• Home
  • 50 Classics Series
    • 50 Self-Help Classics >
      • James Allen - As A Man Thinketh
      • Dale Carnegie - How To Win Friends and Influence People
      • Stephen Covey - The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
      • Ralph Waldo Emerson - Self-Reliance
      • Benjamin Franklin - Autobiography
      • Louise Hay - You Can Heal Your Life
      • Joseph Murphy - The Power of Your Subconscious Mind
      • Samuel Smiles - Self-Help
      • Teilhard de Chardin - The Phenomenon of Man
    • 50 Success Classics >
      • Claude M Bristol - The Magic of Believing
      • Jim Collins - Good To Great
      • Russell H Conwell - Acres of Diamonds
      • Napoleon Hill - Think and Grow Rich
      • Catherine Ponder - The Dynamic Laws of Prosperity
      • David J Schwartz - The Magic of Thinking Big
      • Wallace Wattles - The Science of Getting Rich
    • 50 Spiritual Classics >
      • Carlos Castaneda - Journey to Ixtlan
      • Kahlil Gibran - The Prophet
      • Aldous Huxley - The Doors of Perception
      • Carl Jung - Memories, Dreams, Reflections
      • Margery Kempe - The Book of Margery Kempe
      • CS Lewis - The Screwtape Letters
      • Miguel Ruiz - The Four Agreements
      • 50 More Spiritual Classics
    • 50 Psychology Classics >
      • Eric Berne - Games People Play
      • Isabel Briggs Myers - Gifts Differing: Understanding Personality Type
      • Louann Brizendine - The Female Brain
      • David D Burns - Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy
      • Robert Cialdini - Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion
      • Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi - Creativity
      • Albert Ellis - A Guide To Rational Living
      • Milton Erickson - Teaching Tales
      • Erik Erikson - Young Man Luther
      • Hans Eysenck - Dimensions of Personality
      • Sigmund Freud - The Interpretation of Dreams
      • Malcolm Gladwell - Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking
      • Carl Jung - The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious
      • Alfred Kinsey - Sexuality In The Human Female
      • Abraham Maslow - Motivation and Personality
      • Stanley Milgram - Obedience To Authority
      • IP Pavlov - Conditioned Reflexes
      • Jean Piaget - The Language and Thought of the Child
      • Carl Rogers - On Becoming A Person
      • BF Skinner - Beyond Freedom & Dignity
    • 50 Prosperity Classics >
      • James Allen - The Path to Prosperity
      • Genevieve Behrend - Your Invisible Power
      • Richard Branson - Losing My Virginity
      • Warren Buffett - The Essays of Warren Buffett
      • Rhonda Byrne - The Secret
      • Andrew Carnegie - The Gospel of Wealth
      • Felix Dennis - How To Get Rich
      • Peter Drucker - Innovation and Entrepreneurship
      • Harv Eker - Secrets of the Millionaire Mind
      • Milton Friedman - Capitalism and Freedom
      • Michael E Gerber - The E-Myth Revisited
      • Benjamin Graham - The Intelligent Investor
      • Esther & Jerry Hicks - Ask And It Is Given
      • Conrad Hilton - Be My Guest
      • Joe Karbo - The Lazy Man's Way To Riches
      • Catherine Ponder - Open Your Mind To Prosperity
      • Ayn Rand - Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal
      • Donald Trump - The Art of the Deal
      • Max Weber - The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
      • Prosperity Principles
    • 50 Philosophy Classics >
      • Simone de Beauvoir - The Second Sex
      • Heraclitus - Fragments
      • Soren Kierkegaard - Fear and Trembling
      • Thomas Kuhn - The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
      • Marshall McLuhan - The Medium is the Massage
      • John Stuart Mill - On Liberty
      • Montaigne - Essays
      • Friedrich Nietzsche - Beyond Good and Evil
      • Plato - The Republic
      • Karl Popper - The Logic of Scientific Discovery
      • John Rawls - A Theory of Justice
      • Jean-Paul Sartre - Being and Nothingness
      • Nassim Nicholas Taleb - The Black Swan
      • Ludwig Wittgenstein - Philosophical Investigations
    • 50 Politics Classics
    • 50 Economics Classics
    • 50 Business Classics
  • Capstone Classics
    • Think and Grow Rich
    • The Science of Getting Rich
    • The Art of War
    • The Prince
    • The Wealth of Nations
    • The Republic
    • The Tao Te Ching
    • Meditations
    • Beyond Good and Evil
    • Origin of Species
  • New Writing
  • Services
  • Newsletter
  • About
  • READER REVIEWS
  • Foreign Editions
  • Think Long
  • Contact
Tom Butler-Bowdon

self-help classics

As A Man Thinketh 
(1902)
James Allen


In its theme that ‘mind is the master weaver’, creating our inner character and outer circumstances, As A Man Thinketh is an in-depth exploration of the central idea of self-empowerment writing.

