Book: As A Man Thinketh by James Allen

Man's mind may be likened to a garden, which may be intelligently cultivated or neglected, it must, and will, bring forth. If no useful seeds are put into it, then an abundance of useless weed-seeds will fall therein, and will continue to produce their kind. ~James Allen


I just finished the book "As A Man Thinketh" by James Allen written in 1902. It's another of my sojourns into the minds of great thinkers who's works have lived on long after they have passed. It's a short book of about 68 pages so can be read pretty much in one sitting. The book is one of the original texts that would be classified as Inspirational Thought.

The gist of this book is that as a man's mind goes so goes his character and other aspects of his being.  Overall, the book is a treatise on the internal dialog that we run in our mind and on the external thoughts we feed ourselves. His thought on thought follows what is known in the software world as GIGO, Garbage In Garbage Out, meaning you can't get good data from a computer by feeding it with bad data. On the flip side, if we seed our minds with good thoughts, with purity then our character growth and subsequently the actions that sprout from our being will be good and just.

The book goes a bit over the edge when James claims that a man can indirectly shape his circumstances by his thoughts. Circumstances are what happens to us. Our thoughts come into play in how we deal with the circumstances. We can let the circumstances, such as getting fired, drag us down with negative thinking or we can grow from what we learn in any situation, In the case of getting fired, it may be time to start that new adventure that's been put off for so long.  James also claims that sickly thoughts will express themselves in a sickly body, conversely, one can stay healthy by avoiding sickly thoughts. In the modern day, we know that sickness is the result of microbes and not on the thoughts we dwell upon.

One of my favorite lines is:

Until thought is linked with purpose there is no intelligent accomplishment.

I have long believed that for a person to accomplish something of value, he cannot sit back and let magic happen. Man must be disciplined in his thoughts for value to come from his actions. In fact, man must be disciplined to accomplish just about anything worthwhile in life.

I want to improve my leadership abilities, so I have a discipline of reading something about leadership every day. I don't read if I feel like it or there is nothing on TV. I make it a point, and act of discipline, to read about it every day. Every morning before I get out of bed, I navigate through the news aggregators on my phone which are setup to collect leadership articles, and spend a good ten to fifteen minutes. Before I go to bed, I make sure to get another fifteen minutes to half an hour, of leadership reading. The reading may be in a book dedicated to leadership, or it my be a biography, or other genres in which I can glean leadership knowledge. As A Man Thinketh fell right into that category and also help satisfy my desire to learn from classic works.