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MENTAL DIET

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EMMET FOX
BOOKLET #2
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APES SNS
The Seven Day
Mental Diet
How To CHANGE YourR LIFE
IN A WEEK

EMMET Fox
BOOKLET #2

DeVorss Publications
Camarillo, California
This booklet created something of a sensation upon its first
appearance. A simple and direct method of psychological
and spiritual regeneration was at last available. Since then |
some thousands of people have tried the method. Bodily
healings, family adjustments, the overcoming of lack, and,
above all the finding of happiness and peace of mind, have
resulted in a large number of cases.

If you wish to demonstrate, be certain to read the instruc

tions carefully and to carry them out precisely.

EMMET FOX

The Seven Day Mental Diet

Copyright © 1935, 1963 by Emmet Fox
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-087516-738-1

DeVorss & Company, Publisher

P.O. Box 1389
Camarillo CA 93011-1389
www.devorss.com

Printed in the United States of America

 The Seven Day Mental Diet

HE subject of diet is one of the fore-

most topics of the present day in
! public interest. Newspapers and
magazines teem with articles on the subject.
The counters of the bookshops are filled
with volumes unfolding the mysteries of
proteins, starches, vitarnins, and so forth.
Just now the whole world is food-conscious.
Experts on the subject are saying that phys-
ically you become the thing that you eat—
that your whole body is really composed of
the food that you have eaten in the past.
What you eat today, they say, will be in
your bloodstream after the lapse of so many
hours, and it is your blood-stream that
builds all the tissues composing your body
-and there you are.
Of course, no sensible person has any
quarrel with all this. It is perfectly true, as
far as it goes, and the only surprising thing
is that it has taken the world so long to find

y
it out; but in this pamphlet I am going to
deal with the subject of dieting at a level
that is infinitely more profound and far-
reaching in its effects. I refer of course to
mental dieting.
The most important of all factors in your
life is the mental diet on which you live. It is
the food which you furnish to your mind
that determines the whole character of your
life. It is the thoughts you allow yourself to
think, the subjects that you allow your
mind to dwell upon, which make you and
your surroundings what they are. As thy
days, so shall thy strength be. Everything in
your life today—the state of your body,
whether healthy or sick, the state of your
fortune, whether prosperous or impover-
ished, the state of your home, whether
happy or the reverse, the present condition
of every phase of your life in fact—is en-
tirely conditioned by the thoughts and feel-
ings which you have entertained in the |
past, by the habitual tone of your past
4
thinking. And the condition of your life
tomorrow, and next week, and next year,
will be entirely conditioned by the thoughts
and feelings which you choose to entertain
from now onwards.
In other words, you choose your life, that
is to say, you choose all the conditions of
your life, when you choose the thoughts
upon which you allow your mind to dwell.
Thought is the real causative force in life,
and there is no other. You cannot have one
kind of mind and another kind of environ-
ment. This means that you cannot change
your environment while leaving your mind
unchanged, nor—and this is the supreme
key to life and the reason for this pamphlet
—can you change your mind without your
environment changing too.
This then is the real key to life: if you
change your mind your conditions must
change too—your body must change, your
daily work or other activities must change;
your home must change; the color-tone of

