PART 1 Review of Wallace D. Wattles The Science of Getting Rich on ”Prosperity Consciousness” Introduction

Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning

“A person’s right to life means his right to have the free and unrestricted use of all the things which may be necessary to his fullest mental, spiritual and physical unfolding —in other words, his right to be rich.” Wallace D. Wattles

On today's episode #314 we will cover:

✔ The hidden meaning behind Wallace D. Wattles' The Science of Getting Rich

✔ What is Prosperity Consciousness vs Poverty Consciousness, and how do YOU think?

✔ Why do Giver's Gain?

✔ How Can We Best Prepare to Learn the Timeless Principles in this book that was published in 1910?

“Wait a minute, are you telling me that we are going to cover the importance of developing a prosperity mindset on this podcast?” you ask? How is this related to neuroscience?

I’m going to say “yes, we are” and I’ll tie the importance of this to science with Mark Waldman and Chris Manning’s Book Neurowisdom: The New Brain Science of Money, Happiness and Success[i] that focuses on helping people create more “wealth” in their lives. This book opens up in Chapter 1 by asking us to choose if we would pick happiness or wealth, and they said that 90% of the people they surveyed over the past decade actually picked happiness over wealth (Chapter 1, Neurowisdom) but the book goes on to explain that the newest economic research disagrees with this. They found that it’s really the other way around. “Wealth predicts happiness, and the more you make, the happier you actually become.” (Chapter 1, Neurowisdom).

This is not the main reason why I finally decided to cover Wallace D. Wattles’ The Science of Getting Rich on this podcast, but if the research says that “our wealth predicts our happiness” I thought that there is never a better time than now, to cover the seminar I sold in the late 1990s, that transformed my thinking from poverty consciousness, to prosperity. Now this didn’t happen overnight, or immediately. I’m going to share my journey over the past 25 years, along with all of the notes I took studying while this book, watching my own paradigms change slowly, and then watching how other people around me would use what they were learning for improved results in their life. Here’s the important part that I don’t want any of us to miss. Once we have learned to successfully use the principles we will be studying in this book ourselves, we can then take the focus off ourselves, and look for ways to give back to others. You will see that there are many messages within the pages of this book, and this one, is what I think to be THE MOST IMPORTANT.

I’m hoping that studying these timeless principles in this manner will help you the listener to connect either to my way of thinking, (someone who was raised with one parent who might have instilled poverty consciousness in your mind-or said things to you like “money doesn’t grow on trees” over the years, or those people I’ll use as examples who grasped prosperity thinking with ease, so that you can take the principles and fine-tune your own way of thinking, and acting, to achieve the results I know are possible for all of us. Once we have applied them in our own life, it will be time to look outside of ourselves and give back.

The Shortest Summary of The Science of Getting Rich

What’s the message behind the Deep Dive we are going to take into Wallace D. Wattle’s classic book on thinking, the book that describes how each of us shapes the events around us, creating much of the positive riches in our own lives? The book that Rhonda Byrne, creator of The Secret, said she stumbled across and has "never been the same?" The book that was behind one of the seminars I sold in the late 1990s when I worked in the motivational speaking industry with Bob Proctor from EP #66[ii]. I did see an article written by John Rogers[iii] that summarized the book and he got it right.

He said “Here’s the shortest summary of The Science of Getting Rich you’ll ever read: Think and act creatively to add value to others.” I would agree, but might change it a bit to say that this book we will be covering this month is all about how to “think and act creatively in your life first, and then look outwards, and see how you can help others.”

It all begins with understanding the syllabus that echoes throughout ALL the chapters in the book about how getting rich is the result of doing things in a certain way.

If you look at the scroll in the show notes, of this important syllabus, this was handed out in every seminar Bob Proctor conducted of The Science of Getting Rich and I mentioned it when we covered PART 3[iv] of Dr. Joe Dispenza’s work. Until this year, I would say that I had no idea what the syllabus meant. While I read it over and over again, from 1999 to this year, 2023, I couldn’t explain it to anyone, until I understood the Quantum World connecting Dr. Dispenza’s work and Dr. Dan Siegel’s, to the “thinking space” that Wallace Wattles describes.

