more than fifty cents to-morrow.” Now, my friend, talking disparagingly about yourself, depreciating yourself, is self deterioration.

The constant suggestion of your inferiority, of your defects or weaknesses, will interfere with your success in anything. You can’t be lucky, you can’t be successful, if you are all the time talking against yourself, for this will undermine your confidence in yourself and in your efficiency.

Hold a good opinion of yourself. Think highly of yourself. Learn to appreciate your ability and to respect yourself, not egotistically or from a selfish standpoint, but because you appreciate your marvelous inheritance of divine qualities.

Remember that every time you talk depreciatingly of yourself, no matter if you do not really believe it, if you do it for effect, that is, telling others of your hard luck, admitting that you cannot get along as do other people, that you cannot make money and save it, that you don’t seem to have any money sense, you are lowering your estimate of yourself, your ideal of yourself, and this is the pattern for your life building.

There is a, sculptor in you who is working to the pattern which; you hold up to him, and if you hold up a defective, weak, deficient, dwarfed pattern,; it will be built into the very structure of your being.

What you think of yourself will come to you; what you believe regarding yourself, your ability, your future, will tend to come to you. What you expect of yourself is this very instant being wrought into the texture of your being. Always think of yourself as lucky. Never allow yourself to think of yourself in any other way. Say to yourself: “I am good luck. I must be lucky, because I am a part of the divinity which can never fail. I partake of omnipotence because I am a child of Omnipotence, a partner of the Almighty. It is my nature to be lucky. I was made to be lucky. I was born to win. I am the child of the King of kings. A princely inheritance is coming to me, and I must conduct myself with that respect for myself and for my ability which becomes a prince of the Most High.”

Constantly meditate on what a marvelous thing it is to have such an inheritance, to be conscious that you are really are a god in the making, that there is a divinity within you which can never be lost, an omnipotence which can triumph over any handicap, of earthly, inheritance or accident.

Learn to reinforce yourself, to refresh and reinvigorate yourself by tapping the great cosmic intelligence through the subconscious mind, by going much into the silence, and communing with the All-Good. You should no more harbor a fear thought, a worry thought, a jealousy, envy or hatred thought, a selfish thought; than you would listen to the temptation to steal. These things rob you of your peace of mind, your power, force and vitality, your poise as well as your comfort.

You would not allow a thief to ramble through your home to steal. Why should you allow your enemy thoughts to roam through your mind without a protest? A dwarfed ideal means a dwarfed mind, a dwarfed future, a dwarfed career. Your conviction of yourself, your belief regarding yourself, your future, your ability, will all reappear in your career.

Someone says: “Dare to fling out into the great cosmic mind greater assurance about yourself; dare to have greater confidence; dare to believe in yourself and your mission. Have a grander ideal, a nobler aspiration.”

A man must have faith in the thing he is trying to do or trying to get. His hope, his confidence, his expectation are powerful factors in the gaining of his ambition. They are searchlights on the horizon, descrying opportunity from afar.

Nothing can defeat you or rob you of success but yourself. No conditions, however inhospitable, can swamp you, or thwart your life aim—if you have a life aim. Your own weakness only can do that—your lack of determination, your lack of energy, your lack of backbone, your lack of confidence in yourself. Nothing in the world can make you a nonentity; no mischance’s, no conditions, no environment, nothing but yourself can do that. You can be a nobody if you will, or a somebody if you will; it is right up to you.

You can make a success of your life; you can send your influence down the ages, or you can go to your grave a useless nobody, without ever having made a ripple in the current of the life of your day. Your luck, good or bad, is in yourself.

Thinking of your misfortune or hard luck in not being as well placed or as well conditioned as others is fatal to success and happiness, because we must go in the direction in which we face, and we face the way we think, the way we talk, the way we act. We are like weather vanes and we turn this way and that way according as we think. Our thoughts, our emotions, our feelings are like the wind which turns the weather vane.

I know of no one thing that will have a greater influence upon your life than the forming of the habit of thinking of yourself as lucky, regarding yourself as extremely fortunate in your birth, in your location, in your adaptation to your particular line of work, as fortunate in your ambition and in your chance in life to make good. We are just beginning to learn that we are made, fashioned and molded by our thoughts, which are forces as real as is the force of electricity. Our thought is constantly shaping us to correspond with it. We are our own architects, our own sculptors. We are always reshaping, re-molding ourselves to fit our thoughts and our emotions, our motives, our general attitude towards life. If we think of ourselves as being always lucky, we may not be extraordinary examples of good luck, but we shall always be happy, smiling and contented, believing that everything that comes to us is the best that we could possibly attain.

WHERE LUCK HAS BEEN FOUND

In thrift and foresight.

In thorough preparation for one’s life work.

In mental alertness.

In always being ready to lend a helping hand wherever and whenever needed.

In being tactful and a good mixer.

In holding the efficiency ideal of oneself and one’s capabilities.

In downright, constant hard work.

In being ready for the opportunity when it came.

In courtesy, kindness, and consideration toward everybody.

In helping oneself instead of looking to others for boosts,capital, or favors of any sort.

In doing one’s work a little better than others did theirs.

In not being satisfied with anything but one’s best, never accepting one’s second best or a botched job.

In always carrying some reading matter in one’s pocket, so that spare time could be utilized while waiting for trains, or for those who were tardy in appointments, by reading for self improvement.

In being cheerful, no matter how dark the outlook. In trying to make good in every possible way, while never taking advantage of others.

In beginning the thing which something within one said one could and ought to do, no matter what obstacles stood in the way; by obeying one’s good impulses promptly, before they quit prodding one.

In never allowing oneself to believe that he was born to be poor, a failure, a mediocre sort of a man or woman.

In carrying the victorious attitude in everything,’ looking like a winner, talking like a winner, and radiating the confidence of a winner.

In holding that the good things of the world were not made for a favored few, but for all God’s children.

In substituting clear grit and persistency for the advantages which many others enjoyed from birth.

In believing that the best part of one’s salary was not in one’s pay envelope but in the chance to make good in every bit of work that passed through one’s hands.

In the opportunity to absorb the secrets of one’s employer’s business; to learn for pay what he bought dearly, perhaps, after failure and an enormous expenditure of money and time, and, possibly, the shortening of his life in the process.

In keeping eyes and ears open, and mouth closed most of the time.

In indomitable perseverance, a determination which knew no give up or retreat; in everlastingly pushing ahead whether one could see the goal or not.

In the right attitude towards life, towards one’s work, towards everything and everybody.

In choosing one’s company, associating only with people who were doing their best to get on and get up in the world.

In the consciousness of one’s partnership with the All-Good, the All-Supply, with the Infinite Mind.

In learning, through mental chemistry, to neutralize the things which kill one’s best efforts — fear, worry, anxiety, jealousy, envy, malice, touchiness, anger, and thus to keep one’s mind free for the larger things.

Chapter 17 – The Master Key to Be Great, Concentrate

Two friends set out on a journey once, oh, many years ago, The one bestrode a mettled steed, the other trudged below; And he that rode raced everywhere, save to the place he should, “Because,” said he, “there’s time enough, and this, my mount, is good.” Time journeyed, too, and when, at last, the limit’s hour did toll, The one that pleasure’s bubble sought was still far from the goal,. While he that came with tedious pace was at his travel’s end, With but one shadow on his heart,—the failure of his friend. – T. H. Winton.

THE son of a poor Welsh schoolmaster, without advantage of birth or fortune, without pull or influence of any kind, David Lloyd George succeeded in raising himself to the highest position in the British Empire. As Prime Minister of England, he ranks next to King George, while his power and responsibility greatly overtop that of the King or any other man in the empire.

What is the secret of his success? One word tells it: concentration.

Before the boy was two years old, his father died. His mother then took her family to live with her brother, Richard Lloyd, a humble cobbler. The cobbler’s shop was a sort of political forum for workingmen of the neighborhood, and there young David got his early training in politics. In his teens he studied law, and at the age of twenty-one began to practice. But long before he was admitted to the bar, when he first visited the House of Commons, he made up his mind that that was to be his future domain, and then and there resolved to enter parliament. With all the vigor and tenacity of his nature he concentrated on his ambition, with what result the world knows. One of the ablest and most brilliant statesmen England has produced; he is today the most dominant figure in world affairs.

