A stockbroker reported that he had studied the prosperity laws from every angle; that he had observed the many prosperous-minded people who buy and sell stocks; that he had read many biographies of successful people; and that from these observations and studies he had decided that if prosperity could be described in one expression, it would be “self-confidence,” which means faith in one’s innate abilities and talents, and faith in God’s help to develop them.
Psychologists state that there is a tremendous power in self-confidence which doubles your powers and multiplies your abilities. My stockbroker friend told me that, after gaining confidence in the laws of prosperity and using them in his work, his income zoomed upward. One month after he began invoking the prosperity laws presented in this book, his income was four times its previous level. His success is even more remarkable when we realize that it happened during a recession period!
The Secret of Self-Confidence
Perhaps the most important secret of self-confidence is this: Courses are given and books are written to help you attain self-confidence, and yet you already have it! It is a part of your spiritual nature, with which you were endowed when you were created in the image and likeness of God. The Psalmist reminds you that you were made little lower than the angels and crowned with glory and honor.
The truth that we are born with confidence can be viewed by the actions and reactions of most children, before they become filled with the fears, phobias, and inhibitions of thought. Children have the delightful habit of confidently saying and doing whatever they feel led to say and do.
A brilliant child who has no self-confidence does not possess half the potential for living successfully as does the average child with a good degree of self-confidence. I know a Sunday School teacher, who, realizing this, leads her students each Sunday morning in affirming: God loves me, God lives in me, God breathes through me, I am God’s child and He loves and helps me all the time! It is interesting to watch her students blossom forth with new courage and confidence, which are reflected in their school work, home life, and social success, as well.
Quite different is the case of a woman with whom I recently talked. She claimed that years ago she employed the power of prosperous thinking with decidedly happy results. But a friend had told her that such thinking was odd and wrong, and that she should have nothing more to do with it. She placed more trust in the advice of her well-meaning, but misguided friend than in her own God-given convictions. The result is that she must now return to prosperous thinking to restore her home life with her husband, to keep the financial wolf away from her door, and to regain her health. Lack of confidence in her own God-given convictions almost ruined her life.
Admittedly, there is a difference between egotism and sincere self-confidence. Egotism is the attitude, “Not Thy will, but mine be done, Lord; I appreciate Your help, but I prefer to handle things my way.” Self-confidence means humble faith in your innate God-Self, and in your sincere inner convictions. Why shouldn’t you have great faith and confidence in your deep convictions? After all, the scientists declare that you are filled with innate intelligence. Every atom of your being throbs with active intelligence. The very air you breathe and the world in which you live is a thrill with divine intelligence, which seeks to impart to you all you wish to know about everything. That same divine intelligence will perform wonders for you, if you make contact with it in faith.
You Must Have Self-Confidence to Succeed
Perhaps you have wondered at times, as have I, why some people advance to highly paid positions while others, who have equal or better training, are not promoted. Upon close study, you will observe that those who advance really believe in themselves and in their ability to succeed. They seem to have an inner ear with which they listen for guidance and knowledge. They seem to know that within them is something special, to which they have constant access for wisdom and expanded vision. You will usually notice that they radiate poise and assurance, so that others around them just naturally believe in them and follow their ideas.
One of the superb reasons for developing self-confidence is that it is contagious! It impels and persuades others. Joshua, the first official commanding general of the Hebrews, proved this. Even though the Hebrews had been wandering in the wilderness for 40 years, when Joshua took command after the death of Moses, his first act was to assure the Hebrews that they would pass over the Jordan into the Promised Land in just three days and they did! It is interesting that the word “success” is found only twice in the Bible, both times in the Book of Joshua.
No one pays much attention to the person who lacks confidence. He does not attract others or convince them of his worth, because his mind is a negative force that repels rather than attracts. One of the statements we have used in our prosperity classes hundreds of times to call forth innate intelligence as self-confidence is this: Nothing succeeds like success. I now go from success to greater success with God’s rich help. I give thanks that my success, powerful and irresistible, appears now!
Self-Confidence Dissolves Inferiority
You cause yourself to perform divine feats of good just by confidence in your divinity and recognizing it often. It is good to declare daily for yourself a statement of faith and confidence such a this: “___________(state your name), I have confidence in your God-given guidance and abilities. I see you now going from success to greater success with God’s rich help. Your success is big, powerful and irresistible and it now appears! I have known of several cases where inferiority complexes have been dissolved and self-confidence restored, as the person consistently filled his mind with bold, daring, reassuring affirmations.
Should you wonder if spoken words of good can have such power, you will be interested to know this: One positive statement of good is more powerful than 1,000 negative thoughts; and two positive statements of good are more powerful than 10,000 negative thoughts.
