The Power of Concentration summary

Concentration is the ground of every accomplishment. Holding the whole thought on the idea being worked out lets a person use every constructive thought and shut out the destructive ones, and that is why success follows. Dumont tells the beginner not to lose heart when attention wanders at first. Few can hold a thought for long, and the mind turns more easily to what harms it than to what helps it, but conscious practice overcomes this. Concentration counts for more than natural fitness: dwarfs do the work of giants when they have it, and giants do only the work of dwarfs when they lack it. All real advancement comes from individual effort. Dumont offers tested exercises that bring improvement from the very start, and he holds that practiced concentration opens interior avenues to the everlasting laws of Being. The lessons are meant to awaken what already lies within the reader, not to be read passively. For this reason Dumont closes with a method of study: read a page, close the book, and recall its ideas until concentrated attention becomes a habit.

Every person carries two natures, one that urges advance and one that drags back, and the will alone decides which one rules. Dumont teaches that habit is acquired and can be broken the moment a person masters the "I will", and that opportunity never comes looking for us. We have to go and seek it. Books and lessons can only awaken possibilities. The reader must act on them. Dumont advises looking for the good in others, taking a monthly account of progress, and welcoming hard tasks, because difficulty develops the faculties. Success goes to the gritty worker who has learned that results come only from untiring concentrated effort. Dumont pictures a school for the training of failures, where the discouraged would be turned from despair to hope and shown the omnipotent source within them. In the end each person must regain the right road by his own resolve. Setbacks are incidents on the journey, and the way you weather the storm shows what you are made of.

Concentration is strength of mind. It rests on the self-regulating faculties that direct thought, feeling and bodily movement. When these faculties are untrained, impulse, appetite and emotion run free, the mind grows restless, and concentration fails. Dumont names three causes of poor concentration: weak motor centers, an impulsive and emotional mind, and an untrained mind. The last is the easiest to cure, by steady practice. He separates true concentration from the negative, absent state that many mistake for it, and he pictures the person as an engine whose energy leaks away through open valves of excitement, anger and useless movement. Every person has energy enough. What most lack is the engineer, the directing power that holds that energy to one purpose. Dumont then sets out daily disciplines: staying self-poised from morning to night, giving full attention when another speaks, breathing slowly and deeply, controlling the eyes, hands and voice, and putting steady love into the handshake. Because mind and body move together, static exercises that steady the nerves and muscles also steady the mind, and to master the body is to gain mastery of the mind.

Every desire can be fulfilled through concentration, but never through mere wishing, which shows weakness and spends as much brain force as worthy thought. Dumont teaches the reader to choose desires with care, hold a clear mental picture of the goal, and set the will on it until it takes form. He shows the spirit that wins in two pictures: the buyer who keeps asking until he finds the article no clerk had, and the messenger boy whose father pinned a button marked "P" on his coat and asked every night what he had done that day to come nearer to the presidency of the bank. Dumont then turns to the Interior law of force. The soul is a center of all-power, anything right is possible, and the omnipotent law within, joined to a just cause, can conquer the world. The lesson closes with a holding-thought of unconquerable reliance on the God within and the all-wise higher self.

Thought is a living force that shapes the body, the character, the environment and the company a person keeps. Dumont opens with the condemned prisoner who died of fear in a darkened room to show how fully thought can rule the body. He then turns to everyday life and business. Uncontrolled thought breeds worry and despondency and shows on the face like a reflection in a mirror. Good thoughts build and evil thoughts destroy. Thoughts travel over invisible wires, drawing to us people of the same mental caliber: high thinking brings trustworthy associates and earns confidence, while tricky thinking brings people who cheat. Invisible forces stand ready to help, like sunlight on a garden, unless we plant obstacles in their way. Dumont closes with the art of speaking wisely. Speech pulls the attention outward, and only those who have practiced in the real silence, where the forces rest in high potency, can speak with poise under trying circumstances. A holding-thought gives the reader's higher self full control in the silence.

