“As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he” which is but another way of saying that man’s body is the result of his thinking (conscious or unconscious); his speech, manner, gait, his culture conduct, his influence among men, his success or failure all are the natural sequence of his thoughts.
How, then, you ask, can one make himself over? Just as a tailor makes over a coat, a carpenter makes over a house, a shipbuilder makes over a ship by changing the pattern or the design. We build our lives from Ideals as the carpenter builds his house from plans. If we change our ideas, our conceptions of life, its privileges and responsibilities, our thoughts of ourselves, our ideals of character, and persist in holding the new ideas and ideals, we shall develop characters in harmony with them. Whatever we want in our outward life in material expression, we must first build into our mental life, into our Ideals, Purposes and Will.
Events, conditions and seeming results of chance or miracle in our outward life, are all under law and in reality are mostly genuine materializations of forms we have built up in our thought realm.
Life proceeds as a stream from the “within” to the “without,” from the mental and spiritual to the physical and material expressions. We must therefore create wealth in the mind before we realize its possession in the life.
This is not peculiar to the subject of money-making but applies to all life’s activities, as we see that the architect first builds his house in his mind before he erects it on the material plane; the engineer constructs his tunnel mentally before he pierces the mountain or builds his underground railway; the financial magnate builds his plans of commercial conquest or aggression in the silence and secrecy of his own mind before he takes the first step toward their outward realization.
We shall treat this more fully in succeeding pages sufficient for the student at present to be impressed with the great fact that right ideas and conceptions, right plans and purposes, clear vision of opportunities, a strongly developed power of mental creation, unflinching courage, an adamantine will and a perseverance that never tires, are among the essential requisites in moneymaking.
Let me assure the student of these pages that much thought, time and effort spent in getting a clear grasp of these truths, and in weeding out erroneous ideas and impressions from the mind, in getting a right viewpoint of this subject, a right concept of one’s own place in nature as Lord and Master, a right view of one’s intimate relation to, and vital connection with, the Great Source of all Wisdom, Strength and Goodness, through which he may draw unlimited supplies in all life’s honest endeavors, is not wasted, but will prove of unspeakable advantage to him in conquering Poverty and acquiring Wealth.
These considerations are not incidental, or accessory, but vital and fundamental to the subject.
The student, therefore, should make a close inspection of his own mental and spiritual equipment for the great struggle he is to enter upon in the conquest of the conditions and limitations of life.
Then he must gain by reflection, study and experience a clear and lofty ideal of the type of character he would reach, the style of man he must become if he would succeed in the race for wealth, in the battle he would fight to rise from the “cabined, cribbed and confined” conditions of poverty to the enjoyment and power of great wealth.
He will doubtless find himself in possession of qualities of mind and traits of character not only useless but positively detrimental to success in life. These he must no matter how great the effort or long the struggle eliminate. Then he will find other mental qualities and characteristics essential to success conspicuous by their absence, or by very faint expression in his life. These he must develop, nourish, exercise and call into Strength and Beauty.
So the work of making one’s self over is a three-fold work: a thorough diagnosis of our own mental, moral and spiritual equipment for the battle before us; elimination of undesirable ideas, characteristics, habits, etc.; and the cultivation of the undeveloped germs of mental and spiritual qualities essential to success.
This three-fold work of preparation is as rational and essential to one seeking wealth as the careful study of the mental qualities, the physical endowment and the rigid training of the athlete before a contest as necessary as the discipline, training and equipment of the soldier in war.
The man who thinks himself qualified without this three-fold mental discipline to enter upon the fierce competitions and tremendous difficulties in his struggle for his share of worldly good, is as truly a fool as the man who, untrained, wages war with the athlete in the arena.
No one but a fool expects the harvest without toil and seed-sowing. Only the fool expects results without adequate cause. Right ideas, views of life, right conceptions of your own powers, right ideals and purposes, the right courage and will and the right hope and spirit, constitute the adequate cause for the result we call success. They are the fruitful seed of the harvest you wish to reap.
The student cannot be too deeply impressed with the necessity of this mental and spiritual preparation. In this making-over process, time, money, effort and zeal are well expended. Every teacher who can give you a fruitful idea, every book that can bring a real inspiration, every exercise of mental gymnastics that can strengthen the will, every ray of light that can give you clearer vision of true ideals, is of priceless value to you.
Poverty Is a Mental Disease
Of course there are exceptional cases where from some misfortune or wrong doing of others, Poverty seems forced upon an individual, either by uncontrollable circumstances in his own life, or by the action of others. Yet in the vast majority of cases the Poverty of man’s material condition is the natural and inevitable result of Poverty in himself in his thought realm of reasoning, emotion and volition. The mental Poverty is mother and father of the Poverty of his material conditions. The outward conditions of a man’s life are a reflex of his thought world. This view of the case will help the student in his resolve to thoroughly diagnose the condition of his thought realm and to bring his mental machinery into such a state of efficiency that his whole character will assume a nobler type, and with the natural result that his outer conditions shall reflect his improved mentality.
Eliminate Wrong Ideas, Ideals, Moods
Among the erroneous notions which it may be necessary to root out of the mind is the thought (traceable to false religious teaching) that the possession of much money is not in harmony with true religion.
It is quite true that the love of money is a root of evil, and that many who have great wealth are under great temptations to neglect their spiritual interests. But note this fact that while money loved and worshipped, and money hoarded by miserly avarice, are great evils and a source of great temptation, poverty on the other hand, has its peculiar evils and temptations, and that no position in life is free from possible temptation, while every blessing in life, by abuse, many become a curse. Note also that the evident design of nature is abundance and not poverty so that while we may say God is the author of Beneficence and Abundance, and nature’s law is certainly Opulence no one can say God is the author of Poverty.
The end nature aims at is Abundance for All and if we must find an origin for Poverty we can never trace it to divine design.
The notion that sickness, suffering and poverty are in any way necessarily related to a religious life, is one of the falsest teachings ever given out in the name of religion. God is the author of Health, Happiness, Wealth and Wisdom, and sickness, misery, poverty, ignorance, are incidents of our undeveloped condition or results of our own neglect. No life under the blighting influence of poverty can prove the “abundant life,” the full-orbed, symmetrical and beneficent life, which every rational man desires.
The Worry Fiend and his Allies must be routed if you are to secure that peace and inward calm so essential to efficient thinking and working. Psychology today in trumpet tones declares that no one can enjoy health who is a victim of worry, anger, jealousy or fear. Along with these, we should put irresolution, timidity, depression, lack of confidence in one’s self all of them