THE CONQUEST OF POVERTY
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 nothing is
to get nothing.
When every step you take is on the road to failure, how can you hope to
arrive at the success goal?
Prosperity begins in the mind and is impossible while the mental
attitude is hostile to it. It is fatal to work for one thing and to
expect something else, because everything must be created mentally
first and is bound to follow its mental pattern.
Most people do not face life in the right way. They neutralize a large
part of their effort because their mental attitude does not correspond
with their endeavor, so that while working for one thing they are
really expecting something else. They discourage, drive away, the very
thing they are pursuing by holding the wrong mental attitude towards
it. They do not approach their work with that assurance of victory
which attracts, which forces results, that determination and confidence
which knows no defeat.
To be ambitious for wealth and yet always expecting to be poor, to be
always doubting your ability to get what you long for, is like trying
to reach East by traveling West. There is no philosophy which will
help a man to succeed when he is always doubting his ability to do so,
and thus attracting failure.
The man who would succeed must think success, must think upward. He
must think progressively, creatively, constructively, inventively, and,
above all, optimistically.
You will go in the direction in which you face. If you look towards
poverty, towards lack, you will go that way. If, on the other hand,
you turn squarely around and refuse to have anything to do with
poverty,--to think it,--live it, or recognize it--you will then begin
to make progress towards the goal of plenty.
As long as you radiate doubt and discouragement, you will be a failure.
If you want to get away from poverty, you must keep your mind in a
productive, creative condition. In order to do this you must think
confident, cheerful, creative thoughts. The model must precede the
statue. _You must see a new world before you can live in it_.
If the people who are down in the world, who are side-tracked, who
believe that their opportunity has gone forever, that they can never
get on their feet again, only knew the power of reversal of their
thought, they could easily get a new start.
If you would attract good fortune you must get rid of doubt. As long
as that stands between you and your ambition, it will be a bar that
will cut you off. You must have faith. No man can make a fortune
while he is convinced that he can't. The "I can't" philosophy has
wrecked more careers than almost anything else. Confidence is the
magic key that unlocks the door of supply.
I never knew a man to be successful who was always talking about
business being bad. The habit of looking down, talking down, is fatal
to advancement.
The Creator has bidden every man to look up, not down. He made him to
climb, not to grovel. _There is no providence which keeps a man in
poverty, or in painful or distressing circumstances_.
The Creator never put vast multitudes of people on this earth to
scramble for a limited supply, as though He were not able to furnish
enough for all. There is nothing in this world which men desire and
struggle for, and that is good for them, of which there is not enough
for everybody.
Take the thing we need most--food. We have not begun to scratch the
possibilities of the food supply in America.
The State of Texas could supply food, home, and luxuries to every man,
woman, and child on this continent. As for clothing, there is material
enough in the country to clothe all its inhabitants in purple and fine
linen. We have not begun yet to touch the possibilities of our
clothing and dress supply. The same is true of all of the other
necessities and luxuries. We are still on the outer surface of
abundance, a surface covering kingly supplies for every individual on
the globe.
[Illustration: William McKinley]
When the whale ships in New Bedford Harbor and other ports were rotting
in idleness, because the whale was becoming extinct, Americans became
alarmed lest we should dwell in darkness; but the oil wells came to our
rescue with abundant supply. And then, when we began to doubt that
this source would last, Science gave us the electric light.
There is building material enough to give every person on the globe a
mansion finer than any that a Vanderbilt or Rothschild possesses. It
was intended that we should all be rich and happy; that we should have
an abundance of all the good things the heart can crave. We should
live in the realization that there is an abundance of power where our
present power comes from, and that we can draw upon this great source
for as much as we can use.
There is something wrong when the children of the King of kings go
about like sheep hounded by a pack of wolves. There is something wrong
when those who have inherited infinite supply are worrying about their
daily bread; are dogged by fear and anxiety so that they can not take
any peace; that their lives are one battle with want; that they are
always under the harrow of worry, always anxious. There is something
wrong when people are so worried and absorbed in making a living that
they can not make a life.