What David Lloyd George has done in his field you can do in yours, as millions of others have done, by the same means, — concentration.

There is no more powerful magnet in the world for attracting the thing we desire, no force more effective in realizing the ambition we long to attain than concentration. It has been the chief factor in all the great achievements of history. It is the cornerstone of success in every line; the principle upon which all progress is based. All the inventions, all the discoveries, all the modem facilities, which the world enjoys are the children of focused minds. Whatever you long to be, or to have, you can be, you can have, by focusing your mind and concentrating your efforts on that one thing.

When Franz Liszt, the great composer, was a mere youth, his elder brother chided him for spending his time on music and told him that he himself was going to be a great landowner. The would-be landowner scorned his young brother’s musical bent, holding that a talent for music would only ruin a man. Franz, however, stuck to his bent, and even ran away several times in order to gratify the ambition for a musical career, which was discouraged at home. Years later when the elder brother had become a wealthy landowner he called on Franz, who was still a struggling musician. Not finding him at home he left his card which bore the inscription, “Herr Liszt, Landowner.” When more years had passed and the young composer had finally won out, he returned the call of his landowner brother and presented his card, which read, “Herr Liszt, Brain-owner.”

Aside from the humor of this little story, the point is that each of the brothers got what he concentrated on; the one became a wealthy landowner, the other a worldfamed musician and composer.

If your ambition is like that of the elder brother, to become a wealthy landowner, a prosperous man of affairs, then you must concentrate on prosperity, on the acquisition of wealth in some form. We all know men who seem to attract money from every direction. Everything they touch turns to money, as we say, while others who work just as hard for the same end have no success at all. The different results are due to the difference in intensity and persistence of concentration. The natural, the born money-maker thinks in terms of money; he is making money mentally all the time, so to speak, because his mind is focused on money. He is always nursing his money vision. He is positive in his conviction that he will make money, will be wealthy, and he concentrates on his object with such intensity and singleness of aim that he literally creates money.

The man who wants money, but who doesn’t concentrate intensely on getting it; who doesn’t believe very much in his ability to get it, who fears he will never be even what we call a wellto- do man, is like one who wants to be successful, but is always thinking about failure, worrying about it, fearing, believing, that he never will become a success. Or like a man of average ability who should scatter his forces in a dozen different directions, hoping that by chance he might manage to succeed in some one of them.

There is no such thing as succeeding in anything by chance. The greatest genius in the world never created a masterpiece in any line — by chance. Concentration is the master key to all success. It is the fundamental law of achievement. The man who does not concentrate will be either a half success, a mediocrity, or a complete failure.

The French have a proverb, “He who does one thing is terrible.” In other words, he who sticks to one thing is irresistible. No matter if a world opposed his progress he would forge his way through to his goal. It was bending all his energies to the accomplishment of his purpose that made Napoleon one of the most notable figures in history. His intense concentration on his one unwavering aim enabled him to write his name on the very stones of the capital of France; to stamp it indelibly upon the heart of every Frenchman. Even today, a century after his death, France, though a republic, is still under the spell of Napoleon’s name.

“To make a success of the shoe business is my one great ambition,” said the head of one of the largest shoe houses in the world not long ago. “I am not a director or trustee of any bank. I do not scatter my energies. I don’t pretend to know many things, but I do know something about the shoe business. I have put my ability, my energy, my life into the work of making good shoes”

This man, who began life on the lowest round of the ladder, without capital or influence, built up a business which keeps a force of two hundred traveling salesmen on the road to-day and is turning over some $25,000,000 a year.

Emerson says, “The one prudence in life is concentration; the one evil is dissipation.” Scattering our energies, dissipating our creative force, failing to bring our mind to a focus and to hold it there, is responsible for nine-tenths of the failures in life and most of the poverty of the world. I know one of those dissipaters who generates more new ideas and outlines more new schemes than anyone else I have ever met.

Yet he has never accomplished anything more than the making of a meager living, because he never sticks long enough to any one thing to make it go. His brain power and all of his energy are scattered in following one new thing after another without ever carrying any of them forward to completion. Every time I talk with him he amazes me with the fertility of his mind, his resourcefulness in developing original ideas, many of which would prove valuable if they were only put into execution, but they never get beyond the mental stage. The concentration necessary to bring them down to earth, to put them to work, is lacking. There are thousands like this man, getting small salaries in very ordinary positions, whose knowledge of a dozen different occupations, concentrated in one line, would have made them efficient specialists. Everywhere we find men who early in life studied law, medicine, theology, who taught school a few years, worked in a store a little, took a hand at railroading did a little business, traveled for some house, and finally settled down at one thing, only to find that their training years, the years of largest opportunity, when they were susceptible to discipline, had gone by.

No matter how brilliant or versatile you may be you cannot afford to divide your ability, to throw away valuable experience in jumping from one vocation to another. If you would succeed in a worth-while way, you must be a whole man with undivided interests, able to fling the weight of your entire being into one calling. No one is large enough to be split up into many parts; and the sooner a man can stamp this truth upon his mind the better his chances for being a profitable member of society. Elbert Hubbard says: “The master man is a person who has evolved intelligent industry, concentration, self-confidence until these things become the habit of his life.”

Coleman Dupont furnished a good example of the master-man at a critical stage in the affairs of the Dupont Powder Company. When he was called to the head of the business it was losing ground rapidly, but through his amazing industry and concentration, backed by confidence in his ability to do what he undertook, he very soon turned the tide and headed the company toward success. When an interviewer asked Mr. Dupont how he did this, he said: “I talked powder, I ate powder, I dreamed powder. I thought of little else but powder.” This concentration on one unwavering aim built up an enormous institution of world-wide fame.

No matter what your business, trade, or profession, you cannot make a mistake in following Mr. Dupont’s remarkable methods of concentration which make him a master-man in his line. Think the thing you want; talk it; live it; breathe it; dream it; act it; radiate it from every pore of your body; saturate your life, with it; visualize it; believe that it is already yours.

That’s the only way to get anything of value in this world. If we could only realize the marvelous power of thought, the creative force in concentration, the drawing power of intense visualizing, how much more we could accomplish! It is this, which really makes the mind a powerful magnet to attract what it desires, what it longs for most. Everywhere we see illustrations of the attractive force of positive, definite thought concentrated on one point.

Take the little Hebrew boys who come from other countries to America when very young. From the start they have the concentrated commercial instinct of their race. They think in terms of money making; they keep their minds on ways and means of making money until they become powerful magnets, attracting money from every direction. That’s why they succeed and become wealthy where American youths with far better opportunities attract poverty and remain poor all their lives. From the time the Hebrew boy starts to shine shoes on the street, to sell papers, or to peddle some small articles, he is all the time thinking of the money he is going to make; counting what he has and planning what he will do with it; how he can increase it; how he can enlarge his little business, put his profits to work for him and accumulate more money. In a very short time he has a newsstand or a little shop of his own; he invests in a little real estate; by and by he borrows some money and puts up a house, and so he goes on trading in one thing and another, his mind always bent on making more money, until one day this little newsboy, or bootblack, or peddler becomes a man of Fortune – a millionaire.

To demonstrate prosperity, you must concentrate on prosperity; you must hold the prosperity attitude; to demonstrate abundance, you must think abundance, just as you must think health, think vigor, if you would be healthy and vigorous. It is not enough to long for health; you must believe that you will be, that you already are, well and strong. You must expect it. According to thy faith be it unto thee. You must hold in mind that thing, whatever it is, you wish to express in your life, and you must believe it will come. The student who is trying to become a lawyer saturates his mind with law. He thinks law, reads law, studies law, keeps his mind focused upon a future as a lawyer; keeps in a law atmosphere; he pictures himself practicing at the bar, a man of mark in his profession; he continually fills his life with the law ideal, and by the force of his powerful concentration fits himself for the practice of law.

The medical student must follow the same method; so must the aspirant to the ministry or any other vocation. And so must the aspirant to wealth.

You can’t expect to become prosperous if you don’t hold fast to the prosperity vision, if you don’t believe with all your heart you are going to be prosperous. If your mind is occupied with something else most of the time; if it is filled with doubts about ever accumulating property or becoming prosperous in any line of business, don’t deceive yourself with the idea that prosperity will come to you if you only work hard. It won’t. Nothing will come into your life except by the doorway of your thought, of your expectation, your faith.

