CHAPTER LVI THE CONQUEST OF POVERTY

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.

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 o f the world when you are thoroughly convinced that they are not for you?

One o f the greatest curses o f the world is the belief in the necessity o f 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 o f 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 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.