s
your whole life must change—for whether
you be habitually happy and cheerful, or
low-spirited and fearful, depends entirely on
the quality of the mental food upon which
you diet yourself.
Please be very clear about this. If you
change your mind your conditions must
change too. We are transformed by the renew-
ing of our minds. So now you will see that
your mental diet is really the most impor-
tant thing in your whole life.
This may be called the Great Cosmic
Law, and its truth is seen to be perfectly ob-
vious when once it is clearly stated in this
way. In fact, I do not know of any thought-
ful person who denies its essential truth.
The practical difficulty in applying it, how-
ever, arises from the fact that our thoughts
are so close to us that it is difficult, without
a little practice, to stand back as it were and
look at them objectively.
Yet that is just what you must learn to do. .
You must train yourself to choose the sub-
ject of your thinking at any given time, and
also to choose the emotional tone, or what
we call the mood that colors it. Yes, you can
choose your moods. Indeed, if you could
not you would have no real control over
your life at all. Moods habitually enter-
tained produce the characteristic disposi-
tion of the person concerned, and it is his
disposition that finally makes or mars a
person’s happiness.
You cannot be healthy; you cannot be
happy; you cannot be prosperous; if you
have a bad disposition. If you are sulky, or
surly, or cynical, or depressed, or superior,
or frightened half out of your wits, your life
cannot possibly be worth living. Unless you
are determined to cultivate a good disposi-
tion, you may as well give up all hope of get-
ting anything worth while out of life, and it
is kinder to tell you very plainly that this is
the case.
 If you are not determined to start in now
and carefully select all day the kind of
thoughts that you are going to think, you
may as well give up all hope of shaping your
life into the kind of thing that you want it
to be, because this is the only way.
In short, if you want to make your life
happy and worth while, which is what God
wishes you to make it, you must begin im-
mediately to train yourself in the habit of
thought selection and thought control.
This will be exceedingly difficult for the first
few days, but if you persevere you will find
that it will become rapidly easier, and it is
actually the most interesting experiment
that you could possibly make. In fact, this
thought control is the most thrillingly inter-
esting hobby that anyone could take up.
You will be amazed at the interesting things
that you will learn about yourself, and you
will get results almost from the beginning.
Now many people knowing this truth,
make sporadic efforts from time to time to

8
control their thoughts, but the thought
stream being so close, as I have pointed out,
and the impacts from outside so constant
and varied, they do not make very much
progress. That is not the way to work. Your
only chance is definitely to form a new
habit of thought which will carry you
through when you are preoccupied or off
your guard as well as when you are con-
sciously attending to the business. This new
thought habit must be definitely acquired,
and the foundation of it can be laid within a
few days, and the way to do it is this:
Make up your mind to devote one week
solely to the task of building a new habit of
thought, and during that week let every-
thing in life be unimportant as compared
with that. If you will do so, then that week
will be the most significant week in your
whole life. It will literally be the turning-
point for you. If you will do so, it is safe to
say that your whole life will change for the
better. In fact, nothing can possibly remain

2)
the same. This does not simply mean that
you will be able to face your present dif-
ficulties in a better spirit; it means that the
difficulties will go. This is the scientific way
to Alter Your Life, and being in accordance
with the Great Law it cannot fail. Now do
you realize that by working in this way you
do not have to change conditions? What
happens is that you apply the Law, and
then the conditions change spontaneously.
You cannot change conditions directly—
you have often tried to do so and failed—
but go on the SEVEN DAY MENTAL DIET and
conditions must change for you.
This then is your prescription. For seven
days you must not allow yourself to dwell
for a single moment on any kind of negative
thought. You must watch yourself for a
whole week as a cat watches a mouse, and
you must not under any pretense allow
your mind to dwell on any thought that is
not positive, constructive, optimistic, kind.
This discipline will be so strenuous that you

10
could not maintain it consciously for much
more than a week, but I do not ask you to
do so. A week will be enough, because by
that time the habit of positive thinking will
begin to be established. Some extraordinary
changes for the better will have come into
your life, encouraging you enormously, and
then the future will take care of itself. The
new way of life will be so attractive and so
much easier than the old way that you will
find your mentality aligning itself almost
automatically.
But the seven days are going to be stren-
uous. I would not have you enter upon this
without counting the cost. Mere physical
fasting would be child’s play in comparison,
even if you have a very good appetite. The
most exhausting form of army gymnastics,
combined with thirty mile route-marches,
would be mild in comparison with this
undertaking. But it is only for one week in
your life, and it will definitely alter every-
thing for the better. For the rest of your life

11
here, for all eternity in fact, things will be
utterly different and inconceivably better
than if you had not carried through this
undertaking.
Do not start it lightly. Think about it for
a day or two before you begin. Then start
in, and the grace of God go with you. You
may start it any day in the week, and at any
time in the day, first thing in the morning,
or after breakfast, or after lunch, it does not
matter, but once you do start you must go
right through for the seven days. That is
essential. The whole idea is to have seven
days of unbroken mental discipline in order
to get the mind definitely bent in a new
direction once and for all.
If you make a false start, or even if you go
on well for two or three days and then for
any reason “fall off” the diet, the thing to
do is to drop the scheme altogether for
several days, and then to start again afresh.
There must be no jumping on and off, as it
were. You remember that Rip Van Winkle

