Prosperity Chapter XXII

Prosperity Chapter XXII: 

Do you know that every time you say "I can't afford it, such things are for others, but not for me," or, "I have been poor and had to deny myself things all my life, and I expect it will always be so," - you are closing the doors to prosperity?

If you want to realize prosperity and plenty you must dismiss forever from your mind the can't-afford-it thought, the thought that you can't afford anything which is good for you, anything which will contribute to the growth or highest possible development of the man or woman. It is your birthright to have these things. They belong to you by divine heritage, and you should claim them.

The Creator intended that His children should have plenty, and the best of everything that is good for them, that will contribute to growth, enlargement of character, and happiness.

The idea that riches are possible only to those who have superior advantages, more ability, or those who have been favored by fate, is false and demoralizing. The Creator has given man dominion over a world teaming with riches for all, not for a favored few.

If we claim our inheritance and work in harmony with His laws we will have the abundance and happiness He meant we should have. We will be glorious successes. It is not in our nature that we are paupers, but in our mean, stingy estimate of ourselves and our powers.

To me, one of the most pitiable things in the world is a family where the parents, through mistaken ideas of economy, fail to bring up their children generously, who refuse to furnish them with the mental food, the change, the variety, the amusement, that are so necessary to their largest possible development.

How many parents, fearing future want, hoard their money and starve their children's minds, stunt their growth, so that they become dwarfed human beings instead of the superb personalities they might have been if the parents had made a generous effort in their education, in the development of their mental growth!

People are often obliged to go through life exhibiting deplorable ignorance, and are many times blamed for this when their parents were really at fault. They never gave them as children the nourishment, the mental food necessary to develop their larger qualities, their greater possibilities. They are compelled to plod along in mediocrity, so far as mentality and personality are concerned, because they never have had a fair chance. Their ability, their brains, were never backed up with the proper preparation for the larger possible life.

Many of these parents, perhaps most of them, fully intended to be generous to their children, but the habit of saving, the fear of coming to want, which in time develops into a strangling, dwarfing, blighting greed, kept them putting off from year to year a present privilege and duty. They did not put the emphasis on the right thing, to the lifelong detriment of those they loved more than anything else in the world.

True economy is not parsimony, miserliness. It is neither extravagance nor meanness. It means a wise expenditure, an expenditure which brings the largest results. It is being good to ourselves in as large and scientific a way as possible. It means that we should always have the best we can possibly afford when the thing has any reference to our physical and mental health, to our growth in efficiency and power. It often means very liberal spending. It is a perpetual protest against putting the emphasis on the wrong thing.

"Extravagance leads to insubordination and parsimony to meanness," we are told. Don't deceive yourself by going through life patronizing cheap things, wearing cheap clothes, looking seedy, with the belief that you are doing the wisest thing.

Remember that your appearance will largely determine your status in society. The world accepts or rejects us by the evidence of our personality, the impression we make. The feeling that you can't afford this and you can't afford that; always dwelling upon something cheap, cheapens your life, cheapens your mentality, limits and narrows it, dwarfs your personality and makes anything but a favorable impression.

Wise, thrifty, and often generous expenditure in the thing which helps us along the line of our ambition, which will make a good impression, secure us quick recognition, and help our promotion, is often an infinitely better investment than putting money in a savings-bank.

The secret of health, of success and happiness, is largely in being good to one's self, in putting one's self in a superb condition, so that one is always able to do the biggest thing possible to him, always ready to take advantage of whatever opportunities come his way.

Anything which prevents a person from attaining this high-water mark of efficiency is a sin against true economy. Every young man should have an understanding with himself at the outset that he will have nothing to do with the false economy that results in lowered vitality or efficiency, that anything which tends to cut down his power, even by a small fraction, is poor economy and very unscientific.

What is good policy in this respect for the individual is equally good for the home and for business. Many a business concern has gone on the rocks because the proprietor was too much occupied with picayune economies, turning down gas and saving and pinching on petty things, to give his attention to the important things. While saving a trifle here and there, he was losing trade and falling behind in the race, by not putting enough money into his business to keep up with his competitors.

While the shortsighted proprietor is hugging pet theories about economy and trying to save on little things, the big things will suffer for a little expenditure which would bring in infinitely greater returns. Liberal expenditure is often the best kind of business economy. Spending precious time and energy in petty savings is often the worst kind of business policy. In order to bring money in one must put out money.

Some people never get out of the world of pennies into the world of dollars. They work so hard to save the cents that they lose the dollars and also the larger growth, the richer experience and the better opportunity.

"The superior man," says Confucius, "is anxious lest he should not get truth; he is not anxious lest poverty should come upon him." Multitudes of people think too much about poverty and economizing. They dwell upon the "can't-afford-it" philosophy, and continually feel the pressure of the rainy-day idea, which has been dinned into their ears from infancy, until it stunts and dwarfs the whole life.

Those who haven't the money cannot, of course, always do that which will contribute to their highest comfort and efficiency; but many people overestimate the advantage of saving a dollar in comparison with their physical well-being. Power is the goal of the highest ambition. Anything which will add to one's power, to one's growth, no matter how much it costs, if it is within possible reach, is worth its price.

We have all met the "can't afford it" men and women who go through life pinching and cheeseparing. We see them stopping at cheap hotels or boarding houses, traveling long distances in the day coach, carrying their lunch with them; seldom or ever buying a newspaper, a magazine, or a book, investing in nothing which will enlarge the mentality or enrich the life; putting every penny they can Squeeze out of a very poor living into the bank or in other investments. They may think that what they thus save is going to help their children; but, nevertheless, from every point of view it is very short-sighted economy. 

