As you go over your wardrobe in the spring or fall, do not keep any old, useless, or even questionable, garments, for “fear you might need them another year.” Give them to the ragman, or send them to the county or city poor house.
There is nothing that will keep you in a rut of shabbiness more than clinging to old clothes. It is useless to say that you cannot afford new garments. It is because you have harped upon this idea that you are still in straitened circumstances. You believe neither in God or yourself.
Possibly you were brought up to think yourself a mere worm of earth, born to poverty and sorrow. If you were, it will of course require a continued effort to train your mind to the new thought, the thought of your divine inheritance of all God’s vast universe of wealth.
But you can do it.
Begin by giving away your old clothes. There may be people, poor relations, or some struggling mother of half-clad children, to whom your old garments will seem like new raiment, and to whom they will bring hope and happiness.
As a rule, it is not well to give people your discarded clothing. It has a tendency to lower their self-respect and to make them look to you, instead of to themselves, for support. It all depends upon whom the people are and how you do it. If you can find employment for them and arouse their hope and self-confidence and ambition, it is better than carloads of clothing or furniture or provisions. But little children, suffering from cold, or hard-working, over-taxed men and women, will not be harmed and maybe temporarily cheered and encouraged by your gifts.
No matter if you still need your frayed-out garments—do not keep them. Your thoughts of poverty and trouble have impregnated them so that you will continue to produce the same despondent mind-stuff while you wear these garments. Get rid of them, and believe that you are to soon procure fresh, becoming raiment. Rouse all your energies, and go straight ahead with that purpose in mind.
You will be surprised to find how soon the opportunity presents itself for you to obtain what you need.
There is new strength, repose of mind, and inspiration in fresh apparel. God gives Nature new garments every season. We are a part of Nature. He gives us the qualities and the opportunities to obtain suitable covering for our changing needs, if we believe in the one, and use the other.
When I read of a wealthy man who boasts that he has worn one hat seven years, or a woman in affluent circumstances who has worn one bonnet for various seasons, I feel sorry for their ignorance and ashamed of their penuriousness.
Look at the apple tree, with its delicate spring drapery, its luxurious summer foliage, its autumn richness of coloring, its winter draperies of white! Surely the Creator did not intend the tree to have more variety than man!
The tree trusts, and grows, and takes storm and sun as divinely sent, and believes in its right to new apparel, and it comes. It will come to you if you do the same.
The Heart of the New Thought (1903) | by Ella Wheeler Wilcox