Earl Nightingale - How to Master the Basic Fundamentals of Life and Success

So making this record is a special privilege, and I'll do my best in this short space of time to pass along to you a distillation of more than 20 years of research on why some people seem to do so well in life while others do not. This information has changed my life and the lives of thousands of others who have made the same discovery, and I sincerely hope it will have a happy and profitable effect upon yours. I hope that whenever you listen to this record, you will do so with a notebook handy. We seem to forget the spoken word quickly, and only by repeated playings in the home without distractions can this information become a permanent part of your way of life. To begin, I would like you to remember this: successful people are not people without problems. They have, as a rule, just as many problems and largely the same kind as everyone else. The difference is that they learn to solve their problems. Successful living is nothing more than the ability to solve successfully the problems which are as much a part of living as breathing. The degree of our success will be determined by the extent to which we can solve our problems. So now that we've defined the problem, let me make this statement: if you can tell me what you want, I can tell you how to get it. The problem with the great majority of individuals is not with their ability to achieve their goals in life. But rather with the failure to understand two factors vital to successful living. The first is to make the decision as to what it is we want enough to give it most of our attention until it's been achieved, and to clearly define it. And the second is to fully understand that we have the ability to achieve this goal, or we wouldn't want it in the first place. The next vital rule to successful living is to understand that our success is won or lost by our ability to serve others. We are interdependent, and it's just as impossible to succeed without serving others as it would be to live in our modern world without others serving us. Our rewards in life will and must always be in exact proportion to our service. It is the misunderstanding of this single law which, in my mind, is responsible for fully 90% of the frustration and discontent we see around us. In your mind's eye, Get a picture of a giant apothecary scale, the kind with the cross arm from which hang two large bowls on chains. One of the bowls is marked "Rewards," the other "Service." These bowls will always be in perfect balance. Now, a lot of people don't like this law, if they're even aware of it, but not liking a law does nothing to change it. The basic laws of nature and economics are unchanging. If we're out of step with them, we are, as Thomas Huxley put it, checkmated, without haste but without remorse. But to those who know and work with the laws, he said, they are paid with the overflowing sort of generosity with which the strong delight in strength. Now, there are two kinds of rewards or income. One is psychic, the other is real or tangible, such as money or property. If a person doesn't like his income, all he has to do is take a good long look at his service. The fact that the many individuals in the fields of science, religion, teaching, and so on must measure most of their rewards in the realm of the psychic does nothing to alter the fact that their rewards will be in exact proportion to their service. Look where you will, you will find this law in undeviating operation. Our rewards will always be in exact proportion to our service. Good examples of this are World Book and Childcraft. The fact that your company is the world's largest publisher of reference material is based solely on the fact that its products have found the widest acceptance and have been sold to more individuals and institutions. This is the law then that lies as the supporting structure of economics and personal well-being, so fix it in your mind. All attempts to sidestep or in any way avoid this law will result in frustration and failure. So this brings up the question: if what I want is more than I now have, How can I increase my service in order to earn it? Well, whom do we serve? We serve people. So let's take a moment to try to understand people. The more we understand them, the better we can serve them. I think of an adult human being as a grown child doing his best to play for the first and last time on earth this game called life. The extent to which he learns the rules of this mighty game will determine his success. But right here we run into an historic and exasperating fact. People down through the centuries have, with the most amazing consistency, divided themselves into two groups. One group contains about 5% of any given population. The other group contains the remaining 95%. Neither of these two groups is any better than the other, but one thing separates them. The big group, The one containing about 95% of the people never seems to get the word, while the smaller group, the 5%, does. Now, what do I mean by getting the word? I mean about 95% of the people never quite understand, emotionally or intellectually, that we as individuals control, to an altogether unsuspected extent, our lives here on Earth. That each one of us is the architect of the structure fashioned by our years. You see, all of us want the same things, but only about 5% figures out how to get them. I think it's