Concentration is indispensable to success in anything. As Dr. Julia Seaton says: “Concentration is the vital essence of all life, and without it there is no real purpose, no real control. Upon the power of concentration more than upon any other one thing, depends” our law of attracting, controlling and mastering life’s conditions.”

If you feel discouraged because you are not getting on as you hoped you would, something is wrong. Your mind is not pulling in harmony with your effort on the physical plane.

Something has arrested your progress, and that something is a mental stumbling-block which you yourself put in your path. You are not thinking yourself on, you are not putting yourself in the getting-on current by concentrating with confidence, with faith, along the line of your ambition. Discouragement, doubt, a wavering, divided mind, the scattering of your efforts, something or other is neutralizing the force which would naturally take you to your goal. Perhaps you are frittering away your energies by giving your spare time to side-lines, trying to make a little success here, a little there, not giving the whole of yourself to your life work.

In Maine, the farmers say that it makes a horse a gawk to drive it without blinders, because its attention is drawn this way and that, which ruins the animal’s gait and speed. Many a man has been ruined by not confining himself within sufficiently narrow limits to give concentration and direction to his energies. Said Andrew Carnegie: “One great cause of failure of young men in business is lack of concentration. They are prone to seek outside investments, side-lines. The cause of many a surprising failure lies in so doing. Every dollar of capital and credit, every business thought, should be concentrated upon the one business upon which a man has embarked. He should never scatter his shot. It is a poor business which will not yield better returns for increased capital than any outside investment. No man or set of men or corporation can manage a businessman’s capital as well as he can Manage it himself. The rule, ‘Do not put all your eggs in one basket,’ does not apply to a man’s lifework.”

Don’t be afraid of being known as a man of one idea. The men who have moved the world have been men of this kind. It is the man who has his purpose burned into every fiber of his being, who has the faculty of focusing his scattered energies on one point as a burning glass focuses the scattered rays of the sun, which succeeds. “When I have a subject in hand I study it profoundly,” said Alexander Hamilton. “Day and night it is before me. My mind becomes pervaded with it. Then the success I make, the people are pleased to call genius. It is the fruit of thought and labor.” Concentration without genius will accomplish more than genius without concentration.

Chapter 18 – Time is Money, and Much More

Few of us realize the connection between the day, the hour, in which we are living, and our success, our happiness, our destiny.

It is so much easier to dream of a great big success tomorrow than to try to make to-day a big success.

When I see a young man who seizes every odd moment for self improvement, who has an ambition to make each day count, then I know that there is something, a very big something, coming to him in the future.

Our today’s are the blocks with which we build our future. If these are defective, the whole structure of our life will correspond. That marvelous future which you have dreamed of so long will be exactly what you put into your todays.

The world grants all opportunities to him who can use them. Power and fortune are hidden away in the hours and moments as they pass, awaiting the eye that can see, the ear that can hear, the hand that can do.

WHEN Queen Elizabeth of England was dying she said, “My kingdom for a moment!”

One of the richest men in the world said he would give millions of dollars to be assured of a few more years of life.

The late J. Pierpont Morgan used to say that every hour of his time was worth a thousand dollars. It was probably worth many thousands of dollars, even if measured by money alone, for the accumulation of a vast fortune was only an incident in Mr. Morgan’s many-sided career.

But time is infinitely more valuable to us than is shown by its money-making power. I have never known of any person to make his life worth while in any direction until he came to the realization of the immense value of time. Time is our most precious asset, our greatest riches; because in it live our success, our happiness, our destiny.

Yet multitudes are engaged in killing time. Their chief aim in life is to fritter it away as rapidly as possible. They do not realize that this is infinitely more wasteful than it would be for a rich man to throw hundred dollar bills or valuable diamonds into the sea, or to do as Cleopatra did, dissolve priceless pearls in a glass of wine and drink them.

The future of a young man can be gauged to a nicety by the value he puts upon his time, especially his spare time. From the foundation of the American republic the greatest and most successful Americans have been men who not only in their youth but all through their lives made use of every spare moment in broadening their minds, adding to their knowledge, and developing their ability along their special line. The Washingtons, the Franklins, the Lincolns, the Burritts, the Morses, the Fields, the Edisons, the men in every line of endeavor all over the civilized world who have done great things for mankind and made themselves famous, achieved their great work not because they were geniuses, but because they got from every minute of time its full value.

“I have in my time known many famous in war, in statesmanship, in science, in the professions, and in business,” said the late U. S. Senator Hoar of Massachusetts. “If I were asked to declare the secret of their success, I should attribute it, in general, not to any superiority of natural genius, but to the use they made in youth, after the ordinary day’s work was over, of the hours which other men throw away or devote to idleness, or rest, or society. The great things in this world have been done by men of ordinary natural capacity, who have done their best. They have done their best by never wasting their time.”

There are many so-called common or ordinary employees to-day, who, perhaps, think they haven’t nearly as good a chance to rise as their more brilliant or showy companions, who will within a few years be filling high positions. The history of the past shows that every year brings out multitudes of giants from the ranks, often young fellows who are more surprised at their rapid advance than the employers who are watching them.

The only reason why anyone remains a common, ordinary employee, doing routine work and drawing a small salary, is not because he doesn’t have the ability to rise higher, but because. He is not awake to the possibilities in his spare time.

Charles M. Schwab had no more ability perhaps and no better chance to rise than the hundreds of other young men who were working with him at the Homestead plant of Andrew Carnegie when he started in at a dollar a day. The reason why he has become a millionaire and a king in his line is because he saw the necessity of a better education than he had had a chance to get up to that time, and devoted his evenings and spare time to making good his deficiencies, and particularly to acquiring special knowledge in regard to iron and steel.

He was always on the alert to improve his opportunities, always preparing himself to be ready to fill positions next above him in case of a vacancy. That is why his rise was so rapid, why he is to-day one of the richest and most prominent business men in his line in the world, while his early fellow workers who preferred “a good time” to self-improvement in their spare time have never been heard from. Speaking of those early days when he was beginning to attract attention at the Carnegie works, Mr. Schwab said: “At that time science began to play an important part in the manufacture of steel.

My salary at the age of twenty-one warranted me in marrying, so I had a home of my own. I believe in early marriages, as a rule. In my own house I rigged up a laboratory and studied chemistry in the evenings, determined that there should be nothing in the manufacture of steel that I would not know. Although I had received no technical education, I made myself master of chemistry, and of the laboratory, which proved of lasting value.

“The point I wish to make,” continued he, “is that my experimental work was. not in the line of my duty, but it gave me greater knowledge. Achievement is possible to a man who does something else besides his mere duty that attracts the attention of his superiors to him, as one who is equipping himself for advancement. An employer picks out his assistants from the best informed, most competent and conscientious.”

“One is so tired after a day’s work he does not feel like studying,” is an excuse often urged by young people when reminded that they are not doing anything to advance themselves. . It is only the excuse of those who are too lazy to work for what they want, or who lack the ambition to climb. It is well known that a change of occupation in the evening, — the bringing into play of a different set of muscles, brain tissues, ideas, and thoughts, generally rests rather than tires one. Of course every one should take a proper amount of time for needed recreation, exercise and rest, but very often those who claim they are too tired to study evenings waste more energy in foolish dissipation or dawdling aimlessly around doing nothing than they would spend in reading or study.

Only a short time ago I read of a young school teacher who learned six or seven languages in her spare time, and who managed, by earning some extra money evenings in teaching private pupils, to save enough money to go to Europe, to perfect herself in these languages. The enjoyment and breadth of culture she got out of her travels in the different European countries would have been a great reward for the sacrifices she made; but she got much more than that, for she advanced rapidly in her profession, and is now an instructor in French, German, and Italian in a high school for girls.

“The whole period of youth,” says Ruskin, “is one essentially of formation, edification, instruction. There is not an hour of it but is trembling with destinies—not a moment of which, once passed, the appointed work can ever be done again, or the neglected blow struck on the cold iron.” Millions of down-and-outs are to-day bemoaning the loss of the golden opportunities they allowed to slip by in youth, the evenings and holidays they idled away when they might have been laying the foundations for a happy, successful future. But they couldn’t eat their cake and have it too, arid now they feel it is too late even to try to make good.’ They feel that they have nothing to look forward to but an old age of poverty and bitter regrets.