Thus, when discouragement, doubt, or fear of failure try overwhelm you, affirm: I am strong in the Lord and in the power of His Might. All power has been given me for supreme good in mind, body and affairs. I claim and experience it now.
Build Confidence Thoughts Before Sleeping
A powerful way to develop self-confidence, which is your attracting power for prosperity, is to feed your mind confidence-filled thoughts as you drop off to sleep at night. Psychologists believe that your last waking thoughts are the ones on which your subconscious mind feeds and acts while you sleep. If you fill your mind with happy, expectant thoughts of success, prosperity and good results, your subconscious will take them as orders from you. During sleep, your subconscious will obediently go to work to produce a prosperous tomorrow for you. Thus, you can gain control of each day the night before, by getting into the thought and mood of how you want tomorrow to be for you.
A beautiful young model once told me of the results she obtained in this way. She was low, depressed, and unsure of herself because of a love affair that had ended unhappily. Feeling quite discouraged one night, she picked up a book that someone had sent her about the power of the subconscious mind in sleep. Realizing her power to transform her unhappy situation by changing her dominant mood and thoughts, she began to think of how thrilled she would be if she met someone nice and congenial. Quietly she began thinking of the type of man she would like to meet. In that mood she relaxed into a deep sleep. Next morning she was awakened by the telephone ringing. A little conversation revealed that the call was from a bachelor millionaire who had been asked by a mutual friend to call her on his next visit to town. He proved to be the answer to her marital dreams!
A friend of mine, Dr. John Lee Baughman, recommends this powerful affirmation to use before sleeping: I shall go to sleep but God in me remains awake, bringing my present problem to a successful conclusion, in divine order. It is good to give yourself assurance by affirming often: God loves me, God is guiding me, God is showing me the way. Do not wait for others to assure you, praise you, or express their confidence in you. Instead of fretting because they don’t, assure yourself that “someone cares”–that One Who made you and Who is ever interested in helping you.
Affirmations Develop Your Confidence
To develop your innate self-confidence in your ability to succeed, I suggest that you re-read Chapter 6, “The Prosperity Law of Command,” and use the words of command contained therein. Use affirmations to release your self-confidence in three ways: Speak forth affirmations–verbally–at least five minutes a day, somewhere in privacy.
At other times during the day, look at affirmations that you may have written out on cards or in a book. Get them out and look at them when fear or uncertainty seem to grip you. You can do this in the midst of people, ringing telephones and bustling activity, and no one need ever know where your “booster shots” of confidence came from.
A supervisor in charge of a group of book salesmen during a recession period sought to train them to sell encyclopedias, but they regularly returned from attempted sales to complain that times were hard and that nobody was buying. Since he had to remain positive and appear confident, the supervisor told me that the only way he was able to neutralize their pessimism and to convince them that they could sell was by going into another office, getting out his affirmations, and reading them over and over.
He would then square his shoulders, take a deep breath, return and make positive statements concerning his faith in his men, in their sales ability, in their fine product and the customers’ need for it, regardless of economic conditions. In this way he restored their confidence in their sales ability, and they began to sell again.
At least once a day, write out 15 times (or more) a favorite affirmation on success, confidence, and perfect results. By writing out words of confidence you help implant the idea more firmly in your subconscious mind, which then works harder and faster to produce happy results. Affirmations are your strongest confidence builders.
When doubt or fear concerning your ability to succeed seem to come upon you, perhaps you would like to use this series of affirmations that I have used to overcome timidity and a feeling of inadequacy: God’s good is for me, I ought to have it, and I claim it now!
Concerning any situation, problem, or personality that tries to tear down your faith and confidence in God’s goodness, affirm: I have unshakable faith in the perfect outcome of every situation in my life, for God is in absolute control.
After using affirmations, develop your self-confidence by bracing yourself, and then daring to do the things you want to attempt but have previously feared trying. Declare first: God’s almighty Power goes before me, making easy, successful, and delightful my way. If you begin to feel shaky along the way, uplift yourself by affirming: I can do all things through Him Who strengthens me. I am strong in the Lord and in the power of His might. The perfect result now appears!
Stand Firm in Your Confidence Thinking
Another powerful thought with which to fill your mind for self-confidence is: Infinite Wisdom guides me, Divine Love prospers me, and I am successful in everything I undertake.
A businessman recently pointed out that often after he has affirmed success and then taken outer steps toward it, his faith and confidence are then tested. He has found, for instance, that often after he buys a new stock, its price will go down for a period, so that it appears he has invested unwisely. During such testing periods, he always affirmed these words. This gave him the faith and confidence in his decisions to hold on, and invariably the stock would rise, and he would realize a good profit from it.
