There is no place in a grateful mind for thoughts of poverty. If you are striving to live in an attitude of gratitude, all thoughts of poor people and their sufferings must be dismissed from your mind. Does this sound terribly harsh? Perhaps so but, if you consider what it means, you will understand why you should forget about poor people.

In order to achieve your desire for wealth, it is essential that you understand the Law of Gratitude. It is, to quote The Science Of Getting Rich, "the natural principle that action and reaction are always equal, and in opposite directions." The giving of thankful praise is an "expenditure of force", the reaction to which is an "instantaneous movement towards you". Living in a constant attitude of gratitude will result in a constant movement towards you of the wealth you desire. The moment you lose your attitude of gratitude, a movement in the opposite direction will occur

The Law of Gratitude dictates that wealth will move either toward you or away from you according to your thoughts. If you live in continuous gratitude and an attitude of happy thanksgiving, you will naturally continue to attract more blessings. If you lapse into dissatisfaction and think of your problems and the problems of people around you, more problems will swarm in because you are attracting them by the negative nature of your thoughts. If you think rich, you will become rich; if you think poor, you will become poor.

Forgetting about poor people does not mean that you should become hard-hearted and treat the people around you with callous indifference. If a homeless person begs you to give him the price of a cup of coffee, there is no reason not to give him the money. Indeed, if you feel like it, there is nothing to stop you buying him breakfast. You can give thanks for the fact that you can afford to perform charitable acts but you must not permit your thoughts to dwell upon the unhappy circumstances of the homeless and poor. You can make charitable donations to help those less fortunate than yourself but you will harm yourself if you fill your mind with thoughts of the suffering in the world.

Thinking about poverty will not do one ounce of good for the poor people and can bring you a ton of harm. Wallace Wattles tells us that if you "fix attention on the common, the ordinary, the poor, and the squalid and mean" your thoughts will become mental images which you will transmit and, thereby, attract these things into your life. By allowing your thoughts to build these negative images, you are bringing into being more of the very things you would wish to eradicate.

If you desire wealth, you must focus upon wealth and be grateful for every good thing in your life. Take note of the warning in The Science Of Getting Rich: "To permit your mind to dwell upon the inferior is to become inferior and to surround yourself with inferior things. On the other hand, to fix your attention on the best is to surround yourself with the best."