“A man’s mind may be likened to a garden, which may be intelligently cultivated or allowed to run wild: but whether cultivated or neglected, it must, and will, bring forth. If no useful seeds are put into it, then an abundance of useless weed-seeds will fall therein, and will continue to produce their kind. Just as a gardener cultivates his plot, keeping it free from weeds, and growing flowers and fruits which he requires, so may a man tend the garden of his mind, weeding out all the wrong, useless, and impure tho...
“A man’s mind may be likened to a garden, which may be intelligently cultivated or allowed to run wild: but whether cultivated or neglected, it must, and will, bring forth. If no useful seeds are put into it, then an abundance of useless weed-seeds will fall therein, and will continue to produce their kind. Just as a gardener cultivates his plot, keeping it free from weeds, and growing flowers and fruits which he requires, so may a man tend the garden of his mind, weeding out all the wrong, useless, and impure thoughts, and cultivating toward perfection the flowers and fruits of right, useful and pure thoughts. By pursuing this process, a man sooner or later discovers that he is the master-gardener of his soul, the director of his life.” (James Allen, As a Man Thinketh, 1902).[i]
On today's episode #315 and PART 2 of our REVIEW of Wallace D. Wattles The Science of Getting Rich, we will cover:
✔ REVIEW PART 1: Prosperity Thinking vs Poverty Thinking.
✔ Why are our thoughts so important for our results?
✔ Why are Chapters 4/14/7 important chapters for unlocking the "secrets" for wealth and abundance?
✔ Why must we THINK and ACT in a Certain Way to achieve certain results in our life?
✔ A look at 2 types of thinking with famous examples.
✔ 3 STEPS for changing our Money Mindset.
Which brings us to chapter 4 of Wallace D. Wattles’ The Science of Getting Rich, published in 1910.
“A man is but the product of his thoughts. What he thinks, he becomes.” Mahatma Ghandi (an Indian lawyer who inspired movements for civil rights and freedom across the world).
Bringing us to PART 2 of our Deep Dive into Wallace D. Wattles’ The Science of Getting Rich.
Welcome back to The Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast, where we connect the science-based evidence behind social and emotional learning (that’s finally being taught in our schools today) and emotional intelligence training (used in our modern workplaces) for improved well-being, achievement, productivity and results—using what I saw as the missing link (since we weren’t taught this when we were growing up in school), the application of practical neuroscience. I’m Andrea Samadi, an author, and an educator with a passion for learning and launched this podcast 5 years ago with the goal of bringing ALL the leading experts together (in one place) to uncover the most current research that would back up how the brain.
On today’s episode #315 we launch into a Deep Dive of Wallace D. Wattles The Science of Getting Rich starting with Chapters 4/14/7. If you look at the image in the show notes, you will see a TABBED and very well-read Science of Getting Rich book. This was the book I sent to Paranormal Researcher, Ryan O’Neill from Scotland, UK over 10 years ago, instructing him to read this book, starting with Chapters 4/14/7[ii] for 90 days. He sent me this image of his book, all these years later, well-read and marked up, and his results (that we cover on our interview with Ryan on EP #203[iii]) are a byproduct of him doing things in this certain way, beginning with Chapter 4, The First Principle in the Science of Getting Rich that we will cover today. Next, we’ll move onto chapter 14 on The Impression of Increase that is by far my favorite chapter in this book. I love watching this principle in action in others, and then learning to practice this myself has been something that I think has given me some depth with my character over the years. We’ll move back to Chapter 7 on Gratitude, that ties all these chapters together, before reviewing the other chapters of this book, and coming up with some action steps for implementing these timeless principles in our own lives.
If you want a guide, I’ll link a YouTube audio version of these SPECIAL chapters 4/14/7) in the show notes for you and if you look in the comment section, someone knew the power of these chapters in this order revealing their awareness when they wrote “thanks for the combination to the safe.” It’s these three chapters that Bob Proctor would have EVERYONE study, in this order, and we would even form mastermind groups AFTER each seminar had concluded to ensure we read the book this way.
