The key ideas

Your Infinite Power to Be Rich

Joseph Murphy, 1966

A coal miner's son trained as a surgeon, believing in three thousand pounds that were never in the bank. Joseph Murphy gathered dozens of stories like this one to show that wealth, as he was convinced, begins with what a person thinks, says and feels. In the book he gives specific advice: how to cut off thoughts of lack, what to do about envy, how to give thanks and how to give.

Who it is for

For anyone who constantly thinks about not having enough money and wants to understand how habitual words, envy and resentment can stand in the way of prosperity. And for those curious about what the classic writers on the “power of thought” believed.

The only chance you have is the chance you make for yourself.

Three thousand pounds that weren't there

The son of a Welsh coal miner went to school barefoot, and his family saw fruit and meat only on holidays. When the boy decided to become a surgeon, his father told him he had been saving three thousand pounds for him for twenty-five years, but it was better not to touch the money until he had his degree. The son studied, worked nights in pharmacies and didn't take a penny of his father's money.

On graduation day his father confessed: “There is not a shilling or a penny in the bank and there never was.” He had wanted his son to find the gold mine within himself. The surgeon told Joseph Murphy that believing in that money had given him the same courage real money would have.

Murphy, a New Thought minister, collected dozens of stories about money in this 1966 book. His main idea: wealth begins in the mind. Habitual thoughts, words and feelings, as the author was convinced, settle into the subconscious like deposits in a bank and come back as circumstances.

This is the author's belief, not economics and not a guarantee of income. He knows almost all of the cases from what acquaintances and listeners told him, and they can't be verified. But behind the belief stand specific habits.

Don't finish the sentence “I can't”

An acquaintance of Murphy's ran a shop in Beverly Hills. His brother sold the same things three blocks away and prospered, while he could barely make ends meet. He admitted: “It is not the environment or the merchandise; it must be me!”

Murphy gave him three steps. The first: never talk about money in despair. As soon as “I can't…” starts in your head, immediately replace that thought with a phrase saying all your needs are met. At first, the author warns, you may have to do this fifty times in one hour. The second and third: during the day, remind yourself that prosperity has an inexhaustible source, and fall asleep giving thanks.

Similar advice went to a father who kept telling his son there was no money for college. The father began cutting such thoughts off in mid-sentence, and within a few days, as the author tells it, they stopped coming back. Then the father won the lottery and paid off his debts, and his son went to college. Murphy sees this as the subconscious answering. That is his interpretation, not a rule.

The subconscious, in Murphy's view, takes what is said literally. To start, notice how many times a day you say you can't afford something.

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About the author

Joseph Murphy was a New Thought minister in Los Angeles and the author of dozens of books on the power of the subconscious. The best known of them, The Power of Your Subconscious Mind, came out in 1963.

All books by this author: Joseph Murphy

Terms from the book

  • Shilling
  • New Thought
  • Subconscious
  • Beverly Hills
  • Realtor
  • John
  • Tithe
  • Tyng: Lucien Hamilton Tyng, an American businessman. As Murphy tells it, he started out as an errand boy in Chicago and, together with a friend, founded a company that dealt in gas and electricity.
  • Peoria: A small city in the US state of Illinois, about 270 kilometers from Chicago.

All terms

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