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Alter Your Life: A Life-Changing Biblical Meditation Program for Success, Health, and Prosperity
A rousing action program for
overcoming adversity and taking charge of life
-- by one of our century's greatest mystics. For unhappiness, frustration, loneliness, and other afflictions of the spirit, Dr. Emmet Fox prescribes a powerful remedy based on the life and message of Jesus. In Alter Your Life, Fox explains that these "dreary" problems are actually bad habits of mind -- habits from which we can free ourselves. "There is no necessity for anything but success, good health,prosperity, and an abounding interest and joy in life," Fox writes Through a series of brief meditations, Fox shows us how to exchange our bad habits of mind for the healthy ones demonstrated by Jesus. Based upon biblical texts, Alter Your Life offers a progressive, life-changing course designed for all readers, whether or not they have read a religious book before.
overcoming adversity and taking charge of life
-- by one of our century's greatest mystics. For unhappiness, frustration, loneliness, and other afflictions of the spirit, Dr. Emmet Fox prescribes a powerful remedy based on the life and message of Jesus. In Alter Your Life, Fox explains that these "dreary" problems are actually bad habits of mind -- habits from which we can free ourselves. "There is no necessity for anything but success, good health,prosperity, and an abounding interest and joy in life," Fox writes Through a series of brief meditations, Fox shows us how to exchange our bad habits of mind for the healthy ones demonstrated by Jesus. Based upon biblical texts, Alter Your Life offers a progressive, life-changing course designed for all readers, whether or not they have read a religious book before.
Paperback
First published December 31, 1950
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210 people want to read
About the author
Emmet Fox
199 books205 followersEmmet Fox was a New Thought spiritual leader of the early 20th century, famous for his large Divine Science church services held in New York City during the Depression.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
October 28, 2018
Για τους λάτρεις του είδους , το προτείνω ανεπιφύλακτα.. Εξαιρετική ερμηνεία χωρίων της Βίβλου από μία πιο "εναλλακτική" σκοπιά και επί της ουσίας χριστιανική, κατά την άποψη μου. Το μόνο " αρνητικό" του συγκεκριμένου βιβλίου θεωρώ ότι είναι τα 2 τελευταία κεφάλαια τα οποία επί της ουσίας βρήκα εντελώς άσχετα τόσο με το περιεχόμενο όσο και με το πνεύμα του βιβλίου, αλλά οκ ( ήθελε να τα πει και αυτα και τα είπε 😛 ) . Κατά τα άλλα , προτεινω , Έμετ Φοξ για τις δύσκολες, απαισιόδοξες ημέρες 😝😊
November 7, 2013
The brilliant and penetrating analysis of spiritual matters is clearly demonstrated by New Thought author Emmet Fox. His discussions on the stories of the Bible offer the reader amazing insight in very plain and easy to understand language. The impact books such as Alter Your Life have had on spiritual thought is tremendous. Alter Your Life is among the best of the books written by Emmet Fox.
http://www.returnoftheway.com/
January 20, 2018
The key to life , this book goes everywhere with me! I read it over and over again! ❤️
January 3, 2022
FOR: I'm a master's student writing my thesis on Law of Attraction (LoA) and connection to Jewish texts. This book is one of the many early New Thought movement (NTM) texts I've read for reference (it's not Jewish). I'm working from an early 1930s 1st edition text, so page numbers may be different for you if you have a more recent print.
This book is both a bridge book between early NTM writings and a pre-Prosperity Gospel piece. The fact that he comes a few years before (H.T.) Hamblin puts him as one of the earliest in this area. Fox was Irish but emigrated to the US early on and became a speaker/preacher in the Religious Science movement. In the vein of many early 20th century Protestant-adjacent pieces, this book is overtly antisemitic and supersessionist in places, but not creative in being so (so not really dangerous in the scheme of things). Anything included in that vein is basically a repeat of Pauline sources, and with one notable exception (saying Jews are stuck in Age of Aries instead of being with everyone else in the Age of Aquarius, as evidenced by the fact we are attached to the ram’s horn that we still blow on holidays…). Jews aren’t the only targets, however, as Fox is an equal opportunity disliker of things not Protestant or Religious Science adjacent. He says that ‘Eastern’ philosophies are ‘essentially pessimistic’ and also discredits Christian Orthodoxy and Catholicism. We can't really read older text through modern lens, this part is more for information to someone unsuspecting.
Where Fox IS very useful is that he is quite creative in exegetical work blending LoA in with Biblical interpretation. This book is a series of essays and sermons delivered mostly in NYC in the early 1930s. Fox is particularly interested in economic depression and the power of New Thought/LoA to overcome it. He suggests meditation on the fact that the ‘Great Creative Life Force of the Universe’ has already provided, links God saying that creation is ‘very good’ to the fact that that is reality and anything else we are experiencing is maybe physically but not spiritually true (this seems a ‘non truth’ but actually paves the way for questioning, which other early LoA, or any LoA, authors rarely do), and similar. His explanation of the LoA at work, and the need in general for New Thought/reframing is that ‘the body cannot experience anything that does not first appear in the mind’ and relatedly that ‘the body cannot entertain any conviction without its effect appearing upon the body’ (p. 65). In effect, we think things that then become, even in relation to our own bodies, so how much more in the world. Where he differs from later LoA writers is that it is not necessarily true. It doesn’t mean that everything I think comes to reality, just that there is an effect physically sometimes, with strong conviction. He lays the groundwork for faith healing to be linked to material wealth, but plays it safe on the side of ‘change how you’re seeing things,’ not that things aren’t empirically as they are. One interesting deviation in this text is that his reframing takes the mantra of ‘things are thoughts,’ not ‘thoughts are things,’ which is the usual LoA teaching (they seem the same at face value but are not). Fox teaches that we create by thinking, but that we can also un-create by thinking differently. He has no issue (except in one place where he appears to contradict himself or changed his mind, in a late essay entitled ‘How to Maintain Peace,’ where he argues that thoughts of war bring about war) with thinking not just of the positive, but also of the negative things that we don’t want in a conscious effort to ‘erase’ them. This teaching differs from all LoA that I’ve come across.