Success is the fruit of certain moods of mind, and these moods are under the control of the will. Dumont teaches that the power to think is the link joining each person to the omniscient source. Deep concentration ties that power to thoughts of omnipotence, breaks down belief in limitation and drives out fear and anger. The power is safe only when it serves a just cause. Plans built on truth draw on the helpful universal currents. Plans built on injustice set up discordant vibrations and in time tear themselves down. By the law of affinity, every mood draws thoughts of its own kind, so worry brings failure and steady thoughts of Good, Truth and Success bring progress with less effort. Dumont gives an affirmation for meeting fear: you are not alone, but surrounded by invisible forces that help. He closes with practical counsel. Concentrate even on small acts like eating and walking, because a mind left to wander in little things will not gather itself for great ones. Act with calm deliberation, so that each act is clearly recorded on the subjective mind.

The Will To Do is the greatest power concerned with human accomplishment, and every person already has it. It is the inner energy behind every conscious act and every habit, and the way you direct it shapes your life. Dumont compares it to electricity, known only by its causes and effects, and tells of a frail farmer's wife who carried from her burning house loads that later took three men to move. The will gains its greatest force through concentration and voluntary attention held steadily on a single aim. Dumont then names the weaknesses that drain it: slowness in deciding, lack of initiative, lack of perseverance and decisions made in anger. For each he gives a remedy: quick decisions on small daily matters, rising at a fixed hour, definite plans carried through to the end, counting backwards to master the temper. He closes by teaching that no one has a monopoly on will power. It is mental energy gathered at one point, given to each in the measure he demands, and learning to use it matters more than developing the intellect.

The concentrated Mental Demand is the mightiest power in achievement. It cannot be seen or touched, yet it obeys laws and grows stronger with steady, systematic effort. Dumont teaches that when you want a thing so intently that every distracting thought falls away, and you keep up that singleness of purpose until the end is reached, you develop a Will able to accomplish whatever you wish. Two runners show the principle: the one with the greater intensity of desire wins, even by a fraction of an inch. The demand counsels you in doubt, gives courage in fear, chooses the tools and draws in outside forces. Thoughts that reach a friend before any word is spoken come from such demands. Once made, the demand must never falter, because doubt breaks the current between you and your desire, and force once lost is hard to win back. Dumont holds that any man of average ability can master his life if he does two things: he stays forever dissatisfied with what he has done, and he believes the word impossible was not meant for him. To those who have spent years in a rut, he answers with Littre, who began the great French dictionary when he was past sixty.

Concentration and poise grow from the same root: mental quiet. Wisdom passes from the subconscious storehouse into waking consciousness only when the mind is still, so Dumont teaches the reader to hold the thought "Peace" until it becomes a settled state, and to know himself as a spark of the Divine Being with infinite possibilities. He warns against the involuntary concentration that carries business cares into church, theater and bed, for a thought that rules you wears out the body. True concentration is attention given to a chosen thought, laid aside at will. From there Dumont turns to self-study: every negative habit of complaint and self-doubt is to be replaced at once by its positive opposite, since our mental conditions make us what we are. Feeling radiates as vibration, and others feel what you feel. Enthusiasm, cultivated in a daily hour of meditation, is the keynote of success. The chapter closes on a law of receptivity: hurry and strain shut off the interior flow of ideas, while a reposeful, receptive frame of mind lets them come.

All habits are governed, consciously or unconsciously, by the will, and any habit can be broken by strong concentration on its opposite. Dumont shows how repetition bends the nervous system the way a fold creases paper, so that each act makes the next one easier, and why most people drift through life carried by habits they have never examined. He gives five maxims for forming and breaking habits: make the nervous system an ally, begin with a strong initiative, allow no exception until the new habit is rooted, act at once on every resolution, and keep the faculty of effort alive with a little gratuitous exercise every day. Good habits save labor, prevent mistakes and give the trained hand its sureness in an emergency, while trivial habits must not be allowed to enslave. To overcome a bad habit, train the will and resolve to do its exact opposite, so that one habit replaces another, and fight it as earnestly as a physical enemy. Dumont closes by teaching that in stormy times, when wrong habits are most easily formed, the smallest effort is backed by a tremendous Power within, and that it is wiser to wait in silence for guidance from within than to act on impulse from without.