I’m still in contact with the two others I was assigned to meet with (back in 1999) and we would meet once a week, for 90 days, and read the chapters in this order. Chapters 4, 14 and 7. This practice bound us together for life. Whoever commented that this was “the combination to the safe” got it right. With deep understanding, we read these chapters, word for word, together, once a week, and then discussed how we were implementing the ideas into our life, or not. I remember I was in my late 20s, and I would read this book before the sun had come up, with the others in my group, (over the telephone) and this practice didn’t just set me up for that year, but it set me up to Think and Act in this Certain Way, for the rest of my life.
When I cover a book on the podcast, taking a Deep Dive like this, I’m doing so because I watched the contents of these book we cover change my own results, and hundreds of others around me, over the years. If you look at the Table of Contents FIRST. There are 17 simple and short chapters in this book that are all about breaking through the mental barriers of success, and that moving from the competitive mind, to the creative mind is integral to our success. How do we do this? We spent the whole Introduction (PART 1) explaining that we must first learn the principles for ourselves, and THEN we extend our hand out to help others. This is the whole idea of this book. It’s a simple formula for success, that begins when we “think and act in this certain way.”
What is that certain way? This is what we will be diving into with our study of each chapter.
Chapter 4: The First Principle in the Science of Getting Rich.
Remember this book is all about the syllabus, and how important our thinking is (because there is this thinking stuff from which all things are made…that’s everywhere and a thought in this substance produces the thing that is imaged by the thought.”
This chapter is about the importance of how we think. If we are going to “think and act” in a certain way, at the most fundamental level, it matters how and what we think about.
This chapter opens up with line 1 saying “thought is the only power that can produce tangible riches from the formless substance.” We opened up this episode with James Allen’s take on this, where he said by thinking in this certain way, we become “the master-gardener of our soul, the director of our life.”
Therefore, THE FIRST PRINCIPLE in The Science of Getting Rich is that we must “think” in this certain way.
What is this certain way, you ask?
I’ve been thinking about this since I first heard this idea in 1999. I wanted to say “oh yeah, I think in this certain way” and let the high paying positions come to me! But this isn’t how it happened for me. It seemed like this principle took me the longest time to actually implement. Knowing and Doing…are poles apart.
Here’s some clear examples:
Person 1: Drives by a car dealership (I’m going to use this example because it was the first example I heard in 1999). This person looks at the cars on the lot and thinks “oh wow, I love that red car and I’d love to buy it” and they drive off, and start thinking of how they are going to save up to buy this red car they’ve just seen. They might create a plan, and come back and visit the lot, and sit in the car, and maybe even test drive the car. Got it? We see how PERSON 1 thinks.
Person 2: Drives by the car dealership and stops, takes out a notepad, and writes down some numbers. What’s he writing you ask? He’s taking note of how many cars fit on that specific lot, because he’s thinking “how can I buy this lot?” He writes down 50 cars, and he’s thinking about other ideas like, is there another lot nearby that I could buy if I eventually outgrow this lot? They write down some other things like “how much money can I also make from advertising” since there is a sign out front, and then they write down a number guessing at the cost of the land.
WHAT TYPE OF THINKER ARE YOU?
Can you see two distinct ways to think? How would YOU think if you drove past a car dealership today? Are you PERSON 1 or PERSON 2? I know without a shadow of a doubt that I’m PERSON 1 and to get the details for PERSON 2, I had to ask someone who thinks in this way.
Let me put some faces to two different types of thinkers who we’ve mentioned before on this podcast.
