Inquiry · “You Are Not Your Thoughts”
It Works If You Work It
Treat spiritual principle as something to be worked, not merely known — consistently applying affirmation, prayer, and right thinking to daily life, and backing them with practical action, rather than holding them as theory.
Work it, in brief: Pick the principle. Apply it daily, on purpose — not just in a crisis. Notice where you drop it. Back the prayer with real action. Stay with it over time. And hold the outcome honestly: consistency and footwork are what you control; results are not a verdict on your faith.
What it is
“It works if you work it” is Johnnie Colemon’s signature teaching and the title of her collected sermons. It is less a single exercise than a standing discipline: the insistence that spiritual principle has to be applied, daily and consistently, to do anything at all. Knowing the principles — affirmation, affirmative prayer, right thinking, the conviction of God’s good — is not enough; they are tools that “work” only when worked.
Colemon was emphatic that this includes ordinary effort, not just inner work: an affirmation alone will not hand you a dress from a store — “You’ve got to have some money to pay for it.” The practice, then, is a self-honest check: am I actually living these principles today, and backing them with action, or am I treating them as theory I admire but don’t use?
The Method
A faithful paraphrase of the “work it” discipline (short attributed phrases only):
- Choose the principle you are working. Name the specific truth or affirmation you intend to live this season — e.g. “God’s desire for everyone is absolute good,” or a definite affirmation for health or supply.
- Apply it every day, on purpose. Pray it, affirm it, think from it — repeatedly and consistently rather than only in crisis. Repetition is the point; “it works if you work it,” not if you admire it.
- Watch where you drop it. Notice the moments you slip back into fear, complaint, or the old story — the gap between the principle you profess and the thought you are actually thinking. This honest self-observation is the inquiry at the heart of the practice.
- Back the prayer with action (“footwork”). Do the practical thing the situation requires — the application, the savings, the appointment, the conversation. Colemon’s whole emphasis is that demonstrated faith is active, not passive waiting.
- Stay with it. Treat it as ongoing practice, not a one-time experiment. Results, where they come, follow sustained working, not a single try.
- Hold outcomes honestly. Use the discipline to build consistency and follow-through — without turning a hard or unchanged outcome into proof that you “didn’t work it” well enough. (Sourcing note: structure is an attributed paraphrase of Colemon’s “it works if you work it” teaching and It Works If You Work It; bracketed phrases are attributed to her, not full reproduction.)
Source & Lineage
“It works if you work it” is drawn from sermons Johnnie Colemon (1920-2014) preached at Christ Universal Temple, Chicago, and gathered in It Works If You Work It (UFBL Press).
It expresses the practical, application-first character of her Unity-derived teaching and of UFBL (“Better Living” through applied truth principle).
The Traditions' versions
The “principle is useless until practised, and practice includes action” theme recurs across the corpus: - Wattles — hold the vision with faith and purpose pairs mental holding with “acting in the present” on the physical plane.
- Ponder’s 40-day prosperity plan is the same insistence on sustained daily working of an affirmation.,
- Effort and grace (The Inner Creates the Outer) — the corpus-wide recognition that you both act and allow; Colemon stresses the acting half.
- Marden’s affirmation habit / victorious attitude — making the principle a daily lived habit rather than an idea.
Common refinements
Admiring the principle instead of working it. Reading and agreeing is not application; the practice is daily, deliberate use.
- “Working it” as inner-only. Dropping the footwork is the classic error Colemon names; affirmation without action is incomplete.
- Inconsistency. Sporadic, crisis-only use is not “working it”; the mechanism is repetition.
- Turning the slogan against yourself. “It works if you work it” can become “if it didn’t work, you failed to work it.” Resist this — outcomes are not a clean readout of effort or faith.