There is no magic which can give a youth a golden future when he is slipping careless, slipshod work and wasted hours into the fabric of to-day. Ambition, courage, industry, vim, energy, initiative, thoroughness poured into your day’s work, and perseverance in self improvement in your spare time, these are the ingredients warranted to make a golden future, to bring you wealth, knowledge, wisdom, power, fame — whatever you set your heart on.

“Believe me,” said England’s great statesman, William E. Gladstone, “when I tell you that thrift of time will repay you in after life with a usury of profit beyond your most sanguine dreams, and that waste of it will make you dwindle alike in intellectual and moral stature beyond your darkest reckoning.” The way in which they spent their spare time has made all the difference between mediocrity and grand achievement to tens of thousands of men and women, who were intelligent enough in youth to know the value of the priceless odds and ends of time which others were recklessly wasting.

If some one offered to purchase a large percentage of your life power you would not think of selling it, even for a fabulous sum. It is what gives you your chance to make good, to make your life a masterpiece, and naturally you would not part with it.

You would say that you could not afford to sell your birthright of power in which is wrapped up your whole destiny, — your enthusiasm, your zest, your career, your ambition. But do you realize that you are practically doing the same thing when you allow your most precious success asset, your time, to run away from you in all sorts of leaks; in sheer idleness, in dissipation, in superficial, silly pleasures, or worse, in pleasures which kill your self-respect and make you hate yourself the next day? If you would succeed in any adequate way, in a way at all commensurate with your possibilities, you must not only shut off all time leaks, but you must also repair every leak in your mental and physical system, and stop every output of energy that does not tell in rendering you more fit to make your life the great success it is possible for you to make it.

How often we are reminded of the value of time by the expression, “Time is money.” But time is more than money; it is life itself; for every separate moment as it flies takes with it a part of our life span. Time is opportunity. Time represents our success capital, our achievement possibilities. Everything we hope for, everything we dream of accomplishing is dependent on it.

“Short as life is,” said Victor Hugo, “we make it still shorter by the careless waste of time.” I would advise every youth starting out in life to put that sentence up on the wall in his sleeping room, and over his desk or work bench, where it would constantly remind him of the immense possibilities stored in the minutes and hours of every single day. If at the outset of your career you resolve to make good every day, and live up to your resolution, nothing can keep you from being a successful man or woman, a superb character. You are the architect of your fate, the master of your destiny, and right now you are shaping your future. Every day is a step nearer to, or farther from, the goal of your ambition. The precious hours of youth are invaluable.

The realization of all your dreams lives in them. Letters come to me from time to time from young people deploring the fact that it is impossible for them to attend school or college.

They say they have to work for a living, and therefore have no opportunity to acquire an education. They never stop to think that many of the most prominent men and women of the world have been self-educated. I do not mean that they have worked their way through school or college, but that they have actually gained an education in its widest and best sense, by their own efforts, with little or no actual schooling. You who complain that you have no opportunity to get an education, and therefore no opportunity to do anything worth while, read the lives of men and women who have lifted themselves into places of power by self-education, biographies like that of Franklin, of Lincoln, of Greeley, of Garfield, of men of all nations who came from the direst poverty, and by sheer force of will and the wise use of every spare moment lifted themselves to the highest stations of life, to positions of honor, of great power and wealth.

As Hamilton W. Mabie said “One of the prime qualities of a man of force and ability is his clear understanding of what can be done with the time and tools at his command. Such a man wastes no time in idle dreaming of the things he would do if he could go to college, or travel, or have command of long periods of uninterrupted time. He is not guilty of a feeble evasion of ‘no possibility’ for his career by getting behind adverse conditions. If the conditions are adverse, he gets in front of them, and so gets away from them.

“The question for each man to settle is not what he would do if he had means, time, influence, and educational opportunities; the question is what he will do with the things he has. The moment a young man ceases to dream or to bemoan his lack of opportunities and resolutely looks his conditions in the face, and resolves to change them, he lays the corner stone of a solid and honorable success.”

No matter how limited your time, or how exacting your daily work, you can so train your mind, so cultivate yourself by reading and study in your spare moments, that you can, if you will, become an educated man or woman, with a much broader outlook on life and an infinitely greater earning capacity than the uneducated man or woman.

Andrew Carnegie, the young Scotch lad, for example, had only an elementary school education at the start, but by reading and studying in his leisure moments he acquired the culture that fruited in several books and many magazine articles on topics of worldwide interest, to say nothing of his business achievements and the immense fortune he acquired. George Stephenson, inventor of the locomotive engine, seized every leisure moment as though it were gold. He educated himself and did much of his best work during his spare time. He learned to read and write at a night school, and studied arithmetic during the night shifts when he was assistant fireman in a colliery.

The lives and work of multitudes of the world’s benefactors prove that no matter what investment a man may make in life, there is none so satisfactory as self investment, — coining bits of leisure into knowledge and power.

The bigger the man the greater value he puts upon time. He regards it as a great asset, as the most precious capital, which can enrich life. Whether his ambition be to acquire a fortune or to achieve success in some other direction, he knows that everything depends on what he does with his spare time. Weak natures, on the other hand, never regard time as a precious asset, they never want to pay the price which strong natures are willing to pay, to make their dreams come true. They cannot resist the lure of pleasure for the sake of their ambition. They practice no more thrift in the use of their time than they do in the use of their money. They kill a lot of time without realizing that in doing this they are killing their prospects, killing their future, killing themselves.

“I will make this day worthwhile!” would be a splendid daily motto for all of us to adopt. When you awake in the morning; when you start to work; and many times during the day, say to yourself: “I will make this day worthwhile. It shall not pass into the story of my life as time half wasted, or not utilized to the best advantage. No matter whether I feel like it or not, I am going to make this day count. I am going to make it stand out in my life as a red-letter day, one in which my work was effective, efficient.” If you do this every day you will be surprised at the wonderful effect it will have upon your whole life. It will lift it to the highest point of your possible efficiency and effectiveness. It will mean everything to you both in character and financial returns.

Some one says: “All that time is lost which might be better employed.” If all of us realized the truth of that, there would be more success and fewer failures in life. Each of us has the same number of hours in his day, the same number of days in his year, and the chief difference between the success and the failure lies in the use to which the hours’ and the days are put. Given the very same environment, the same chances to succeed, and one youth will rise to fame and fortune by the right use of the time that another recklessly wastes. It is what we put into the passing moment, just that and nothing more, that makes up all of life, all of character, all of success.

The harvest of our tomorrows will be like the seed we sow today. If we do not put that quality into the present moment that we expect in our success, in our character, in our life as a whole, it will not be there. If there is not energy, vim, courage, initiative, industry, a high quality of work in to-day the results of these cannot appear in your future. It is the daily ambition which starts out every morning with the firm resolution not to let the hours slip through one’s fingers until one has wrung from them their utmost possibility that makes the successful day; and it is the accumulation of daily successes that makes the big life success, that enables the man to realize the ambitious dream of the boy.

Chapter 19 – The Positive Versus The Negative Man

The negative mind never gets anywhere; it can only destroy, tear down.

It is very easy to develop a negative state of mind, and it is very fatal to success. We must get rid of it before we can attract prosperity or develop efficiency.

We cannot act negatively without getting negative results.

The vacillating man, however strong in other respects, is always pushed aside in the race of life by the determined, positive, decisive man who knows what he wants to do, and does it. Even brains must give way to decision.

Even if sometimes wrong, it is better to decide positively and carry out your decision with energy than to be forever hanging in the balance, contemplating, and procrastinating.

Every important decision involves the letting go of something, and the more one tries to get away from the difficulty, the more he thinks over the thing to be decided, the more he entangles the whole situation.

It is not only necessary to keep your mind positive, but to be immune from all the enemies of prosperity and happiness, it must be vigorously positive.

It is the positive, vigorous mentality that does things, that makes things move. The negative character is always a weakling, a nobody, who follows in the beaten path.