This is an important point to remember after you have dared to follow your convictions. It is as though you are challenged by an invisible force that tests your confidence in your decisions. Often people will try to discourage you. This is the time to hold on to what you sincerely believe is right. You have already laid the inner foundation through affirming success and perfect results. You must now prove to yourself and others that you have what it takes to follow through on your convictions. As you do, the tide must surely turn, and your confidence is multiplied; while the confidence of others in you is often tripled. It is at this point that you can truly affirm, Nothing succeeds like success.
When you find yourself in fearful circumstances, it is good to call forth confidence by affirming: God has given His angels charge over me, to keep me in all my ways. A businessman recently told me how it seems he did have a guardian angel for protection one dark night. Having just cashed his check, he had a pocketful of money. Since a friend had promised to repay him some money, he proceeded into a dimly lit area of town to collect it. As he passed the corner of a darkened building, two men stood in the shadows, one with his arm projecting from the building in such a way that he could reach out and grab a passerby. The second man stood nearby as his accomplice. However, as this businessman rounded the comer of the building, these two men stood perfectly still and let him pass unharmed, though his pockets were filled with cash. This man silently remembered these words from the 23rd Psalm as he had entered this area: I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me.
Develop Your Confidence Through Imaging
To help develop your confidence in your God-given success, I also suggest that you re-read Chapter 5, “The Imaging Law of Prosperity,” and that you make a wheel of fortune, placing on it pictures of the visible good you wish to obtain. As you daily view the pictured results on your wheel of fortune, you are filling, your mind with confident images of the good you wish.
One of the statements I once placed on my wheel of fortune was: Good things begin to happen now, and a series of happy results came forth. Another statement I have found powerful to view on my wheel of fortune daily is this: This is a time of Divine Fulfillment. Miracles now follow miracles, and God’s blessings never cease. By filling your mind with mental images, your mind then is given the confidence to make those mental images into visible results.
Truly, the image makes the condition if you will make the mental image. If you do not consciously have confidence that your desires can come true, place a picture of the desired result where you can daily view it. Your subconscious mind will make it so, and your convictions will come to pass.
Another simple way to develop self-confidence is to ask directly of a loving Father for guidance about anything that concerns you. As we have previously stated, the divine solution is the sublime solution!
Associate With Self-Confident People
Another delightful way to develop your self-confidence is to link yourself with self-confident people. You will subconsciously begin to absorb their air of assurance, which soon will come alive in you. By making contact with one or two success-minded, self-confident individuals, they will subconsciously inspire you and lift you to higher levels of thought and expectation.
Develop Your Deeper Powers for Self-Confidence
There are still other ways in which you can begin developing your self-confidence. You should know about these methods in this exciting age we are now entering, because these are scientific methods for achievement.
Two of these methods for building self-confidence will be explained fully in the next chapters, and they concern the development of your intuition and your creative imagination. Your intuition is that “still, small voice” within you, filled with inner knowing, that will guide you in toward greater good, if you learn to listen and perceive its guidance. This will be shown you in the next chapter.
Your creative imagination is developed by talking with at least one other person about anything that concerns you, and in confidence asking that person to agree to work with you toward the perfect result. This releases multiplied mind power into the situation. Scientists have described intuition and creative imagination as your genius powers. And so they are, when rightly understood and developed, as will be discussed in the next chapter.
Scientists also declare that you have five special powers or super-senses that can be developed for prosperity and success. When you understand these special powers and begin to stir them up, they will add immensely to your self-confidence and success power. These five special powers will be described in Chapter 15, as telepathy, clairvoyance, extrasensory perception, precognition, and psychokinesis.
Call Forth the Good in Others
Let us consider one final way you can develop your own self-confidence and help bring it forth in others. Begin appreciating, praising, and calling forth the good in others. Speak confidently to others of their good points. Dare to praise them. Speak words of kindness, uplift and success to them. I know of one businessman whose previous failure turned into success, after his wife gained new confidence in his business abilities, and let him know it daily.
I recently heard of a commercial photographer who stated that his great success in photographing prominent models in the fashion world came as a result of his expressing to those models, before he began taking pictures, his confidence in their ability to photograph well. He said that just by assuring them of his confidence in them, they became radiant before the camera, and he could do twice the work in half the time. Few retakes were necessary.
If you think something good about someone, tell them about it! If you have confidence in a person who is still struggling to succeed, let him know it. Don’t wait until after a person has succeeded to say in a back-slapping way, “John, how proud I am of you, but then I knew you could do it all the time.” Express words of praise and confidence in his success before he has succeeded. That’s when he really needs it.