perfectly stated in your World Book booklet titled Opportunity Unlimited. It says, within each of us burn two unquenchable ambitions: to serve importantly and to gain financial independence. Both of these worthwhile goals are within the reach of all of us, man or woman. But according to statistics, only about 5% achieve both of them. Why? Let's look at it logically. Every human being has a tendency to think, act, and talk like those by whom he is surrounded. This is environment, and it exercises an enormous influence on our lives. We've already pointed out that 95% don't seem to get the word in life. Then it follows that in the case of any given individual, The odds are 95 to 5 that he is surrounded by the larger group, and since a body in motion tends to remain in motion until acted upon by an outside force, that he will continue to conform to his group unless we can do a better job of serving him through knowledge. Here is our largest opportunity for service, and the rewards will take care of themselves. Now, right here, let me restate what we've covered so far. Our rewards, psychic and tangible, will be in proportion to our service. The failure of most people to live successfully is not caused by their lack of abilities, far from it, but rather in their failure to decide what it is they want and understanding that our wants are governed by our talents and abilities, and that we are divided into two groups of roughly 5% and 95%, and that it's the 5% group which is successful. So here, let me give you a definition of success which, to my mind, covers the subject completely. Success is the progressive realization of a worthy ideal. That is, anyone who knows where he is going in life is a success. At the moment he makes the decision of what it is he intends to accomplish, of what it is he considers a worthy ideal, he is successful. Once this goal has been accomplished, he is again, by our definition, a failure until he establishes a new goal toward which to work. To my mind, This is what we as human beings were intended to do, to go through life from one achievement to another, and to finally come to the end of our road here on Earth, still reaching, still working toward a new and better plateau on which to stand. For this is to live and live completely, to know as much as we can know, to serve as much as we can serve, to accomplish as much as we can accomplish. Well, since success is the progressive realization of a worthy ideal, Why are we faced with only 5% who can be called really successful? Because the best estimates available tell us that only about 5% will ever decide upon and define the one thing they want. One thing, because we can only do one thing at a time. To my mind, the story of a person's life is the story of a quest, a search to which he devotes his life. We know that the happiest people on earth are those who know exactly what it is they seek and set boldly out to find it. And while we're all dreamers, the fortunate ones are those who have found a dream so exciting and worthwhile that they'll devote a part or all of their lives to making that dream come true. But while all dream, by far the great majority, that 95%, never realizes that a persistent daydream is often the point on which we should set our compass, the place toward which it is meant for us to journey. The tragedy is that the great majority shrugs off this built-in direction finder and returns to the wide, visible, well-marked road in life which they feel must be the best road because it carries the heaviest traffic. Well, let's make this point clear. The road in life with the heaviest traffic is not the best road to follow, for it is the road of the 95%. It is the road with no more opportunity and with 19 times as much competition. Let me very briefly tell you how I got started on this business of making a study of people and why they wind up the way they do. I spent nearly 20 years looking for the secret to achievement. I didn't know it was older than the pyramids and had appeared in more than 50 million books. It started in 1933 during the last depression for me. I was bothered by the difference that existed between what I had been told and what I could see around me. For example, I had been told that man was God's noblest creature and had dominion over all the earth and all its other creatures. I knew this was true. But in my neighborhood, the creatures were eating better than we were, and I wanted to know why so many were poor when there was such abundance on the earth. They had no money, but there was still as much as there'd been a few years before. Where had it gone? They had little education, yet education was on every side of them. They had very little food, yet it was raised in abundance. They lived in inadequate and ugly dwellings, yet there were good homes for sale. Well, it was apparent to me that these people didn't have the answer to the problem. They were good people, but they didn't have the answers. Here were people who were discouraged and confused in a world which should have been filled with challenge and excitement. It's true that we were in a period of general depression, but to the thinking individual, this represents another problem to be solved, another challenge to overcome. And to many, it was the thing that sparked their greatest accomplishments. I remember reading something once about discouragement. It was a fable about a devil's sale, and he had his many wares