If you've never dipped into Claude M. Bristol's The Magic of Believing, it may be time to do so - especially if you need to hit the refresh key on your money & financial situation SOON.
Claude Bristol dictated the first draft of his brochure in its entirety in less than five hours, without notes or references of any kind before him. He had no idea what he wrote during those five hours would create a sensation. Demand for his brochure, T.N.T. - It Rocks the Earth - published in 1932, was so great that he later expanded the brochure into a book. A third book was called TNT: The Power Within You.
There is no question Claude Bristol felt believing added "plus value" to our lives. Bristol was a soldier in World War 1 in France and Germany, became a newspaper man who also spent years studying the power of belief, and later became a highly successful investment banker.
"You must have a clear pattern drawn in your mind. What is your exact goal?" Bristol asked his readers. "Wealth, can you fix the amount in figures? What achievements? Not one out of a hundred people can answer these questions," he claimed.
Belief attracts that upon which it is directed. Job, in the Old Testament, even admitted "For the thing I greatly feared is come upon me." Our positive thoughts, Bristol believed, bring welcome results eventually, even if our beginnings are bumpy.
Bristol quotes scientist Sir Arthur Eddington who claimed he believed "the mind has the power to affect groups of atoms and even tamper with the odds of atomic behavior, and that even the course of the world is not predetermined by physical laws, but may be altered by the uncaused volition of human beings."
The message of Claude Bristol in The Magic of Believing? "That people charged with the vibrations of strong beliefs sometimes do the miraculous, things others often say are unbelievable."
Our conscious mind is the source of thought, our sub-attentive mind (what some call the subconscious) appears to be the source of power, and Bristol believed its existence was "beyond space and time" and that it is "a powerful sending and receiving station with a universal hookup." It also operates best when much of the chatter in our mind is quieted.
"The subconscious mind," Bristol claimed, "will not take the trouble to work for those who do not believe in it." For those who believe the Source of Power is MORE than that possessed by what I call the sub-attentive mind, look at Bristol's statement about its connection with a "universal hookup;" in other words, a power source outside itself into which it is plugged and draws on for energy to carry out its assignments.
When you or I say, "Yes, I can do that," it is as if - to quote the philosopher William James - the faith of a man or woman "acts on the powers above him [or her] as a claim and creates its own verification."
Money, Bristol says, "always sensitive, runs to cover when fear suggestions begin to circulate." The opposite of fear is what Dr. Robert Schuller calls "possibility thinking." "We influence events," Dr. Shailer Matthews then of the University of Chicago claimed, "by great desires" in which we believe.
Yes, there are instances in life where we believe we believed as much as believing was possible and, in our view, things went askew and we can't understand why. These are cases where the advice of a former Supreme Court justice, Justice Oliver Holmes, is worth noting: "Have faith and pursue the unknown ends," he advised a young man who asked for advice on a personal matter.
Bristol's salary as a beginning investment banker was quite small, yet he always kept before him a "mental picture" of wealth. When on the telephone with a client or during quiet times he doodled $$$$$ signs on bits of paper that were on his desk. He wanted his "suggestible mind" to get the message that prosperity was important to him. "It is the repetitions of affirmations that lead to belief," Bristol wrote. "And once that belief becomes a deep conviction, things begin to happen."
"What one thing do you desire above anything else?" Bristol asked the readers of The Magic of Believing. He recognized and admitted "It is very difficult for the average person to concentrate or hold a thought picture for any great period." Too much else going on in the mind and it distracts us from our dreams all too often. This is why Bristol advocated writing your goals, as well as your faith or affirmation statements, on three by five cards and reviewing these cards daily to impress the inner mind that you are serious and you mean business.
If you're a sales person, Bristol - a businessman himself - claimed "You must be thoroughly SOLD on the idea yourself before you can convince [or sell] to others."
Bristol indicated he received thousands of letters from business people who told him his technique of looking in the mirror, into your own eyes, breathing to calm the mind, and speaking their affirmations aloud had helped self-confidence immeasurably as well as their profits. "Your mirror shows you the person others see when they look at you," Bristol observed. "There is no better way than rehearsing [your presentation] before the mirror. Use it to build yourself into the person you wish to be."
"A person who desires riches must go where the riches are," Bristol told his readers. It's hard to amass a fortune on a desert island. "If you're after money, you must go where it [money] is being spent."
We have untapped powers but few, to quote the British novelist Colin Wilson, have yet to activate the higher circuits. Of one woman he knew, an Opal Whitely, Bristol, commenting on her powerful beliefs, says "It was uncanny, almost supernatural, the way circumstances suited themselves to her plans."
The Magic of Believing is a success classic. Fear-thought hold us back every time we start to get excited about launching something new. These anxieties not only create a lot of unwanted chemical changes in our own bodies, they keep away from us the things desired that would, when realized, make more of those wonderful wealth-achieving chemicals that make us feel so good.
Until you have the kind of faith and confidence in your future that Bristol writes about perhaps the advice of Dorothea Brande in her book Wake Up and Live is a good place to begin. "Act [and live] as if it were impossible to fail." If you're not a believer yet, try her advice for one day - which is a lot easier than saying do it for a lifetime - and see what happens. Bristol would say, if you pay close attention, you'll find, in ways you never imagined, that your belief is paying off.
"You attract," Bristol wrote, "that on which you steadily focus your imagination."
Once you attract it? That's when the real work begins! Are you up for the challenge of being challenged on a scale you never dreamed your dreams would ask of you? If your answer is yes, then may your answer to your dreams be, "I'm ready to do the work demanded of me," and may your approach to your customers be like the sign Bristol saw in an office building: "We do the impossible - any place, any time."
"You have to think big to be big," Bristol said - and his message resonated with people from all walks of life, from salespeople to performers, from housewives to politicians - to get a better job, increase their income, find a mate, and to even get a restful night's sleep. Bristol wrote that his files were filled with letters from people in all walks of life telling him how The Magic of Believing had changed their lives. "...many have used it in their business to double, treble, even quadruple their incomes."
During America's depression years Bristol used it to save his firm from financial ruin. "In that same period it came to me in a flash why my firm was going on the rocks - not because of the threatening outside happenings and events, but because of the mental attitude of our employees. We were all succumbing to mass fear thoughts:...with our own thoughts of ruin we were attracting the disaster to ourselves.
"It occurred to me that to save the firm and begin fighting the Depression itself, all I needed to do was reverse the thinking of every person connected with our organization. I set about doing that very thing." Frank Camp, a friend, declared that Bristol's efforts were followed "by the most remarkable transformation of individuals and organization as well."
Will the Magic of Believing work for YOU? Bristol's answer would be: you can only find out by trying it yourself. The Magic of Believing, Bristol boldly claimed, was the EVIDENCE of things desired working their way toward us, and we better grab hold of belief in them while the opportunity is available.