Most people wear a mask. If you could see behind the mask of their lives, you would realize what a tonic your kind words can often mean. It’s like throwing a lifeline to a drowning man. It’s better to overdo it, if such a thing is possible, than to let an opportunity to praise another pass by. It could be the turning point in a man’s rise to success. And someone will do the same for you when you need it most. Even people whom the world considers highly successful crave words of confidence, thoughtfulness, and appreciation. Wholehearted confidence in ourselves and others has a miracle power when it is expressed. The truth of this was recently reported by a housewife who wrote:
Surely no one knows better than I the potency of words of praise and appreciation of others. Before I realized this power I was a chronic grumbler, and the whole atmosphere about me was steeped in fault finding and complaining. I discovered that words of confidence, thoughtfulness, and appreciation not only helped others, but also eliminated pain from my body and trouble from my mind.
Since I have adopted the method of expressing praise and confidence in others, there has been a great change in my household; especially is this true of my domestic help and my children. I no longer censure my help for apparent carelessness and for accidents, but I praise them for their good intentions, their faithfulness, and their goodness. I have found that the very act of speaking confidently to them and about them calls into activity the very qualities that are needed. I have watched this method work what some would call a miracle.
The Power of Speaking Words of Praise
I recently observed the power of spoken words of confidence when I visited a happy family group, consisting of the husband, wife and their five children. I marveled at the five well-adjusted, well-behaved children. I could not resist asking, “What is your secret for having five such happy, well-adjusted children in this age of common maladjustment?” The wife, who is a quiet introvert, quickly declared, “My husband is the secret. He is so wonderful with the children.” I thought, “How can your husband be so wonderful with the children when he is away at work ten hours a day, six days a week?” But I noticed a look of adoration on her husband’s face. He honestly thought he was that good with the children!
Later, in preparing for a cookout, the wife said to her husband in sincere appreciation, “My dear, what a wonderful fire you build!” Again I thought, ‘Whoever heard of praising a man for building a fire!” But it worked–he almost built a bonfire! I have a feeling that if he had built one and set the whole yard ablaze, his wife would probably have responded by declaring, “Isn’t my husband the most wonderful fire-fighter?” Small wonder that that family is so happy.
Call Forth Confidence Silently
Along with deliberate words of praise, kindness, consideration, and appreciation of another, it is good to silently declare to him and for him:_______(call his name), I have confidence in your God-given guidance and abilities. I see you now going from success to greater success with God’s rich help. Your success is big, powerful and irresistible. It appears now.
This does not mean you are trying to gain hypnotic control of another’s mind. You are simply giving him the benefit of your high thoughts of success. To gain control of another’s mind is never the object of a prosperous thinker. Hypnosis has its place in medical and scientific research, but is not for general use. One person never has a spiritual right to take control of another’s thinking. Such actions usually bring only confusion and unhappiness to all concerned.
Freedom is one of the great mental laws of the universe, and a prosperous thinker knows it. As long as you simply declare ideas of general success and good for another, there is no danger of trying to mentally control them. Control comes when one tries to get specific, and mentally forces another’s actions to his own selfish way of thinking. Affirmations for yourself do not hypnotize you. Instead, they de-hypnotize you from thoughts of failure and negation which you have habitually accepted before you realized the power of thought.
A popular business executive for a large corporation attained his success through speaking sincere words of praise, appreciation, and confidence to his employees. In one instance, a young prisoner on parole was brought to him as a prospective employee. This executive expressed his faith in this ex-prisoner’s ability to make good. He then hired him. Over the years he constantly spoke words of confidence and expectation of good to this employee. Today that former prisoner is an executive for the same company!
Your Self Confidence Will Multiply
You may never know just how much good your words of confidence can mean, nor how far they can go to produce good for others. The age-old truth applies: when you speak words of confidence concerning others, you cannot help attracting it to yourself, since what you send out comes back multiplied.
Along with these various methods for developing your self-confidence, and with the more scientific methods given you in the next two chapters, there is one other that should never be underestimated. Psychologists declare that prayer is one of the greatest confidence builders in the world, and I believe it. I suggest that you re-read Chapter 12, which gives you the four basic methods of prayer. Through prayer, you tap that divine something within you and around you that releases great power and faith. You are then filled with confidence and the zeal to proceed.
Someone has said that it is the man “who thinks he can” that succeeds. Remember the power of putting your best foot forward as a confidence-builder, too. By doing whatever you can to effect the confident feeling and the confident look, you give yourself and others the impression of assured success. Your own thoughts and those of others then multiply along the line of expected successful results.
In the various ways mentioned herein, your thoughts are lifted up, self-confidence becomes a habitual state of mind, which then unconsciously goes to work for you. Then your prosperity comes in an avalanche of praise-filled success!