As A Man Thinketh by James Allen

The self-help genre is not a new one at all. In fact, we keep uncovering books that are old enough to be in the public domain and were supposed classics of their day. Dudes like James Allen and Russell Conwell were just their generation’s Deepak Chopra and Tony Robbins. Wallace D. Wattles’s The Science of Getting Rich is basically the 1908 version of Rhonda Bynes’s The Secret.

Long before we had podcasts and an entire industry built around motivational speaking, writers were exploring many of the same questions we are still asking ourselves today: How do our thoughts shape our lives? What separates successful people from unsuccessful ones? If we change our mindset, can we change our circumstances?

Many of these early works that can now be found in the public domain were quite influential in their time. If Brené Brown occupies that space today, James Allen and his contemporaries filled a very similar role for readers one hundred years ago.

First published in 1903, James Allen’s slim volume As A Man Thinketh makes the argument that our character and our habits — and ultimately our entire lives — are totally shaped by our thoughts. If that message sounds familiar to you, it’s probably because you’ve heard it over generations of self-help talk.

Allen’s influence still rings out today, with ideas that shaped the New Thought movement. Wattles’s The Science of Getting Rich is an extension of many of the same things Allen talked about, and Rhonda Byrne has acknowledged Wattles as a huge influence on The Secret. These books can be pretty different from each other, but they all share the conviction that our inner lives play a very powerful role in shaping the direction of our outer lives.

Many of these kind of positive thinking self-help books can wander into toxic positivity, with this idea that good vibes alone can overcome the many structural and economic and social forces that make up our environment and how we’re able to respond to its stresses. But fans of this book would say that misses the point. Allen preaches cultivating discipline and responsibility and purposeful action because those kind of thoughts become habits and our habits shape our character — and our character influences the lives we ultimately create.

Whether you read it as philosophy or practical advice or a historical milestone in the evolution of self-help literature, As A Man Thinketh remains one of the foundational works of the personal development genre. It’s been more than 120 years since it was first published, and its enduring popularity suggests that the desire to improve ourselves is as timeless as ever.

Click on the book cover to buy As A Man Thinketh by James Allen!

Cover Image Credit: Background image is part of the public domain per Wikimedia Commons. The cover image of James Allen was made by ChatGPT, to be completely honest with you, and the prompt was based on his picture that is part of the public domain per Wikimedia Commons.

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