Your Forces and How to Use Them · 5 of 74

Volume I: V. The Law of Success

Success in any business or undertaking comes through the working of a law. It never comes by chance: in the operations of nature’s laws, there is no such thing as chance or accident. The so­‑called accidental tumbling of the stone from the mountain‑side is the result of forces which have been acting in that stone through countless ages.

You and your fortunes are no more the things of chance than is the tree from its earliest growth. You are the product of the elements, and that product through the working of a law. You can, as you find out the law, make of yourself whatever you please.

Your thought, or spirit, and not your body, is your real self.

Your thought is an invisible substance, as real as air, water, or metal. It acts apart from your body; it goes from you to others, far and near; it acts on them, moves and influences them. It does this whether your body be sleeping or waking.

This is your real power. As you learn how this power really acts; as you learn how to hold, use, and control it,—you will do more profitable business, and accomplish more in an hour than now you may do in a week. You will continually increase this power by exercise. This, and only this, was the basis of the miracles, the magic or occult power of ancient times.

Your prevailing mood, or frame of mind, has more to do than any thing else with your success or failure in any undertaking. Your mind is that amount of thought‑substance which has come together during countless ages, and after using many physical bodies. The mind is a magnet. It has the power, first of attracting thought, and next of sending that thought out again. You do not, of yourself, make your thought: you only receive and feel it as it comes to you.

What kind of thought you most charge that magnet (your mind) with, or set it open to receive, it will attract most of that kind to you. If, then, you think, or keep most in mind, the mere thought of determination, hope, cheerfulness, strength, force, power, justice, gentleness, order, and precision, you will attract and receive more and more of such thought‑elements. These are among the elements of success. These qualities are of thought‑element as real things as any we see or feel. The more you set the magnet in this direction, the stronger it grows to attract these elements.

Whatever of thought you think or receive, you send from you again, an invisible substance to act on others.

Your own thought is now in the air, acting on and attracting to you of its kind the thought of others, whose bodies you may never have seen. The people you are in the future to meet, who may help or damage your fortunes, are those whose thought in like manner sent far from their bodies has already met and mingled with your own. That attraction tends to bring you together in the body. It will certainly bring you together in some form of existence.

When determined thought meets determined thought, and unites on a similar purpose, a double power for success comes of such union, be the bodies used by such thought, mind, or spirit, in the same house or a thousand miles apart. But if you are thinking most of the time discouragement or anger, or any form of ill‑temper, you are sending hundreds and thousands of miles away from your body this thought‑element of discouragement, hopelessness, or anger, literally a part of your unseen self. It attracts, meets and mingles with the same thought‑­element similarly sent out by others (parts of such people). So it attracts you to them, your partners in misery. You hurt each other’s health and fortune.

A thought attracts thought of like kind. Keep any thought fixed in your mind, say the thought of strength or health, and you attract to you more and more of the thought‑element of strength and health. Keep in mind the idea of force, “go‑ahead,” push, and you attract to you in element that which gives you force, push, and go‑ahead.

So long as you are in a confident, determined, serene frame of mind, having some special aim in view based on right and justice, so long are you moving in this way the strongest silent power of your thought in attracting to you the persons you need to co‑operate with. If your aim is not based on right and justice, you will still move this silent power of your mind, but it will not affect results so beneficial to you as your thought based on your highest idea of right.

If you wish to gain through deceit and craft, you can do so. You will attract, by the same law and method, deceitful and dishonest thought in advance of its body. You will then work with the dishonest in the body. Dishonest mind herds together through a natural law. The dishonest are certain to injure each other at last in some way.

A thought, be it good or bad, is a thing or construction of unseen element as real as a tree, a flower, a clock. It is already made before you think or receive it, as your mind through its mood, frame, or attitude attracts it. As you think it, you put it out again to act, move, or influence others. But your thought spoken or whispered in the privacy of your room is put out with more force so to act on others than if you merely “think it.” And if two or more persons talk together without wrangle or disagreement on a common purpose in any business, they send out a proportionately greater volume of force to work on other minds relative to such business. If your company so putting out thought‑element or force do not agree, if they are angry and wrangle with each other, the force so sent from them is injurious to that business. If they talk peacefully, and will set aside individual preferences or prejudices in order to work out the common purpose in view, the thought or force they generate is constructive, and acts favorably on other minds far and near to advance that business.