IF WE could only learn always to talk and think decisively, constructively, what a wonderful civilization this would be! It is the strong, optimistic, expectant-of-good-things mind, the mind of faith, and of hope and confidence, belief in the good, that attracts the good. The mind of the pessimist attracts pessimistic products.

If you do not learn to decide firmly and finally and then act on. your decision; if you waver and dilly-dally, allow yourself to be carried this way and that by conflicting circumstances, your life ship will always be adrift; you will never be anchored. You will always be at the mercy of storms and tempests, and will never make the port of prosperity. When a young man asks my opinion of his chances for success in life, I try to find out something about his ability to decide things. If he can do this quickly, firmly, and finally, I am very sure he will win out. There is no other one quality which plays such an important part in business careers especially as the ability to decide things wisely, quickly, firmly, and finally.

The. man who is made of winning material does not hesitate and dawdle and waver and balance on the fence. He jumps right in and tackles the hardest thing first, and goes through with it. Voltaire tells us that vacillation is the most prominent feature of weakness of character.

What we get out of life we do not get by-physical force, but by the subtle power of mental attraction. We bring it to ourselves by making our minds magnets to attract it out of the great -cosmic storehouse of intelligence. Gut of the great ocean of supply that surrounds us we attract the things for which our mental attitude has an affinity. Some attract success, some failure; some attract opulence, plenty; others, poverty and lack.

It all depends upon the difference in thought whether it is positive or negative, constructive or destructive, Negative thoughts demagnetize the mind so that it attracts just the opposite of what we want.

People who plod along in mediocrity, or who fail in life, might make a very creditable life record if they could only keep the things out of their minds which make them negative. It is their discouraging moods and all of their enemy thoughts, —- their doubts, fears, worries, uncertainties, and their lack of confidence in themselves that kill the creative power of the mind and make it negative.

The negative mind never gets anywhere. It is the positive mind that radiates force and pushes its way in the world. A negative mind can only destroy, tear down. Many people dwell so much upon their failure to get on in the world, their poverty, their misfortunes, that they develop a real failure atmosphere; they surround themselves with destructive, tearingdown thoughts, disintegrating suggestions, until they make impossible that mental condition, that positive mental attitude which creates, produces.

We are just beginning to learn that we can not only control our moods and all of our thoughts, but that we can also control our environment, because our environment is largely our objectified thought, feeling, emotion, and mental attitude. We make our own world by our thoughts, our motives.

As long as you keep your mind positive and creative you will have courage, initiative, and sound judgment, you will be a producer. But the moment you become discouraged and blue, your ability, your mind, becomes demagnetized, negative, and you are no longer a creator or a producer. Your decision wobbles, your judgment is weak and uncertain, your whole mental kingdom is demoralized. Keep your mind positive by refusing to admit to it such traitors as doubt, discouragement, fear or worry. They are your fatal enemies. You can never succeed while you entertain them.

Drive them out. Don’t leave the doors of your mind open to them. Be known as a man of great faith regarding everything in the world; believe that everything is right in the world because God made it, God ordered it. Believe only in the best. Live success; walk about among your fellows as though you were successful, with a triumphant, victorious air; show that you are victory organized.

Never fear failure; don’t visualize it; don’t picture poverty or have a horror of it, for this tends to make it a reality and keeps away from you the very things you desire. “What is the use of dreaming about the wonderful things I am going to do in the future? There is no such achievement in store for me. I am not a genius. I must content myself with an ordinary career.” These negative thoughts and assertions permeate the atmosphere of most homes and chill the youthful ardor of the children with the result that their ambition sags, their ideals shrivel, and, having no great life incentive, they drop into a humdrum routine and fall far below the level they might have attained.

It is criminal not to correct the tendency to negatives in a child’s mind. It is not very difficult to cultivate a positive habit of thinking and acting if undertaken when a child is young. With the adult it is not so easy, but it is possible.

When you long for something that it is perfectly legitimate for you to have, sow your affirmation seed in perfect confidence that it will bloom in reality. Say to yourself, “God is no respecter of persons. He is not partial in his treatment of His children.

They all have the same rights, the same privileges. He will give me through my own effort what I need, what I ask for. The poorest, most ragged wretch that crawls has just as many hours in his day as has the richest and most powerful magnate. I can and I will do what I long to do. I will be what I desire to be.”

Whatever you do, don’t set up in your mind and in that of others, a picture of yourself as a weak, ineffective, negative personality.

If you are constantly depreciating yourself, other people will think there is a reason for it, that you are not worthy, that there is something about you that they do not know about as a basis of your own judgment. Why should not others think meanly of you if you do yourself?

If you carry about with you a negative mental attitude yours will be a negative life. You cannot act negatively without getting negative results.

Negative people do not start vigorous, positive vibrations; they are so passive and so susceptible to the influences about them that their negative minds take off all of the negative vibrations from all the cross currents from other negative minds.

It is perfectly possible to make our mentality so vigorously positive that, no matter what conflicting currents or vibrations from other negative, discordant minds strike us, they find no response. Then we are immune to all negative thoughts; we can walk through all sorts of adverse conditions about us without responding, because we do not vibrate to the negative thought and the negative condition, and we can still keep our robust, positive poise. Living in the stronger thought makes us stronger. People with a vigorous, positive mental attitude, people with a strong, firm decision, people with great faith, have a much stronger mentality than do negative minds, because they habitually live in a more vigorous mental attitude, and a positive mental attitude makes for growth, for mental enlargement. We all know the negative man, the man who never has any opinion of his own, who is always asking other people’s advice and depending upon others. The negative character is always a weakling.

The negative man in any community is the nobody. It is the positive, vigorous mentality that does things, that makes things move, which puts things through. It is the positive man who does his own thinking; who dares to step out of the beaten path and blaze his own way; who dares to have opinions of his own and dares to express them.

This is the sort of man who gains the respect and confidence of mankind. A lot of people go through life doing little things, because their negative thought paralyzes their initiative; they do not dare undertake anything important. The negative mind, the man who is afraid to act, who is always deliberating or hesitating, never accomplishes much.

The leader is always characterized by positive qualities. He rules by his vigorous affirmatives. There is nothing negative or minus about him. The positive man, the natural leader, is always assertive, while the negative man shrinks, and effaces himself, waits for someone else to take the initiative.

One of the most pathetic sights in the world is the man who never has any opinion of his own, — the backboneless, shiftless, slovenly, negative man, who never differs from you, whose only opinion is assent to the one you express. We instinctively despise such a weakling, a man who never opposes us, who always says “yes, yes,” to everything we say.

We want leaders and originators more than we want followers or imitators. We have enough, and to spare, of those who are willing to lean on others. We want our young people to depend on themselves. We want them to be so educated and trained that their qualities of leadership, their originality and their individuality, will be emphasized and strengthened instead of obliterated.

All negative thinking, all negative mental attitudes, such as doubting one’s ability, hesitating to undertake things, the habit of putting off, waiting for more favorable conditions, and of reconsidering one’s decisions, are deadly enemies of initiative. If one does not cultivate a positive mental attitude he will have a weak, wishy-washy initiative, and initiative is the executive officer of the other faculties. It is the brain leader.

Do not forget that the force that is going to project you to the success and prosperity goal is actually inside of you. Do not look to others to push you, to give you a pull or to use their influence. Your resources, your assets, are right inside of you; they are nowhere else.

If you feel paralyzed by the very responsibility of deciding things, beginning things of your own accord, make up your mind that if you ever are to amount to anything in the world you must strangle this habit. The only way to do this is to form the counter habit of starting out every morning with the grim resolution not to allow yourself, during the day, to waver, to wait for somebody to show you the way. Resolve that during the entire day you are going to be a pusher, a leader; that you are not going to be a trailer, not going to wait for somebody to tell you what to do and how to do it; that you are going to take the initiative, start things yourself, put them through without advice. Determine to carry a positive mental attitude. This will sharpen the faculties, put a keen edge upon them, and make the mind alert and eager for opportunities.

