“What’s money? A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night and in between does what he wants to do.”
– Bob Dylan

“There is only one success: To be able to live your life in your own way.”
– Christopher Morley

In truth, when one seeks an external form of success, what a person truly seeks is its essence such as happiness, peace of mind, a sense of fulfillment, and so on. What is success without any of these anyway?

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So, if you’re following the commandments, you should now have a unique name, possibly a tagline, and established yourself as the first or leader in your unique category. What about the service or product you offer? Do you offer an extraordinary product or service, or do you offer an ordinary one?

Even if the service you provide is customary, traditional, and probably offered by your competition, you should make it appear unique just as well.

Remember that perception is more powerful than truth. You don’t need to emphasize that your product or service is unique, better than the competition, or even the best for that matter. Doing so by declaring that it is can sometimes be worse than not saying anything at all, and the reason for that is that it makes your self-serving claim appear suspect or exaggerated.

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Whether you change your vocation or not, your actions for the present must be those pertaining to the business in which you are now engaged.

You can get into the business you want by making constructive use of the business you are already established in — by doing your daily work in the certain way.

And insofar as your business consists in dealing with other people, whether personally or by letter, the key thought of all your efforts must be to convey to their minds the impression of increase.

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Success, in any particular business, depends for one thing upon your possessing, in a well-developed state, the faculties required in that business.

Without good musical faculty no one can succeed as a teacher of music. Without well-developed mechanical faculties no one can achieve great success in any of the mechanical trades. Without tact and the commercial faculties no one can succeed in mercantile pursuits. But to possess in a well-developed state the faculties required in your particular vocation does not insure getting rich. There are musicians who have remarkable talent, and who yet remain poor. There are blacksmiths, carpenters, and so on who have excellent mechanical ability, but who do not get rich. And there are merchants with good faculties for dealing with people who nevertheless fail.

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When I say that you do not have to drive sharp bargains, I do not mean that you do not have to drive any bargains at all or that you are above the necessity for having any dealings with your fellow men. I Mean that you will not need to deal with them unfairly. You do not have to get something for nothing, but can give to every person more than you take from him.

You cannot give everyone more in cash market value than you take from him, but you can give him more in use value than the cash value of the thing you take from him. The paper, ink, and other material in this book may not be worth the money you pay for it, but if the ideas suggested by it bring you thousands of dollars, you have not been wronged by those who sold it to you. They have given you a great use value for a small cash value.

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You must get rid of the last vestige of the old idea that there is a deity whose will it is that you should be poor or whose purposes may be served by keeping you in poverty.

The intelligent substance which is all, and in all, and which lives in all and lives in you, is a consciously living substance. Being a consciously living substance, it must have the nature and inherent desire of every living intelligence for increase of life. Every living thing must continually seek for the enlargement of its life, because life, in the mere act of living, must increase itself.

A seed, dropped into the ground, springs into activity, and in the act of living produces a hundred more seeds; life, by living, multiplies itself. It is forever becoming more. It must do so, if it continues to be at all.

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Thought is the only power which can produce tangible riches from the formless substance. The stuff from which all things are made is a substance which thinks, and a thought of form in this substance produces the form.

Original substance moves according to its thoughts; every form and process you see in nature is the visible expression of a thought in original substance. As the formless stuff thinks of a form, it takes that form; as it thinks of a motion, it makes that motion. That is the way all things were created.

We live in a thought world, which is part of a thought universe. The thought of a moving universe extended throughout formless substance, and the thinking stuff — moving according to that thought — took the form of systems of planets, and maintains that form. Thinking substance takes the form of its thought, and moves according to the thought.

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