To think about and worry about the things we do not want, or to fear that they will come to us, is but to invite them; because every impression becomes an expression, or tends to become so unless the impression is neutralized by its opposite.
If we think too much about our losses, too much about our possible failure, all these things will tend to bring to us the very thing we are trying to get away from.
On every hand we see this law of like attracting like exemplified in the lives of the poverty-stricken multitudes, who, through ignorance of the law, keep themselves in their unfortunate condition by saturating their minds with the poverty idea; thinking and acting and talking poverty; living in the belief in its permanency; fearing, dreading, and worrying about it.
They do not realize, no one has ever told them, that as long as people mentally see the hunger wolf at the door and the poorhouse ahead of them; as long as they expect nothing but lack and poverty and hard conditions, they are headed toward these things; they are making it impossible for prosperity to come in their direction.
The way to attract prosperity and drive poverty out of the life is to work in harmony with the law instead of against it.
To expect prosperity, to believe with all your heart, no matter how present conditions may seem to contradict, that you are going to become prosperous, that you are already so, is the very first condition of the law of attaining what you desire.
You cannot get it by doubting or fearing. Whatever we visualize and work for we will get.
What we most frequently visualize, what we think most about, is constantly weaving itself into the fabric of our lives, becoming a part of ourselves, increasing the power of our mental magnet to attract those things to us.
It doesn't matter whether they are things we fear and try to avoid or things that are good for us, that we long to get. Keeping them in mind increases our affinity for them and inevitably tends to bring them into our lives.
It is a curious fact that many people seem to think that one must spend years as an apprentice to become an expert in any line of endeavor, in business or in a profession, but that in regard to prosperity it is largely a matter of chance, of fate, something which cannot be affected very much by anything they may be able to do.
They say, "Well, I was not built that way. I am not a natural money-maker, and never can be." Or they excuse themselves on the ground that their parents and those before them were never money-makers, and never did anything more than make a bare living.
There is nothing at all peculiar about prosperity any more than there is about legal efficiency or expertness in law or medicine.
Its realization is purely a matter of concentration and of preparation; a matter of focusing all our powers upon the prosperity law in order to attract prosperity and to make ourselves expert in attaining it.
The law of prosperity, of opulence, is just as definite as the law of gravitation, and it works just as unerringly. Its first principle is mental. Wealth is created mentally first; it is thought out before it becomes a reality.
If you would attract success, keep your mind saturated with the success idea. Develop an attitude of mind that will attract success. When you think success, when you act it, when you live it, when you talk it, when it is in your bearing, then you are attracting it.
When we once get this law of attraction thoroughly fixed in our minds we will be careful about attracting our enemies, contacting with them through our mind, thinking about them, worrying about them, fearing, and dreading them.
We will hold the sort of thoughts that will attract the things we long for and are seeking, not the things we dread, and despise, and are trying to avoid.
It is just as easy to attract what you want as to attract what you don't want. It is just a question of holding the right thought, and making the right effort.
There is no exception to the law of attraction, any more than there is to the law of gravitation, or the laws of mathematics.
Chapter III.
Driving Away Prosperity
As long as you hold the poorhouse thought you are heading toward the poorhouse. A pinched, stingy thought means a pinched, stingy supply.
The man who sows failure thoughts, poverty thoughts, can no more reap success, prosperity harvests, than a farmer can get a wheat crop from sowing thistles.
No matter how hard you may work, if you keep your mind saturated with poverty thoughts, poverty pictures, you are driving away the very thing you are pursuing.
Stop thinking trouble if you want to attract its opposite; stop thinking poverty if you wish to attract plenty. Refuse to have anything to do with the things you fear, the things you do not want.
It is doubting and facing the wrong way, facing towards the black, depressing, hopeless outlook that kills effort and paralyzes ambition.
A man once told me that if he could be assured that he would never have to go to the poorhouse, and that he would have the necessities of life for his family, he would be perfectly satisfied.
He said it was evidently not intended that he should have luxuries or anything more than a bare living; he had always been a poor man and he always expected to be poor, that his people before him had also been poor.
Now, it was just this mental attitude, — for he was a hard worker, — of always expecting to be poor, believing he would always be poor, that kept him from attracting prosperity.
He had not expected prosperity and, of course, could not attract what he did not expect. He only just managed to get along, for that was all he expected to do.
One of the chief reasons why the great mass of human beings live such mean, stingy, poverty-stricken lives is because their negative mental attitudes, their doubts and fears and worries, their lack of faith, attract these conditions.
The Good Book tells us that "the destruction of the poor is their poverty." That is, their poverty thought, their poverty conviction, their poverty expectation and poverty belief, their general hopeless mental outlook keeps away prosperity.
The worst thing about poverty is the poverty thought, the poverty belief.
Multitudes of people never expect to be comfortable, to say nothing of having the luxuries and refinements of life. They expect poverty, and they do not understand that this very expectancy increases the power of their mental magnet to attract want and limitation, even though they are trying to get away from it; that we always head towards our expectations and convictions.
Poverty begins in the mind. The majority of poor people remain poor because they are mental paupers to begin with. They don't believe they are ever going to be prosperous.
Fate and conditions are against them; they were born poor and they expect always to be poor, — that is their unvarying trend of thought, their fixed conviction.
Go among the very poor in the slums and you will find them always talking poverty, bewailing their fate, their hard luck, the cruelty and injustice of society.
They will tell you how they are ground down by the upper classes, kept down by their greedy employers, or by an unjust order of things which they can't change.
They think of themselves as victims instead of victors, as conquered instead of conquerors. The great-trouble with most people who fail to realize their ambition is that they face life the wrong way. They do not understand the tremendous potency of the influence of the habitual mental attitude in shaping the career and actually creating conditions.
It is really pitiful to see people making slaves of themselves trying to get ahead, but all the time side-tracking