So whenever you think, you are affecting your fortunes for good or ill; and whenever you talk to others, you are making a force still greater to make or lose for you health, friends, and money. Every thought of yours, silent or spoken, has a literal value.

If you receive (that is, think) the thought that you cannot succeed in any undertaking, that thought also goes out, meets and attracts other discouraged, despondent “I can’t” thought, brings you nearer and nearer the hopeless, fretting people’s bodies it is in advance of, injures your health and all pushing business ability, and brings you at last in personal contact with people who only help to ruin each other.

You are working then your thought‑power for non­success. You can use this power to bring you good or ill results, as you can use the locomotive to carry your body on a journey, or to crush your body by throwing yourself before it.

Whatever plan or scheme of business you fix your mind persistently upon in the determination to succeed, it commences then as a thought‑construction of unseen element to draw aiding forces to you. By “aiding forces” is meant first, ever growing fertility of mind to breed new plans for pushing your business; secondly, drawing to you the best people to aid you in your plans.

Do not waste your power in looking for such aiding forces with your body. Let silent, persistent resolve in mind do the work. It will do it if you persevere holding to this frame of mind. It is no new power, though possibly new to most of us. It is constantly, though unconsciously, exercised for good or ill all about us. Because your body is not the only power you have to work with. Your body is only the instrument used by your mind, or spirit. Your mind, your invisible self, uses your body in, say, cutting down a tree, or other work of hand, exactly as your body uses the axe. But when such force (thought) is not using the body, it is at work with greater power elsewhere.

To think persistent resolve, to think persistent push in your one aim and purpose,—to simply think it, and do nothing else,—will create for you a power as certain to move and effect results as the jack­screws placed under the heaviest building will move it upward. The power you so create of your mind and of unseen forces will work while you sleep. It will bring to you new devices, plans, and methods for moving your business forward. And as you get these plans, they will move your body to act. You cannot sit still when an idea that means business comes to you: such idea is for you power. But you can tire your body to such an extent that you will have no power to receive an idea when it does come. All successful business is based on a continual in‑flowing of new idea, plan, device, scheme.

Your spirit, or thought, acts and works on others while your body sleeps. It may do this with those whose bodies are also asleep. If you are angry or discouraged on going to sleep, your invisible self on leaving its body will probably be attracted to some other angry or discouraged nature. The better mood you are in on quitting your body at night, and entering on your other existence, the better the thought or person you will meet in that existence to further your purpose. If you have no purpose, you will then probably meet with another purposeless nature. To have no special purpose in life, to simply drift, is to have nothing on which to focus or concentrate your thought‑power. If it is not so concentrated, but scattered, fastening on one thing to‑day, and another to‑morrow, you will be restless, moping, and unhappy in mind. If unhappy in mind, you can never be healthy in body.

Spirit, or thought, is always active, be the body asleep or awake. When the body is unconscious in sleep, your mind then enters on its other phase of life and activity. You have only exchanged one form of existence for another. When you awake, you do literally “take the body up” to use for purposes on the earth‑stratum of life.

