How To Use The Will

To set about get­ting rich in a sci­en­tific way, you do not try to apply your will power to any­thing out­side of your­self. You have no right to do so, any­way. It is wrong to apply your will to other men and women in order to get them to do what you wish done.

It is as fla­grantly wrong to coerce peo­ple by men­tal power as it is to coerce them by phys­i­cal power. If com­pelling peo­ple by phys­i­cal force to do things for you reduces them to slav­ery, com­pelling them by men­tal means accom­plishes exactly the same thing; the only dif­fer­ence is in meth­ods. If tak­ing things from peo­ple by phys­i­cal force is rob­bery, them tak­ing things by men­tal force is rob­bery also. There is no dif­fer­ence in principle.

You have no right to use your will power upon another per­son, even “for his own good,” for you do not know what is for his good. The sci­ence of get­ting rich does not require you to apply power or force to any other per­son, in any way what­so­ever. There is not the slight­est neces­sity for doing so. Indeed, any attempt to use your will upon oth­ers will only tend to defeat your purpose.

You do not need to apply your will to things in order to com­pel them to come to you. That would sim­ply be try­ing to coerce God and would be fool­ish and useless.

You do not have to try to com­pel God to give you good things, any more than you have to use your will power to make the sun rise.

You do not have to use your will power to con­quer an unfriendly Deity, or to make stub­born and rebel­lious forces do your bid­ding. Sub­stance is friendly to you, and is more anx­ious to give you what you want than you are to get it.

To get rich, you need only to use your will power upon yourself.

When you know what to think and do, then you must use your will to com­pel your­self to think and do the right things. That is the legit­i­mate use of the will in get­ting what you want — to use it in hold­ing your­self to the right course.

Use your will to keep your­self think­ing and act­ing in the cer­tain way.

Do not try to project your will, or your thoughts, or your mind out into space to “act” on things or

peo­ple. Keep your mind at home. It can accom­plish more there than elsewhere.

Use your mind to form a men­tal image of what you want and to hold that vision with faith and pur­pose. And use your will to keep your mind work­ing in the right way.

The more steady and con­tin­u­ous your faith and pur­pose, the more rapidly you will get rich be-​​cause you will make only POSITIVE impres­sions upon sub­stance, and you will not neu­tral­ize or off­set them by neg­a­tive impressions.

The pic­ture of your desires, held with faith and pur­pose, is taken up by the form­less, and per­me­ates it to great dis­tances — through­out the uni­verse, for all we know.

As this impres­sion spreads, all things are set mov­ing toward its real­iza­tion. Every liv­ing thing, every inan­i­mate thing, and the things yet uncre­ated are stirred toward bring­ing into being that which you want. All force begins to be exerted in that direc­tion. All things begin to move toward you. The minds of peo­ple every­where are influ­enced toward doing the things nec­es­sary to the ful­fill­ing of your desires, and they work for you, unconsciously.

But you can check all this by start­ing a neg­a­tive impres­sion in the form­less sub­stance. Doubt or unbe­lief is as cer­tain to start a move­ment away from you as faith and pur­pose are to start one toward you. It is by not under­stand­ing this that most peo­ple make their fail­ure. Every hour and moment you spend in giv­ing heed to doubts and fears, every hour you spend in worry, every hour in which your soul is pos­sessed by unbe­lief, sets a cur­rent away from you in the whole domain of intel­li­gent sub­stance. All the promises are unto them that believe, and unto them only.

Since belief is all impor­tant, it behooves you to guard your thoughts, and as your beliefs will be shaped to a very great extent by the things you observe and think about, it is impor­tant that you should care­fully gov­ern to what you give your attention.

And here the will comes into use, for it is by your will that you deter­mine upon what things your atten­tion shall be fixed.

If you want to become rich, you must not make a study of poverty.

Things are not brought into being by think­ing about their oppo­sites. Health is never to be attained by study­ing dis­ease and think­ing about dis­ease; right­eous­ness is not to be pro­moted by study­ing sin and think­ing about sin; and no one ever got rich by study­ing poverty and think­ing about poverty.

Med­i­cine as a sci­ence of dis­ease has increased dis­ease; reli­gion as a sci­ence of sin has pro­moted sin, and eco­nom­ics as a study of poverty will fill the world with wretched­ness and want.

Do not talk about poverty, do not inves­ti­gate it, or con­cern your­self with it. Never mind what its causes are; you have noth­ing to do with them.

What con­cerns you is the cure.

Do not spend your time in so-​​called char­i­ta­ble work or char­ity move­ments; most char­ity only tends to per­pet­u­ate the wretched­ness it aims to erad­i­cate. I do not say that you should be hard-​​hearted or unkind and refuse to hear the cry of need, but you must not try to erad­i­cate poverty in any of the con­ven­tional ways. Put poverty behind you, and put all that per­tains to it behind you, and “make good.”

Get rich. That is the best way you can help the poor.

And you can­not hold the men­tal image which is to make you rich if you fill your mind with pic­tures of poverty and all its atten­dant ills. Do not read books or papers which give cir­cum­stan­tial accounts of the wretched­ness of the ten­e­ment dwellers, of the hor­rors of child labor, and so on. Do not read any­thing which fills your mind with gloomy images of want and suffering.

You can­not help the poor in the least by know­ing about these things, and the wide-​​spread knowl­edge of them does not tend at all to do away with poverty.

What tends to do away with poverty is not the get­ting of pic­tures of poverty into your mind, but get­ting pic­tures of wealth, abun­dance, and pos­si­bil­ity into the minds of the poor.

You are not desert­ing the poor in their mis­ery when you refuse to allow your mind to be filled with pic­tures of that misery.

Poverty can be done away with, not by increas­ing the num­ber of well-​​to-​​do peo­ple who think about poverty, but by increas­ing the num­ber of poor peo­ple who pur­pose with faith to get rich.

The poor do not need char­ity; they need inspi­ra­tion. Char­ity only sends them a loaf of bread to keep them alive in their wretched­ness, or gives them an enter­tain­ment to make them for­get for an hour or two. But inspi­ra­tion can cause them to rise out of their mis­ery. If you want to help the poor, demon­strate to them that they can become rich. Prove it by get­ting rich yourself.

The only way in which poverty will ever be ban­ished from this world is by get­ting a large and con­stantly increas­ing num­ber of peo­ple to prac­tice the teach­ings of this book.

Peo­ple must be taught to become rich by cre­ation, not by competition.

Every per­son who becomes rich by com­pe­ti­tion knocks down the lad­der by which he rises, and keeps oth­ers down, but every per­son who gets rich by cre­ation opens a way for thou­sands to fol­low — and inspires them to do so.

You are not show­ing hard­ness of heart or an unfeel­ing dis­po­si­tion when you refuse to pity poverty, see poverty, read about poverty, or think or talk about it, or to lis­ten to those who do talk about it. Use your will power to keep your mind OFF the sub­ject of poverty and to keep it fixed with faith and pur­pose ON the vision of what you want and are creating.

About the Author

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