This is Earl Nightingale. I’d like to tell you about the strangest secret in the world.
Some years ago Albert Schweitzer, the the great doctor and nobel prize winner, was being interviewed in Londonand a reporter asked him “Doctor, what’s wrong with men today?”
The great doctor was saddened for a moment and then he said, “Men don’t think”.
And it is about this that I want to talk to you.
We live today in a golden age.
This is an era that man has looked forward to, dreamed of, and worked toward for thousands of years but since it’s here, we pretty well take it for granted.
Ours is a land of abundant opportunity for everyone.
But you know what happens?
Let’s take 100 men and we’ll start even, at the age of 25. If you’d ask any one of them if they wanted to be a success, he’d tell you he did and you’d notice that he was eager toward life.
There was a certain sparkle to his eye. An erectness to his carriage and life seemed like a pretty interesting adventure to him but by the time these men reached 65, only 5 would have made the grade.
Only 5 are successful.
When we say only 5% achieve success we have to define success and here’s the definition:
“Success is the progressive realization of a worthy ideal.”
If a man is working toward a predetermined goal and knows where he’s going that man is a success.
If he is not doing that, he’s a failure.
Success is the progressive realization of a worthy ideal.
Rollo May, the distinguished psychiatrist, wrote a wonderful book called Man’s Search for Himself and in this book he says
“The opposite of courage in our society is not cowardice, it’s conformity”
A survey was made one time that covered a lot of men, working men and these men were asked, “where do you work?
Why do you get up in the morning?” 19 out of 20 had no idea.
They simply said “everyone goes to work in the morning” and that’s the reason they do it: because everyone else is doing it.
And there you have the trouble today.
It’s conformity.
People acting like everyone else without knowing why, without knowing where they’re going.
Now, we learn to read by the time we’re 7. We learn to make a living by the time we’re 25.
Usually by that time, we’re not only earning a living, we’re supporting a family.
And yet by the time we’re 65 the great majority hasn’t learned how to become financially independent in the richest land that has ever been known.
Why?
They conform.
They’re acting like the wrong percentage group, the 95% that don’t succeed.
Why do these people conform?
Well let’s get back to our definition of success.
Who succeeds?
The only man who succeeds is the man who is progressively realizing a worthy ideal.
He is the man who says “I’m going to become this” and then begins to work toward that goal. He succeeds because he knows where he’s going.
Think of a ship leaving a harbor.
Think of him with a complete voyage all mapped out and planned.
The captain and crew know exactly where the ship is going and how long it will take. It has a definite goal and it will reach that goal.
Now let’s take another ship, just like the first.
Only let’s not put a crew on it or a captain at the helm. Let’s give it no aiming point, no goal no destination.
We just start the engines and let it go. I think you’ll agree with me that if it gets out of the harbor at all, it will wind up at some deserted beach a derelict.
It can’t go anyplace because it has no destination, no guidance and it’s the same of the human being.
I’ll tell you who the successful people are: a success is a schoolteacher who’s teaching school because that’s what he or she wanted to do.
The success is the woman who is a wife and mother because she wanted to become a wife and mother and is doing a great job at it.
The success is the man who runs the corner gas station because that’s what he wants to do.
The success is the successful salesman who want to be top salesman and grow and build with his organization.
A success is anyone who is doing deliberately a predetermined job because that is what he decided to do deliberately but only 1 out of 20 does that.
That’s why today there isn’t really any competition unless we make it for ourselves.
Instead of competing all we have to do is create.
For twenty years I looked for the key which would determine what would happen to a human being.
Was there a key, I wanted to know, which would make the future a promise that we can foretell to a large extent?
Was there a key that could guarantee a person’s becoming successful if he only knew about it and knew how to use it?
Well there is such a key and I found it.
Here’s the key to success and the key to failure.
We become what we think about.
Now let me say that again, we become what we think about.
Throughout all history, the great wise men and teachers, philosophers and prophets have disagreed with one another on many different things.
It’s only on this one point that they’re in complete and unanimous agreement.
Buddha said “all we are is what we thought about.”
Marcus Aurelius said “a man’s life is what his thoughts make of it”
Disraeli said this: “Everything comes if a man will only wait. I’ve brought myself by long meditation to the conviction that a human being with a settled purpose must accomplish it, and that nothing can resist a will that will stake even existence for its fulfillment.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson said this: “a man is what he thinks about all day long.”