Fox’s main conviction (like several later writers) is that God is love and so what we love most, we manifest (because God wants to be in relation with us). So, if we love God more than we love (or are attached to) our sickness or poverty, then those things cease to exist. The problem, as with all LoA, is that it blames the victim when the things do not come to pass.
For my own use: a piece of Fox’s ‘Meditation for Peace’ (p. 170) will be included in the appendix of liturgical resources. Fox’s descriptions of the American Dream (in his final essay on 210) as being connected to New Thought/LoA are worthy of note, and are of use to my thesis inasmuch as LoA is more than anything an American doctrine.
This book is both a bridge book between early NTM writings and a pre-Prosperity Gospel piece. The fact that he comes a few years before (H.T.) Hamblin puts him as one of the earliest in this area. Fox was Irish but emigrated to the US early on and became a speaker/preacher in the Religious Science movement. In the vein of many early 20th century Protestant-adjacent pieces, this book is overtly antisemitic and supersessionist in places, but not creative in being so (so not really dangerous in the scheme of things). Anything included in that vein is basically a repeat of Pauline sources, and with one notable exception (saying Jews are stuck in Age of Aries instead of being with everyone else in the Age of Aquarius, as evidenced by the fact we are attached to the ram’s horn that we still blow on holidays…). Jews aren’t the only targets, however, as Fox is an equal opportunity disliker of things not Protestant or Religious Science adjacent. He says that ‘Eastern’ philosophies are ‘essentially pessimistic’ and also discredits Christian Orthodoxy and Catholicism. We can't really read older text through modern lens, this part is more for information to someone unsuspecting.
Where Fox IS very useful is that he is quite creative in exegetical work blending LoA in with Biblical interpretation. This book is a series of essays and sermons delivered mostly in NYC in the early 1930s. Fox is particularly interested in economic depression and the power of New Thought/LoA to overcome it. He suggests meditation on the fact that the ‘Great Creative Life Force of the Universe’ has already provided, links God saying that creation is ‘very good’ to the fact that that is reality and anything else we are experiencing is maybe physically but not spiritually true (this seems a ‘non truth’ but actually paves the way for questioning, which other early LoA, or any LoA, authors rarely do), and similar. His explanation of the LoA at work, and the need in general for New Thought/reframing is that ‘the body cannot experience anything that does not first appear in the mind’ and relatedly that ‘the body cannot entertain any conviction without its effect appearing upon the body’ (p. 65). In effect, we think things that then become, even in relation to our own bodies, so how much more in the world. Where he differs from later LoA writers is that it is not necessarily true. It doesn’t mean that everything I think comes to reality, just that there is an effect physically sometimes, with strong conviction. He lays the groundwork for faith healing to be linked to material wealth, but plays it safe on the side of ‘change how you’re seeing things,’ not that things aren’t empirically as they are. One interesting deviation in this text is that his reframing takes the mantra of ‘things are thoughts,’ not ‘thoughts are things,’ which is the usual LoA teaching (they seem the same at face value but are not). Fox teaches that we create by thinking, but that we can also un-create by thinking differently. He has no issue (except in one place where he appears to contradict himself or changed his mind, in a late essay entitled ‘How to Maintain Peace,’ where he argues that thoughts of war bring about war) with thinking not just of the positive, but also of the negative things that we don’t want in a conscious effort to ‘erase’ them. This teaching differs from all LoA that I’ve come across.
Fox’s main conviction (like several later writers) is that God is love and so what we love most, we manifest (because God wants to be in relation with us). So, if we love God more than we love (or are attached to) our sickness or poverty, then those things cease to exist. The problem, as with all LoA, is that it blames the victim when the things do not come to pass.
For my own use: a piece of Fox’s ‘Meditation for Peace’ (p. 170) will be included in the appendix of liturgical resources. Fox’s descriptions of the American Dream (in his final essay on 210) as being connected to New Thought/LoA are worthy of note, and are of use to my thesis inasmuch as LoA is more than anything an American doctrine.
May 26, 2022
Alter Your Life is awesome!
Old becomes new. Gives you a lot to look forward to. Encouragement big time! Visions and dreams becomes real if that’s what you want.
Old becomes new. Gives you a lot to look forward to. Encouragement big time! Visions and dreams becomes real if that’s what you want.
April 2, 2011
I highly recommend this book to every American. He addresses the 'American Dream' and the symbolism on money in a way that inspires my being. It is all good, but, the last 15 percent of the book, for me, was awe inspiring.
July 28, 2010
and read everyday
Currently reading
March 10, 2011Love Emmet Fox!
June 24, 2015
This author is so out there. I can never figure out what he trying to say.
October 23, 2012
The New Thought people still have things to contribute.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews