Yes, You can Afford it
Correct
Your Beliefs about Money
Orison
Swett Marden
The idea that riches
are possible only to those who have superior advantages, more ability, or those
who have been favored by fate, is false and demoralizing.
Don't deceive yourself
by going through life patronizing cheap things, wearing cheap clothes, looking
seedy, with the belief that you are doing the wisest thing. Remember that your
appearance will largely determine your status in society. The world accepts or
rejects us by the evidence of our personality, the impression we make.
The feeling that you
can't afford this and you can't afford that; always dwelling upon something
cheap, cheapens your life, cheapens your mentality, limits and narrows it,
dwarfs your personality and makes anything but a favorable impression.
Wise, thrifty, and
often generous expenditure in the thing which helps us along the line of our
ambition, which will make a good impression, secure us quick recognition, and
help our promotion, is often an infinitely better investment than putting money
in a savings-bank.
Some people never get
out of the world of pennies into the world of dollars. They work so hard to
save the cents that they lose the dollars and also the larger growth, the
richer experience and the better opportunity.
Multitudes of people
think too much about poverty and economizing. They dwell upon the
"can't-afford-it" philosophy, and continually feel the pressure of
the rainy-day idea, which has been dinned into their ears from infancy, until
it stunts and dwarfs the whole life.
Many families live
constantly under the shriveling influence of the stinginess consciousness, the
lack and want consciousness, the conviction that the good things of the world
were intended for others but not for them.
As a result they have
never been able to demonstrate anything else but lack, want and limitation.
Multitudes of children are reared in this poverty atmosphere, and in time
become so convinced that they can't afford things that others have that they
never do have them.
Their poverty
conviction shuts off the supply. They think the little thought and they
demonstrate littleness.
Getting along with
little and being half-satisfied to continue doing this, generally means that we
shall have to get along with less, for it is not a creative mental attitude,
not an attitude which attracts plenty and builds success.
I know people in fair
circumstances who live so completely in the poverty conviction that they are
always hunting for bargains, are always buying cheap things,—cheap food, cheap
clothing, cheap furniture, cheap everything.
The result is that
nothing they have wears or lasts any length of time. While they pinch and screw
on prices and think they are saving, they really spend more in the end for poor
cheap stuff which is always coming to pieces than they would need to spend on
good things, because these would last so much longer than the inferior
articles, to say nothing of the infinitely greater satisfaction they would
give.
Bargain hunters are nearly
always victims of false economy; and women are special offenders in this
respect. They will waste hours of precious time, sometimes most of a day, and
suffer much discomfort in chasing around from one store to another, looking for
bargains and trying to save a few cents on some small purchase they wish to
make.
Success attracts
success. Money attracts money. Prosperity attracts prosperity, and it pays you
to get with people who are prosperous, who have honorably won out in what they
attempted.
If you are thinking
and constantly saying, "I can't afford to do this," or "I can't
afford that," "We must make this do," "Money is so
scarce," you are sowing the seed which will give you the same kind of a
harvest. Your poverty thought will make your future as narrow and limited and
poverty-stricken as your present.
