The following excerpts are from The Game of Life and How to Play It by Florence Scovel Shinn.  Any emphasis is original.

The imaging faculty plays a leading part in the game of life.  “Keep thy heart (or imagination) with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life.”  (Prov. 4:23)  This means that what man images, sooner or later externalizes in his affairs [and he becomes] [t]he victim of distorted imagination. 

To play successfully the game of life, we must train the imaging faculty.  A person with an imaging faculty trained to image only good, brings into his life ‘every righteous desire of his heart’—health, wealth, love, friends, perfect self expression, his highest ideals. 

The imagination has been called, “The Scissors of The Mind,” and is ever cutting, cutting, day by day, the pictures man sees there, and sooner or later he meets his own creations in his outer world.  

To train the imagination successfully, man must understand the workings of his mind. The Greeks said: ‘Know Thyself.’  (p. 7-8) 

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Man can only receive what he sees himself receiving. 

The children of Israel were told that they could have all the land they could see.  This is true of every man.  He has only the land within his own mental vision.  Every great work, every big accomplishment, has been brought into manifestation through holding to the vision, and often just before the big achievement, comes apparent failure and discouragement.  

The children of Israel when they reached the “Promised Land,” were afraid to go in, for they said it was filled with giants who made them feel like grasshoppers.  “And there we saw the giants and we were in our own sight as grass-hoppers.”  This is almost every man’s experience. 

However, the one who knows spiritual law, is undisturbed by appearance, and rejoices while he is “yet in captivity.”  That is, he holds to his vision and gives thanks that the end is accomplished, he has received.  

Jesus Christ gave a wonderful example of this.  He said to his disciples: “Say not yet, there are yet four months and then cometh the harvest?  Behold, I say unto you, lift up your eyes and look in the fields; for they are ripe already to harvest.”  His clear vision pierced the “world of matter” and he saw clearly the fourth dimensional world, things as they really are, perfect and complete in the Divine Mind.  So man must ever hold the vision of his journey’s end and demand the manifestation of that which he has already received.  It may be his perfect health, love, supply, self-expression, home or friends. 

They are all finished and perfect ideas registered in Divine Mind (man’s own superconscious mind) and must come through him, not to him.  (p. 19-20) 

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Continual criticism produces rheumatism, as critical, inharmonious thoughts cause unnatural deposits in the blood, which settle in the joints.  

False growths are caused by jealousy, hatred, unforgiveness, fear, etc.  Every disease is caused by a mind not at ease….  There is no use asking anyone ‘What’s the matter with you?’ we might just as well say, ‘Who’s the matter with you?’  Unforgiveness is the most prolific cause of disease.  It will harden arteries or liver, and affect the eyesight.  In its train are endless ills…. 

Any inharmony on the external, indicates there is mental inharmony.  “As within, so the without.”  

Man’s only enemies are within himself.  “And man’s foes shall be they of his own household.”  Personality is one of the last enemies to be overcome, as this planet takes its initiation in love.  It was Christ’s message—“Peace on Earth, good will towards man.” (p. 27-28) 

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[Your] body and affairs show forth what [you have] been picturing.  The sick man has pictured sickness, the poor man, poverty, the rich man, wealth.  

People often say, “why does a little child attract illness, when it is too young even to know what it means?…” 

[C]hildren are sensitive and receptive to the thoughts of others about them, and often outpicture the fears of their parents…. 

If you do not run your subconscious mind yourself, someone else will run it for you. 

Mothers often, unconsciously, attract illness and disaster to their children, by continually holding them in thoughts of fear, and watching for symptoms…. 

However, the man who is centered and established in right thinking, the man who sends out only good will to his fellow man, and who is without fear, cannot be touched or influenced by the negative thoughts of others.  In fact, he could then receive only good thoughts, as he himself, sends forth only good thoughts. (p. 30-31)

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[M]an can only be what he sees himself to be, and only attain what he sees himself attaining. 

“Nothing ever happens without an on-looker,” is an ancient saying.  

Man sees first his failure or success, his joy or sorrow, before it swings into visibility from the scenes set in his own imagination.  We have observed this in the mother picturing disease for her child, or a woman seeing success for her husband. (p. 40) 

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There is for each man, perfect self-expression.  There is a place which he is to fill and no one else can fill, something which he is to do, which no one else can do; it is his destiny! 

This achievement is held, a perfect idea in Divine Mind, awaiting man’s recognition.  As the imaging faculty is the creative faculty, it is necessary for man to see the idea, before it can manifest.  

So man’s highest demand is for the Divine Design of his life.   

He may not have the faintest conception of what it is, for there is, possibly, some marvelous talent, hidden deep within him. (p. 75) 

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Man should make an art of thinking.  The Master Thinker is an artist and is careful to paint only the divine designs upon the canvas of the mind; and he paints these pictures with masterly strokes of power and decision, having perfect faith that there is no power to mar their perfection and that they shall manifest in his life the ideal made real.  

All power is given man (through right thinking) to bring his heaven upon his earth, and this is the goal of the “Game of Life.” (p. 93)