A film that didn’t tell me much
If you asked me which book had the biggest impact on my life, the answer would be easy: a small book from 1910 called The Science of Getting Rich, by Wallace D. Wattles.
It started with The Secret. I watched the film, and to be honest, it didn’t tell me much I didn’t already know. But two voices in it stayed with me: Esther Hicks and Bob Proctor. They made me curious. Really curious. I wanted to go deeper, to the source of what they were talking about.
How the book found me
I believe that when you long for something with your whole heart, the Universe always helps you on your way. This time, help came through a colleague. He handed me a PDF of Wattles’ little book, which you can download for free because it is so old.
I will always be grateful to him.
Fittingly, Rhonda Byrne herself credited this very book as one of the inspirations for The Secret. I had followed the thread straight back to its root.
Three ideas from a book written in 1910
Don’t let the title fool you. This is not a book about greed. It is a book about how thought and creation work together. Three ideas stand out:
1. Everything comes from one source.
“There is a thinking stuff from which all things are made, and which, in its original state, permeates, penetrates, and fills the interspaces of the universe.”
Wattles calls it the Formless Substance. Everything we see, and everything we have not yet seen, begins there. Our thoughts are in contact with it.
2. Create; don’t compete.
“You are to become a creator, not a competitor; you are going to get what you want, but in such a way that when you get it every other man will have more than he has now.”
There is no shortage to fight over. What you create adds to the whole.
3. Gratitude keeps you connected.
“The grateful mind is constantly fixed upon the best; therefore it tends to become the best; it takes the form or character of the best, and will receive the best.”
For Wattles, gratitude is not politeness. It is the thread that keeps you connected to the source.
And then everything changed
After I read this little book, the great change in my life began… and it moved fast. What happened is a story I am telling in full in the book I am writing now. For today, I will only say this: it all began with one free PDF and one kind colleague.
Read it yourself
The Science of Getting Rich is in the public domain, so you can read it for free on Project Gutenberg. It is short; you can finish it in an afternoon. If you only have ten minutes, start with the chapter on gratitude.
