Taking Action

Thought is the creative power, or the impelling force which causes the creative power to act; thinking in a Certain Way will bring riches to you, but you must not rely upon thought alone, paying no attention to personal action. That is the rock upon which many otherwise scientific metaphysical thinkers meet shipwreck – the failure to connect thought with personal action.

By thought you can cause the gold in the hearts of the mountains to be impelled toward you; but it will not mine itself, refine itself, coin itself into double eagles, and come rolling along the roads seeking its way into your pocket.

Your pocketbook is not going to be transformed in to a Fortunatus’s purse which shall always be full of money, without effort on your part.

This is the crucial point in the science of getting rich; right here, where thought and personal action must be combined. There are very many people who, consciously or unconsciously, set the creative forces in action by the strength and persistence of their desires, but who remain poor because they do not provide for the reception of the thing they want when it comes.

By thought, the thing you want is brought to you; by action you receive it.

From The Science of Getting Rich
by Wallace D. Wattles.

I suppose it’s kind of like having an apple orchard. You plant the trees, the weather cooperates, and eventually there are apples. But unless you harvest and use them, they are just bird food. And if you aren’t ready to go out and get them when they are ripe, and if you don’t can, cook, eat, or sell them, those apples will still end up being bird food.