Hold each job long enough to get from it every speck of information there is in it. Hold it long enough to learn the job ahead. Then if there seems no likelihood of a vacancy soon in that job ahead, find one that corresponds to it somewhere else.
Progress! Keep going ahead! Don’t be satisfied merely because your salary is being boosted occasionally. Learn something every day. When you reach the point in your work that you are no longer adding to your store of knowledge or abilities, you are going backward, and it’s time for you to move. Move upward in the organization you are with if you can — but MOVE!
Your actual salary is of slight importance compared with the knowledge and ability you add to your mind. Given a full storehouse there, the salary or the riches will speedily follow. But the biggest salary won’t do you much good for long unless you’ve got the knowledge inside you to back it up.
It’s like a girl picking her husband. She can pick one with a lot of money and no brains, or she can pick one with no money but a lot of ability. In the former case, she’ll have a high time for a little while, ending in a divorce court or in her having a worthless young “rounder” on her hands and no money to pay the bills. In the other, the start will be hard, but she is likely to end up with a happy home she has helped to build, an earnest, hardworking husband who has “arrived” — and happiness.
Money ought to be a consideration in marriage — but never the consideration. Of course it’s an easy matter to pick a man with neither money nor brains. But when it’s a choice of money or brains — take the brains every time. Possessions are of slight importance compared to mind.
Given the inquiring, alert type of mind — you can get any amount of possessions. But the possessions without the mind are nothing. Nine times out of ten the best thing that can happen to any young couple is to have to start out with little or nothing and work out their salvation together.
What is it you want most from life? Is it riches?
Picture yourself with all the riches you could use, with all the abundance that Nature holds out with such lavish hand everywhere. What would you do with it?
Daydream for a while. Believe that you have that abundance now. Practice being rich in your own mind. See yourself driving that expensive car you have always longed for, living in the sort of house you have often pictured, well-dressed, surrounded by everything to make life worthwhile. Picture yourself spending this money that is yours, lavishly, without a worry as to where more is coming from, knowing that there is no limit to the riches of Mind. Picture yourself doing all those things you would like to do, living the life you would like to live, providing for your loved ones as you would like to see them provided for. See all this in your mind’s eye. Believe it to be true for the moment. Know that it will all be true in the not-very-distant future. Get from it all the pleasure and enjoyment you can.
It is the first step in making your dreams come true. You are creating the model in mind. And if you don’t allow fear or worry to tear it down, Mind will re-create that model for you in your every-day life.
“All that the Father hath is yours,” said Jesus. And a single glance at the heavens and the earth will show you that He has all riches in abundance. Reach out mentally and appropriate to yourself some of these good gifts. You’ve got to do it mentally before you can enjoy it physically. ‘“Tis mind that makes the body rich,” as Shakespeare tells us.
See the things that you want as already yours. Know that they will come to you at need. Then LET them come. Don’t fret and worry about them. Don’t think about your LACK of them. Think of them as YOURS, as belonging to you, as already in your possession.
Look upon money as water that runs the mill of your mind. You are constantly grinding out ideas that the world needs. Your thoughts, your plans, are necessary to the great scheme of things. Money provides the power. But it needs YOU; it needs your ideas, before it can be of any use to the world. The Falls of Niagara would be of no use without the power plants that line the banks. The Falls need these plants to turn their power to account. In the same way, money needs your ideas to become of use to the world.
So instead of thinking that you need money, realize that money needs YOU. Money is just so much wasted energy without work to do. Your ideas provide the outlet for it, the means by which money can do things. Develop your ideas; secure in the knowledge that money is always looking for such an outlet. When the ideas are perfected, money will gravitate your way without conscious effort on your part, if only you don’t dam up the channels with doubts and fears.
“First have something good — then advertise!” said Horace Greeley. First have something that the world needs, even if it be only faithful, interested service — then open up your channels of desire, and dollars will flow to you.
And remember that the more you have to offer — the more of riches will flow to you. Dollars are of no value except as they are used.
You have seen the rich attacked time and again in newspapers and magazines. You have read numberless articles and editorials against them. You have heard agitators declaim against them by the hour. But have you ever heard one of them say a single word against the richest man of them all — Henry Ford? I haven’t. And why? Because Henry Ford’s idea of money is that it is something to be used — something to provide more jobs, something to bring more comfort, more enjoyment, into an increasingly greater number of lives.
That is why money flows to him so freely. That is why he gets so much out of life. And that is how you, too, can get in touch with Infinite Supply. Realize that it is not money you have to seek, but a way to use money for the world’s advantage. Find the need. Look at everything with the question — How could that be improved? To what new uses could this be put? Then set about supplying that need, in the absolute confidence that when you have found the way, money will flow freely to and through you. Do your part — and you can confidently look to Universal Mind to provide the means.
Get firmly in mind the definite conviction that YOU CAN DO ANYTHING RIGHT THAT YOU MAY WISH TO DO. Then set your goal and let everything you do, all your work, all your study, and all your associations, be a step towards that goal. To quote Berton Braley again —
If you want a thing bad enough
To go out and fight for it,
Work day and night for it,
Give up your time and your peace and your sleep for it,
If only desire of it
Makes you quite mad enough
Never to tire of it,
Makes you hold all other things tawdry and cheap for it,
If life seems all empty and useless without it
And all that you scheme and you dream is about it,
If gladly you’ll sweat for it,
Fret for it, plan for it,
Lose all your terror of God or man for it,
If you’ll simply go after that thing that you want,
With all your capacity, strength and sagacity,
Faith, hope and confidence, stern pertinacity,
If neither cold poverty, famished and gaunt,
Nor sickness nor pain of body or brain
Can turn you away from the thing that you want,
If dogged and grim you besiege and beset it,
You’ll get it!
Chapter 9 — The Formula of Success
What is the eternal question, which stands up and looks you and every sincere man squarely in the eye every morning?