It is not only necessary to keep your mind positive, but to be immune from all the enemies of your success and happiness it must be vigorously positive. When the mind is saturated with all sorts of negation, with the thoughts of sickness, of failure and poverty, it becomes chronically discordant, and gradually deteriorates. Form the habit of talking up, not down, of talking optimism instead of pessimism. Cut criticism, fault-finding and blame out of your vocabulary. One of the first signs of deterioration in many minds is a tendency to be negative; to hold the discordant, belligerent, envious, jealous mental attitude. This is just as abnormal as is chronic melancholy, gloom, and despondency. These indicate an abnormal or diseased condition of the mind. Try to see things from a large, generous standpoint; hold a large consciousness. Show everybody that you have a great faith in humanity, in your calling, and in yourself. Resolve to keep the negatives out of your life. You are too large for jealousy or envy, too big for worry, or to be anxious about your career, or about your future.

Making yourself positive to everybody and everything you contact with in life is what counts. This is the key to mastership, to success and prosperity.

Chapter 20 – Thrift and Prosperity

If you would be sure that you are beginning right, begin to save. The habit of saving money, while it stiffens the will, also brightens the energies. THEODORE ROOSEVELT.

Enter into a compact with yourself to save a certain amount every week out of your salary.

The little difference between what we earn and what we spend is capital.

Thrift is the friend of man, a civilization builder.

The practice of thrift gives an upward tendency to the life of the individual, and to the life of the nation; it sustains and preserves the highest welfare of the race.

Nothing makes a businessman so absolutely independent as ready cash. • It is the “man with the savings-bank habit who seldom gets laid off; he’s the one who can get along without you, but you cannot get along without him.”

Thrift means wise management of what you have — money, time, BENJAMIN FRANKLIN is one of the most inspiring examples of what the practice of thrift can do for the poorest boy or girl in this land of opportunities. Son of a poor tallow chandler and soap boiler, the fifteenth child in a family of seventeen, he began at the age of ten to earn his living by working in his father’s shop. From these humble beginnings he succeeded, entirely by his own efforts, in becoming one of the world’s greatest men — a distinguished patriot, scientist, statesman, inventor, diplomat, philosopher, author, and, last but not least, a noted humorist.

All this he accomplished by the practice of thrift. That does not mean merely economy in financial matters, the wisest expenditure of his income, but the wisest expenditure of his time and efforts in all the business of life. For to him thrift meant not only prudence in business and money spending, but the conservation of health, of energy, of life capital, and the utmost development of all his natural resources. As well as being the thriftiest, Franklin was the most generous of men, and would share his last cent with one who needed it.

One of Franklin’s favorite maxims—one that he literally lived by himself—was “God helps those who help themselves.” And the first lesson for those who would help themselves to learn is the one that he constantly taught —- Thrift. Headed with a picture of Benjamin Franklin, the great apostle of thrift, a calendar, issued by the Y. M. C. A. in New York, has this slogan — “Make Your Money Mean More.” Then, it gives the “Ten Commandments for a Young Man’s Financial Life.”

1. — Work and Earn.

2. — Make a Budget.

3. — Record Your Expenditures.

4. — Have a Bank Account.

5. — Carry Life Insurance.

6. — Own Your Own Home.

7. — Make a Will.

8. — Pay Your Bills Promptly.

9. — Invest in Reliable Securities.

10. — Share With Others.

If you “forge these links of success into your character,” as the calendar suggests, you will not only develop a self-reliant, vigorous type of manhood or womanhood, but you will also be laying the foundation of enduring prosperity, contentment, and happiness. Every man knows that it is easier to earn money than to save it; so if there is any one link in the “Ten Commandments” the wage earner, the man or woman of limited means, should pay special attention to, it is the second, “Make a Budget.” And here again the Y.M. C.A. is meeting a great need in supplying “A Budget Book With a Conscience,” which shows the best way to plan the expenditure of your income, and how to keep an accurate account of your income and outlay.

From Benjamin Franklin to Sir Thomas Lipton, thousands of successful men in every field have given testimony to the value of thrift, or economy, as a wealth and happiness maker. Lipton says it is “the first great principle of all success. It creates independence, it gives a young man standing, fills him with vigor, it stimulates him with the proper energy; in fact, it brings to him the best part of any success — happiness and contentment.”

Unless you make it a cast-iron rule to lay aside a certain percentage of your earnings each week, each month, you will never succeed in becoming a really independent man or woman. You will always be at the mercy of circumstances. No matter how small it may be, or if you have to go without a great many things you think you need, put a portion of your earnings away every year where it will be absolutely safe. You don’t know what this will mean to you in case of illness, accident, or some unlooked for emergency when a little ready money may save you great suffering or financial ruin.

The wise expenditure of one’s income, however small it may be, involves the same principles as the investment and handling of the business man’s capital. And the successful businessman carries these principles into the conduct of all his affairs, his personal and household expenditures as well as those relating directly to his business. Even multimillionaires have to be thrifty or their millions would take wings. In his little book “Succeeding With What You Have,” Charles M. Schwab says: “Not long ago the expenses of running my New York home got exorbitant. I called in the steward and said to him: ‘George, I want to strike a bargain with you. I will give you ten per cent of the first thousand dollars you save in house expenses, twenty-five per cent of the second thousand, and one-half of the third thousand.’ The expense of operating the house was cut in two.”

I once sent an interviewer to Marshall Field to ask him, among other things, what he considered the turning-point in his career, and his answer was: “Saving the first five thousand dollars I ever had, when I might just as well have spent the modest salary I made. Possession of that sum, once I had it, gave me the ability to meet opportunities. That I consider the turning-point.” John Jacob Astor, the founder of the Astor fortune, said that if it had not been for the saving of his first thousand he might have died in the almshouse.

What a pathetic thing it is to see, as we do on every hand, well-educated, well-bred men and women, people with a great deal of ability, but with no money sense, going about with practically nothing ahead of them, between themselves and want, spending everything as they go! What a pathetic story the charity organizations could tell about people who have been in better circumstances, but who have lost their money, of people who have never been able to lay up anything; to put by anything, for a “rainy day.”

What an assurance and sense of protection we get from the consciousness of a little “nestegg,” a little money laid up for the future, something to stand between us and possible emergency or want, no matter what might happen to us.

No one can feel easy or safe who is living from hand to mouth. How many poor people in our great cities are constantly dispossessed, put out on the sidewalk, oftentimes when a parent or some other member of the family is ill, because they can’t pay the rent, and this is often due to the lack of early training in thrift and wise economy; no provision made for an emergency; nothing laid up for a rainy day.

I have no sympathy for the rainy-day philosophy of many people; the rainy-day fear and terror, that cheeseparing saving, pinching, stingy policy. Such people make the very rainy day they are trying to guard against. It is the good sense, the wise precaution, which gives a reasonable provision for future needs, or for accidents, or for emergency, or for anything which may impair one’s earning capacity, or any loss which may result from fire or flood, that wins our approval.

The saving habit, the bank-book habit, is an indication of the ambition to get on and up in the world. It is also an indication of many other good success qualities. The bank-book habit is seldom found in bad company.

The habit of thrift not only opens the door to opportunity, but is a safeguard against our own weaknesses, our gullibility, the tendency to scatter our earnings and make fools of ourselves. The saving of money so often means the saving of a man. It means cutting out indulgences or avoiding vicious habits. It often means health in the place of dissipation. It means a clear instead of a cloudy and muddy brain. It means that a man has vision, foresight, intelligence in planning and providing for his future. In fact, the thrift habit, the habit of saving, is not only one of the foundation-stones of a fortune, but also of character.

Theodore Roosevelt once wisely said, “If you would be sure that you are beginning right, begin to save. The habit of saving money, while it stiffens the will also brightens the energies.”

The moment a young man begins to put aside money, systematically, and to make wise investments, he becomes a larger man. He begins to have a broader view of life. He begins to have more confidence in himself, in his ability, in his power to shoulder responsibility, to make his own program, to be his own boss. In early learning the lesson of thrift, he has taken the first step in the development of a sturdy character, the sort of character that distinguishes the best type of self-made man — the Benjamin Franklins of the race.

Nothing will do more to help a young man to get credit and gain for him the assistance of successful people than the reputation for thrift, of having the saving habit, — of having something ahead, something laid by, whether in government bonds, or in a life insurance policy, or in some other investment. Such thrift gives him standing.

