New Thought · 1860-1911
The Science of Getting Rich
A precise, unapologetic manual for wealth creation through creative thought and systematic action. Wattles argues that there is a science to getting rich - specific principles that, applied consistently, produce results as reliably as physical laws.
What Wattles Got Right
Why The Science of Getting Rich still matters
The Science of Getting Rich gets the architecture right. Wattles identified in 1910 that wealth creation is a function of internal state, not just external action - that the person thinking creatively from settled conviction produces different results than the person taking identical action from competitive anxiety.
He named the thing that most wealth education still misses: your nervous system state determines whether your efforts land or scatter. His distinction between creative thought and competitive thought is not motivational language - it describes two incompatible physiological states. Competitive thinking activates the sympathetic nervous system, narrows perception, and shuts down the prefrontal cortex. Creative thought corresponds to the ventral vagal state: safe, open, generative.
His insistence that gratitude is not sentiment but a daily practice for maintaining the internal condition from which good decisions flow was decades ahead of its time. HeartMath research now confirms what he intuited: genuine gratitude produces measurable shifts in heart rate variability and cognitive function.
Wattles understood the what. He mapped the territory precisely.
Historical Context
How The Science of Getting Rich came to be written
Wallace D. Wattles spent most of his adult life in poverty. Born in 1860 in the American Midwest, he worked as a farmer and Methodist lay preacher while reading voraciously - Hegel, Swedenborg, Emerson, and the New Thought movement - in search of the mechanism that separated people who achieved from people who didn't.
He was middle-aged before he found the framework that satisfied him intellectually, and he wrote The Science of Getting Rich in 1910 at the age of fifty, just one year before he died.
His daughter Florence later described his final years as a period in which he was finally experiencing the material results his philosophy described - that the book was written while he was actively living the transition from failure to success.
This matters because The Science of Getting Rich was not a theory assembled from other people's success stories. It was a working manual written by someone who had spent decades failing, had found the mechanism, and was writing it down before he died.
The publisher was Elizabeth Towne, a progressive New Thought publisher in Holyoke, Massachusetts, who also published William Walker Atkinson and other New Thought writers. Wattles wrote two companion books the same year - The Science of Being Great and The Science of Being Well - completing a trilogy that applied the same systematic framework to character, wealth, and health.
He died in 1911, never knowing that his work would still be in print 115 years later.
Core Principles
The 6 core principles of The Science of Getting Rich
Creative thought vs. competitive thought
Wattles' most original contribution is the distinction between two incompatible mental operating modes. Competitive thought - comparing, fearing scarcity, measuring against others - contracts the mind and produces contracted results. Creative thought - originating from settled inner vision rather than external comparison - expands what is possible. These are not philosophical preferences; they describe two incompatible physiological states. Competitive thinking activates the sympathetic nervous system. Creative thought corresponds to the ventral vagal state: open, safe, generative.
The impression of increase
Wattles argues that every interaction leaves people feeling increased or diminished. People who consistently leave others feeling expanded - more capable, more seen, more hopeful - attract resources, opportunities, and support in return. This is not manipulation; it is the natural operation of value creation. Every conversation is either a net positive or a net withdrawal from the relational account. Building in increase is both ethical and practical.
Gratitude as a daily practice, not a feeling
Chapter 7 is the most misread chapter in the book. Wattles does not mean cultivating a grateful mood. He means using gratitude as a daily reset mechanism that reconnects the mind to the creative state. The grateful mind is fixed on what is working, which directs the reticular activating system toward opportunities and solutions rather than threats and obstacles. HeartMath research confirms the physiological reality Wattles was describing: sustained gratitude practice measurably shifts heart rate variability and cortisol levels.
Acting in the certain way
Wattles insists that thought without action is incomplete - but he specifies that action must come from a particular internal state. Efficient action is not frantic effort; it is the output of a settled mind moving toward a clearly held vision. The same action taken from scarcity and taken from creative certainty produces different results not because of magical thinking but because the internal state determines the quality of attention, judgment, and relational attunement that the action is performed with.
The formless substance is not the point
Wattles builds his system on a metaphysical premise - that there is a 'thinking stuff' from which all things are made. Modern readers often get stuck here. The practical content of the book is completely separable from the cosmology. Whether or not you accept the metaphysics, the psychological mechanisms he describes are real. The creative-competitive distinction, the gratitude reset, the efficient action framework - these work because of neuroscience and psychology, not because of formless substance. Take what works; leave the cosmology if it doesn't fit.
Getting into the right business
One of the most pragmatic chapters in any New Thought book. Wattles argues that doing work you are suited for - not just any profitable work - matters because incongruence between your natural capacities and your work produces friction that undermines the creative state. He is not advising people to wait for their passion; he is saying that sustainable wealth creation requires alignment between the person and the work, because that alignment removes one of the main drains on creative energy.
