Prosperity Through Thought Force
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Less than three years ago I was a poor bookkeeper earning one thousand dollars per year in a city where living on that amount was possible only by the strictest economy. My personality was buried in a sea of worry, anger, suspicion and hatred. These things prevented my evolution to the position to which my talents entitled me. I knew I should not be under inferior men, but did not know why it was so. Smarting under a sense of injustice, I felt the fiercest antagonism to both people and things.

My friends were few, my health poor, hard work and poverty my lot, and there was nothing to indicate a brighter future. The thought was brought to my attention that success in life could be obtained by developing strength of character and controlling my mental forces. The idea appealed to me as possibly true, while if it were not true there would be no injury resulting from a trial of it. I worked vigorously to cultivate strength of character, constantly suggesting courage, peace, force and decision. From the awakening in morn until slumber closed my consciousness the suggestions were incessant. It was a year and a half before any financial improvement was noticed, though it was apparent that I was getting stronger daily.

At the end of the first year I resigned my position, determined to tolerate existing circumstances no longer; without money or friends. I did not know where I was going or what I would do. I had grown. Where a year before I had worried myself ill through fear of losing my position, I now voluntarily gave it up, knowing and feeling I would do better. Within twenty-four hours an offer of one hundred dollars per month was received and I accepted. In six months my salary was advanced to eighteen hundred a year because I was the right man in the right place and had, during a crisis in the business, in the absence of the manager, dared to assume authority and act independently with a successful outcome.

At the meeting of the Board of Directors I was regularly elected secretary of the corporation by which I was employed, and two months later my salary was advanced another fifty dollars a month because I conceived and carried out two ideas which netted many thousands of dollars to my employers.

At the end of the second year of self-suggestions I resigned and, without capital, opened an office for myself. I was given credit for over twenty thousand dollars, mainly on my record of past dealings. These things were attributable to the fact that those who had dealt with me had confidence in my judgment and honesty. They felt the radiations of honesty, ability and judgment from my mind. Briefly, in one year I had paid every dollar I owed and had eleven thousand dollars ahead. I then quit the business in order to have leisure to write the personal experiences upon which the ideas herein contained are based.

But I must acknowledge that even now, with plenty of money for all needs, a happy home and everything one need wish, I have moments of depression, of loss of confidence in self, lack of faith in God, as well as the occasional inability to sustain a happy buoyancy and contentment of mind. Then the reaction comes and I regain strength to calmly wait and be led, strong in my belief of a guiding hand. I hope to help those who peruse these pages by instilling courage into them until they are strong enough to accomplish their aspirations.

Readers will not find this a tale conceived in a fantastic moment of idleness. The writer dislikes to parade the sanctity of his inner life to the gaze of those who mayhap cannot understand, but this work may be the means of bringing some one out of the gloom of despond into the happy light of developed courage where he or she may calmly face the world in adverse circumstances and, by rising superior to environment, acquire happiness, peace and independence.

The above was written three years ago. In the light of retrospection I can only add, it is grandly true. Every principle set forth in this book is based on scientific truth. All are provable from the hypothesis set forth.

I moved to Oklahoma, Beautiful Land, where amid sunshine and flowers we rub shoulders with cowboys, Indians, regular soldiers, gamblers, farmers, business men and trappers, thrown together in promiscuous confusion incident to the settlement of a new country.

If we want to work, we work; if play, we play. The exhilaration of freedom reaches its acme of perfection when, on a good horse, we fly across the prairies.

I spend my life writing, reading, plowing, riding after cattle, making hay, harvesting corn and cotton, oats and alfalfa (and attending the county fair, by gosh!).

As to money? There's enough and to spare. Why spend one's life amassing a fortune? Look at the fun one, misses.

We are only here once, at least that's all we know of now. Let's get money enough, then look around a bit and see what people and things are like.