Shinn’s second chapter opens with a verse about silver and gets to the point fast. God is a person’s supply, she writes, and the spoken word, said in perfect faith, releases what already belongs to her by divine right. She means every word. Read it as a 1925 sermon, because that is what it is.
What she actually said
The case studies here are some of her most famous. A woman facing a three-thousand-dollar lawsuit is told to act rich while she waits, starting with an expensive lunch. A cousin with a long white beard shows up with the money. An apartment hunter in a New York housing shortage buys new blankets before she has anywhere to put them, and beats two hundred other applicants.
The principle comes from the Second Book of Kings, where three stranded kings are told to dig ditches in a dry valley before any rain shows up. Shinn’s version:
Man must prepare for the thing he has asked for, when there isn’t the slightest sign of it in sight.
Florence Scovel Shinn, The Game of Life and How to Play It (1925), “The Law of Prosperity”
She also states the reverse, which is sharper:
If one asks for success and prepares for failure, he will get the situation he has prepared for.
Florence Scovel Shinn, The Game of Life and How to Play It (1925), “The Law of Prosperity”
Please don’t order the lunch
Spending money you don’t have, with a debt coming due, to prove your faith is an efficient way to dig the hole deeper. The bearded cousin is a lovely ending. He is not a plan. These are survivor stories: we hear from the woman whose money arrived and never from anyone whose money didn’t. Shinn’s idea that words are a vibratory force shaping your affairs is a metaphysical belief, and it can stay one.
The ditch is the good part
Take away the miracles and preparation is just how you act when you take your own plan seriously. The blankets were something the apartment hunter would need anyway, at a price she could carry. The lunch was a performance. Dig ditches. Skip performances.
The other keeper sits near the end of the chapter. Shinn says it is much easier to hold the vision for someone else than for yourself, so ask for help when you feel yourself wavering. We call that accountability.
Dig your ditches this week
- Name the ask. A raise, a first client, a price increase. One sentence, with a number in it.
- Dig one cheap ditch. Make something you’d need anyway if the answer were yes: a rate sheet, an invoice template, a list of five people to ask. Spend time before you spend money.
- Check which speech you’ve drafted. Shinn describes a man who spent his time planning what he’d say when he didn’t pay his bill. If you’ve written the apology for raising your rates and not the announcement, write the announcement.
- Hand someone the vision. Tell one friend the number and the date, and ask her to check in on that date. Offer to do the same for her.
- Keep the lunch money. Celebrate when the yes arrives, and pick a celebration your budget can survive.
Nobody can promise you rain. You can still have the valley dug.
Read the original: Florence Scovel Shinn, The Game of Life and How to Play It (1925), chapter “The Law of Prosperity.” Published in the United States in 1925, so it has been in the US public domain since January 1, 2021. Free full text at Project Gutenberg (eBook #74878): https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/74878