Business success comes from concentrated mental effort, never from chance or luck. Dumont teaches that every mental force grows stronger with use, so whatever you do well today builds the power you will need tomorrow. Desire is a creative force when it is pure, intense and sustained, but it has to be carried into action, one detail at a time, or it stays a dream. The successful attitude expects great things of yourself and of others. It relies on its own judgment, decides firmly and keeps going with steady effort instead of spasmodic spurts. Dumont holds that fret, worry and suspense wear out the nerves, not the work itself, and that weariness in work is a sign of being out of harmony with it. Each day should be planned and should mark an advance. Every enterprise must first be seen expanding in the mind before it takes material form, and the natural leader draws to himself, by mental attraction, the ideas he needs. The lesson closes with a call to take on responsibility, since the higher self never winces and its powers appear when difficult tasks are faced.

Courage is the backbone of man and the Will To Do. It concentrates the mental forces on the task at hand and draws to itself every quality of strength, while cowardice scatters those forces and invites failure. Dumont teaches that courage costs no more energy than fear and comes by right training. You claim it by belief, by affirmation and by use: cast off fear-thoughts the instant they come, hold the thought "I am courageous," and look on every task within your power as a possibility. No one else can judge what you are able to do, and giving way to another's influence leaves you directed rather than directing. Most great achievements came after they had been shown to be impossible. Dumont closes with counsel on depression and melancholy. These are states of ignorance in which the thought faculties draw the wrong force-currents, and you overcome them by turning toward the higher self and fixing the will on happy subjects.

It was never intended that man should be poor. Wealth rightly gained broadens the life and lets a person uplift himself and humanity, while wealth taken unjustly is a misuse of one's forces. Dumont teaches that the first and last step toward wealth is to surround yourself with good influences: good thought, good health, a cultured home and business setting, and associates of large caliber. Hard work and saving alone do not make anyone rich. What is needed is to see possibilities, reflect, and keep improving one's methods by concentrated effort. Dumont tells of a lecturer on Prosperity who had been broke for ten years, and shows him that his poor dress, poor surroundings and belief in his own ill fate drew poverty to him, because thought is as real a force as electricity and like attracts like. A fair exchange in every dealing is required, since what we take from others will be taken from us. The chapter closes with the image of an engine: every average brain holds the energy to climb past the word impossible, and hope, self-confidence and determination supply the spark that sets it working.

Everyone can concentrate. Whether you will is up to you, and far more ability lies unused than used. Dumont names energy and the will to succeed as the two things success cannot do without, and nothing replaces either. Favorable conditions are made, not waited for. Obstacles give way to perseverance, and difficulties that look hard in advance often turn out easy once you meet them. Most people are beaten before they start because they look for obstacles rather than for ways past them. Drawing on Goethe and Victor Hugo, Dumont teaches that people lack will, not strength. He calls work the great builder of courage, asks the reader to see the present position as a stage and not a resting place, and to stay alert for opportunity, since we attract what we set our minds on. When the call to responsibility comes, the one who is sure of himself and gives it his whole attention comes to the front.

Attention works like the sun's rays. Scattered, it warms. Gathered through a glass, it burns. Dumont opens by holding a single thought, health, against every intruder, and teaches that the images you form are the patterns your life follows. Deep concentration links you with the creative spirit of the universe and opens the supra-consciousness, where cosmic intelligence is received. The path there is practical and graded. First the body learns to obey the mind: you sit still, hold out an arm, steady a glass of water, open and close the fist slowly, and drop every useless gesture. Then the training moves to the senses and the inner life: picking out one scent from many, following the heartbeat and the flow of blood, inducing sleep by gazing at calm water, calling up heat or cold, breathing the Eastern way. It ends in conduct and character: mastering worry, temper and the urge to gossip, reading and writing back what was read, breaking habits by speaking to the real self, and finally the concentration of faith, which pictures what is wanted as already yours. Dumont insists that dull objects train attention best, and that self-distrust ends when you turn to the higher self, which never doubts.

Forgetting is a failure of concentration at the moment a purpose is formed. We remember only what makes a deep impression, and the impression deepens when attention rests on the purpose and the purpose is tied to related ideas. Dumont gives the example of a husband who pockets his wife's letter without a thought, and of an errand to Mr. Smith fixed in mind by picturing the street corner where one will turn. The mind follows laws of association: ideas that enter together return together, so the sight of the linked object calls back the errand. Practiced as a habit, this makes memory a dependable asset in daily work. Dumont then sets an exercise of studying a picture, recalling it with closed eyes, and correcting every error until the mental image matches the original. The lesson widens to the inner sense of listening, which nature awakens and civilization dulls. The child who pauses and goes still over a hard problem, the doctor who waits on the symptoms, and the author who holds his plot all receive illumination through quiet concentration.

