As a Man Thinketh Book Review
James Allen is considered to be a pioneer of the self help movement.
This book published more than a hundred years back this book has been described by the author himself as ‘a book that will help you to help yourself’.
The book is another reminder of how thoughts influence our character, circumstances, health, purpose, and achievement.
The book, written in an aphoristic style, is easy to read. It is quite short with less than a hundred pages. Search online as there are many editions, some quite inexpensive.
Must read if you are starting a journey of personal growth. Or want to know how self help books looked a century ago.
As a Man Thinketh Book Summary
Note: This summary is made up of my notes, thoughts and highlights of important passages while reading the book. I keep updating the summary when I revisit it, and occasionally may edit it to reduce summary length. Don’t be surprised if it has changed between visits. The author’s words are in normal font, while my interpretations are in italics.
Thought and Character
As a man thinketh in his heart so is he.
A man is literally what he thinks, his character being the complete sum of all his thoughts.
Every act of a man springs from the hidden seeds of thought, and could not have appeared without them.
Act is the blossom of thought, and joy and suffering are its fruits.
Man is made or unmade by himself; in the armoury of thought he forges the weapons by which he destroys himself; he also fashions the tools with which he builds for himself heavenly mansions of joy and strength and peace.
Man is the master of thought, the moulder of character, and the maker and shaper of condition, environment, and destiny.
He that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.
Effect of Thought on Circumstances
Man’s Mind May be Likened to a Garden
A garden can be intelligently cultivated or allowed to run wild.
The garden, whether lovingly cultivated or not, will bring forth something true to its nature and purpose. A well-maintained and well-cared garden will bring beautiful plants, flowers and fruits. While a neglected garden will bring forth weeds.
The mind’s garden needs to be similarly cultivated, maintained, challenged, nourished so that it continues to grow and produce a beautiful life. When neglected it can only create nuisance for yourself and others.
Order bears in the meaning of life. Energy and effort needs to be spent to create an orderly garden or an orderly mind. Creating order, no matter for how a brief period of time, in the sea of universal disorder, is perhaps the true meaning of existence.
Thought and Character are One
Thought and character are one, and as character can only manifest and discover itself through environment and circumstance, the outer conditions of a person’s life will always be found to be harmoniously related to his inner state.
Every man is where he is by the law of his being; the thoughts which he has built into his character have brought him there, and in the arrangement of his life there is no element of chance, but all is the result of a law which cannot err.
As a progressive and evolving being, man is where he is that he may learn that he may grow; and as he learns the spiritual lesson which any circumstance contains for him, it passes away and gives place to other circumstances.
Man is buffeted by circumstances so long as he believes himself to be the creature of outside conditions.
When he realizes that he is a creative power, and that he may command the hidden soil and seeds of his being out of which circumstances grow, he then becomes the rightful master of himself.
The soul attracts that which it secretly harbours; that which it loves, and also that which it fears; it reaches the height of its cherished aspirations; it falls to the level of its unchastened desires.
Circumstances are the means by which the soul receives its own.
As the reaper of his own harvest, man learns both by suffering and bliss.
A man does not come to the almshouse or the jail by the tyranny of fate or circumstance, but by the pathway of grovelling thoughts and base desires.
Circumstance does not make the man; it reveals him to himself.
Man as the lord and master of thought, is the maker of himself the shaper and author of environment.
Men do not attract that which they want, but that which they are.
His wishes and prayers are only gratified and answered when they harmonize with his thoughts and actions.
What is the meaning of ‘fighting against circumstances?’ It means that a man is continually revolting against an effect without, while all the time he is nourishing and preserving its cause in his heart.
Men are anxious to improve their circumstances, but are unwilling to improve themselves; they therefore remain bound.
Good thoughts and actions can never produce bad results; bad thoughts and actions can never produce good results.
Nothing can come from corn but corn.
We reap what we sow.
If we sow good deeds, the result will be positive. If we sow bad deeds, the result can only be negative.
- Sow awareness, to reap awareness.
- Sow positivity, to reap positivity.
