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As a man Thinketh
Men's Personal Growth, Personal Growth, Spirituality
As himself Allen describes, “It shows how, in his own thought-world, each man holds the key to every condition, good or bad, that enters into his life, and that, by working patiently and intelligently upon his thoughts, he may remake his life, and transform his circumstances. …and it can be carried in the pocket.
- Release Date
- 1903
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Our Review
About the book
James Allen’s short 1903 essay argues that a person’s thoughts shape their character, circumstances, health and achievements. Divided into brief chapters, it encourages readers to cultivate disciplined, purposeful and serene thinking as the foundation of a good life.
Our review
A slim, quietly influential essay that helped launch a century of self-help, readable in less than an hour.
Brevity is this book’s great virtue. In a handful of short chapters, Allen makes his case that our habitual thoughts become our character and eventually our circumstances, using the image of the mind as a garden that must be tended. The tone is calm, earnest and almost meditative, and many readers return to it as a reset. Its influence on later self-help writing is enormous, which makes it worth reading as a source.
The weakness is the flip side of that conviction. Allen suggests that circumstances flow almost entirely from thought, which can sound like blaming people for poverty or illness. The Victorian prose is formal and the ideas are repeated more than developed. Taken as a short reflection on self-discipline and attitude rather than a full philosophy of life, it still has a gentle, lasting power.
What we loved
- Extremely short and easy to revisit
- Calm, reflective tone
- Historically important to the self-help genre
Keep in mind
- Overstates how much thought controls circumstance
- Old-fashioned prose with repetitive ideas
Read it if you like
readers of The Magic of Thinking Big, fans of Napoleon Hill, anyone wanting a quick reflective read
The verdict
A tiny classic worth an hour of your time, as long as you read its bold claims with some healthy skepticism.
