New Thought teachings . . . quickly found their way into the business world. Unity used to publish a magazine titled Good Business. Napoleon Hill, a newspaperman of humble background, undertook a famous twenty-year study of highly successful people in business and politics, at the instigation of steel magnate Andrew Carnegie. Carnegie gave him encouragement and introductions, but no money; yet Hill ended up a multimillionaire. His study led him straight to New Thought principles. Journalist Claude Bristol (The Magic of Believing, Dale Carnegie (How to Win Friends and Influence People, James Allen (As a Man Thinketh), and poets Ella Wheeler Wilcox and Edwin Markham, were among numerous writers either in New Thought or influenced by it.
New Thoughter and successful businessman Orison Swett Marden around the turn of the century established Success magazine, revived in recent years by insurance magnate and Positive Mental Attitude (PMA) promoter W. Clement Stone, a disciple of Napoleon Hill. Then as now, it deals with what are essentially New Thought principles for succeeding in business and in life. It frequently features life stories of people who have succeeded against enormous and daunting challenges of every sort: physical, financial, political, interpersonal. The emphasis is on the power of the mind: one's beliefs, coupled with a clear vision of what one wants, backed up by the strength of character to keep on keeping on and to be of service to others in some way. It's hard to scoff at multimillionaire successes who have done the impossible and/or come back from incredible setbacks. Businessmen and best-selling authors such as Robert Ringer, Tony Robbins, and Charles J. Givens went from rags to riches and back to rags repeatedly before they learned how to make prosperity stay around on a consistent basis. None of them makes any mention of New Thought, although Tony Robbins occasionally quotes Emmet Fox or Orison Swett Marden. It doesn't matter what you call it as long as you live by it.
To New Thought: A Practical American Spirituality, from which the above material was taken.
To Anderson-Whitehouse New Thought
To New Thought Movement Home Page
Created March 13, 1997
by Alan Anderson
caa@gis.net
or aanderso@curry.edu
Phone: (781) 828-6965
Latest update (not of text) June 26, 1998
URL of this page: http://www.gis.net/~caa/business.html
Visits since March 13, 1997
