The Power of Concentration by William Walker Atkinson
A practical manual of mental exercises that treats concentration as a skill to be trained lesson by lesson.
This is a self-help manual built around a single idea: that the ability to hold your attention on one thing is a skill you can train, and that doing so changes what you are able to accomplish. William Walker Atkinson writes it as a course of instruction rather than an essay, and the reader is expected to work through it and to practise, not merely to read.
How the book is arranged
The book opens with an INTRODUCTORY section that states the case plainly, then moves through twenty numbered lessons. The early lessons set out the general claim — that concentration finds the way, that it gives self-mastery and mental poise — before the middle chapters turn to particular applications. There are lessons aimed at business and at wealth, at overcoming bad habits, at courage, and at memory. LESSON XIV is given over to practical exercises, and the final LESSON XX reviews the whole. A reader who wants the method in condensed form might look there.
A few things worth knowing before you begin:
- The chapters are short and each takes up one theme, so the book can be read in pieces.
- The tone is instructional and confident, addressing the reader as a student.
- Some lessons carry a spiritual vocabulary, speaking of the reader as a child of the infinite and of forces that transcend thought.
The sort of reader it suits, and the opening
The introduction sets the expectation directly. Atkinson does not promise that focus comes easily, and even notes a difficulty most readers will recognise:
It seems a peculiar fact that it is easier to concentrate on something that is not good for us, than on something that is beneficial. This tendency is overcome when we learn to concentrate consciously.
INTRODUCTORY
From there the book proceeds by assertion and example. In the business lesson Atkinson opens with striking anecdotes about the power of thought, including a prisoner in an experiment, to press home how much the mind's habits matter. In the chapter on wealth he argues that a person's surroundings shape their thinking and that the first step toward wealth is to place oneself among helpful influences. The lesson on desire leans on the tale of Aladdin's Lamp to argue that a person carries latent powers within.
This will suit a reader who wants an early, uncomplicated statement of the self-improvement outlook and is willing to try the exercises rather than judge the ideas from a distance. A reader who wants argument tested against evidence, or who is uneasy with sweeping claims about thought and wealth, may find it thin. Read it as a period document and a set of practical drills, and take its confidence as an invitation to experiment rather than as proof.
The book, free to read
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