The answer to your prayers is right inside of yourself. They are answered by your obeying the natural as well as the spiritual law of all supply. If you don't do your part in the actual working world down to the minutest detail your prayer is bound to come back to you unanswered.
Everything in the universe has its price, a perfectly legitimate one. You can realize what you desire if you are willing to pay the price, and that is honest, earnest, persistent effort to make it yours. The Creator answers your prayer by fitting you to answer it yourself, by enabling you to put into practice the law of demand and supply, the fundamental principle on which answer to prayer is based. You must put yourself in absolute harmony with the thing you pray for. It cannot be forced. You must attract it. Answer to prayer comes only to a receptive mind in a positive condition, that is, in a condition to create, to achieve.
The law of affirmation and the law of prayer are one and the same. "Affirm that which you wish, work for it, and it will be manifest in your life." Affirm it confidently, with the utmost faith, without any doubt of what you affirm. Say to yourself, "I am that which I think I am—and I can be nothing else." But if you affirm, "I am health; I am prosperity; I am this or that," and do not believe it, you will not be helped by affirmation. You must believe what you affirm; you must constantly strive to be what you assert you are, or your affirmations are but idle breath.
Make yourself a New Thought rosary, not of set formal prayers, but an original one whose beads shall be your heart's aspirations, your desires to e-volve the strong, radiant, successful happy man or woman the Creator has in-volved in you.
If you are unhappy, crushed by repeated failures and disappointment, suffering the pangs of thwarted ambition, put this bead in your rosary and say it over to yourself frequently: "The being God made was never intended for this sort of life. Mary (or John)," addressing yourself by name, "God made you for success, not failure. He never made any one to be a failure. You are perverting the great object of your existence by giving way to discouragement, going about among your fellows with a long, sad, dejected face, as though you were a misfit, as though there were no place for you in this great glad world of abundance. You were made to express gladness, to go through life with a victorious attitude, like a conqueror. The image of God is in you; you must bring it out and exhibit it to the world. Don't disgrace your Maker by violating His image, by being anything but the magnificent man or woman He intended you to be."
Back up every "bead," or prayer you put in your rosary by action during the day, otherwise you might as well save yourself the trouble of stringing your beads, for
"It's the toil ye give t' get a thing—the sweat an' blood an' care—
That makes the kind o' argument that ought to back yer prayer."
Don't be afraid of thinking too highly of yourself, not in the egotistical sense, but because (the Creator having made you in His image) you must have inherited divine qualities, omnipotent possibilities. It is an insult to God to depreciate what He has made and has pronounced good.
If you are a victim of timidity and self-depreciation, afraid to say your soul is your own; if you creep about the world as though you thought you were taking up room which belonged to somebody else; if you shrink from responsibility, from everything which draws attention to yourself; if you are bashful, timid, confused, tongue-tied, when you ought to assert yourself, turn to your rosary and add another bead.
Say to yourself, "I am a child of the King of kings. I will no longer suffer this cowardly timidity to rule me,—a prince of heaven. I am made by the same Creator who has made all other human beings. They are my brothers and sisters. There is no more reason why I should be afraid to express what I feel or think before them than if they were in my own family. I have just as much right on this earth as any potentate, as much right to hold up my head and assert myself as any monarch. I am my Father's heir, and have all the rights of a prince. I have inherited the wealth of the universe. The earth and the stars and the sun are mine. I will quit this everlasting self-depreciation, this self-effacement, this cringing habit of forever appearing to apologize for being alive. It is a crime against my Maker and myself. Henceforth I shall carry myself like a prince. I will act like one, and will walk the earth as a conqueror. I will let no opportunity pass to-day for assuming any responsibility which will enlarge me, for expressing my opinion, for asserting myself whenever and wherever necessary.