Introduction (Thoughts are Things)

The first chapter. And it starts off with the story of Edwin C Barnes.
Edwin C Barnes is the guy who had nothing but the desire to work with Thomas Edison. He staked it all on that dream , presented at Edison's doorstep looking like a "common tramp".
He then worked at Edison's company for 5 years as a mere "cog" in his organisation until his big opportunity came up.
I wonder, in this era of shortened attention spans, whether a truly ambitous person would be content to sit there mopping the floors at Edison's lab for 5 years before their opportunity came up? I think not. We are so used to immediate gratification (I know I am), that if we got no sign of progress after 5 weeks, we'd be itching to get out of there. I don't know how he stopped himself from getting demoralised.
The rest of this chapter is more about persistence than anything else. The story of RU Darby, who was digging for gold, and thought he was getting nowhere, so gave up three feet from striking it rich, is a lesson in persistence. Every time I read this story, I think, how good his life would have been, if he had struck gold, instead of having to slave away as an insurance salesman. But then, countless studies have shown that people who come by sudden money (inheritance, lottery winning), almost always end up spending all their new found riches and are back to where they started within a few years.
The other theme of this chapter, and the book in general, is your thoughts determining your future. If you think about success all the time, you are much more likely to succeed than if you think about failure all the time. Simple, but true.