Before any one had heard of Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill or The Secret by Rhonda Byrne, people who were serious about attracting abundance and wealth were reading the writings and teachings of Wallace D. Wattles. Although many in the early 1900’s thought his writings radical, today he is considered a pioneer and visionary within the early self-help movement. What Mr. Wattles has to say about acquiring abundance and wealth is what still makes this 100 year old book as relevant today as it was back in 1910. This landmark work is still often quoted and remains actively in print.
Wallace Wattles had only a few years of formal education and was primarily self-taught. Wattles especially enjoyed learning about the “science” or mental state of forming pictures in the human mind (known as visualizing.) After is death, his daughter wrote, “He wrote almost constantly. It was then that he formed a mental picture. He lived every page.”
I believe what makes The Science of Getting Rich an enduring work is that it gives us a blueprint for attracting wealth and abundance into our lives. These writings tell us that if we do “certain things in a Certain Way,” we can acquire financial abundance and wealth. We don’t have to be born into wealth to become wealthy. We can use our mind and actions to create our own abundance and wealth.
The original text is divided into seventeen chapters that explain step-by-step Wattle's beliefs about overcoming the mental barriers that can hinder us from attracting, enjoying and keeping wealth.
Here are a couple of quotations from Wallace Wattles that will give you a general idea of his philosophy about success, abundance and wealth:
"If you wear cheap clothes, eat cheap foods and surround yourself with cheap things to ‘save money’ you will put yourself in the mental attitude of cheapness and inferiority. You will think of yourself in connection with cheap and inferior things, and so will see yourself as a cheap and inferior person. The cheap and inferior within you will be brought to the surface, and you will never do your best. You will be incapable of exerting your whole power, and by the law of reaction, cheap and inferior things will move toward you."
"Do not wait for an opportunity to be all that you want to be; when an opportunity to be more than you are now is presented and you feel impelled toward it, take it. It will be the first step toward a greater opportunity."
In the United States, The Science of Getting Rich is in the Public Domain. There are also “modernized” versions available on Amazon.com and in your local library. Rhonda Byrne’s best selling book The Secret was inspired by the teachings and writings of Wallace Wattles.
Whether you believe in the Law of Attraction or not, this 1910 book is a good read about the role the human mind can play in acquiring abundance and wealth. A final thought from Wallace D. Wattles, “Many people who order their lives rightly, in all other ways are kept in poverty by the lack of gratitude.”
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