Isn’t it amazing how we acquire wisdom? I can easily look at the syllabus now and connect it to the Quantum World (where all possibility exists), where time and space collapses and you can literally BECOME your dream. But it took me some time to gain this understanding. Stewart Edward White explains how AHA Moments of Learning can change us, in his poem where he shares:

“Curious how we acquire wisdom! Over and over again, the same truth is thrust under our very noses. We encounter it in action; we are admonished of it; we read it in the written word. We suffer the experience; we gradually assent to the advice; we approve, intellectually, the written word. But nothing happens inside us. Then, one day, some trivial experience or word or encounter stops us short. A gleam of illumination penetrates the depth of our consciousness. We see! Usually it is but a glimpse; but on rare occasions a brilliant flash reveals truth fully formed. And we marvel that this understanding has escaped us so long.”

Do you know what I mean? Have you ever heard something you knew was important, but it just didn’t click? (The same truth is thrust under our very noses)…until “one day some trivial experience or word or encounter stops us short.” You’ve got to know what I’m talking about here. Why do we see something NEW in the words we’ve heard over and over again, and weren’t ready to hear them? What is it that makes us “finally see…a brilliant flash…revealing truth fully formed?” What is this concept? Why does this happen? Have you ever heard “when the student is ready, the teacher will appear?” Just be OPEN as we cover this book. You might hear something you’ve heard over and over again in the past, but you’ve missed its significance somehow. Something that can CHANGE your entire world, and then those around you, once you’ve grasped and implemented it.

I’m going to suggest it’s the understanding of this syllabus that holds the “secret” to implementing the principles outlined in The Science of Getting Rich. If we can understand this syllabus, enough that we can LIVE IT in our daily life, then strange and marvelous things will begin to occur in our lives, with constant regularity. It will only be when we are LIVING these words, or “doing things in a certain way” that we will know we’ve got the meaning of this book. And what’s crazy to me is that the meaning of this book has taken me 25 years to understand. I’m hoping that my AHA Moment will help YOU, where ever you are in the world, to “think” and “act” in this certain way, that Wallace D. Wattles wrote about in 1910.

Welcome back to The Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast, where we connect the science-based evidence behind social and emotional learning (that’s finally being taught in our schools today) and emotional intelligence training (used in our modern workplaces) for improved well-being, achievement, productivity and results—using what I saw as the missing link (since we weren’t taught this when we were growing up in school), the application of practical neuroscience. I’m Andrea Samadi, an author, and an educator with a passion for learning and launched this podcast 5 years ago with the goal of bringing ALL the leading experts together (in one place) to uncover the most current research that would back up how the brain.

On today’s episode #314 we launch into a Deep Dive on Wallace D. Wattles The Science of Getting Rich. This book was first published in 1910, and while you will notice some examples will date the book (like in Chapter 6 Wattles picks something he thinks we might all want in our lives) when he says “If you really want a sewing machine..” as an example. While I’m sure there is someone out there listening, who would LOVE a sewing machine, if this example from 1910 doesn’t resonate with you, then just pick something else that does to go in its place.

You can also scan The Table of Contents and pick out some other places his book is not with the times. Chapter 15 is called “The Advancing Man” and can be changed by thinking of this chapter as “The Advancing Person” to show that in modern times, men and women are equally advancing in their fields of work.

While some of the examples Wattles picks will date the book to 1910, the main principles he writes about are timeless. What’s interesting to me is that The Science of Getting Rich preceded similar success books such like Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill (1937) that we covered in January of 2022[v]. In the 100 years since its publication, The Science of Getting Rich has gone through many editions, and remains in print from more than one publisher.

For today’s deep dive, I’m not going to cover the book chapter by chapter. You can pick up the book and read it yourself, or you can listen to the entire book on YouTube. I’ll connect these tools in the resource section. You can even buy the audio program of the seminar I used to sell, which is Bob Proctor’s[vi] version of the book, through his company’s website.

Or you can Google the book and find the audio online, or some other people’s versions and summaries of what the book is about. All of these ideas will get you the main concepts of this book, but for this deep dive, I’m going to cover the book the way Bob Proctor suggested we read it because it matters “how” we read The Science of Getting Rich for the principles to jump out at us in a way that we will NOT miss them.

I don’t want the ideas in these pages to escape you, as they have tremendous power. Not just for you, but for everyone YOU connect with in your future once you have begun to implement these ideas, and you are operating in “this certain way.”

Today I’m not going to just read through the chapters, but I’ll share the notes, insights and Aha moments I learned from selling this seminar (the first one was Denver in June 1999) with ideas, thoughts and suggestions to implement the timeless concepts in this book, into ALL OUR daily lives, so that these Success Principles can have the most impact on you and those you’ll interact with in your lifetime.

Let’s Begin Our Journey into the Pages of Wallace D. Wattles: The Science of Getting Rich.