12
in the play would take a solemn vow of tee-
totalism, and then promptly accept a drink
from the first neighbor who offered him
one, saying calmly: “I won’t count this
one.” Well, on the SEVEN DAY MENTAL DIET
this sort of thing simply will not do. You
must positively count every lapse, and
whether you do or not, Nature will. Where
there is a lapse you must go off the diet
altogether and then start again.
Now, in order, if possible, to forestall
difficulties, I will consider them in a little
detail.
First of all, what do I mean by negative
thinking? Well, a negative thought is any
thought of failure, disappointment, or trou-
ble; any thought of criticism, or spite, or
jealousy, or condemnation of others, or self-
condemnation; any thought of sickness or
accident; or, in short, any kind oflimitation
or pessimistic thinking. Any thought that is
not positive and constructive in character,
whether it concerns you yourself or anyone

13
else, is a negative thought. Do not bother
too much about the question of classifica-
tion, however; in practice you will never
have any trouble in knowing whether a
given thought is positive or negative. Even
if your brain tries to deceive you, your heart
will whisper the truth.
Second, you must be quite clear that
what this scheme calls for is that you shall
not entertain, or dwell upon negative things.
Note this carefully. It is not the thoughts
that come to you that matter, but only such
of them as you choose to entertain and
dwell upon. It does not matter what
thoughts may come to you provided you do
not entertain them. It is the entertaining or
dwelling upon them that matters. Of
course, many negative thoughts will come
to you all day long. Some of them will just
drift into your mind of their own accord
seemingly, and these come to you out of the
race mind. Other negative thoughts will be

14
given to you by other people, either in con-
versation or by their conduct, or you will
hear disagreeable news perhaps by letter or
telephone, or you will see crimes and disas-
ters announced in the newspaper headings.
These things, however, do not matter as
long as you do not entertain them. In fact,
it is these very things that provide the dis-
cipline that is going to transform you during
this epoch-making week. The thing to do is,
directly the negative thought presents itself
—turn it out. Turn away from the news-
paper; turn out the thought of the unkind
letter, or stupid remark, or what not. When
the negative thought floats into your mind,
immediately turn it out and think of some-
thing else. Best of all, think of God as ex-
plained in The Golden Key. A perfect
analogy is furnished by the case of a man
who is sitting by an open fire when a red
hot cinder flies out and falls on his sleeve. If
he knocks that cinder off at once, without a

15
moment’s delay to think about it, no harm
is done. But if he allows it to rest on him for
a single moment, under any pretense, the
mischief is done, and it will be a trouble-
some task to repair that sleeve. So it is with
a negative thought.
Now what of those negative thoughts and
conditions which it is impossible to avoid at
the point where you are today? What of the
ordinary troubles that you will have to meet
in the office or at home? The answer is, that
such things will not affect your diet pro-
vided that you do not accept them, by fear-
ing them, by believing them, by being
indignant or sad about them, or by giving
them any power at all. Any negative con-
dition that duty compels you to handle will
not affect your diet. Go to the office, or
meet the cares at home, without allowing
them to affect you. (None of these things move
me), and all will be well. Suppose that you
are lunching with a friend who talks nega-
tively—Do not try to shut him up or other-

16
wise snub him. Let him talk, but do not
accept what he says, and your diet will not
be affected. Suppose that on coming home
you are greeted with a lot of negative con-
versation—do not preach a sermon, but
simply do not accept it. It is your mental
consent, remember, that constitutes your
diet. Suppose you witness an accident or an
act of injustice let us say—Instead of react-
ing with pity or indignation, refuse to
accept the appearance at its face value; do
anything that you can to right matters, give
it the right thought, and let it go at that.
You will still be on the diet.
Of course, it will be very helpful if you
can take steps to avoid meeting during this
week anyone who seems particularly likely
to arouse the devil in you. People who get
on your nerves, or rub you up the wrong
way, or bore you, are better avoided while
you are on the diet; but if it is not possible
to avoid them, then you must take a little
extra discipline—that is all.