Chapter by Chapter
What's inside The Science of Getting Rich
Legacy
The legacy of The Science of Getting Rich
The Science of Getting Rich was unknown outside New Thought circles for most of the twentieth century. That changed in 2006 when Rhonda Byrne credited it as the direct inspiration for The Secret, which went on to sell 30 million copies worldwide and generate a global conversation about the law of attraction. Suddenly the book that had been quietly in print for nearly a century was being discovered by millions of people who had never heard of New Thought.
Bob Proctor - one of the contributors to The Secret - built his entire teaching career around The Science of Getting Rich. He reportedly read it every single day for over fifty years and called it the only book he had ever needed. His teaching amplified Wattles' influence into a second generation of business coaches and wealth mindset practitioners, making SOGR the upstream source for a significant share of the twenty-first-century personal development industry.
The influence chain traces forward cleanly: Wattles (1910) influenced the New Thought movement, which influenced Napoleon Hill (Think and Grow Rich, 1937), which influenced the entire post-war personal development industry, which produced The Secret (2006), which introduced Wattles to a new global audience.
For a book written by a man who died before he could see any of its impact, The Science of Getting Rich has shaped more people's relationship with wealth and possibility than almost any other document in the self-help tradition.
What Was Missing
What Wattles could not have known
Wattles had no access to the body. He wrote before polyvagal theory, before trauma-informed practice, before cognitive behavioural therapy existed as a discipline. What he could not explain is why you drift out of creative thought and back into competitive thinking even when you know better - why reading the book produces insight but not lasting change.
The answer is physiological. Beliefs are held somatically, not just cognitively. The scarcity patterns that pull you back to competitive thinking are not ideas you have failed to correct - they are nervous system states your body defaults to under pressure. Chronic stress, early experiences of lack, and the accumulated weight of years of competitive striving wire the body into a baseline of threat. Until you address those physiological patterns directly, the 'certain way' remains a concept you visit rather than a state you inhabit.
Wattles also had no framework for Efficient Action beyond 'do it from the right internal state.' He could not give you the tools to recognise when you are acting from fear versus acting from vision, or to shift your state before you act. That gap is where CBT, NLP, and somatic work come in.
Who This Is For
Who gets the most from The Science of Getting Rich
- ✓You've read The Science of Getting Rich but are still trading time for money
- ✓You want to understand why creative thought works neurologically - not just spiritually
- ✓You're building a business and want to move from scarcity thinking to abundance strategy
- ✓You've tried visualisation but keep taking frantic, fear-driven action instead of efficient action
- ✓You want daily practices that shift your nervous system out of competitive threat mode
- ✓You're drawn to Wattles' systematic approach and want a structured method, not vague inspiration
The DAR Response
We applied CBT, NLP & somatic work to The Science of Getting Rich
We took Wattles' framework and mapped it against CBT schema work, NLP anchoring techniques, polyvagal nervous system regulation, and somatic bodywork. The result is a set of tools that do what the book alone cannot: build the 'certain way' as a daily default rather than an aspiration you return to when things go wrong.
The workbook, cheat sheets, tracker, and card deck below are structured around that premise. They target the level Wattles kept pointing at - not the thinking mind reading theory, but the settled inner state he called 'the certain way.' Each tool is designed to be used daily, because nervous system change happens through consistent small repetitions, not occasional large insights.
The Tools
DAR workbooks & tools for The Science of Getting Rich
You've read the book. This is where the shift actually happens - 30 structured days that build the 'certain way' as a default mental state, not just a concept you revisit when things go wrong.
Everything you need from The Science of Getting Rich on one printable reference - the creative-not-competitive distinction, the gratitude practice, the efficient action framework. Keep it visible so you stop drifting back to competitive thinking without noticing.
50 printable cards structured as present-tense priming - the kind of language that reaches the subconscious rather than bouncing off it. One each morning shifts your state before the day begins.
A full year of daily affirmations drawn from Wattles' teaching - May 2026 through April 2027. Each one structured to anchor the creative-not-competitive mindset so it becomes the state you operate from, not the state you aim for.
90 days of tracking the three habits that define Wattles' 'certain way': the creative vision, the gratitude practice, the efficient action. Built for the person who knows what to do and needs structure to actually do it every day.
The Annotated Edition
Read The Science of Getting Rich- with Christie's annotations
Written under Lesley Christie's pen name Christie L. Russell, this annotated edition adds the neuroscience, NLP, and CBT commentary that places each passage in its modern context - making Wattles's century-old wisdom immediately actionable.
As an Amazon Associate, Christie L. Russell earns from qualifying purchases.
Questions Answered
Questions about The Science of Getting Rich
What is 'the certain way' and why does Wattles keep repeating it?+
What is the 'formless substance' and how does it connect to modern science?+
Why does Wattles insist I must not compete?+
His gratitude chapter seems too simple - is it actually important?+
What is 'efficient action' and how is it different from just working hard?+
I'm doing the visualisation but nothing is happening - why?+
How do I hold the vision when my bank account is at zero?+
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