The Power of Concentration

Name: The Power of Concentration
Author: Theron Q. Dumont

Theron Q. Dumont191621 Chapters3h 12m read

Start Book

Read the summary

In brief

The Power of Concentration (1916) by Theron Q. Dumont is a New Thought manual of practical mental training, arranged as twenty lessons with exercises. Concentration is the will directed to one purpose, and through its disciplined use every person can master habit, steady the mind and bring desire into realization.

Key ideas

Concentration is nothing other than willing to do a certain thing.
The will grows by willing and can be trained as a muscle is trained.
Thought is a living force that shapes body, character and circumstance.
Any habit yields to steady concentration on its opposite.
The desire to do implies the ability to do.

Your attention scatters across a hundred small demands, and with it goes the force that could carry you wherever you choose. Concentration is that force, and it answers to the will. What Dumont asks of you first, before any exercise, is simpler and harder than it sounds.

This Book Is: Concentration · Will Power · Self-Mastery

Chapters

IntroductoryDwarfs can do the work of giants, and giants only the work of dwarfs, depending on a single power you can train.4 min

ILesson I. Concentration Finds the WayTwo natures pull at every man, one forward and one back, and a single supreme effort of will settles which one wins.10 min

IILesson II. The Self-Mastery: Self-Direction Power of ConcentrationAn engine with all its valves open stops dead on the track, and so does a mind that spends its steam on every impulse.19 min

IIILesson III. How to Gain What You Want Through ConcentrationA messenger boy wore a button marked "P" for years and kept its meaning secret, while his father asked each night what he had done.4 min

IVLesson IV. Concentration, the Silent Force That Produces Results in All BusinessA condemned prisoner in a darkened room bled almost nothing, yet was dead by morning from the dripping he believed was his blood.6 min

VLesson V. How Concentrated Thought Links All Humanity TogetherEvery mood you hold draws its own kind to you along unseen currents, and a plan built on wrong vibrates itself apart.8 min

VILesson VI. The Training of the Will to DoA frail farmer's wife hauls from her burning house what three men later struggle to lift, and the same force waits in you.9 min

VIILesson VII. The Concentrated Mental DemandLittre began his great French dictionary past the age of sixty, and the power behind it is a demand you can learn to make.8 min

VIIILesson VIII. Concentration Gives Mental PoiseThe name you strain to recall arrives the moment you stop trying, and the reason lies in a quiet mind.9 min

IXLesson IX. Concentration Can Overcome Bad HabitsEvery fold in a sheet of paper leaves a crease, and every act you repeat bends your nerves the same way.10 min

XLesson X. Business Results Through ConcentrationA business must be seen expanding in your mind before it takes tangible shape, and fret, not work, is what exhausts the nerves.11 min

XILesson XI. Concentrate on CourageIt takes no more energy to be courageous than cowardly, and courage, like cowardice, spreads from one person to a whole army.7 min

XIILesson XII. Concentrate on WealthA lecturer on Prosperity had been broke for ten years, and half an hour was enough to show him why poverty kept him company.8 min

XIIILesson XIII. You Can Concentrate, But Will You?Most people are beaten before they start, because they look for obstacles instead of the means to overcome them.6 min

XIVLesson XIV. The Art of Concentrating by Means of Practical ExercisesA glass of water at arm's length, a clock's second hand, a single flower's scent: the plainest tasks become the training ground of the will.31 min

XVLesson XV. Concentrate So You Will Not ForgetA letter forgotten in a husband's pocket shows how memory fails at the very moment a purpose is formed.5 min

XVILesson XVI. How Concentration Can Fulfill Your DesireA man started in business with thirteen cents and no credit, and his debtors paid on the very day he willed them to.8 min

XVIILesson XVII. Ideals Developed by ConcentrationA man changeable as the weather is a rudderless boat, and his drifting begins each time he lets go of an ideal.4 min

XVIIILesson XVIII. Mental Control Through CreationInventors foresaw speaking a thousand miles without wires; the projected thought, you learn, should travel more easily still.10 min

XIXLesson XIX. A Concentrated Will DevelopmentTen minutes before a door-knob and a slow deck of playing cards build a will that keeps every resolution you make.14 min

XXLesson XX. Concentration ReviewedSaying "I can't" takes exactly the same effort as saying "I can," and that choice decides which army you march in.10 min

Through concentrated thought power you can make yourself whatever you please.

About This Book

Every seeker comes at last to the same question: why does the clear intention of the morning so often scatter before evening? The answer lies at the threshold this book guards. The power to hold the mind upon one thing, steadily and by choice, is the master key that opens success, health and self-mastery alike. Without it the finest gifts leak away. With it, ordinary faculties gather into a force that shapes character, habit and destiny.

Dumont teaches that the will is the deciding power in a life, and that it is trained the way any power is trained, through patient and graded practice. The way to the mind begins with the body. Restless hands, a wandering gaze and nervous habits drain the nerve force that should be kept and directed. As the body learns stillness, the mind follows. Poise grows from that conservation, and magnetism grows from poise, a quiet strength others feel before a word is spoken. The exercises are simple and exact, and they ask to be done daily. Each evening the student examines the day honestly and takes note of where attention was held and where it was lost.

Beyond discipline lies the deeper teaching. Thought is a real force. It draws to itself what is like it, and over time it gives form to a person's surroundings. The images held steadily in mind, joined to sincere desire, become creative patterns that take shape in the world as surely as seed becomes harvest. Dumont shows how a bad habit is broken by turning the mind toward its opposite, because what the attention dwells on grows stronger. Courage and faith displace fear and doubt in the same way. Minds also act on one another, so that thought held together in common purpose becomes a living power in human affairs.

All of this rests on a foundation that cannot be moved. The source of power is not the restless personality but the higher self, the Infinite within, met in the silence that concentration makes possible. And only right action endures, because universal justice returns to every person what they have sent out. Dumont places concentration in the service of that law and of nothing lesser. The reader who takes up these pages with steady practice will find a discipline to keep for a lifetime, not merely an idea to admire.

About the Author

Theron Q. DumontTheron Q. Dumont is a pen name of William Walker Atkinson (1862-1932), the American New Thought writer and publisher. Under this name he wrote practical manuals on concentration, will and personal magnetism, most famously The Power of Concentration (1916).

More like this

Your Forces and How to Use Them

1912 · 5h 57m read

You carry more energy than you will ever spend, and most of it runs to waste through scattered thought and borrowed desire. There is a ruling principle within you that can gather every force and direct it, and it stands nowhere you have yet been looking.

Your Invisible Power

1921 · 1h 31m read

You already hold a picture of the life you want, and it is shaping your days whether you tend it or not. Genevieve Behrend, the only personal pupil of Thomas Troward, teaches how that picture is drawn into form from Universal Substance, and names the single power able to hold it back.

In Tune with the Infinite

1897 · 4h read

You have looked outward for the cause of your troubles and the source of your strength. Trine holds that both were always within, and that one realization, lived rather than merely believed, reorders health, peace, power, and plenty. What that realization is, and how it is kept, he makes plain.

About this edition

First published 1916.

Because of when it was first published, this text is in the public domain in the United States.

Presented as a reading edition by Better Thought. Typography, chapter titles and glossary links are ours. The words are the author's.

The Master Key Experience

The books teach the law.
The Experience trains it.

A 24-week guided journey through the laws of mind: weekly gates, lessons drawn from the texts in this library, and a living companion that remembers you.

Begin the Experience

Free · Begin without an account