DID YOU KNOW THAT: Walt Disney (who is kind of like Person 2 in our car dealership example) took his good friend Art Linkletter[iv] (a Canadian born radio and television personality) who surely had vision but his vision was different than Art’s). Walt took Art to an open field near Orange County, California and pointed to the land and then told Linkletter of his vision for building a park for children. I talked about this with Dr. John Medina all the way back on EP #42[v] and I asked Dr. Medina about this and oddly enough, Dr. Medina said that he has a large poster of Walt Disney hanging up in his office. It was from a time when there was only one theme park (Disneyland which came first in Anaheim, CA in 1955). Disney World near Orlando hadn’t been built yet (it opened in 1971) and it was a photo of a big swamp with Cinderella’s Castle in the background. You see Walt Disney with an entrepreneurial grin, and the caption on the poster says “It’s kinda fun, to do the impossible.”
How Do You Change Your Way of Thinking?
Isn’t this the point of why we all listen to podcasts in the first place? We are looking for new ideas or ways of thinking. Something to give us a different result, when we do something in a different way. This is how we change our PARADIGMS and it takes time. This doesn’t happen overnight.
We also were not taught “how to think in this certain way” in school. We have to learn to live from “inside” our minds first, and I can tell you that I’ve been working on this way of thinking for over 25 years, and the more I learn, the more I realize I know so very little. It’s a lifetime process, and involves dedication, time, effort and hard work.
This is one of the main reasons why I host this podcast. Each week, as I release something that you the listener downloads, it also helps me and those close to me, since I’m getting a refresher as I’m writing each episode, and thinking of ways that we can ALL put what we are learning into practice.
This is also why I chose the 6 Social and Emotional Learning Competencies to focus on for this podcast.
It appears that Self-Awareness is the key to making any change in our lives. We’ve got to first of all “know thyself” before we can “change thyself.”
SELF-AWARENESS and THE 7 LEVELS OF AWARENESS
We covered this concept in depth in Sept. 2022 when we first started our review of our past episodes with the goal of building a stronger 2.0 version of ourselves. On EP #247 we dove deep into our interview with Greg Link, who intentionally created a legacy by reading a book a week. Since “95% of the decisions we make take place in the subconscious mind” (Deane Alban) it’s crucial for our future results that we keep tending to the “garden of our mind” with continual study. This practice will keep us moving up the 7 Level of Awareness. We all begin at the same level, but it’s our ability to “think” that moves us up these 7 Levels, away from following what everyone else is doing (STEP 2), to aspiration (STEP 3) where we “think” we are doing something (we aspire to BE/DO or HAVE more in our lives) but we must keep moving forward for REAL change to occur. At STEP 4 we step out and take action on idea (we actually DO something), which brings us to STEP 5 since we will need to apply DISCIPLINE to stay in the game. Over time, STEP 6 we gain experience, that eventually leads us to STEP 7 Mastery.
Going through these 7 Levels of Awareness requires that we THINK and ACT in a certain way, which is what Chapter 4 of The Science of Getting Rich is all about.
If you look at the graphic of these 7 Levels of Awareness, it was in Chapter 4 that Bob Proctor would cover these. At the very top of this worksheet is the quote “to look on the appearance of poverty will produce corresponding forms in your own mind.” (Wallace D. Wattles).
THINKING TRUTH REGARDLESS OF APPEARANCES
So to THINK and ACT in a CERTAIN way, requires that we “THINK truth regardless of appearances.” (page 58, Ch 4, Science of Getting Rich) Wallace Wattles tells us in this chapter. I could talk about this concept for weeks, because I have honestly been thinking about this since 1999.
We all have the ability to “think” we have already concluded, but some people “think” differently, or in a certain way, leading them to different results.
I told you that I was not always someone who had prosperity thinking. How could I when I was raised to be careful with money, since it was scarce, and had to stretch far. Thinking there is enough (or even abundance) was a complete stretch for me, but over time, and many years, my paradigms about money have changed.
HOW DO WE CHANGE OUR PROGRAMMING FROM POVERTY CONSCIOUSNESS TO PROSPERITY?