We were made for happiness, to express joy and gladness, to be
prosperous. The trouble with us is that we do not trust the law of
infinite supply, but close our natures so that abundance cannot flow to
us. In other words, we do not obey the law of attraction. We keep our
minds so pinched and our faith in ourselves so small, so narrow, that
we strangle the inflow of supply. Abundance follows a law as strict as
that of mathematics. If we obey it, we get the flow; if we strangle
it, we cut it off. The trouble is not in the supply; there is
abundance awaiting everyone on the globe.
Prosperity begins in the mind, and is impossible with a mental attitude
which is hostile to it. We can not attract opulence mentally by a
poverty-stricken attitude which is driving away what we long for. It
is fatal to work for one thing and to expect something else. No matter
how much one may long for prosperity, a miserable, poverty-stricken,
mental attitude will close all the avenues to it. The weaving of the
web is bound to follow the pattern. Opulence and prosperity can not
come in through poverty-thought and failure-thought channels. They
must be created mentally first. We must think prosperity before we can
come to it.
How many take it for granted that there are plenty of good things in
this world for others, comforts, luxuries, fine houses, good clothes,
opportunity for travel, leisure, but not for them! They settle down
into the conviction that these things do not belong to them, but are
for those in a very different class.
But why are you in a different class? Simply because you think
yourself into another class; think yourself into inferiority; because
you place limits for yourself. You put up bars between yourself and
plenty. You cut off abundance, make the law of supply inoperative for
you, by shutting your mind to it. _And by what law can you expect to
get what you believe you can not get_? _By what philosophy can you
obtain the good things of the world when you are thoroughly convinced
that they are not for you_?
_One of the greatest curses of the world is the belief in the necessity
of poverty_. Most people have a strong conviction that some must
necessarily be poor; that they were made to be poor. But there was no
poverty, no want, no lack, in the Creator's plan for man. There need
not be a poor person on the planet. The earth is full of resources
which we have scarcely yet touched. We have been poor in the very
midst of abundance, simply because of our own blighting limiting
thought.
We are discovering that thoughts are things, that they are incorporated
into the life and form part of the character, and if we harbor the fear
thought, the lack thought, if we are afraid of poverty, of coming to
want, this poverty thought, fear thought incorporates itself in the
very life texture and makes us the magnet to attract more poverty like
itself.
It was not intended that we should have such a hard time getting a
living, that we should just manage to squeeze along, to get together a
few comforts, to spend about all of our time making a living instead of
making a life. The life abundant, full, free, beautiful, was intended
for us.
Let us put up a new image, a new ideal of plenty, of abundance. Have
we not worshiped the God of poverty, of lack, of want, about long
enough? Let us hold the thought that God is our great supply, that if
we can keep in tune, in close touch with Him, so that we can feel our
at-one-ness with Him, the great Source of all supply, abundance will
flow to us and we shall never again know want.
There is nothing which the human race lacks so much as unquestioned,
implicit confidence in the divine source of all supply. We ought to
stand in the same relation to the Infinite Source as the child does to
its parents. The child does not say, "I do not dare eat this food for
fear that I may not get any more." It takes everything with absolute
confidence and assurance that all its needs will be supplied, that
there is plenty more where these things came from.
We do not have half good enough opinions of our possibilities; do not
expect half enough of ourselves; we do not demand half enough, hence
the meagerness, the stinginess of what we actually get. We do not
demand the abundance which belongs to us, hence the leanness, the lack
of fulness, the incompleteness of our lives. We do not demand royally
enough. We are content with too little of the things worth while. _It
was intended that we should live the abundant life_, that we should
have plenty of everything that is good for us. No one was meant to
live in poverty and wretchedness. _The lack of anything that is
desirable is not natural to the constitution of any human being_.
