Number Two

Mind Power
William Walker Atkinson (1862–1932)

The self-culture movement introduced the idea that people—no matter what their position in life—can develop themselves into greatness. William Atkinson was the one to demonstrate how it could be done.

Self-culture appealed to the philosophical, as theories about personal awareness impacted the nation. Among those, the most successful provided advice on ways to adjust and succeed in a fast and changing world. For instance, the idea of personal power and divinity in each person increased in popularity. Spiritual beliefs that were grounded in a metaphysical foundation—positive thinking, visualization, thoughts manifesting our reality, and the law of attraction, among others–formed a movement known as New Thought. New Thought, sometimes called“mind cure,” focused on the ability of an individual to control the subconscious mind, which William Walker Atkinson compares to an“immense warehouse into which goods are being carried and stored.”

Atkinson felt that the“selection of goods . . . being stored away” was important. He believed that this“subconscious mentality” could be trained, molded, and shaped“according to the will.” This New Thought provided individuals with the sense they could impact their environment. People could increase control over how they managed their lives and determine what opportunities would be advantageous to them; that power could be achieved through thought and mind control.

Rags-to-riches stories were prevalent. Fantastic stories about successful businessmen and bankers, whom we know as“robber barons” filled newspapers and magazines. Through their ingenuity, inventors became household names. Everyone wanted to have what America’s new role models seemed to have. Business advice was bountiful. However, it was the New Thought and Spiritualists who dominated the marketplace for both business and personal self-help.

And we have seen history repeat itself in the twenty-first century, where the law of attraction and positive thinking are ever-present in books, seminars, and pop culture in general. But digging deep beyond the surface of sound bites and chapter excerpts, we find the teachings of William Walker Atkinson, who used New Thought to heal himself psychologically and emotionally, and continued on to write several books on New Thought and mind power. In these writings we find a plethora of pragmatic instruction for how to engage in positive thinking in order to increase self-esteem, self-awareness, and achieve goals that were previously thought to