- Sow empathy, to reap empathy.
- Sow understanding, to reap understanding.
Another aspect is how much time we spent harvesting results of our past vs. how much time we spend sowing seeds for the future?
Judge each day by what we sow, not by what we harvest.
Suffering is always the effect of wrong thought in some direction.
The sole and supreme use of suffering is to purify, to burn out all that is useless and impure.
Blessedness, not material possessions, is the measure of right thought; wretchedness, not lack of material possessions, is the measure of wrong thought.
Blessedness and riches are only joined together when the riches are rightly and wisely used.
Indigence and indulgence are the two extremes of wretchedness.
Law, not confusion, is the dominating principle in the universe.
Justice, not injustice, is the soul and substance of life.
Righteousness, not corruption, is the moulding and moving force in the spiritual government of the world.
Let a man radically alter his thoughts, and he will be astonished at the rapid transformation it will effect in the material conditions of his life.
Men imagine that thought can be kept secret, but it cannot; it rapidly crystallizes into habit, and habit solidifies into circumstance.
A man cannot directly choose his circumstances, but he can choose his thoughts, and so indirectly, yet surely, shape his circumstances.
Effect of Thought on Health and the Body
The body is the servant of the mind.
Anxiety quickly demoralizes the whole body, and lays it open to the entrance of disease.
Strong, pure, and happy thoughts build up the body in vigour and grace.
Out of a clean heart comes a clean life and a clean body.
If you would protect your body, guard your mind. If you would renew your body, beautify your mind.
There is no physician like cheerful thought for dissipating the ills of the body.
Thought and Purpose
Until thought is linked with purpose there is no intelligent accomplishment.
Aimlessness is a vice.
Thoughts of doubt and fear never accomplished anything and never can.
The will to do springs from the knowledge that we can do.
He who has conquered doubt and fear has conquered failure.
Thought allied fearlessly to purpose becomes creative force.
The Thought-Factor in Achievement
All that a man achieves and all that he fails to achieve is the direct result of his own thoughts.
He who has conquered weakness, and has put away all selfish thoughts, belongs neither to oppressor nor oppressed. He is free.
A man can only rise, conquer, and achieve by lifting up his thoughts.
There can be no progress, no achievement without sacrifice.
Intellectual achievements are the result of thought consecrated to the search for knowledge, or for the beautiful and true in life and nature.
Spiritual achievements are the consummation of holy aspirations.
Achievement, of whatever kind, is the crown of effort, the diadem of thought.
Victories attained by right thought can only be maintained by watchfulness.
He who would accomplish little must sacrifice little; he who would achieve much must sacrifice much; he who would attain highly must sacrifice greatly.
Visions and Ideals
The dreamers are the saviours of the world.
He who cherishes a beautiful vision, a lofty ideal in his heart, will one day realize it.
To desire is to obtain; to aspire is to, achieve.
Dream lofty dreams, and as you dream, so shall you become.
The greatest achievement was at first and for a time a dream. The oak sleeps in the acorn; the bird waits in the egg.
Dreams are the seedlings of realities.
Into your hands will be placed the exact results of your own thoughts; you will receive that which you earn; no more, no less.
The thoughtless, the ignorant, and the indolent, seeing only the apparent effects of things and not the things themselves, talk of luck, of fortune, and chance.
They do not see the long and arduous journey, but only behold the pleasant goal, and call it “good fortune,” do not understand the process, but only perceive the result, and call it chance.
In all human affairs there are efforts, and there are results, and the strength of the effort is the measure of the result.
Serenity
Calmness of mind is one of the beautiful jewels of wisdom. It is the result of long and patient effort in self-control.
The calm man, having learned how to govern himself, knows how to adapt himself to others;
The more tranquil a man becomes, the greater is his success, his influence, his power for good.
Keep your hand firmly upon the helm of thought.
Self- control is strength; Right Thought is mastery; Calmness is power.
Say unto your heart, ‘Peace, be still!’
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Can’t agree more and see this work ! Thanks for sharing!!!