The key is in this chapter. We need to be able to “think truth” (that there is an abundance of what we need) “regardless of appearances” (or what we can see with our eyes). I remember reading this passage thousands of times in our study, in those early days, because this one took us all, a very long time to grasp.
- My bank account is empty but you mean I should think there’s money in it?
- There’s no food in the fridge but you mean I should think food will come?
They come when you learn to THINK AND ACT in this certain way. This isn’t easy. I know and I remember.
I remember when I first moved to the US (and I’m fully aware that we are not supposed to dwell on difficult times according to this book, but I will need to mention where I came from for you, the listener to understand). I came with an empty bank account, but a vision for what I would be doing. Of course the vision for what I wanted to do would take time, and we ALL start out in the same place which is LEVEL 1 on the 7 LEVELS of AWARENESS.
I remember running out of gas as my car was going up a hill, and I had to pray the car would start again as the road evened out so I could get to a gas station and fill up the car. I also remember that I had $20 in my bank account to spend on gas, so the idea of “thinking truth” that there was enough money to cover what I need was a far stretch. But I did it, because I had no other option.
I thought “truth regardless of appearance” and slowly, over time learned to THINK AND ACT in this certain way.
In those early days I worked as a nanny at local resorts in Arizona, and I remember walking around beautiful resorts would help my ability to “think” in this certain way. You can’t just “think” and not take action, so I worked hard, and looking back now, I had plenty of food in my fridge (always-it helped to shop at Costco where I could buy certain things in bulk), and was able to pay ALL of my bills. I used to line up the largest ones first in order on my desk, and when I had earned enough money to pay them, I moved onto the smaller, easier ones.
Eventually life became easier, as I worked Chapter 13, Getting into the Right Business, but I did it all one step at a time, and followed these principles, believing that if I were to THINK AND ACT in this certain way (which we know is prosperity thinking, that there would always be enough) and this required me to “think truth regardless of appearances” since I didn’t have money in my bank account at that time, but I’m sure we can all remember lean times like I’m talking about. We all experience them. I just want to show you how I turned it all around in my life, and it was a process, that occurred with time, but maybe if you are where I was right now, it might help you to think and act in a different way, to shorten the amount of time that you are here. The focus of this entire book is to expand our awareness, and open up the keyhole (or kick in the door) to reveal new possibilities on the other side.
PUTTING CHAPTER 4 INTO ACTION:
So how do we change our thinking and learn to “think truth (that there’s abundance) regardless of appearances (when there is not)?
I can only say that this chapter takes time. There is no way that anyone would have been able to convince me that my empty bank account would one day have plenty of money in it, (when I was down to my last $16 that would fill up my car with gas to get me home), or that I would have been able to see that paying my monthly bills (from working as a nanny) would be possible until I found a better way. I wouldn’t have believed it unless I had actually lived it.
Now, it’s important for me to share this knowledge, so that others can do the same. I learned from being a parent that this skill must be taught, and there is a fine line here as we do not want to raise our children to be pretentious, immodest or assuming in life. We want our children to be outward focused, humble, modest and polite.
It took me years to change my mindset (from poverty consciousness-that there is not enough to cover what I need to prosperity (that I have enough) expanding my level of awareness in this process.
So How Do We Change Our Money Mindset?
The late Doug Wead, presidential advisor, said it best when he said “We are not limited by money, but rather by the poverty of our own dreams.” Open up our minds to abundant thinking versus poverty. Here’s how I took the FIRST Principle in The Science of Getting Rich, and began to teach this to my own children.
The first time I heard one of my girls talking about money in terms of “what if we don’t have enough” I knew it was time to put some focus on the timeless principles in this book.
Here’s what I would suggest to expand anyone’s level of awareness around money.
STEP 1: Know money looks and feels like. When you can’t see or feel money, like when I only had $20 left in my bank account, it’s hard to imagine there being an abundance of it. This is something I notice happens EVERY TIME I play Monopoly. This game is really about prosperity thinking and putting it in action. No one wants to play this game with me because I win this game every time.
