The Master Key System: Your Step-by-Step Guide to Using the Law of Attraction

by Charles F. Haanel

We cannot express powers that we do not possess. The only way by which we may secure possession of power is to become conscious of power, and we can never become conscious of power until we learn that all power is from within.

Harmony in the world within means the ability to control our thoughts, and to determine for ourselves how any experience is to affect us.

All possession is based on consciousness. All gain is the result of an accumulative consciousness. All loss is the result of a scattering consciousness.

Every thought therefore is a cause and every condition an effect; for this reason it is absolutely essential that you control your thoughts so as to bring forth only desirable conditions.

Eliminate, therefore, any possible tendency to complain of conditions as they have been, or as they are, because it rests with you to change them and make them what you would like them to be.

Wealth is a product of labor. Capital is an effect, not a cause; a servant, not a master; a means, not an end.

Wealth should then never be desired as an end, but simply as a means of accomplishing an end. Success is contingent upon a higher ideal than the mere accumulation of riches, and he who aspires to such success must formulate an ideal for which he is willing to strive.

What is the first law of success? Service.

Men have, heretofore, generally used the word “God” to indicate this Universal, creative principle; but the word “God” does not convey the right meaning. Most people understand this word to mean something outside of themselves; while exactly the contrary is the fact. It is our very life. Without it we would be dead. We would cease to exist. The minute the spirit leaves the body, we are as nothing. Therefore, spirit is really all there is of us.