A prominent businessman says: “Give me the youth who saves to make the man worthwhile.” If you want to make your dreams of a prosperous future come true you will enter into a compact with yourself to save a certain amount every week out of your salary. No matter how small this may be, or if you have to go without a great many things that you think you need; put this certain percentage of your earnings where it will be absolutely safe.

This may mean riches to you in the future. A little ready money attracts opportunities. I have known of young men to get a splendid opportunity to start in business for themselves on five hundred dollars, some on less. Many a fortune has been started on less than a thousand dollars. The head of five big stores in New York told me he began business with three hundred dollars. Frank Woolworth, who built up the mammoth five and ten cent store business, started with something like three hundred dollars of his own, borrowing enough to bring it up to five hundred. Several of his first stores were failures, but he was not a failure.

He had an idea and his small earnings helped him to back up his idea and to make his Dreams come true.

The power of money is usually not half appreciated by young men and young women. This is a land of opportunity, and good chances are constantly coming to those who have the ready cash. How often we hear people plead as an excuse for not seizing a rare opportunity for investment, that they hadn’t the money! Multitudes of men have been obliged to let splendid opportunities pass because of this same lack. Great bargains for cash everywhere have been offered and only comparatively few men have had the reserve funds or the” ready cash to avail themselves of these splendid chances.

Some of the shrewdest business men I know tell me that there is nothing that pays the business man so well, in the long run, as to keep money in the bank, ready for an emergency, ready for an unexpected opportunity or a great bargain. It gives one a great sense of security to know that he is prepared for any ordinary emergency, that he has ready cash to help him. We can never tell when illness or accident may impair our earning capacity, or when some unforeseen emergency may make an unexpected call upon us. The thrifty man is never caught unprepared.

There are opportunities to save all around us. The facilities for saving are unparalleled and the rewards are certain. When we get a little money ahead it arouses enthusiasm to add to it. It is a perpetual suggestion, when we are tempted to spend, that we try to save. It is a little easier to say “No” when inclined to spend foolishly or for things which are really not worth while. Our savings are a constant encouragement, a tonic, a stimulant. His small savings have kept many a young man from falling into temptations which might have crippled or ruined him.

The little difference between what we earn and what we spend is capital. A little ready money suggests to young people just establishing a home wonderful possibilities in the way of comforts, the means of self-culture and growth. It means a little better reading matter, better books and periodicals. It means a possible college course later on for the children, and did age protection. It means less worry and less anxiety about the future, exemption from the fear of coming to want, or that those dear to us may suffer. It may mean a good physician, a skillful surgeon, instead of a bungler when sickness enters our home.

“I have been asked,” says a great businessman, “to define the true secret of success. It is thrift in all its phases, and especially, thrift as applied to savings. Saving is the first great principle of success. It creates independence, it gives a young man standing, fills him with vigor, it stimulates him with the proper energy; in fact, it brings to him the best part of any success—happiness and contentment.” Can you desire anything better in your future than these?

I AM — ?

I am stored-up happiness.

I lead the way to peace, power, and plenty. I bring you freedom from anxiety and worry over the living problem.

I am a friend alike of the rich and the poor.

I am common sense applied to life in all sorts of ways.

I am a tower of strength in youth and a staff in old age.

I increase hope, confidence, assurance, certainty as to the future.

I was one of the chief factors in the winning of the World War.

I am the best form of insurance against poverty and failure. I remove the shadow of the poorhouse.

I make for health, for efficiency, for the highest possible welfare of the individual.

I kill that “rainy day” dread; in fact, I do away with the “rainy day” altogether. I put hope into the heart of man, a light into human eyes that was never there before.

I put people in a position to take advantage of all sorts of opportunities for investment, for advancement, to take advantage of chances that, but for me, would be lost.

I mean the best physicians, the most skilled surgeons, the best hospitals in case of need, as well as the best health resorts.

I make possible a needed vacation, rest, recreation and travel. I mean leisure, more living with natural art and with the beautiful things in the world.

I mean better opportunities for your children, better schools, better clothing, a more refining environment, greater security for their future.

I show you how to make the most of your income; how to expend the margin to the best advantage; how to make the wisest investments of your time, your strength and your ability as well as your money.

I am the friend of man, a civilization builder. I not only give an upward tendency to the life of the individual, but also to the life of a nation.

I sustain and preserve the highest welfare of the race.

I safeguard the future; I enable you to work with confidence, to look up and not down, to rise superior to your surroundings.

I keep thousands of people out of the penitentiary; prevent them from committing theft and other crimes.

I increase the confidence of others in struggling young men and add tremendously to their credit.

I am an employee’s best recommendation, for I belong to a large and most excellent family. Every employer knows that the employee who cultivates me has many other sterling qualities, such as honesty, thoroughness, ambition, reliability, foresight, prudence. I am a symbol of character, of stability, of self control; a proof that a man is not a victim of his appetites and weaknesses, but their master.

I am often the savoir of a man, cutting off indulgences and vicious habits, putting health in the place of dissipation and insuring a clear brain instead of a cloudy, befuddled one.

I am the enemy of that great curse of mankind — debt — which wrecks multitudes of homes, causes divorce, blasts love, and destroys all peace of mind. I am that which helps a man to lift his head above the crowd; to be independent, self-reliant, and to stand for something in the world. Multitudes of families are homeless, moneyless, and are enduring all sorts of hardship, privation, and humiliation because the husbands and fathers never took me into partnership.

The failure army, today, is largely recruited by people who never learned to know me, who ridiculed the suggestion of needing me, who rather despised and looked down on me as standing for meanness and penuriousness and as being an enemy of their enjoyment.

I am the best friend of woman. I make her a better businesswoman, a better housekeeper, a better wife and mother, a better citizen. I help her to make herself independent, self-reliant, and teach her how to finance herself. However you make your living, whether by the work of your hand or of your brain, in a trade or in a profession, at home or in the shop, whether your income be small or large, you will always be placed at a disadvantage, will always be taking chances with your future security and happiness, unless you have me as a working partner.

I am an incentive to high living, the simple life and high thinking. I urge spending upward, living upward, dwelling in honesty, in simplicity, living the life that is worthwhile, the genuine life, the life that will give enduring satisfaction.

I am the beginning of real success; that which puts a foundation under your air castles, that which makes your dreams come true, which builds that “home of my own” to which every healthy, ambitious young person looks forward as the culmination of his hopes.

I AM THRIFT

Chapter 21 – As A Man Expecteth So Is He

We never can get more out of ourselves than we expect. If we expect large things, if we hold the large mental attitude toward our work, toward our life, we shall get much greater results than if we depreciate ourselves, and only look for little things.

The habit of expecting great things of ourselves calls out the best that is in us.

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 little is to get little.

We ask little things, we expect little things, and thus we limit our supply.

There is a tremendous power in the habit of anticipating good things, of believing that we shall realize our ambition; that OUT dreams will come true.

Multitudes queer their success at the very outset by anticipating bad things, expecting that they are going to fail, that their dreams will never be realized.

WHEN I was graduated from a New Hampshire academy my greatest stimulus to further endeavor was my favorite teacher’s belief in me. Taking me by the hand at parting, as he bade me good-bye, he said: “My boy, I expect to hear from you, — that the world will hear from you, — in the future. Don’t disappoint me. I believe in you, and can see something in you that you do not see in yourself.”

There is only one thing more stimulating, more helpful, in the struggle for success, than the knowledge that others — our teachers, our parents, our friends and relatives — believe in us and expect great things of us; that is, to expect great things of ourselves. The difference between what two people get out of life, what they accomplish, and what they represent to others, depends upon the difference in what they expect of themselves.

A general who goes into a battle expecting to be beaten will be beaten. His expectation of defeat communicates itself to his army, demoralizes it at the start, and makes it impossible for the men to do their best. It is the same in the battle of life. To enter it with the expectation of defeat, is to be defeated before you begin. If you desire to succeed you must show your confident expectancy of success in your very presence. You must also live day by day in the very soul of expectancy of splendid things which are coming to you.

