I am evaluating Wallace D. Wattles’ “The Science of Getting Rich,” now owned by Rebecca Fine. So far, I have identified five steps to getting rich, which are:

1. Control Your Thoughts; Focus on Truth
2. Be Grateful
3. Find Your Purpose
4. Set Clear, Definite Goals
5. Receive Through Inspired Action

This next step is probably the most difficult: Maintain Faith.

When our desires do not manifest as quickly as we would like or think they should, we begin to doubt.  Here’s what Wattles has to say about that:

“Doubt or unbelief is as certain to start a movement away from you as faith and purpose are to start one toward you.  It is by not understanding this that most people make their failure.  Every hour and moment you spend in giving heed to doubts and fears, every hour you spend in worry, every hour in which your soul is possessed by unbelief, sets a current away from you in the whole domain of intelligent substance.” 

Pay particular attention to this next statement.

“All the promises are unto them that believe, and unto them only.”

Wow!  Okay.  So we need to work on our beliefs, and maintaining our faith.  How?

Remember what we discovered in step number one; we must control our thoughts, and focus on truth.  My post, Achieve Success by Surrounding Yourself with a Positive Environment addresses the need for positive surroundings to help with the process of keeping our thoughts in the right place.  Wattles takes it a step further, though, and says that we need to exercise our will power to keep our thoughts in the right place.  I can understand that, since it often takes a great deal of willpower to not watch that hilarious comedy on television because we know it’s a negative influence.  It can take a lot of willpower to let someone know you don’t want to be around them anymore because they bring you down.  Wattles insists that we must do such things, and I agree with him.

Wattles would agree with many motivational speakers today who tell us to stop watching the news.  It’s mostly negative, and you cannot convince me it’s because there are only negative things going on the world.  Here’s a little trick my husband uses to stay abreast of what’s going on, but not get inundated with negativity:  TiVo the evening news.  (Record it, for those poor souls who aren’t yet blessed with a TiVo.)  We record the CBS evening news with Katie Couric, watch the “previews,” then only watch the articles we think we need to, or want to in the rare situation that they are positive.  I’m being a little flippant here, but I figure if it’s important enough that I need to know about it, Katie will tell me.

“If you want to become rich, you must not make a study of poverty.”

This means that you do not view images of poor people on the news, on late night television commercials requesting money, or on television situation comedies where being poor is often glorified.  Some other modern ways I’ve noticed we “make a study of poverty” include:

1. Worrying about money.  Learn to live within your means while you’re attracting more to you and you’ll always feel rich, thereby attracting even more.  That’s a lot to try to comprehend in one sentence, isn’t it?  This topic deserves its own post, I’ll write more about this soon.   You might want to subscribe now so you don’t miss it.  In the meantime, stop worrying about money.  Look at what you currently bring in, decide once and for all how you’re going to spend it, then use your will power to make it so.  This will free up mental energy for you to focus on how to make more money.
2. Being cheap.  I’m not talking about being a savvy consumer here; I’m talking about being cheap.  I don’t feel that I need to give too many examples, I think everyone knows what I’m talking about, and I don’t want to give any cheapskates who might be reading this any new ideas, but I must share this one story with you.  I read recently of a man who went online, signed up for every free give away he could find on the internet, then gave those freebies away as Christmas gifts!  Now that’s cheap!  When you believe that you have to resort to these types of measures, your faith needs an attitude adjustment.

Here’s a critical issue in the manifestation of our desires: disappointment.  I mentioned earlier that when our desires do not manifest as quickly as we’d hoped, we start to doubt and, ultimately, become disappointed.  Here’s what Wattles says about “failure:”

“Never allow yourself to feel disappointed.  You may expect to have a certain thing at a certain time and not get it at that time, and this will appear to you like failure.  But if you hold to your faith you will find that the failure is only apparent.  Go on in the certain way, and if you do not receive that thing, you will receive something so much better that you will see that the seeming failure was really a great success.”

This is hard, folks, I know.  Maintaining faith when it appears on the surface that nothing is happening is tough.  Here’s what I want to ask you though, if you’re currently in a situation like this – you’re starting to feel disappointment because something you expected hasn’t happened yet.  That question is this, “How do you know?  How do you know that what you’re striving for isn’t on its way to you right now?  Better yet, how do you know that something even greater than what you’re expecting isn’t on its way?”

The only way to know if you’re going to get what you want, is to maintain your faith.  If you lose your faith, you for sure won’t get it.  If the deadline has past, set a new one.  If you didn’t get this promotion, go for a different one.  If you didn’t pass the test after many hours of studying, find out how you can study to be better prepared for the next test and still ace the course.  Do whatever you have to do to keep your faith alive.

Maintaining your faith that what you desire is on its way to you is the most important skill you can develop, and protect, in your quest to become rich.

Posted under Education, Inspiration, Leadership, Motivation