on display. There was the rapier of jealousy, the dagger of fear, the strangling noose of hatred, each with its high price. But on a purple pedestal, gleaming dully in the light, was a worn and battered wedge. This was the devil's most prized possession, and it was not for sale, for with it alone he could stay in business. It was the wedge of discouragement. Well, as I remember it, the people in my neighborhood were a pretty discouraged lot. Now discouragement can only come from one of two things: 1) a lack of information, or 2) a situation over which we can exercise no control. It is very seldom that we are faced with number 2. Almost all discouragement can be traced to a lack of information. If you find yourself falling from the top of a high building, you could justify discouragement. But it can be traced to your having made the fatal step, and that was a lack of information about the law of gravity. When I asked these people why we were in the fix we were in, they did a very human thing. They blamed other people. They looked everywhere for the answer except where it really was: within themselves. These were the 95%. And I decided to find out just what it was that separated the haves from the have-nots, not just in a financial sense, but in every sense. I found the answers in books written by great men. I found the answer in the Bible. Why didn't these people of whom I speak know the answers? They didn't read good books. They didn't read the Bible. Everyone owned one because it was fashionable, like a set of Shakespeare, but they didn't read that either. They were discouraged because they lacked information. They didn't know the rules of this game called life, and they had been checkmated without haste, but without remorse. They didn't realize that without a goal, an aiming point, we're without purpose or direction. They clung together, feeling somehow that there was safety in numbers, without realizing that in this case, Just the opposite is true. They didn't know that if we conform to the big group, the odds are 95 to 5 that we'll miss the boat in life in almost every vital and important aspect of living. To prove this, you need only take a look at human history. Of all the billions of human beings who've lived on Earth, all great advances, all great ideas have come from just a handful, a few thousand out of billions. Now, how have the people as a group reacted to the great ideas. Every great leader and thinker, from Socrates to the Wright brothers, has been scorned, ridiculed, poisoned, imprisoned, stoned, pilloried, burned at the stake, or crucified. Mankind as a group has made a consistently grisly game of tormenting his saviors. Why? Lack of information. Lack of knowledge. It comes from following the wrong crowd. What can we learn from all this as individuals? Two things. One, to amount to anything as individuals, we've got to be individuals. We've got to have individual goals, individual thinking, individual action. And two, we must never conform to the great mass of people. We must love them, help them, for our joy and success will be determined by the extent to which we serve them. But we must never lose our individuality and identity by permitting ourselves to be submerged in this suffocating sea of indirection and purposelessness. There's nothing wrong with emulation. In fact, it's a good idea so long as we emulate a person who represents that which we wish to become, but never the crowd, never the 95%. And you know what the answer was, the secret to achievement that I devoted nearly 20 years to finding? Its pure simplicity had caused it to elude me, just as it manages to elude the majority of the people in any given age. I had been looking for something complicated, something only a mind prepared by years of study could grasp, and I found the answer so simple a child can understand it. In 6 words: we are what we think about. Our minds, our thinking controls our destinies here on Earth to a degree totally unsuspected by the great majority of people. When you think about it a moment, it becomes so obvious, so clear and simple. Well then, if we become what we think about, and if we can control our minds, we can pretty well tell our own future. And that's the point I want to make. That's what I meant when I said earlier that each one of us is the architect of the structure fashioned by our years. This means that if we're confused about what we wish to become or accomplish, our lives, our environment will mirror that confusion. It also means that if we know what it is we seek, that it will, it must be accomplished. Barring an act of God or a catastrophe over which we have no control, we as individuals can call our own shots for the rest of our lives. We can know what it means to go through life from one success to another, to play life according to the rules and reap the rewards. We can know what it means to have peace of mind, and live calm, cheerful, successful lives. You are at this moment the sum total of your thoughts to this point, for there is nothing else you can be. And 5 years from now, you can be and have anything you set your entire mind and heart upon. Turn this record over now, and let me tell you of a way you can use this law to accomplish more in 5 years than the average person does in 40. Succeeding in life has always been a matter of doing that which the great majority does not do. Now let's keep this in mind as we get into this business of