We must learn to Think and Act in a Certain way in REAL life, as well as in board games. It’s really the same idea. This again takes time and practice. None of these steps are going to quickly change your money mindset. Play Monopoly like you would play “your life” and watch what happens. You’ll have more money than you know what to do with, and then you can share your wealth with others. In the beginning of the game, we all start out with the same amount of money, but the decisions we make throughout the game will determine who is able to earn more, and eventually wins the game, as they create an abundance. At the beginning of a Monopoly game, I’ve trained myself “to think truth regardless of appearances” I can “see” a vision of all the property I will buy (Park Place and Boardwalk will win the game for you) by earning you the rent from everyone who lands on the spaces you will buy and own.
This concept became much more interesting when money became available in cryptocurrency, showing us that money can exist outside of physical bills or coins. We can NOW pay for things electronically, quickly sending money to people and vendors via systems like Zell, or PayPal. What we “think” of money in 2023 is much different than 50 years ago, but the concept is the same. It’s an exchange for service rendered, and once you know what it looks like (whether it’s physical bills, or a number in an account) it’s much easier to be able to see it in your possession.
STEP 2: Know how to earn money. I love the quote “never stand begging for that which you have the power to earn” by Miguel de Cervantes. When times were difficult in my 20s, I figured out how to earn the money I needed to live the life I wanted, from cleaning houses and working as a nanny. Using this experience, I now instill the idea of “working” for money with our children by giving them money for things they can do to help around the house, or with their skills and talents. If they can help me to solve a computer issue, or something technology based (where their level of thinking far surpasses mine) I will pay them for their knowledge. This teaches our next generation that when you take the time to study and learn something new, you can earn money for your knowledge. This job in the real world is called Being a Consultant, and can earn someone money in addition to whatever job they choose to spend their days doing. This is where the concept of earning income from multiple sources comes in, that we will cover in more depth in Chapter 6 How Riches Come to You.
This concept that money circulates helps anyone to see how they can work for it, and rightfully have it.
STEP 3: Know how to THINK TRUTH regardless of APPEARANCES. Remember that “every man has the natural and inherent power to think what he wants to think, but it requires far more effort to do so than it does to think the thoughts which are suggested by appearances.”
I don’t know WHEN this principle switched in my head, and I began living it, but I do remember it being “laborious” and it required “the expenditure of more power than any other work” (Wattles, Chapter 4) than I’ve ever had to perform. To think according to appearances is easy. My bank account has $20 left, my fridge is empty, or I have no sales in my pipeline. It’s easy to look at these things and think this is the way it’s going to be. OR, we can implement this first timeless principle and create something else (first of all on the screen of your mind) and then second with action that you will take.
Stop for a minute and look around. The clothes you are wearing were created in someone’s mind FIRST, before they created the pattern and manufactured them.
The car you are driving came first into the mind of Henry Ford, or if you are driving a Tesla, the mind of Elon Musk.
Once you’ve learned to do this, you can relate to Walt Disney’s entrepreneurial grin, as you begin to turn the impossible, into reality.
REVIEW AND CONCLUSION
To review and conclude PART 2 of our Deep Dive of Wallace D. Wattles’ The Science of Getting Rich, we covered Chapter 4, and the first principle of learning to think and act in a certain way, and that’s with prosperity thinking versus poverty thinking.
Since “thought is the only power that can produce tangible riches from the formless substance” it matters what we think about.
We looked at the importance of being able to Think Truth, regardless of appearance, even if this is the hardest work in the world. I gave the example of being able to think beyond what money I had in my bank account, and this concept can also be practiced with our health. Not at all to say we “think ” ourselves to health, but if we can learn to think and see ourselves as healthy, it’s the first step towards using our mind (instead of the outside world) to create and shape our results.
As we covered in PART 1 of our review, the message within the pages of The Science of Getting Rich is NOT to obtain money for ourselves, but to spend “money in meaningful ways—especially when it’s used to benefit others” (Chapter 1 Neurowisdom, Waldman and Manning) and this is known to increase our satisfaction in life.
