Tag: financial success

Recently I found a one hundred year old copy of Wallace Wattles’ famous book, Financial Success Through Creative Thought, or, The Science of Getting Rich.

This 1915 leather bound edition of the book first privately published in 1910, is the one that inspired Rhonda Byrne to create her bestselling book and movie, The Secret.

1915 edition

While my computer took an hour to download new operating software, I reread Wattles’ book.

I’ve read it before, of course. But several things surprised me on this fresh reading.

Here are a few facts that jumped out:

• Wattles doesn’t talk about the “Law of Attraction” with that exact phrase, ever, but he certainly spells out that your thoughts will attract what you get. (The phrase “Law of Attraction” was made popular by William Walker Atkinson, in his 1906 book, Thought Vibration or The Law of Attraction in the Thought World. Wattles and Atkinson had the same publisher and probably knew each other.)
• Wattles doesn’t say anywhere that what you want will “magically” appear out of the air, just popping into reality before your eyes like some sort of magic trick. He explains that what you want will be attracted through natural means.
• Wattles actually stresses the need to take action to attract what you want. He has two chapters on the subject. He says “the failure to connect thought with personal action” is the biggest shipwreck in getting results.

I loved reading the book again because I could see clearly that many people who criticize or misunderstand the Law of Attraction have simply not read Wattles’ original text.

Or, if they did read his book, they glossed over all the parts they didn’t want to face, much like the many who watched the move The Secret and somehow fogged out when I appeared on screen and said you had to take action.

That’s the nature of unconscious limiting beliefs.

They filter reality so you only see what is a match to your beliefs.

Science of Getting Rich

Of course you have to take action.

Of course what you attract will come through natural means.

Of course it all begins with thought, which leads to behaviors, which leads to results.

Wattles is down to earth, very practical, and psychological in his approach.

He explains that you have to form an image of what you want to have, do, or be in your mind.

That image, held with faith and focus, will command the invisible elements of the world — the “stuff” that makes up everything, including you and me — to begin to form into your desired image. It will begin to unconsciously nudge yourself and other people to help you attract what you hold in mind.

You then have to work, with gratitude and holding your faith, in the direction of making it materialize, even if, at first, you can see no way to make it happen.

If I had to sum it up, I’d say that Wattles delivered a very simple, logical, and practical formula for attracting wealth. He’s not “woo woo” at all. He’s psychological rather than metaphysical, somehow knowing what psychologist William James declared –

“The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitudes” and —

“Act the part and you will become the part” and —

“Each of us literally chooses, by his way of attending to things, what sort of universe he shall appear to himself to inhabit.”

And something to think about from Wallace Wattles —

“The only service you can render God is to give expression to what he is trying to give the world, through you. The only service you can render God is to make the very most of yourself in order that God may live in you to the utmost of your possibilities.”

Wattles book is still in print, and copies of the original 1910 edition are available for free online. I urge you to find one and read it.

And then turn what you learn into action.

Wattles wrote – “The very best thing you can do for the whole world is to make the most of yourself.”

Ao Akua,

Joe

PS — This free new e-book can help you, too: http://www.theabundanceproject.com/book1.php?linkid=428743

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