Thought and Circumstances - As A Man Thinketh
Posted by: Rob Saxe // Category: As A Man Thinketh by James Allen
James Allen wrote “As A Man Thinketh”, his second book, in or around 1903. It’s a small book that’s easy to read and packed with wisdom. I’ve read this book dozens of times and it never gets old. There is so much value in it that, if studied regularly, will help you to understand how your thoughts affect who you are. While I consider this book to be a bit on the mystical side, common for the era it was written, there is practical information here that is timeless.
One quote from “Thought and Circumstances” has stayed with me since I first read it and spurred me to study other works to try and understand it. It eventually changed the direction of my life. It reads:
“Men do not attract that which they want, but that which they are.”
At the time, I was studying the Law of Attraction and was focusing quite intently on what I wanted. Guess what? It wasn’t working. I was in denial in a big way about this sentence. I didn’t want to accept that I had to change to get what I wanted. How many people think just this way? There was a gnawing feeling that I got when I read it as if something deep inside me was saying..”HEY, pay attention to this, you need to learn this”. I didn’t get it at the time but I’m glad I stuck with it.
Pay attention to it I did. I was on a quest to find out what it meant and to additional information that lead to more successful living. Incidentally, that was what I wanted in the first place.
What I found out is that it isn’t enough to want something, you have to be ready to receive it. You can’t get that which is out of alignment with who you are. If what you want doesn’t coincide with your image of self, you won’t be successful at “attracting” what you’re focusing on.
I was dealing with a business failure that left me in dire straits, my self confidence was shattered and all I could think about was being a failure rather than that I had failed. I took my failure personally. The truth was, I failed but this failure wasn’t who I was it’s what happened. Having failed was a fact, that is what happened but thinking that I was a failure was a subjective opinion, not fact. When I accepted that and began to focus on the success in my life, everything changed. (by the way, the failure turned out to be, as it always does, one of the best things that could have happened to me)
Thinking that I was a failure repelled everything that remotely appeared to be successful. Makes sense, doesn’t it? If you’re thinking failure and hoping for success, how likely is it that you will succeed? I know what the answer was for me and as James Allen so aptly put it..you don’t attract what you want; you attract what you are.
All the answers are inside. Become aware of the inside, change it and everything else will follow by the law of cause and effect.
“As the plant springs from and could not be without the seed, so every act of a man springs from the hidden seeds of thought and could not have appeared without them.”
James Allen, As A Man Thinketh, Thought and Character
Tags: as a man thinketh, james allen, Law of Attraction
July 8th, 2008 at 7:36 pm
You’re right that you attract what you are, what you put out there. Also, that failure isn’t a bad thing, but a learning experience. Who among us hasn’t failed at something? As Nietzsche famously said, “That which doesn’t kill me will make me stronger.”