17
 Suppose that you have a particularly try-
ing ordeal before you next week—Well, if
you have enough spiritual understanding
you will know how to meet that in the spir-
itual way; but, for our present purpose, [|
think I would wait and start the diet as soon
as the ordeal is over. As I said before, do
not take up the diet lightly, but think it
over well first.
In closing, I want to tell you that people
often find that the starting of this diet seems
to stir up all sorts of difficulties. It seems as
though everything begins to go wrong at
once. This may be disconcerting, but it is
really a good sign. It means that things are
moving; and is not that the very object we
have in view? Suppose your whole world
seems to rock on its foundations. Hold on
steadily, let it rock, and when the rocking is
over, the picture will have reassembled itself
into something much nearer to your heart’s
desire.
The above point is vitally important and
rather subtle. Do you not see that the very

18
dwelling upon these difficulties is in itself a
negative thought which has_ probably
thrown you off the diet? The remedy is not,
of course, to deny that your world is rock-
ing in appearance, but to refuse to take the
appearance for the reality (Judge not ac-
cording to appearances but judge righteous
judgment).
A closing word of caution—Do not tell
anyone else that you are on the diet, or that
you intend to go on it. Keep this tremen-
dous project strictly to yourself. Remember
that your soul should be the Secret Place
of the Most High. When you have come
through the seven days successfully, and
secured your demonstration, allow a rea-
sonable time to elapse to establish the new
mentality, and then tell the story to anyone
else who you think is likely to be helped by
ie.
And, finally, remember that nothing said
or done by anyone else can possibly throw
you off the diet. Only your own reaction to
the other person’s conduct can do that.

19
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 THe Emmet Fox Book tets
Please order by number.

. The Golden Key La Life After Death

. The Seven Day Mental 705% Love
Diet 26. Sowing and Reaping
. The Lord’s Prayer fe The Presence
. The Wonder Child 28. The Word of Power
. The Yoga of Love iS). Fifteen Points
Your Heart’s Desire 30. God in Business
. The Good Shepherd sy. What Is Scientific Prayer?
. The Everlasting Gates B22 Blessing and Cursing
. Light and Salvation 33) Treatment for Divine
. Be Still Love
. The Secret Place 34. Reincarnation
. The Lion’s Den (Daniel 3) The American Spirit
6) and Faith 38. How to Get a
. Getting Results by Demonstration
Prayer, You Must
Be Born Again, ae The Four Horsemen of
The Great Adventures the Apocalypse
. Alter Your Life 43. Make Your Life Worth
. The Magic of Tithing While
. The Zodiac and the Bible 44. The Seven Main Aspects
. The Historical Destiny of of God
the United States 45. Adam and Eve
. How to Bring About 49. The Seven Days of
Peace Creation

DeVorss Publications
devorss.com @ 800-843-5743
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 THE Emmet Fox Books

Emmet Fox’s Golden Keys to Successful Living

Spiritual discoveries that helped millions achieve happiness; set
against Emmet Fox’s own life, with Reminiscences by Herman
Wolhorn, friend and associate.
Power Through Constructive Thinking
27 of the above booklets and cards in one volume.
The Sermon on the Mount
This book constitutes a complete course of instruction in Scien-
tific Christianity. This is the standard textbook. Includes the
Lord’s Prayer.
The Ten Commandments
Master Key to Life. A companion volume to The Sermon on the
Mount.
Find and Use Your Inner Power
Messages of help and inspiration for days of discouragement.
Make Your Lite Worth While
Inspirational Messages for the Christian Life.
Alter Your Life
This book contains sixteen of the latest Emmet Fox pamphlets,
plus some unpublished material.
Stake Your Claim
Short, to-the-point messages.
Around the Year with Emmet Fox
Selections from the inspiring teaching of Emmet Fox attractively
arranged for daily meditation.
Diagrams For Living
Simple keys to unlocking the mysteries of the Bible and at the
same time giving practical answers to the challenges of modern-
day living.
 Thank You!
for selecting this book from DeVorss
Publications. If you would like to receive a
complete catalog of our specialized selection of
current and classic Méetaphysical, Spiritual,
Inspirational, Self-Help, and New Thought books,
please visit our website or give us a call and ask for
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DeVorss Publications
NEW. THOUGHT / SPIRITUAL
ISBN: 978-087516-738-1
www.devorss.com