James Allen's contribution was to take an assumption we all share - that because we are not robots we therefore control our thoughts - and reveal its fallacy. Because most of us believe that mind is separate from matter, we think that thoughts can be hidden and made powerless - this allows us to think one way and act another. But Allen believed that the unconscious mind generates as much action as the conscious mind, and while we may be able to sustain the illusion of control through the conscious mind alone, in actuality we are continually faced with a question, 'Why cannot I make myself do this or achieve that?' In noting that desire and will are sabotaged by the presence of thoughts that do not accord with the desire, Allen was led to the startling conclusion that, 'We do not attract what we want, but what we are.' Achievement happens because you as a person embody the external achievement; you don't 'get' success but become it. There is no gap between mind and matter.

We are the sum of our thoughts

The logic of the book is unassailable: noble thoughts make a noble person, negative thoughts hammer out a miserable one. To a person mired in negativity, the world looks as if it is made of confusion and fear. On the other hand, Allen noted, when we curtail our negative and destructive thoughts, ‘All the world softens towards us, and is ready to help us.’ We attract not only what we love - but what we fear. His explanation for why this happens is simple: those thoughts which receive our attention, good or bad, go into the unconscious to become the fuel for later events in the real world. As Emerson said, ‘A person is what he thinks about all day long.’

Our circumstances are us

Part of the fame of this book is its contention that ‘Circumstances do not make a person, they reveal him.’ This seems an exceedingly heartless comment, a justification for neglect of those in need and a rationalisation of exploitation and abuse; of the superiority of those at the top of the pile, and the inferiority of those at the bottom. This, however, would be a knee-jerk reaction to an argument of subtlety. While Allen does not deny that poverty can ‘happen’ to a person or a people, what he tries to make clear is that defensive actions like blaming the perpetrator will only further run the wheels into the rut. What measures us, what reveals us, is how we use those circumstances as an aid or spur to progress. A successful person or community, in short, is that which can process failure with the most efficiency.

Each set of circumstances, however bad, offers a unique opportunity for growth. If circumstances always determined the life and prospects of people, then humanity would never have progressed. In actuality, circumstances seem to be designed to bring out the best in us, and if we make the decision that we have been 'wronged' then we are unlikely to begin a conscious effort to escape from our situation. It all seems too hopeless. But as any biographer knows, a person's early life and its conditions are often the greatest gift to an individual. Gold does not emerge from jewellers' shops but from mud and rock.

One self-help author influenced by Allen is Wayne Dyer. Dyer observed that '...being broke is a temporary state of affairs that afflicts almost everyone at one time or another, but being poor is an attitude, a set of beliefs that gets reinforced when we shift to blaming life circumstances for the condition of our poverty'. The tragedy of poverty is that children born into it begin to accept it as part of their culture. Allen talks about those who feel that it is all right to do shoddy work because they are being paid so little. Yet this attitude - superficially justifiable - keeps them in the very situation they despise.

Tranquility = success

The influence of Buddhism on Allen's thought is obvious in the emphasis on 'right thinking', but it is also apparent in his suggestion that the best path to success is calmness of mind. People who are calm, relaxed and purposeful appear to look like that is their natural state, but nearly always it is the fruit of self-control. These people have an advanced knowledge of how thought works, coming from years of literally 'thinking about thought'. According to Allen, they have a magnet-like attraction because they are not swept up by every little wind of happenstance. We turn to them because they are masters of themselves. 'Tempest-tossed' souls battle to get success, but success avoids the unstable.

Final word

Almost a hundred years after publication, As A Man Thinketh continues to get rave reviews from readers. The plain prose and absence of hype are appealing within a genre that contains sensational claims and personalities, and the fact that we know so little about Allen makes the work somehow more intriguing.

The book's title comes from the Bible - 'As a man thinketh, so he is' - but despite this provenance, As A Man Thinketh is religion-neutral. Allen believed that the dynamic that linked thought to action and outer circumstances was a metaphysical law that could not err. In the way it identifies universal laws and applies them to the mechanics of desire and prosperity, the book is appropriately the 20th century's first self-help classic.

To bring its message to a wider audience, two updated versions of the work which right the gender-specificity of the original have been published: As You Thinketh, edited by Marc Allen (no relation) and As a Woman Thinketh, Dorothy Hulst.