Prosperity Chapter XXII , continued...

I have scarcely ever known an instance where money squeezed out of the real necessities of life was appreciated by the children who inherited it, to say nothing of the dwarfing, impoverishing, aging effect upon those who accumulated it by such self-sacrifice. Oftentimes the hard-earned, sweat-of-the-brow savings have really been a detriment to youthful inheritors, because it has prevented them from using their ability and developing their powers of self-reliance and vigor.

Many families live constantly under the shriveling influence of the stinginess consciousness, the lack and want consciousness, the conviction that the good things of the world were intended for others but not for them. As a result they have never been able to demonstrate anything else but lack, want and limitation.

Multitudes of children are reared in this poverty atmosphere, and in time become so convinced that they can't afford things that others have that they never do have them. Their poverty conviction shuts off the supply. They think the little thought and they demonstrate littleness.

Getting along with little and being half-satisfied to continue doing this, generally means that we shall have to get along with less, for it is not a creative mental attitude, not an attitude which attracts plenty and builds success.

The "can't afford it" consciousness, the "going without" consciousness, brings you nearer and nearer to the point where you can't afford it, just as the "can afford it" consciousness tends to bring you nearer to the point where you can afford it, for he can who thinks he can, and he can't who thinks he can't. We can't do what we think "we can't do; we can't get what we think we can't get.

If you are hard up, you have had a hard-up mind, that is, a hard-up mental attitude, a hard-up conviction, and that has cut off your supply.

The poverty thought, the poverty conviction, is a colossal giant wrestling with human beings and overcoming multitudes of them. It is only those who know the secret hold of the wrestling match, as Dr. W. John Murray says, who can hope to escape the fatal blow of this giant.

I know people in fair circumstances who live so completely in the poverty conviction that they are always hunting for bargains, are always buying cheap things, — cheap food, cheap clothing, cheap furniture, cheap everything. The result is that nothing they have wears or lasts any length of time. While they pinch and screw on prices and think they are saving, they really spend more in the end for poor cheap stuff which is always coming to pieces than they would need to spend on good things, because these would last so much longer than the inferior articles, to say nothing of the infinitely greater satisfaction they would give.

Getting into the current of cheapness not only narrows and pinches the life, but it deteriorates the taste for and appreciation of quality, just as a cheap piano in a home, a piano which is always out of tune, tends to deteriorate the musical taste of the members of the family.

Bargain hunters are nearly always victims of false economy; and women are special offenders in this respect. They will waste hours of precious time, sometimes most of a day, and suffer much discomfort in chasing around from one store to another, looking for bargains and trying to save a few cents on some small purchase they wish to make. Then they will buy wearing apparel and all sorts of articles of inferior material because the price is low, although they know the articles will not wear well. They actually buy, because they are cheap, a great many things they do not need, and then they will probably tell you how much they have saved. If these women would only reckon up what they have expended in this way in one year, they would generally find that, apart altogether from the loss of time and the wear and tear on themselves, they have lost rather than gained on their transactions. They would find that they had spent more than if they had only bought what they really needed, when they needed it, and had paid the regular price for it.

There are many ambitious people with mistaken ideas of economy who very seldom get the kind and quality of food which is capable of building the best blood and the best brain. This going without what would reinforce physical power, create mental force and virility, keeps multitudes of people plodding along in mediocrity who are really capable of doing infinitely better things. This is wretched economy.

The ambitious farmer selects the finest ears of corn and the finest grain, fruits and vegetables for seed. He cannot afford to cumber his precious soil with poor seed. Can the man who is ambitious to make the most of himself afford to eat cheap, stale foods, which' lack, or have lost, great energizing elements? Can he afford to injure his health by trying to save a little money at the cost of letting the fire of his energy languish or die?

No one who hopes to accomplish anything in life can afford to feed his brain with poor fuel. To do so would be as foolhardy as for a great factory to burn bad coal on the ground that good coal was too expensive. Whatever you do, however poor you may be, don't stint or try to economize in food fuel, which is the very foundation and secret of your success in life.

To make a high class man you must have first class food, and this is not extravagance. You can't build a superior brain out of cheap, inferior, adulterated foods, gulped down at a cheap lunch counter.

It is wholly a question of what you get out of your expenditure, not its amount, which makes it a wise expenditure or a foolish one. For instance, it will sometimes pay the biggest kind of returns to pay five or even ten dollars for a dinner where you can hear great men with world-wide reputations speak. In other words, it always pays to get into the most ambition-arousing and helpful atmosphere possible.

It is a great thing to learn about the experiences of men who have won out in the very lines in which we are struggling; even if they do not happen to be in our particular line, the principles by which they have succeeded are much the same as those that bring success in any line, and it is extremely valuable to know how they have been applied in any particular instance.

Success attracts success. Money attracts money. Prosperity attracts prosperity, and it pays you to get with people who are prosperous, who have honorably won out in what they attempted. There is a perpetual success suggestion radiating from them which no ambitious young man can afford to lose.

A miserable pinching economy was never intended for God's children. There is a larger and fuller life for them. Man was made for good things, for grand things, to have everything which can minister to his complete growth and development. If he condemns himself to a narrow, unfruitful life of cheeseparing, pinching economies he has no one to blame but himself.

Our condition is what our words, our thoughts, our convictions, as well as the result of our efforts, make it.

If you are thinking and constantly saying, "I can't afford to do this," or "I can't afford that," "We must make this do," "Money is so scarce," you are sowing the seed which will give you the same kind of a harvest. Your poverty thought will make your future as narrow and limited and poverty-stricken as your present.

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