I want to begin with the title…because the title alone could deter some of you who might think I’m going to cover a book that’s about creating wealth so that we can go out and buy more things that will make us happy. This isn’t at all what the book is about, nor what Wattles intended, but without an explanation, I’m sure many people would bypass this book and miss his intention.

Let’s Go Back to Denver, CO June 5th, 1999

This was the FIRST time I ever took this seminar, and thinking back, it was just 2 months after the Columbine Tragedy that shook our schools in the US to the core. I remember at this time I had just left the classroom, and wanted to find ways to help our next generation of students to “think” and “create” so after I had helped the attendees find their seats, I joined a table, opened up the pages the notebook that I’d carry with me 25 years later, and I began to study this “little green book” called The Science of Getting Rich.

What’s Your Money Mindset? Prosperity or Poverty?

I remember before we even got to chapter 1 of the book, or any of the words Wallace Wattles wrote about, we spent the WHOLE first evening on our Money Mindset, making sure we knew the difference between a Prosperity Consciousness, versus Poverty Consciousness. If you go to Amazon and type “prosperity consciousness” into the search field, you will see book after book written on the importance of having a money mindset.

Now remember that many of our beliefs, biases and prejudices lie underneath the water in the iceberg analogy, so you might “think” you’ve got a prosperity consciousness, but deep down, under the water there, you’ve got someone else’s programming (like a well-meaning parent who told you hey, money doesn’t grow on trees) and it’s going to take you some time to change these paradigms before you’ll be able to see the results I’m promising are possible with this book.

It’s here we would cover the power of understanding our paradigms with Joel Barker’s famous quote. “To ignore the power of paradigms is to put yourself at risk when exploring the future. Your future will look much the same as the past until you understand the power of your paradigms and what it takes to change them.”

Sitting at the table at my FIRST SGR Seminar, in 1999, I knew I had a lot of work to do with my programming and thinking. The most money I had ever earned was my teaching salary, that was great money for someone in their early 20s just starting out, but here I began speaking and networking with others who had begun to put these principles into practice.

I met people from all over the world at this seminar, from all different walks of life, and I could tell that we were all at different levels of thinking when it came to our prosperity mindset. I met truck drivers, teachers like me, business owners, inventors, writers, athletes and even some well-known celebrities, and everyone I met spoke about how they had over time, learned to create multiple sources of income with their work. We will cover this more in depth later, but I started to notice my paradigms around earning money, and saw them changing with each person I met. I talked about some of the lessons I learned from others during these seminars on EP67.[vii]

Once you have thought hard about your own money mindset, you will either resonate with me (someone who knew in those early days that I didn’t have a prosperity mindset) or you’ll connect more to others I’ll speak about who very clearly did. We are ALL at different places, but just recognize where you are, BEFORE we read the chapters of this book.

WHY IS THIS IMPORTANT?

Easily put, it’s because Giver’s Gain. Our goal in life is to not be good little “go-getters” but see how we can go out and “give” back to others. We can’t give to others if we have nothing to give, so learning these principles for ourselves is the FIRST step towards being about to provide more for others in your life. I remember one of the first events I attended where we were to meet as many people in the room, and we were to ask everyone we met first “how can I help YOU” before even once thinking about what I needed for myself. It was a powerful concept that Dr. Ivan Misner[viii] talks about in his book Infinite Giving.

I wonder, do you have a limit to what you would give someone else? Where is your money mindset when it comes to what you would give freely and openly to someone else? I’m sure we have all been conditioned by now to buy a coffee for someone in line behind you, and might even dish out $20 or $30 to give back to someone else. But would you give someone something really big, like a car? Now I’m not talking to Oprah here, as I’m sure we have all heard that she often gives away big presents to people. What about someone regular, like you and me? Or someone who’s not a celebrity as we’ve already determined that two people can have completely different levels of thinking here.

WOULD YOU GIVE SOMEONE A CAR?

Just think about this for a minute. There’s someone I know who owns a lot of cars. It’s just his thing. He has always loved cars. He loves buying them, fixing them, and just seems to have an eye for this type of thing. One day I said to him “why do you need so many cars? Would you ever consider giving one away to your good friend who I know would love one of these cars?” He didn’t say no, but looked at me with a strange look. Almost like he heard me, but didn’t know what to say. We talked about it for a bit and he said he would keep his eye open for something his friend might like. I know it sounds strange, hey, would you give someone you know a car? But I asked the question, and that was all I needed to do.