goals. It isn't that I want to make an invidious comparison between the 5% and the 95%, not at all. That's just the way it is, and if we don't recognize it, it will be to our cost. At the beginning of this record, I made the statement, if you can tell me what you want, I can tell you how to get it. You see, the trick is not in achieving our goals; it is in establishing them. A ship would never leave a harbor if it did not have a destination. An industrial plant would never open its gates if it did not have a product or a purpose. Football would not be played without goalposts, nor would baseball without a home plate. Every business operates for a purpose. Every game has a reason. Getting back to the analogy of our ship, If you were to climb to the navigation bridge and ask the captain the name and location of his next port of call, he would tell you immediately. There's not the slightest doubt in his mind. Can you tell anyone your destination just as quickly and in one sentence? The captain of the ship knows that he can arrive at only one port at a time. He knows that it's impossible to arrive at two. Do you know that? He also knows that his destination will be invisible for fully 99% of his voyage, But he knows it's there, and that he'll reach it, barring an unforeseen catastrophe, if he will just keep doing certain things a certain way every day. One fine morning, his destination will appear on the horizon. He'll sail into port, his voyage successfully completed. When his business has been accomplished, he'll then sail to another predetermined port of call, and this will take him and his ship from one success to another for the rest of both of their lives. By understanding that he can reach only one port at a time, The owner of a ship can, in the short space of a very few years, reach hundreds of ports successfully. There'll be problems, lots of them, but they'll be solved, and the ship will steam its solitary course over the deep oceans of the world, devoting its life to accomplishing its mission and contributing its share to the welfare and economy of the world. Men and women who follow this sensible, obvious, and meaningful way of life will do the same. But the paradox is that most are like ships without rudders, They're subject to the whims of wind and tide, and while they hope they'll one day arrive in a rich and bustling port, you and I know that for every narrow harbor entrance, there's 1,000 miles of treacherous and rocky coastline. The chances of their just drifting into port are 1,000 to 1 against them. These are the unfortunate people who, not knowing the rules, believe that circumstance controls our lives. They believe in luck and superstitions. Fate, the breaks. They believe that success comes as a result of who you know, not what you know. And while they cling to their false alibis, life passes them by, for the rules of life are just, and they are checkmated without haste but without remorse. Now, what about you? Remembering that the definition of success is the progressive realization of a worthy ideal, what's the ideal toward which you are working now, today, yesterday, and tomorrow? Can you write it in one sentence? Is your goal sharply and clearly defined? Now, for a moment, let's return to the message in your booklet, Opportunity Unlimited. It reads: Within each of us burn two unquenchable ambitions: to serve importantly and to gain financial independence. The first of these two desirable goals you've already achieved by being in the World Book Childcraft organization. Now let's take a look at the second ambition: financial independence. I mentioned on the first side of this record that I could tell you how you could be and have anything you set your mind on in 5 years. To better understand this, you must examine one of the most overlooked facts in the world. It is that every job, no matter what it may be, holds somewhere within itself the key to everything we want in life, the key to greatness. But we must look for it, and we must think. Since only about 5% make the grade, We must place ourselves in this percentage group. We can do this by making two decisions. The first is to decide once and for all that this is what you're going to do for a living, that this is going to be your career, since its opportunities are unlimited and it's constantly growing with our dynamic economy and our exploding population. In the past 13 years, World Book sales have increased 800%. And even this enormous volume is expected to double in the next 5 years or less. I think you can easily see that by being in this business now, your future is unlimited in this organization, both from a career and economic standpoint. It is being undecided, uncommitted about what we're going to do that keeps us from doing our best. We're working with one hand and looking around with the other. As a result, we do neither satisfactorily. And remember, this work contains within it the road to greatness, the key to anything you want for yourself and your family. Hundreds of people have already proved this in the last few years, so make the decision once and for all. Once this has been made, you'll feel as though a weight has been lifted from your mind. Perhaps for the first time in your life, you'll know where you are in the world. You know you have a place where you can serve, where you're needed and respected, where what you're doing is important. Once this decision has been made, we come