The Science of Getting Rich By Wallace Delois Wattles --- 12 CHAPTER 12. EFFICIENT ACTION

CHAPTER 12. EFFICIENT ACTION

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.
You can advance only be 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.
The world is advanced only by those who more than fill their present
places.
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. 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. 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.
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.
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.
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If there is something that may be done today, and you do not do it, you
have failed in so far as that thing is concerned; and the consequences
may be more disastrous than you imagine.
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; 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 things and of
human affairs; your neglect or failure to do some small thing may cause
a long delay in getting what you want.
Do, every day, ALL that can be done that day.
There is, however, a limitation or qualification of the above that you
must take into account.
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.
You are not to try to do tomorrow's work today, nor to do a week's work
in a day.
It is really not the number of things you do, but the EFFICIENCY of each
separate action that counts.
Every act is, in itself, either a success or a failure.
Every act is, in itself, either effective or inefficient.
Every inefficient act is a failure, and if you spend your life in doing
inefficient acts, your whole life will be a failure.
The more things you do, the worse for you, if all your acts are inefficient
ones.
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 is doing too many things in an inefficient manner,
and not doing enough things in an efficient manner.
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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.
The matter turns, then, on the questions whether you can make each
separate act a success in itself. And this you can certainly do.
You can make each act a success, because ALL Power is working with
you; and ALL Power cannot fail.
Power is at your service; and to make each act efficient you have only to
put power into it.
Every action is either strong or weak; and when every one is strong, you
are acting in the Certain Way which will make you rich.
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.
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 pace and at another time. So their acts are
not successful in themselves; too many of them are inefficient. 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.
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.
Do, every day, all that you can do that day, and do each act in an efficient
manner.
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
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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.
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.
Let us again repeat our syllabus, and by slightly changing the closing
statements bring it to the point we have now reached.
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.
A thought, in this substance, Produces the thing that is imaged by the
thought.
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.
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.