In chapter 11 of The Science of Getting Rich, Wallace D. Wattles states this:
“THOUGHT is the creative power, or the impelling force which causes the creative power to act; thinking in a Certain Way will bring riches to you, but you must not rely upon thought alone, paying no attention to personal action. That is the rock upon which many otherwise scientific metaphysical thinkers meet shipwreck–the failure to connect thought with personal action.”
Then, in chapter 12, he says the following:
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 EFFECTIVENESS 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 ineffective.
Every ineffective act is a failure, and if you spend your life in doing ineffective acts, your whole life will be a failure.
The more things you do, the worse for you, if all your acts are ineffective ones.
On the other hand, every effective act is a success in itself, and if every act of your life is an effective one, your whole life MUST be a success.
But does this mean that if I do something and that something fails, I am a failure? Absolutely not! Wallace uses the phrase, “effective act” as an indication of success. Not whether or not the thing done succeeded or failed. I liken this to the famous story of Thomas Edison and his efforts to make an electric light bulb. For every item that he tried and that failed, he would tell himself that he had succeeded in eliminating another possibility which brought him closer to that one item that would succeed. Many times, those things we have done that ended up failing, have been experiences of learning.
Benjamin Franklin put it this way: “I didn’t fail the test, I just found 100 ways to do it wrong”
Wallace D. Wattles says many times throughout his book that you don’t get rich by doing certain things, but that you get rich by doing things in a certain way.