to the second: decide to become a professional at your business. You see, we can either compete or create. If we compete with all the other people in our line of work, we must be willing to accept the same rewards. If that's what we want, fine. But if we want to become professionals at what we do, then we must create. And when we begin to do this, there's no limit to that which we can achieve. We hear a lot these days about a word called security. Everyone wants security, but not 1 in 10 can tell you what it is. Most people will tell you that security rests with a job. This is impossible. There is no such thing as a job that represents security. Anyone with a job can lose it for any one of a thousand reasons at any time. Those people I saw back in 1933, demoralized and afraid, thought that a job represented security. And when it had been taken from them, they had lost everything. They found themselves lost in a world they didn't understand. No, a job cannot represent security. There is only one place on earth you can find security, and if it isn't there, it isn't anywhere. It's inside of a person, never outside. If a man has security inside where it belongs, His wife and children can feel it when he sits down to eat with them, and they're warmed by it. If a man has security inside where it belongs, you can see it walking down the street, and you can feel it when he enters a room. That's security, and you can't take it away from him. You can take away his money, his home, everything but a wife who's willing to start over, and most of them are, and drop him anywhere in the country. Go back in a year and he'll be doing just as well as when you found him the first time. You can't keep a good man down. No matter what you do to him, like cream on milk, you can shake it all day, but just set it down for a while and it'll bounce right to the top again. This man or this woman has security where it belongs. And do you know where it comes from? It comes from doing what we do for a living surpassingly well. It comes from being a pro in a world of amateurs. Becoming a pro isn't difficult. It comes from knowing what to do with time. It comes from knowledge, planning, and working. First, knowledge. This means learning everything we can about what we sell, about World Book, Childcraft, and our sales material. Learning everything we can about people, since that's who we sell, and learning everything we can about selling, since that's our profession. What we sell, who we sell, and how to sell. Those three subjects would fill a large library. But we can take things one at a time, and by devoting an hour a day to study, we can become outstanding professionals in 5 years or less. And it's the professionals in this business who can write their own tickets, good times or bad. They can live where they choose, and being professionals, work when they choose. Second, planning. This means writing down the specific goal we're now working toward. It means writing in detail about the first port of call we want to reach. Realizing that we can only reach one at a time. It means selecting the income we feel will represent financial independence to us. Once this has been selected, we know exactly what we must do in order to reach it. As soon as our first goal has been reached, we can set a new one. The person who does this is the person people call lucky. Good things just seem to happen to him. The so-called breaks start coming his way. But it's a result of planning and working positively that attracts the good things to us. I can't emphasize too much the importance of describing your goal in detail. If it's a beautiful new home, get the actual plans, or at least an elevation drawing of the home, and carry it with you so that you can look at it regularly. If it's a certain amount of money, write down the specific amount for the coming year to the penny, and then work your plan. Whatever your goal may be, Write it down in detail. Then you're like the ship. You're on course, and you'll reach more successful ports in a few years than most men do in a lifetime. And third, working. Working more than the average, if we're going to achieve more than average results, is necessary, of course. But with proper planning and with knowledge, it seems easy. Moreover, to work, we need energy, and energy is inextricably linked to to desire. Unless we have a desire to do a certain thing, we find ourselves without the energy. But you will never find desire without energy. Once our goal has been crystallized in our minds and we realize that we become what we think about, our doubts vanish as to whether or not we can achieve our desired ends, and with the picture of our dream in our mind, we have abundant energy. Let me quote from William James' essay on vital reserves. Compared with what we ought to be, we are only half awake. Our fires are damped. Our drafts are checked. We are making use of only a small part of our possible mental and physical resources. Stating the thing broadly, the human individual thus lives usually far within his limits. He possesses powers of various sorts which he habitually fails to use. He energizes below his maximum, and he behaves below his optimum. And then he wrote, "Excitements, ideas, and efforts, in a word, are what carry us over the dam." He goes on in this excellent essay to point out that we have deep reservoirs of abundant energy that we habitually fail to use, and that by pushing