Our Grandparents’ Teachers

“You are what you think all day long.”

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Then came that whole Dark Ages fiasco, but around the turn of the last century, the idea that thoughts equal power made a serious comeback.

The Law of Attraction faction was finding its legs when in 1903, James Allen wrote a best-seller called As a Man Thinketh, which argued that actions result from thought.

Napoleon Hill followed up in 1937 with his famous Think & Grow Rich, selling only 100 million copies. In it, he tells readers that, “Whatever the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve.”

Six words in Hill’s book, “We become what we think about,” inspired Earl Nightingale to write The Strangest Secret in 1957 that sold a million copies. Nightingale then founded the Nightingale-Conant corporation that today produces most of the audiobooks you listen to on your ride to work.

It would be fair to say then that this idea—that thoughts have power—is the foundation for today’s $10 billion personal development industry.