As we are going through these chapters, my goal is to show us not how we can be good little go-getters, but how we use these principles to help ourselves first, and then, how to use them to benefit others.
This is the true meaning behind The Science of Getting Rich and we will go deeper into taking the focus off ourselves on our next episode with Chapter 14, The Impression of Increase.
Until then, I hope that you review how to change your money mindset, to improve your thinking first, and then help others you interact with.
STEP 1: Know money looks and feels like. It’s a different world in 2023 now that we have BitCoin and Cryptocurrency, but for this step, I like to grab a stack of bills (real or fake) and just know what it “feels like” to hold what I would consider to be “a lot” of money. The more I have practiced this concept, the easier it is for me to expand my thinking of what’s a lot of money to me. In my late 20s, when I was running out of gas, $20 was a lot of money. With experience, my number has changed, but this is the key, to always be opening up the doorway and expanding where our thinking currently sits. Whatever you think is “a lot of money” see how it feels to put that amount in your wallet. Carry it around for a while. Before you know it, your amount will change, and you’ll have expanded your thinking around money. I saw an incredible example of this on Instagram with Grant Cardone who was teaching his children this concept with a game where he blind-folded his kids who were fishing for hundred dollar bills in a money-mindset game. I know that whatever money was “raised” with this game went to charity, but I know it also would have changed the money mindset of those kids. They will never look at a $100 bill the same way after seeing many of them on the table. There was plenty of them, and enough for all of them to gather them up, and give back to others.
IMAGE CREDIT: Grant Cardone on Instagram
STEP 2: Know how to earn money. We will cover this one in more depth throughout this book study, but once we can see that money is an exchange for services rendered, we can open up to what services we can provide to help other people, that they would pay for. I remember paying a young high school kid (who was 17 at the time) how to code my first website. It was faster for me to work with him after school than it would have been for me to learn how to do this on my own, and this young man earned plenty of money with his knowledge and talents.
STEP 3: Know how to THINK TRUTH regardless of APPEARANCES. This is the hardest part of implementing this chapter, especially if you are where I was when my car ran out of gas. I had to go home, go to sleep and think “tomorrow is a new day” and that tomorrow I had the ability to create something new, something that only existed on the screen of my mind.
And when tomorrow came, I always found work that I could do, that filled my bank account back up, (one check at a time) and kept me going. I remember at this specific time I was working as a nanny at a local resort in Arizona, and this was the BEST place for me to work on improving my money consciousness. I would walk around the resort, and see abundance everywhere. I would think “one day, I will have my own family and I’ll bring them to a resort like this, and I’ll relax in the lawn chairs and think of ways I can give back to others once I’ve done it myself.” This didn’t happen right away. I had to master how to THINK TRUTH regardless of APPEARANCES first, and then had to get to work on what we will cover next week, The Impression of Increase.
The Science of Getting Rich is a process. It is scientific and mathematical. It matters what we THINK about.
With that thought, I’ll close out PART 2 of our Deep Dive of Chapter 4 of The Science of Getting Rich, and will see you next week, with Chapter 14 on The Impression of Increase.
REFERENCES:
[i] As a Man Thinketh, by James Allen, 1902 https://www.amazon.com/As-Man-Thinketh-James-Allen/dp/1503055361
[ii] The Science of Getting Rich Chapters 4/14/7 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPBdjiFBrJg
[iii]Neuroscience Meets SEL Podcast EPISODE #203 with Paranormal Researcher Ryan O’Neill https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/case-study-with-paranormal-researcher-ryan-o-neill-on-making-your-vision-a-reality/
[iv] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_Linkletter
[v] Neuroscience Meets SEL Podcast EPISODE #42 with Dr. John Medina https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/dr-john-medina-on-implementing-brain-rules-in-the-schools-and-workplaces-of-the-future/