past the first false feeling of fatigue, we will find an exhilarating second wind that will take us to our goals. This is why, in studying the lives of the world's great men and women, We find they seem to be indefatigable. Work meant nothing to them because what they were doing, where they were going, filled their entire worlds. Frequently, people find it difficult to establish a goal toward which to work. Realizing that we cannot be successful without a goal, here's a good way to solve the problem. Get off by yourself and where you can think without being disturbed. Then write on a sheet of paper a complete description of the person you would like to be and the things in being this person you would have. Once this has been done, start acting the part of the person you wish to become. Carry, as often as you can, a clear mental image of the person you want to be, and begin to be that person. Soon this will become so knit with habit, it will lead you without fail to the goal you seek. You see, when you begin to do this, you're using your greatest power, your mind, and you will become what you think about. Some time ago, I was flying west and reading a copy of a television play by the three-time Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Archibald MacLeish. The play was The Secret of Freedom. Suddenly I read a line that shook me to the soles of my feet, and for a long time I stared out of the window thoroughly digesting the line I had just read. Here is that line: The only thing about a man that is a man is his mind. Everything else you can find in a pig or a horse. Think about that line until you know what it means. The only thing that sets us apart as human beings is our divine minds. Everything that means anything to us—our love of our families, our faith, our dreams, our talents and abilities, our religion, everything we know—is connected to us solely through our minds. Our minds represent our hope and our future. Yet, as a rule, it is the last place the average person will turn to for help. Your mind contains riches beyond belief, but you must prospect this rich and largely unexplored continent. And the only way it can be prospected is by systematic study and systematic thinking. Your mind is like a muscle. It will develop only to the extent that you use it, no more. By devoting an hour a day to study, you're building your mind into a powerful and creative servant. If you only do this 5 days a week, it comes to 260 hours a year. That's 1,300 hours in 5 years, or the equivalent of 162 8-hour days devoted to study and research. Believe me, if you'll do this, in 5 years you'll be one of the most accomplished professionals in your field, and you will have the world on a string. You will virtually be able to write your own ticket. The average man works 8 hours a day, about 50 weeks a year, for 40 years. That's time enough to become great at anything. The time will pass anyway. We might as well reap the rewards. So now let's sum up. And reduce the whole thing to a workable formula, a set of rules for this game of life that cannot fail to take us to where we wish to go. The first and most important thing to remember is the rule that controls our life: we become, literally, what we think about. This means that we must establish a worthwhile goal toward which to work, a goal that will occupy our minds most of the time. This goal should be written out or illustrated. We should look at it and restate our purpose every morning, every night, and as many times during the day as we can. We must fully understand, emotionally as well as intellectually, that whatever it is we set our heart upon will become real in our lives. We must also remember the law that lies as the basic foundation for all economics and personal well-being as well. Our rewards will be in exact proportion to our service, and if we want to get into the top 5% of the people, we must often cut ourselves away from the effects of our environment. And become individuals with individual goals, individual thinking, individual actions. We must realize that our daily work contains more opportunities than we could develop in a lifetime, and that our job contains within itself the key to greatness, the road to everything we could possibly want in life for ourselves and our families. We must realize too that security can be found in one place only, inside of us. If it isn't there, it isn't anywhere. And the only road to security lies in doing what we do for a living surpassingly well. And lastly, that we must become professionals at what we do, and that becoming a pro involves knowledge, planning, and working. Knowledge of what we sell, who we sell, and selling. Planning by establishing the goal, which automatically establishes our work pattern. The great salesman is like the great golfer. It looks easy the way he does it, because it is easy the way he does it. But it took time, dedication, and work in its accomplishment. Is it worth it? You bet it is. P.G. Hamerton once wrote, let's be different. A strong life is like that of a ship of war which has its own place in the fleet and can share in its strength and discipline, but can also go forth alone to the solitude of the infinite sea. We ought to belong to society, to have our place in it, and yet be capable of a complete individual existence outside of it. And remember the strangest secret, will you? You are now, and you will become, what you think about. Thank you.