Charles F. Haanel wrote that matter is …

… powerless, passive, inert. Mind is force, energy, power. Mind shapes and controls matter. Every form which matter takes is but the expression of some preexisting thought.

The things around us — the things we see and touch and feel — are nothing until our minds takes them and plays with them and creates a use for them. The iron in the ground was but wasting there until it was discovered by Man and his mind learned — through the use of his creative imagination and experimentation — to smelt it and make use of it.

Computers were of very little use to us until many intrepid programmers came along the way and created programs the we could find useful to us. They took “inert” potential and converted it into powerful “kinetic” for all of us to use to our advantage, whether that advantage be for work or for play.

In a sense, the mind of the thinker takes nothing and makes of it something.

Thusly, we can make by use of our thoughts and the things around us what we desire. As Haanel wrote, though, “thought works no magic transformation.”

This small snippet — and what follows — flies in the face of how much of this philosophy is presented today and shows how much it has been bastardized. Does Haanel write that if we think it then it will “manifest” for us, seemingly out of the void, produced merely by the power of our thoughts?

No. He writes that “it manifests in your conduct and actions, and these in turn react upon your friends and acquaintances, and eventually upon the whole of your environment.” In other words, thought(s) lead(s) to actions that lead to the results we see and receive.

Thought is but a foreshadowing of the things to come. That is why it is important we take care of what we think. Our thoughts guide our actions and, in a way, configure us to what we will see, how we will act, what we will be.

That is why thinking — and thinking properly — is hard and difficult work.

That is why we look for the solution to our problems rather than centering on the problems themselves.

As you better yourself with this mode of thinking — as you master it! — “you can create for yourself the things you desire.”

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