Working for one thing and expecting the opposite can bring only one result — failure. Every time you say you don’t expect ever to be anything, or to get anything, or to accomplish anything worth while, you are neutralizing the efforts you are making to be or to get or to do what you want. Our expectations must correspond with our endeavor. If we are convinced that we are never going to be really happy, that we are destined to plod along in discontent and wretchedness, to suffer all our lives, we shall tend to get what we expect. To be ambitious for happiness and yet always expect to be miserable, to continually doubt our ability to get what we long for, whatever it may be, is like getting on a train which is headed east when we wish to go west. We must expect to go in the direction of our desire, of our longing and effort. If you would succeed in what you are trying to do or to be, you must turn your back upon failure, blot out of your mind every thought, every picture, every suggestion of failure, and head toward success.

When, through a series of reverses and disappointments, a man has lost his grip upon himself, and feels convinced that he cannot possibly get on his feet; when he expects nothing but failure, there is only one thing you can do for him, — try to arouse his hope; to restore his lost faith; to show him that, being divine, there is something in him which can never fail; that he and his Maker are one, and that, working together, they are a majority in any situation.

I have just received some manuscripts accompanied by a letter, in which the writer says: “I know the enclosed are nothing like your articles, for I couldn’t write like you no matter how hard I might try. I don’t expect you will want to publish these, but thought I would send them along because of the possibility that you might.”

Now, at the very outset, this writer prejudiced me against his articles by his self-expressed inferiority and the suggestion that they were not worth publishing, and would probably be returned. It was as though a young man should start out in a disheartened mood to look for a job, discouragement in his face and in his every action, and should say to a prospective employer: “I don’t think you will hire me; I didn’t expect any luck when I came in, but thought I would try. I haven’t much confidence in myself, and don’t know that I can do work along this line. I doubt very much if I should suit you. Still I will try my best if you want to give me a chance, though I don’t believe you will, for I never have any luck in hunting jobs.”

This may sound ridiculous, but it expresses the mental attitude which multitudes of people hold toward the thing they long for and are striving to attain. They never expect to succeed in anything they undertake; never expect to be comfortable, to say nothing of having the luxuries and refinements of life. They expect only failure and poverty, and do not understand that this very expectancy increases the power of their mental magnet to attract these things, even though they are trying to get away from them.

I was recently talking with a man who is a good illustration of what this mental attitude does for us. He told me that for many years he had been working very hard, with no vacations, no let up in his efforts; that he worked holidays and most of his Sundays, and yet had never gotten anywhere and never expected to; that, in fact, things seemed to be in a conspiracy to disappoint and defeat him. “Of course you haven’t succeeded, my friend, because you never expected to,” I said to myself. “Moreover, you never gave yourself a chance. Holding your nose to the grindstone all this time, fearing and expecting poverty, failure, disappointment, limitation, defeat in everything, has made you a magnet for these things and drawn you into a failure rut.”

We don’t necessarily get what we work for; it is what we expect that comes to us. What you fear, as well as what you long for, is headed your way. All your fears, all your doubts, all your failure thoughts are taking shape in your life, molding conditions to their likeness; and no matter how hard you work for the thing you want, if you hold constantly in mind negative, discouraged thoughts; if you expect failure instead of success, evil instead of good, it is what you expect that will come to you. In other words, your thought is the creative force that molds and determines the conditions of your life.

“You must have birds in your heart, Madam, before you can find them in the bushes,” said John Burroughs, the great naturalist, to a woman who complained that no birds ever came to her orchard, while he counted a score or more there, even while she uttered her plaint. It is what you hold in your heart, what you believe will manifest itself to you, that comes into your life. No one can accomplish anything great in this world who is confident that he was made to do little things, and is satisfied with an inferior position, hopeless of being anything but an underling all his life. On the other hand, a man who expects great things of himself is constantly trying to open a little wider the doors of his narrow life, to extend his limited knowledge, to reach a little higher, to get a little farther on than those around him. He has enough of the divine disposition to spur him on to nobler endeavors; he has a quenchless ambition to make the most of himself.

No matter what the conditions of your birth, it is you who shape your career, fashion your life for happiness or unhappiness, success or failure. It is true of all men and women that— “They themselves are makers of themselves.”

If you want to live the larger life, the happy, useful life, you must think the larger life; you must enlarge your model of yourself and of your possibilities; you must expect to realize your ideal of yourself and of the thing you long to do; for, as a man expecteth, so will his happiness, so will his life be.

It doesn’t matter what we are trying to do, it is the hope and expectancy of success that nerves us to put forth our greatest effort; arms us with the assurance that compels success. The greatest difference, for instance, between the Al salesman and the mediocre one is the difference in their mental attitude.

“Beaten before he began”; “Didn’t believe he was going to get the order,” is written all over some salesmen. In trying to get orders they lack the hope, the expectation of success, the assurance and self-confidence that presage victory. They don’t know the psychology of salesmanship; that it consists in holding the conviction of success always in mind, and so they fall down before the slightest opposition.

There are thousands of second-rate salesmen who have enough ability to make crackerjacks, but who fail to get results because of their doubts and fears. At every little objection made by a prospect, they keep thinking and saying to themselves: “There, I am going to lose that man; I just feel it in my bones. I wish I could get an order from him, but it’s no use; he’s not going to sign.” They do not realize that they are communicating their own doubts and fears to their prospect. It doesn’t take a very sensitively organized person to feel the negative, failure atmosphere, and when he first lays his eyes upon one of those timid, doubting salesmen, the prospect knows that he is not a winner. Instead of victory, he sees defeat in his face; and if defeat is in a man’s face he can’t win no matter how much ability he has. His failure atmosphere repels everyone he contacts with.

Negative minds never make great salesmen or great anything else, because they don’t build; they tear down. They are not creative, but destructive. They go through life closing the very doors ahead of them which they long to open; pulling with one hand, so to speak, on the door-knob, while at the same time holding a foot of doubt against that very door which they are trying to open. If they affirm their belief that there are good things for them, almost before they leave their lips they neutralize their affirmations by their secret doubts. They say one thing, but expect the opposite, just like the woman who prayed to the Lord to remove the sand heap from her yard, and when she got through praying looked out and said, “There it is, just as I expected! Of course the Lord didn’t remove it!” That is the trouble with most of us. We pray and we work hard for things, and when we don’t get them it is, “just as we expected.” We couldn’t get what we wanted and longed for because there was no faith, no belief, back of our efforts and our prayers. You know what St. James says of the man who doubts and fears and has no faith: “Let not that man think that he shall receive anything of the Lord.”

Some people cannot understand how it is that bad men, cruel, brutal, conscienceless men, often succeed so well in their business. They succeed by the exercise of the mental law that like thoughts produce like results. This law works as unerringly as any physical law. It is neither ethical nor unethical. It is scientific. It is an inexorable principle, a changeless fact, that what we hold persistently in the mind is ultimately objectified in the body, in the life, whether it relates to our health, to our success or to our happiness. Ignorance of the law does not save us from the consequences of its violation, just as ignorance of our State or Federal laws does not condone an offense against them.

This is why it is so important that children should be trained in right thinking from the start.

Every child should be reared to expect big things of himself: to understand that the Creator sent him here on an important mission, and that he must prepare himself for a life of achievement. Being a child of Omnipotence, of the All-Supply, man is the heir of all that is; health, success and happiness are his divine birthright, and every child should grow up with the conviction that good things instead of evil are waiting for him; that the longings of his heart, the yearnings of his soul, are prophecies of what he may become if he does his part in making a thorough preparation for his life work.

Do you realize that your environment today, your achievement, and your poverty or prosperity are really made up of your expectations of the past; what you expected of yourself years ago, when you started out in life? If you have been true to your vision of a successful future, and have backed up your faith, your ability, with hard work and intelligent endeavor, you have worked in harmony with the law and are reaping the harvest of your thought and endeavor. If, on the other hand, you find yourself poverty – stricken and wretched, you have violated the law, and your only hope of bettering your condition is to turn about face and go the other way. Work with the law, not against it. Work for what you want, but work with confidence, with the hope, the belief, that you will get it.

Expecting to be happy; expecting to be successful; expecting to win out in our undertakings; expecting health instead of disease; ‘ expecting good luck instead of ill luck; expecting harmony instead of discord and trouble; expecting to make friends wherever we go; expecting to be thought well of, to stand for something in our community,—this is to establish relations with the things we want and are working for; it is to attract them to us: for as a man expecteth so is he; so has he.