Source: 50 Self-Help Classics: Your shortcut to the most important ideas on happiness and fulfilment by Tom Butler-Bowdon (London & Boston: Nicholas Brealey)
Picture
Click to see reader views or to buy
Buy Amazon
Buy Amazon UK
​Also available in Kindle and Audio format.​
Back to classics list
BUTLER-BOWDON
Home
About
Contact




50 CLASSICS SERIES
Humanities & Social Sciences
Personal Development
50 Psychology Classics
50 Philosophy Classics
50 Politics Classics
​
50 Economics Classics ​
50 Self-Help Classics 
50 Spiritual Classics
50 Success Classics 

Business
50 Business Classics

​

​
© COPYRIGHT TOM BUTLER-BOWDON, 2023
​. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
  • Home
  • 50 Classics Series
    • 50 Self-Help Classics >
      • James Allen - As A Man Thinketh
      • Dale Carnegie - How To Win Friends and Influence People
      • Stephen Covey - The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
      • Ralph Waldo Emerson - Self-Reliance
      • Benjamin Franklin - Autobiography
      • Louise Hay - You Can Heal Your Life
      • Joseph Murphy - The Power of Your Subconscious Mind
      • Samuel Smiles - Self-Help
      • Teilhard de Chardin - The Phenomenon of Man
    • 50 Success Classics >
      • Claude M Bristol - The Magic of Believing
      • Jim Collins - Good To Great
      • Russell H Conwell - Acres of Diamonds
      • Napoleon Hill - Think and Grow Rich
      • Catherine Ponder - The Dynamic Laws of Prosperity
      • David J Schwartz - The Magic of Thinking Big
      • Wallace Wattles - The Science of Getting Rich
    • 50 Spiritual Classics >
      • Carlos Castaneda - Journey to Ixtlan
      • Kahlil Gibran - The Prophet
      • Aldous Huxley - The Doors of Perception
      • Carl Jung - Memories, Dreams, Reflections
      • Margery Kempe - The Book of Margery Kempe
      • CS Lewis - The Screwtape Letters
      • Miguel Ruiz - The Four Agreements
      • 50 More Spiritual Classics
    • 50 Psychology Classics >
      • Eric Berne - Games People Play
      • Isabel Briggs Myers - Gifts Differing: Understanding Personality Type
      • Louann Brizendine - The Female Brain
      • David D Burns - Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy
      • Robert Cialdini - Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion
      • Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi - Creativity
      • Albert Ellis - A Guide To Rational Living
      • Milton Erickson - Teaching Tales
      • Erik Erikson - Young Man Luther
      • Hans Eysenck - Dimensions of Personality
      • Sigmund Freud - The Interpretation of Dreams
      • Malcolm Gladwell - Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking
      • Carl Jung - The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious
      • Alfred Kinsey - Sexuality In The Human Female
      • Abraham Maslow - Motivation and Personality
      • Stanley Milgram - Obedience To Authority
      • IP Pavlov - Conditioned Reflexes
      • Jean Piaget - The Language and Thought of the Child
      • Carl Rogers - On Becoming A Person
      • BF Skinner - Beyond Freedom & Dignity
    • 50 Prosperity Classics >
      • James Allen - The Path to Prosperity
      • Genevieve Behrend - Your Invisible Power
      • Richard Branson - Losing My Virginity
      • Warren Buffett - The Essays of Warren Buffett
      • Rhonda Byrne - The Secret
      • Andrew Carnegie - The Gospel of Wealth
      • Felix Dennis - How To Get Rich
      • Peter Drucker - Innovation and Entrepreneurship
      • Harv Eker - Secrets of the Millionaire Mind
      • Milton Friedman - Capitalism and Freedom
      • Michael E Gerber - The E-Myth Revisited
      • Benjamin Graham - The Intelligent Investor
      • Esther & Jerry Hicks - Ask And It Is Given
      • Conrad Hilton - Be My Guest
      • Joe Karbo - The Lazy Man's Way To Riches
      • Catherine Ponder - Open Your Mind To Prosperity
      • Ayn Rand - Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal
      • Donald Trump - The Art of the Deal
      • Max Weber - The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
      • Prosperity Principles
    • 50 Philosophy Classics >
      • Simone de Beauvoir - The Second Sex
      • Heraclitus - Fragments
      • Soren Kierkegaard - Fear and Trembling
      • Thomas Kuhn - The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
      • Marshall McLuhan - The Medium is the Massage
      • John Stuart Mill - On Liberty
      • Montaigne - Essays
      • Friedrich Nietzsche - Beyond Good and Evil
      • Plato - The Republic
      • Karl Popper - The Logic of Scientific Discovery
      • John Rawls - A Theory of Justice
      • Jean-Paul Sartre - Being and Nothingness
      • Nassim Nicholas Taleb - The Black Swan
      • Ludwig Wittgenstein - Philosophical Investigations
    • 50 Politics Classics
    • 50 Economics Classics
    • 50 Business Classics
  • Capstone Classics
    • Think and Grow Rich
    • The Science of Getting Rich
    • The Art of War
    • The Prince
    • The Wealth of Nations
    • The Republic
    • The Tao Te Ching
    • Meditations
    • Beyond Good and Evil
    • Origin of Species
  • New Writing
  • Services
  • Newsletter
  • About
  • READER REVIEWS
  • Foreign Editions
  • Think Long
  • Contact