William James said “The greatest discovery of my generation is that human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind.”
And George Bernard Shaw said: “People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don’t believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and if they can’t find them, they make them.”
Well it’s pretty apparent, isn’t it? We become what we think about. It stands to reason that a person who’s thinking about a definite and worthwhile goal is going to reach it because that’s what he’s thinking about and we become what we think about.
Conversely, the man who has no goal doesn’t know where he’s going and his thoughts must therefore be thoughts of confusion and thoughts of anxiety, fear and worry, becomes what he thinks about. His life becomes one of frustration, fear, anxiety and worry.
And if he thinks about nothing, he becomes nothing.
You see, the human mind is the last great unexplored continent on earth. It contains riches beyond our wildest dreams. It will return anything we plant in it.
Now, you might say, “If that’s true, why don’t people use their minds more? Why don’t they till their fertile mental soil?”
We have the answer to that too.
Our mind comes as standard equipment at birth. It’s free and things that have been given to us we place little value upon. Things that we pay money for we value. The paradox is that exactly the reverse is true.
Everything that is really worthwhile in life came to us free: our minds, our soul, our bodies, our hopes, our dreams, our ambitions, our intelligence, our love of our families, and children and friends.
All these priceless possessions are free but the things that cost us money are actually very cheap and can be replaced at any time.
A good man can be completely wiped out and make another fortune. He can do that several times.
Even if our homes burn down we can rebuild them but the things we got for nothing.
The really valuable possessions, we can never replace.
The human mind isn’t used merely because we take it for granted. It can do any kind of a job we assign to it but generally speaking, we use it for little jobs instead of big important ones. Universities tell us that we are operating on about 10% of our abilities.
Decide now.
What is it that you want?
Find your goal in your mind.
Give yourself direction and a destination.
It’s the most important decision you’ll ever make in your life.
You see, the very law that gives us success is a two way sword.
We must control our thinking.
The same rule that can lead a man to a life of success, wealth, happiness and all the things he’s dreamed of for himself and his family—that very same law—can lead him into the gutter. It’s all in how he uses it, for good or bad.
This is the strangest secret in the world.
Remember these words from the Sermon on the Mount and remember them well. Keep them constantly before you.
“Ask and it shall be given you. Seek and you shall find. Knock and it shall be open unto you. For everyone that asketh, receiveth and he that seeketh, findeth and him that knocketh, it shall be open.”
It’s as marvelous and as simple as that. In fact it’s so simple that in our seemingly complicated world it’s difficult for an adult to understand that all he needs is a purpose and faith.
Above all, don’t worry. Worry brings fear and fear is crippling. The only thing that can cause you to worry is trying to do it all yourself.
Know that all you have to do is hold your goal before you. Everything else will take care of itself. Remember also to keep calm and cheerful.
Don’t let petty things annoy you and get you off course.
Prosperity is founded upon the law of mutual exchange: any person who contributes to prosperity must prosper in turn himself. Sometimes the return will not come from those you serve but it must come to you from some place.
That’s the law. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.
There are no exceptions to a law. You can drive down any street inAmericaand from your car estimate the service that’s being rendered by the people living on that street. Have you ever thought of this yardstick before? It’s interesting.
Once this law is fully understood, any thinking person can tell his own fortune. If he wants more, he must be of more service to those from whom he receives his return. If he wants less, he is only to reduce this service.
This is the price you must pay for what you want. If you believe you can enrich yourself by deluding others you can end only by deluding yourself. It may take some time but just as sure as you breathe, you’ll get back what you put out.
The prisons and the streets where the lonely walk are filled with people who have tried to make new laws just for themselves.
We may sometimes avoid the laws of men but there are greater laws that can’t be broken.
One time I heard grove Patterson the other great chief of the Toledo Daily Blade make a speech and as he concluded his speech he said something that I’ve never forgotten.
He said “My years in the newspaper business have convinced me of several things. Among them: that people are basically good and that we came from some place and that we’re going someplace. So we should make our time here an exciting adventure.
The architect of the universe didn’t build a stairway leading nowhere.”
And the greatest teacher of all, the carpenter from the plains of Galilea gave us the secret time and time again, “as you believe, so shall it be done unto you.”
Earl Nightingale
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