By Wallace D. Wattles

with Power Affirmations by William H. Marshall

Chapter 12

Efficient Action

1.                     You must use your thought as directed in previous chapters and begin to do what you can do where you are; and you must do ALL that you can do where you are.

Become Larger than Your Present Place

2.                    You can advance only by being larger than your present place; and no man is larger than his present place who leaves undone any of the work pertaining to that place. 

3.                    The world is advanced only by those who more than fill their present places.

4.                    If no man quite filled his present place, you can see that there must be a going backward in everything.  Those who do not quite fill their present places are dead weight upon society, government, commerce, and industry; they must be carried along by others at a great expense. 

5.                    The progress of the world is retarded only by those who do not fill the places they are holding; they belong to a former age and a lower stage or plane of life, and their tendency is toward degeneration.  No society could advance if every man  was smaller than his place; social evolution is guided by the law of physical and mental evolution. 

6.                    In the animal world, evolution is caused by excess of life.  When an organism has more life than can be expressed in the functions of its own plane, it develops the organs of a higher plane, and a new species is originated. 

7.                     There never would have been new species had there not been organisms which more than filled their places.  The law is exactly the same for you; your getting rich depends upon your applying this principle to your own affairs.

8.                    Every day is either a successful day or a day of failure; and it is the successful days which get you what you want.  If everyday is a failure you can never get rich; while if every day is a success, you cannot fail to get rich.

Do Everyday All that Can be Done that Day

9.                    If there is something that may be done today and you do not do it, you have failed insofar as that thing is concerned; and the consequences may be more disastrous than you imagine.

10.                You cannot foresee the results of even the most trivial act; you do not know the workings of all the forces that have been set moving in your behalf.  Much may be depending on your doing some simple act; and it may be the very thing which is to open the door of opportunity to very great possibilities.  You can never know all the combinations which Supreme Intelligence is making for you in the world of things and of human affairs; your neglect or failure to do some small thing may cause a long delay in getting what you want. 

11.               Do, every day, ALL that can be done that day. 

12.                There is, however, a limitation or qualification of the above that you must take into account. 

13.                You are not to overwork, nor to rush blindly into your business in the effort to do the greatest possible number of things in the shortest possible time. 

14.                You are not to try to do tomorrow's work today, nor to do a week's work in a day. 

Make Every Act Efficient and Successful

15.                It is really not the number of things you do, but the EFFICIENCY of each separate action that counts.

16.                Every act is, in itself, either a success or a failure. 

17.                 Every act is, in itself, either effective or inefficient.

18.                Every inefficient act is a failure, and if you spend your life in doing inefficient acts, your whole life will be a failure. 

19.                The more things you do, the worse for you, if all your acts are inefficient ones.

20.               On the other hand, every efficient act is a success in itself, and if every act of your life is an efficient one, your whole life MUST be a success.

The Cause of Failure

21.                The cause of failure is doing too many things in an inefficient manner and not doing enough things in an efficient manner.

22.                You will see that it is a self-evident proposition that if you do not do any inefficient acts and if you do a sufficient number of efficient acts, you will become rich.  If, now, it is possible for you to make each act an efficient one, you see again that the getting of riches is reduced to an exact science, like mathematics.

23.                The matter turns, then, on the question of whether you can make each separate act a success in itself.  And this you can certainly do. 

24.                You can make each act a success, because ALL power is working with you; and ALL power cannot fail.

25.                Power is at your service; and to make each act efficient you have only to put power into it.

26.                Every action is either strong or weak; and when every action is strong, you are acting in the Certain Way which will make you rich.

27.                Every act can be made strong and efficient by holding your vision while you are doing it, and putting the whole power of your FAITH and PURPOSE into it.

Combine Your Mental Power with Your Personal Action

28.                It is at this point that the people fail who separate mental power from personal action.  They use the power of mind in one place and at one time, and they act in another place and at another time.  So their acts are not successful in themselves; too many of them are inefficient. 

29.                But if ALL power goes into every act, no matter how commonplace, every act will be a success in itself; and as in the nature of things every success opens the way to other successes, your progress toward what you want and the progress of what you want toward you, will become increasingly rapid.

30.               Remember that successful action is cumulative in its results.  Since the desire for more life is inherent in all things, when a man begins to move toward larger life, more things attach themselves to him, and the influence of his desire is multiplied.

31.                Do, every day, all that you can do that day, and do each act in an efficient manner.

One of the Best Ways to Use Your Leisure or Opportunity Time

32.                In saying that you must hold your vision while you are doing each act, however trivial or commonplace, I do not mean to say that it is necessary at all times to see the vision distinctly to its smallest details.  It should be the work of your leisure hours to use your imagination on the details of your vision and to contemplate them until they are firmly fixed upon memory.  If you wish speedy results, spend practically all your spare time in this practice.

33.                By continuous contemplation you will get the picture of what you want, even to the smallest details, so firmly fixed upon your mind, and so completely transferred to the mind of Formless Substance, that in your working hours you need only to mentally refer to the picture to stimulate your faith and purpose and cause your best effort to be put forth.  Contemplate your picture in your leisure hours until your consciousness is so full of it that you can grasp it instantly.  You will become so enthused with its bright promises that the mere thought of it will call forth the strongest energies of your whole being.

34.                Let us again repeat our syllabus, and by slightly changing the closing statements bring it to the point we have now reached.

The Science of Getting Rich Formula - Updated

35.                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.

36.                A thought in this Substance produces the thing that is imaged by the thought.

37.                Man can form things in his thought, and, by impressing his thought upon Formless Substance, can cause the thing he thinks about to be created.

Revision to the Formula

38.                In order to do this, man must pass from the competitive to the creative mind; he must form a clear mental picture of the things he wants, and do, with faith and purpose, all that can be done each day, doing each separate thing in an efficient manner.

 Go to Chapter 13

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