Attention & Focus · “You Become What You Hold”
Holding the Optimistic Thought
To deliberately tenant the mind with cheerful, hopeful, courageous thoughts and refuse to dwell on gloom, fear, sickness, and failure — on the conviction that thoughts are forces that shape mood, conduct, and (Wilcox claims) what comes to you.
Treat your thoughts as forces. When a gloomy, fearful, or bitter thought rises, clear it out and deliberately put a cheerful, courageous, kindly one in its place. Guard the first half-hour of the morning. Walk away from the doom-talkers and seek optimistic company. Send good thoughts outward. Hold it daily until cheerfulness is your default — while still letting real feeling be felt.
What it is
Ella Wheeler Wilcox — the New Thought poet best known for “Laugh, and the world laughs with you” (her poem “Solitude”) — taught optimism not as temperament but as a discipline of which thoughts you let live in your mind.
In The Heart of the New Thought (1902) she frames thought as causal and even physical: “You never can tell what your thoughts will do / In bringing you hate or love, / For thoughts are things, and their airy wings / Are swift as a carrier dove.” The practice is two-sided: deliberately entertain hopeful, courageous, cheerful thoughts, and deliberately refuse the gloomy, fearful, sick, and bitter ones — including refusing the company that breeds them.
Her tone is the chapter “Optimism”: “Life is a glorious privilege, and we can make anything we choose of it, if we begin early and are in deep earnest, and realize our own divine powers.”
The Method
Faithful to The Heart of the New Thought:
- Treat thoughts as forces, not idle weather. Begin from her premise — thoughts are “things” with effects — so that what you dwell on is taken seriously, not indulged carelessly. “Every thought, word and deed is helping decide your next place.”
- Catch the gloomy thought and clear it out. When a dark, fearful, angry, or self-pitying thought rises, do not feed it. From “Common Sense”: “Clear your mind of every gloomy, selfish, angry or revengeful thought.”
- Replace it with the cheerful, courageous one. Don’t leave a vacuum — deliberately turn the mind to a hopeful, kindly, expectant thought in its place. Cheerfulness is chosen, repeatedly.
- Guard the morning. Wilcox weights the first half-hour: your thoughts then “will greatly influence the entire day.” Set the tone on waking rather than letting the day’s first worry set it for you.
- Curate your inputs — walk away from the doom-talkers. This is a striking, concrete part of her teaching. From “Thought Force”: “Do not associate with pessimists. Get out and away, into the society of optimistic people,” and “If you find any one determined to talk failure and sickness and misfortune and disaster, walk away.”
- Send good thoughts outward. Optimism in her version is not just self-soothing; she has you actively wish good to others: believe your “tender, loving thoughts and wishes for good to all humanity have power to help.”
- Hold it as a standing attitude. Not a one-time decision — a daily, repeated tenanting of the mind with the better thought until cheerfulness is the default. (Sourcing note: quoted lines are Wilcox’s; the numbered structure is attributed paraphrase.)
Source & Lineage
Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1850–1919) was a wildly popular American poet (Poems of Passion, 1883; Poems of Power, 1901) who became a leading popular voice of New Thought, distilling its ideas into verse, columns, and short prose books — chiefly The Heart of the New Thought (1902).
Her optimism doctrine sits squarely in the movement’s “thought is a force” stream (cf. Trine, Mulford, Marden), translated into the plain, hortatory style of a newspaper poet. → Contrast (don’t duplicate):
- Marden’s victorious attitude / optimist material build an achievement-oriented confident stance; Wilcox’s drill is specifically thought-hygiene — refusing gloom and the gloomy, choosing the cheerful, including curating company.
- Larson’s “Promise Yourself” optimist creed is a fixed recited pledge; Wilcox’s is an ongoing moment-to-moment selection of thoughts and inputs.
- Towne’s joy affirmation is a rapid on-the-spot mood-flip with enacted feeling; Wilcox’s is the broader habit of what you let yourself think and whom you listen to.
- Wilcox’s own “I am” assertions are spoken identity-claims; this practice is the prior attentional discipline of refusing dark thoughts in the first place.
Common refinements
Suppressing instead of redirecting. “Clear your mind of every gloomy thought” can become deny every painful feeling. Acknowledge a real grief or fear first; this is for ordinary recurring negativity, not for papering over genuine pain.
- Weaponising “walk away.” Curating chronic doom-talkers is healthy; abandoning anyone who is merely struggling or grieving is not what optimism asks. Distinguish a toxic input from a person who needs your support.
- Treating it as a magic broadcast. The change you can count on is in you and your chosen environment — not in thoughts flying out to rearrange events.
- One good resolve, then drift. It’s a standing daily habit (especially the morning), not a single decision.