The desire to do implies the ability to do. Every natural desire can be realized, because the Infinite does not create wants it cannot supply. Dumont teaches that the power to fulfil desire lies within, in the Infinite that is reached in the silence, and that it helps only those who help themselves. The method is concentration. First form a clear Mental Image of what you want. That image becomes a thought-seed, drawing related thoughts, plans and helpers to it for as long as the desire stays keen. Dumont prescribes five minutes a day of single-minded thought on the aim, with every other thought shut out, and the habit of writing out your thoughts on what lies nearest your heart. Your desire must be good for you and do no harm to another, and doubt and fear must be kept out of the mind. As the inventor and the architect show, everything is created mentally first. Dumont closes with a man who built a large business from thirteen cents through belief and hard work, and with the words of Jesus on praying as though you had already received.

Everything is first created in the mind, and the ideals you hold today shape the life you will live tomorrow. Dumont teaches that every person is an idealist, that controlling your thoughts makes you a creator, and that concentration is the means by which ideals become material actualities. Your past ideals determine your present, so the future must be prepared now. A man who changes his ideals is like a rudderless boat, and each time you let an ideal be shattered, as when a resolve to keep your poise gives way to anger, your will is weakened. Holding fast to the ideal until it becomes a mental habit builds will-power and success. Ideals come to us from the unseen spirit as silent whisperings out of the silence, so noble thoughts are to be sought within rather than in books. Dumont closes with firm counsel: wishing never carries a man over the fence; he must climb, study his weaknesses, criticise rather than pity himself, and count upon himself alone.

Concentrated mental control holds a hidden power stronger than physical force. Thought rightly controlled and projected goes out from one mind and shapes the work and spirit of others. Dumont begins at a banquet of inventors who foresee wireless speech across a thousand miles, and he holds that the projected thought should pass from person to person even more easily. He shows this force already at work in business. A well-ordered company carries an atmosphere of high workmanship. A letter succeeds through the spirit it breathes. A leader joins his people into one purpose, each like a spoke in a big wheel. The same power can be sent to a friend or relative, picturing him successful and commanding his weaknesses to be replaced by strength. No one stays neutral to the mental forces of his surroundings: an environment that does not help will harm, solitude starves the mind, and like attracts like. Dumont closes by urging the reader to believe in mental control, study it and use it, since these psychic forces will direct the lives of generations to come.

The will grows by willing, and it can be trained as surely as a muscle is trained by exercise. Dumont gives two graded six-day exercises. In the first, the student sits still and looks at a door-knob for ten minutes, driving out stray thoughts. In the second, the student lays playing cards down one on another as slowly and evenly as possible, mastering impulse and gaining calm. A daily notebook of honest introspection goes with both, so the student learns to know the flitting movements of the mind and to govern them. For those who will not practice set exercises, Dumont teaches that carrying every task through to its end, large or small, fortifies the will and builds confidence. He then turns to the will to win: what counts is not ability but the will to do. Beneath the will lies a driving force of the soul, the "I will do" that pushes every person toward worthy deeds. The chapter closes with blunt counsel to guard the body, your only real property, and to listen to those who know more than you.

Concentration is nothing but willing to do a certain thing, and every person holds as much will as any other. In this closing lesson Dumont gathers the whole course into one charge. Reading the lessons does little good unless the exercises are practiced and applied. The will is the same whether you act as if it were weak or strong, and saying "I can't" means only "I won't try." He gives a nightly and morning affirmation to keep up for a month, reminds the reader that the courage shown in rare crises is available at all times, and sets out a final rule of life: one thing at a time, deliberate speech, stillness, steady reading and steady companions. The lesson then rises to the higher self. Character, conduct and soul growth are all that go with you at death, and these qualities shape every outer condition. Dumont closes with holding-thoughts for living in harmony with the higher self and the great plan of the universe, so that you know yourself as a permanent Being.