Why I Re-read As a Man Thinketh Every Year

Every January I sit down and read As a Man Thinketh by James Allen. The whole essay takes about an hour. It is shorter than most magazine features I read in a week, and yet no other book on my shelf has shaped how I think about thought itself.

Why I keep returning

Allen’s thesis is simple and uncomfortable: a person is, quite literally, what they think about most. Circumstance, he argues, is not the master of character — it is the mirror of it. A disciplined mind eventually finds its way to disciplined surroundings; a careless mind eventually finds its way to careless ones, no matter where it starts.

I grew up in a household where this was not framed in those words, but it was lived. My father’s last counsel to me — that I was destined for success if I remained in school and disciplined — assumes the same thing Allen does. Thought, repeated, becomes character. Character, repeated, becomes life.

Three passages I have underlined

“A man is literally what he thinks, his character being the complete sum of all his thoughts.”

This one I read against my own week. If my week is poor, my thoughts have been poor. There is no third explanation.

“Men do not attract that which they want, but that which they are.”

A useful corrective when I find myself wishing for opportunities. The faster path is almost always to become the kind of person opportunities attach to, then wait.

“The dreamers are the saviours of the world.”

Allen is not naive about effort — most of the book is about it — but he is unsentimental about the fact that vision precedes work. You cannot discipline yourself toward a future you have not first imagined.

How to read it

Read it once in a sitting. Then put it down, sleep on it, and read it a second time the next day with a pen. Then re-read every January. It costs almost nothing and yields more per page than most things on a recommended-reading list.