Your thought acts on others, for or against you, far and near, while you are awake. But it acts more strongly on those to whom it is attracted when your body sleeps. It is then less distracted by the hopes, fears, prejudices, customs, and surroundings of its body‑life. It is better, then, if you have any purpose in view, not to fix your thought too strongly when awake on such persons as you may think may co‑operate with you, because your spirit, when out of its body, has a much wider range of acquaintance and action than when using its body. You may concentrate its force overmuch, while it holds the body, on some person less likely to help you than the person or thought to which it is attracted while away from the body. In such case its force is placed in two directions when it should be but in one. Talking your business plan or project makes force for or against you. A clear plan or idea by which you can make more money represents force. A muddled plan represents a lesser and imperfect force. A new invention is a new force. Talking your business with those who are really friendly to you, actively friendly, and without a shade of envy or grudge against you, adds their thought or force to your own for making clearer plans, and working on other minds, and enlisting them in some way in your favor. Sympathy is force. Any person’s good will is a real, living, active substance, flowing always to you as that person thinks of you. It has a commercial value in dollars and cents. Ill will is also an element sent from the person that thinks it, and works against you though that person never speaks or acts with the body against you. This you can only successfully oppose by putting out against it the thought‑element of friendliness. The thought of good to others is the stronger unseen element, and can turn the bad (the weaker) aside. It prevents it from reaching or harming you.

Through the working of that same law, it is dangerous to make enemies, no matter how good or just the cause.

To talk your business at random, is not only to give your secrets to such as will tell them to others, but it is to send your secrets and plans in thought‑element flying far and wide in the air. Then they fall into other minds, and you may find your plan used by others before you. The air is literally full of supposed secrets. They herald themselves to thousands in the form of suspicion and impression.

Every disorderly meeting, every family quarrel, every discordance between man and man, sends into the air a wave of destructive and unpleasant substance. It affects unpleasantly minds thousands of miles distant. The thought so coming from some centre of turbulence forms a wave, or current. If you are by some trifle made angry, you then place your mind in the attitude of a magnet to attract and let in this hurtful thought‑current. Your anger, peevishness, or irritation, caused at first by a trifle, is constantly fed from these currents. You must, for relief, turn your mind toward some more agreeable order of thought. Practice in so doing will give you more power, and make it more and more easy to change the character of the thought‑element coming to you.

When interest, sympathy, and good will meet to present pleasantly their opinions or thoughts on any special subject to each other, for an hour, there goes from that company a wave of thought‑substance, which strikes other minds, and awakens or renews interest in that especial business, art, or cause, in proportion to the sensitiveness or capacity of such minds to receive thoughts. The new thought coming suddenly to you, comes because somewhere it is being talked out or agitated. The wave so caused acts in unseen element precisely like that made by throwing the stone in calm water. The waves so radiate from the talk‑centre; and they will continue to spread out in every direction, striking other minds, so long as the agitation of talk is kept up at that centre. No thought is, in a sense, original. The same idea, or parts or shades of that idea, may float into a thousand minds within an hour, when once started, through a few people talking it. Talk with others in friendliness about an improvement in machinery, a new invention, a new idea for man’s comfort, and through thought‑substance so sent far and wide you awaken desire or interest for the thing talked of. The more people interested in a thing, the more will be attracted to you to aid you, or buy the thing produced.

Regarding your plan, purpose, and aim, all your discreet talk, your interest and persistent determination, represent for you so much actual outlay of force expended in attracting the thing desired to you. If you expend such amount of force for, say, three months, and then get discouraged, and give it all up, you abandon so much of a structure you have built up having this attracting power. You may not see where that power is operating. But it is at work, bringing to you the people in sympathy with you, or those who want what you have to give.

Quarrelling, angry argument, and grumbling put out the silent destructive force. Friendly discussion, and peaceful presentation of individual opinion, put out the silent constructive force. If you set your mind persistently in the desire for having the best people to talk to, and so aid you, they will come to you through this power of thought‑attraction. Exactly the order of mind will so come you most desire. If you are not particular as to principle or honesty, this law will attract those not particular as to honesty.

There will always be a demand for a better article, a better effort in any art, or a better service of any kind, than those before produced. When you are sure yours is the better effort, push it. Get it before people. Talent in art or invention is one thing. Talent for pushing that art or invention is quite another. You must, to be successful, have both. The world pays best those who push. Hundreds of inventors and artists fail because they do not cultivate the science of pushing themselves before the world.