Erase all the shadows, all the doubts and fears, and the suggestions of
poverty and failure from your mind. When you have become master of
your thought, when you have once learned to dominate your mind, you
will find that things will begin to come your way. Discouragement,
fear, doubt, lack of self-confidence, are the germs which have killed
the prosperity and happiness of tens of thousands of people.
Every man must play the part of his ambition. If you are trying to be
a successful man you must play the part. If you are trying to
demonstrate opulence, you must play it, not weakly, but vigorously,
grandly. You must feel opulent, you must think opulence, you must
appear opulent. Your bearing must be filled with confidence. You must
give the impression of your own assurance, that you are large enough to
play your part and to play it superbly. Suppose the greatest actor
living were to have a play written for him in which the leading part
was to represent a man in the process of making a fortune--a great,
vigorous, progressive character, who conquered by his very presence.
Suppose this actor, in playing the part, were to dress like an
unprosperous man, walk on the stage in a stooping, slouchy, slipshod
manner, as though he had no ambition, no energy or life, as though he
had no real faith that he could ever make money or be a success in
business; suppose he went around the stage with an apologetic,
shrinking, skulking manner, as much as to say, "Now, I do not believe
that I can ever do this thing that I have attempted; it is too big for
me. Other people have done it, but I never thought that I should ever
be rich or prosperous. Somehow good things do not seem to be meant for
me. I am just an ordinary man, I haven't had much experience and I
haven't much confidence in myself, and it seems presumptuous for me to
think I am ever going to be rich or have much influence in the world."
What kind of an impression would he make upon the audience? Would he
give confidence, would he radiate power or forcefulness, would he make
people think that that kind of a weakling could create a fortune, could
manipulate conditions which would produce money? Would not everybody
say that the man was a failure? Would they not laugh at the idea of
his conquering anything?
_Poverty itself is not so bad as the poverty thought_. _It is the
conviction that we are poor and must remain so that is fatal_. It is
the attitude of mind that is destructive, the facing toward poverty,
and feeling so reconciled to it that one does not turn about face and
struggle to get away from it with a determination which knows no
retreat.
If we can conquer _inward poverty_, we can soon conquer poverty of
outward things, for, when we change the mental attitude, the physical
changes to correspond.
Holding the poverty thought, keeps us in touch with poverty-stricken,
poverty-producing conditions; and the constant thinking of poverty,
talking poverty, living poverty, makes us mentally poor. This is the
worst kind of poverty.
We can not travel toward prosperity until the mental attitude faces
prosperity. As long as we look toward despair, we shall never arrive
at the harbor of delight.
The man who persists in holding his mental attitude toward poverty, or
who is always thinking of his hard luck and failure to get on, can by
no possibility go in the opposite direction, where the goal of
prosperity lies.
There are multitudes of poor people in this country who are _half
satisfied to remain in poverty_, and who have ceased to make a
desperate struggle to rise out of it. They may work hard, but they
have lost the hope, the expectation of getting an independence.
Many people keep themselves poor by fear of poverty, allowing
themselves to dwell upon the possibility of coming to want, of not
having enough to live upon, by allowing themselves to dwell upon
conditions of poverty.
When you make up your mind that you are done with poverty forever; that
you will have nothing more to do with it; that you are going to erase
every trace of it from your dress, your personal appearance, your
manner, your talk, your actions, your home; that you are going to show
the world your real mettle; that you are no longer going to pass for a
failure; that you have set your face persistently toward better
things--a competence, an independence--and that nothing on earth can
turn you from your resolution, you will be amazed to find what a
reenforcing power will come to you, what an increase of confidence,
reassurance, and self-respect.
Resolve with all the vigor you can muster that, since there are plenty
of good things in the world for everybody, you are going to have your
share, without injuring anybody else or keeping others back. It was
intended that you should have a competence, an abundance. It is your
birthright. You are success organized, and constructed for happiness,
and you should resolve to reach your divine destiny.