A few months later, he came to me and said “hey, I entered a raffle, and the Grand Prize was a black Camaro Sports car.” I looked at him, and said “Don’t you already have a Camaro (in red)?” and he said “yes, it’s so weird, I won the exact same car I already own in black” and he showed me a photo of the car, and explained this wasn’t a scam, but he had won this car, with a cash value of $90,000. Then he said “When I entered the raffle, I said a prayer that if I won the car, I would give one of my cars that I don’t need to my good friend” (the one I had said would LOVE to have one of his cars). So he won the car, and was telling me that he was going to find a way to deliver one of his cars to his friend on Thanksgiving Day as a surprise.

He picked a black IROC car that had meaning to his friend, and here’s a photo of his friend with his new car over Thanksgiving weekend.

When you learn to “think and act” in a certain way, strange and marvelous things will occur in your life, with constant regularity. This is just one example of someone who implemented the principles of The Science of Getting Rich and was able to give back to someone else immediately.

Reminding us that:

“God’s gift to you is more talent and ability than you will ever use in one lifetime. Your gift to God is to develop and utilize as much of that talent and ability as you can, in this lifetime. Steve Bow”

Whether you believe in God or not, I’m going to share the principles Wallace D. Wattles teaches in his book, The Science of Getting Rich to show all of us that there is tremendous value in the pages of this book, and on our next episode, we will dive into Chapters 4, 14 and 7 (in that order) as we begin to implement the concepts in this classic book of “thinking” and “acting” in a certain way, that has the potential to change your life and those around you.

REVIEW AND CONCLUSION:

To review and conclude Part 1 of Wallace D. Wattles The Science of Getting Rich, we have not even opened the pages of the book yet.

We have started with a thorough review of our mindset. Do we have a prosperity consciousness where we could conceive of giving something (like a car) to someone else, or do we live in a world of lack and limitation where we couldn’t possibility see how to do this?

My goal with this review of Wattles’ SGR book is to show us that we ALL have the same ability, the ability to “think” and “act” in a certain way, and that once we have learned to think and act this way for ourselves, we can then turn our focus onto others and add tremendous value and abundance to someone else’s life.

This is what I think is the SECRET message held within the pages of this book, and I look forward to unravelling more secrets to “thinking” and “acting” in this certain way as we make our way through this book.

REMEMBER: “There is a thinking stuff from which all things are made, and which is its original state, permeates, penetrates and fills the interspaces of the universe. A thought in this substance produces the thing that is imagined by the thought. A person can form things in their thought, and by impressing their thoughts upon the formless substance, can cause the thing they think about to be created.” There was no accident that person won a car, after praying about it, with the goal of giving a gift to his friend. This happened exactly as Wattles describes it would in this book.

Remember: Be careful what you think about, speak about, and pray about. Your thoughts hold more power than you might think.

I’ll see you next week for PART 2 of this series.

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RESOURCES:

YouTube Version of The Science of Getting Rich Audiobook https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBGQERyTPWk

The Science of Getting Rich by Wallace D. Wattles https://www.amazon.com/Science-Getting-Rich-Wallace-Wattles/dp/1490471766

REFERENCES:

[i]Neurowisdom: The New Brain Science of Money, Happiness and Success by Mark Robert Waldman and Chris Manning Published Jan.17, 2017 https://www.amazon.com/NeuroWisdom-Brain-Science-Happiness-Success/dp/1682303055

[ii]Neuroscience Meets SEL Podcast EPISODE #66 with Bob Proctor https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/the-legendary-bob-proctor-on/

[iii] https://wealthcreationmastermind.com/blog/summary-the-science-of-getting-rich/

[iv]Neuroscience Meets SEL Podcast EPISODE #310 PART 3 of our Review of Dr. Joe Dispenza’s Work https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/decoding-our-thoughts-how-to-build-a-better-future-with-the-power-of-our-mind-part-3-review-of-dr-joe-dispenza-s-work/

[v] Neuroscience Meets SEL Podcast EPISODE #190 PART 1 Think and Grow Rich DEEP DIVE https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/think-and-grow-rich-book-review-part-1-how-to-make-2022-your-best-year-ever/

[vi] https://www.proctorgallagherinstitute.com/programs/science-of-getting-rich

[vii]Neuroscience Meets SEL Podcast EPISODE 67 “Expanding our Awareness with a Deep Dive into Bob Proctor’s Most Powerful Seminars” https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/expanding-your-awareness-with-a-deep-dive-into-bob-proctors-most-powerful-seminars/

[viii] https://ivanmisner.com/tag/givers-gain/