A piece of magnetized steel will attract only the products of iron ore. It has no affinity for wood, copper, rubber, or any other substance that has not iron in it. When you were a boy you found that your little steel magnet would pick up a needle but not a match or a toothpick. It would draw to itself only that like itself. 

          Men and women are human magnets. Just as a steel magnet drawn through a pile of rubbish will pull out only the things which have an affinity for it, so we are constantly drawing to us, establishing relations with, the things and the people that respond to our thoughts and ideals.

          Our environment, our associates, our general condition are the result of our mental attraction. These things have come to us on the physical plane because we have concentrated upon them, have related ourselves to them mentally; they are our affinities, and will remain with us as long as the affinity for them continues to exist in our minds.

          Your thoughts, your viewpoints, your conception of what your status and position in life will be, your ideal of your future, will draw you exactly to that plane like a lodestone. Focus your mind, your predictions, your expectations on poverty, failure and wretchedness; banish ambition, hope, expectation of good things, and give full sway in your mentality to fear, worry, doubt, anticipation of evil, and the ego magnet will draw you unerringly to squalid surroundings, to an in­ferior position, to association with persons of a lower order of mind on a meaner social plane.

          The great trouble with all of us who are struggling with unhappy or unfortunate conditions is, that we have separated ourselves in some way from the great magnetic center of creation. We are not thinking right, and so we are not attracting the right things.

          “Think the things you want.” The profoundest philosophy is locked up in these few words. Think of them clearly, persistently, concentrating upon them with all the force and might of your mind, and struggle toward them with all your energy.  This is the way to make yourself a magnet for the things you want. But the moment you begin to doubt, to worry, to fear, you demagnetize yourself, and the things you desire flee from you. You drive them away by your mental attitude. They can not come near you while you are deliberately separating yourself from them. You are going in one direction, and the things you want are going in the opposite direction.

          “A desire in the heart for anything,” says H. Emilie Cady, “is God’s sure promise sent beforehand to indicate that it is yours already in the limitless realm of supply.”

          No matter how discouraging your present outlook, how apparently unpromising your future, cling to your desire and you will realize it. Picture the ideal conditions, visualize the success, which you long to attain; imagine yourself already in the position you are ambitious to reach. Do not acknowledge limitations, do not allow any other suggestion to lodge in your mind than the success you long for, the conditions you aspire to. Picture your desires as actually realized, and hold fast to your vision with all the tenacity you can muster. This is the way out of your difficulties; this is the way to open the door ahead of you to the place higher up, to better and brighter conditions.

          When Clifton Crawford, the actor, started on his career in America, he played in one week performances in small towns and cities. One night he was told by a prominent member of the company that his work wasn’t much good, that he would never be successful, and had better go back home to Scotland. Notwithstanding this discouraging but well meant criticism and advice, young Crawford remained in America, continued in his profession and in a comparatively short time reached the coveted position of a Broadway “star.” After his first success in New York he had the satisfaction of meeting the friend who had advised him to return to his own country, and reminded him of the incident.

          Clifton Crawford won out because he related himself mentally to the thing he wanted, because he listened to the voice in his own soul rather than to the pessimistic predictions of outside voices.

 “Why has the heart restless yearnings
For heights and steps untrod?
Some call it the voice of longing
And others the voice of God.”

           That something within you which longs to be brought out, to be expressed, is the voice of God calling to you. Don’t disregard it. Don’t be afraid of your longings; there is divinity in them. Don’t try to strangle them because you think they are much too extravagant, too Utopian. The Creator has not given you a longing to do that which you have no ability to do.

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