You can learn the science of pushing by yourself. You will acquire it by seeing yourself in mind or imagination as asserting yourself courageously, fairly, honestly, before others, and making yourself agreeable to all. The more you do this in imagination, the more will you feel like doing it in reality. What you do in thought is a reality. What you live most in thought, you make a reality. You will find, after a time of such mental exercise, that you have more nerve, more courage, more tact, more address, more desire to mingle with all sorts of people, to take hold of the world, and make it give you what rightfully belongs to you.

Poverty comes largely of shrinking away from people, and fear of assuming responsibilities.

See yourself always in imagination as diffident, bashful, shrinking, and by the same law you make yourself so. Reverse this process of silent mental treatment. See yourself courageous. You are always growing up to your highest ideal of yourself, and you reconstruct yourself by this process of silent thought. You cannot succeed and make money if you remain in a corner. You cannot do business with the world entirely by letter or by proxy. You must to an extent show yourself to others. When your spirit carries your body before another person, it carries the instrument for enabling your spirit to put out its fullest volume of thought‑power on that person.

Thought being substance or force, you can pile up in your mind volumes of that force for or against you. To think of nothing but difficulties and possible troubles in business, is to set your mind as the magnet to attract only difficulties, first in thought, next in substance. This becomes with many a fixed habit hard to get rid of.

You have nothing whatever to do with a difficulty but to set your mind as a magnet in the direction for receiving force, ideas, and plans for overcoming that difficulty. If you have trouble with any person, and are always thinking of his injustice toward you, in the mood of anger or complaint, you are in thought‑­ element making over again and again the wrangle or battle. You can use up in growling, scolding, complaining, and grumbling, be it thought out silently, or spoken to others, the same force or thought which would make a plan to get rid of the thing scolded or grumbled at. It is on precisely the same principle as the strength with which the mason builds his wall can be used in tearing it down, or in flinging about bricks at random. If you will give your body all the rest it needs, your mental force will work far and near more powerfully for you. Your plans will be deeper, and, when carried out, more productive of results. If the body is always fagged out, much of the force of that spirit must be used up in keeping its hold on the body,—in other words, keeping it alive. It matters not whether you tire yourself out voluntarily, or are obliged to do so to get a living. The result is the same.

If you want more time in which so to rest, desire and demand it persistently. An opportunity will then at length come to you by which you can earn enough for your present support without working the body at one employment so many hours daily. It will come by that mysterious law and attractive force which moves all things to all people according to their strongest desires and the persistency of such desire.

You can, through this same power (persistent desire), bring to you an evil as quickly as a good. The thing you are now strongly desiring may turn out an evil. If you desire or demand wisdom to know what will do you the most lasting good, you will, by the same law, bring to you the capacity to see what is really the best for you. Desire persistently a “clear head,” and a clear head will come to you. When your opportunity comes, granting you four or five more hours daily of leisure, do not pile on yourself any extra effort for the sake of the few dollars you may get by it. This opportunity may be your first step out into a newer life. Give yourself leisure. Don’t be afraid of enjoying yourself. Your mind will then breed plans for future success; and as such plans come to you, you will be inspired to act them out with your body.

A steady situation and good wages for life in any calling is not the road to any permanent or growing success. You are then but a screw in the great business machine, and, when worn out, will be mercilessly replaced by the newer screw. If in skill you are in your business at the top, and as to wages near the bottom, it is because, while skilled in your trade, you are not so in getting your just reward for that skill. You must aspire to manage a business founded on your skill. You must not be content to be managed by others who, taking advantage of your skill, get your industry and article before the public, and, with that, three‑fourths of the profits. You must use this your power of thought, to get it and yourself before the public.

You must, to gain the greatest success, manage a business, or a department of a business, and be its sole governor without interference or hinderance from another. Responsibility alone can bring out your fullest power and its attendant happiness.

Otherwise you will, as a mere employee, be fettered by an employer’s demands, or by conditions made by others in which you will be obliged to work. You will see your best ideas imperfectly carried out, because you cannot fully control their carrying out yourself.