Unlock a New You: 22 Minutes with Earl Nightingale That Will Change Everything

The 2-ton truck and the shining, sleek black roadster stopped within inches of each other at the street intersection. In the truck was a nice-faced man in his early 30s. At the wheel of the open car sat a mule-faced man of 60-plus. No damage done. An accident narrowly averted, yet the elderly man who had not given the other his right of way was now shouting at the very top of his voice, waving his hands with a fist in one. Red in the face and almost apoplectic. It was over in a minute. The truck and the car parted. The well-dressed, apparently intelligent citizen of the community had thrown at the truck driver his last look of malevolence with intent to kill. The young man who had listened silently to the other's tirade, leaning relaxed over his wheel, parted with these words spoken softly but with a suggestion in the tone that The advice he was giving was good. He said, "Old man, why don't you grow up? Be your age." The advice was excellent, but I'm afraid it came too late. The man in the roadster had grown up all right, but lopsidedly. There are many ways of growing up and becoming a well-angled individual. According to the Dr. Steinkron, you must realize that it isn't just a question of the state of your biceps or whether or not you have lost all your baby teeth before you're on the way to sensible maturity. We grow in lots of ways, or fail to grow, and each manner of growth contributes to the fullness of the life of the individual. There's the calendar age—no need to stress its importance since it isn't too important. Then the mental age. This is dependent on our drive for self-betterment. The initial impetus is given us in school, and from then on our degree of enlightenment and knowledge depends upon our innate desire to learn. Probably we know more about the physical age than any other. Suppose that a man whom you never met before sits quietly in a chair. You're asked to guess his physical age. You will usually guess the true decade, often come within a year or two of his birthdate. But suppose you're asked to guess his mental and emotional age. Now, you can't do that unless he speaks. And even then, it may require more than a few minutes before you have him cataloged. It takes time to dig down through the Superficial layers of small talk to determine whether the undersoil is as promising as the top. For example, the boy in the truck knew he was talking to an old man. Even a baby knows whether it's looking at a granddad or at a boy across the street. But the young man in the truck had also divined something else. He knew at once that this older man was emotionally below par. So you can see there's more to growing up than just living. Just getting smart, just being healthy. There's the emotional side which is so important, and without its full development, there's an extreme difficulty in adjusting ourselves to the social life around us. It's well to remember that people's reactions are dictated by their states of mind and health. To be emotionally grown up is to learn not to get in the habit of taking everybody Everything is a personal insult. That man in the roadster probably argued with people all day because he thought they were picking on him. People don't pick on strangers. It just happens that the strangers get in the way of their feelings. And so we must train ourselves when young to be tolerant of others. We should intuitively, in all our human relations, Each time, step over into the other fellow's shoes, which is just the good old golden rule. For instance, don't laugh at people's peculiarities, because remember that after all, you yourself are a packet of subconscious reactions. That we're creatures of habit is another way of saying that often we're nothing but puppets who dance this way and that to the pull of the strings. Sometimes we can rear back and cut the strings. Usually, however, we go through life making the same motions.

Live and let live is a good rule in all human relationships.

It's invaluable when you're contending with the idiosyncrasies of your older fellow man. His habits have had time to gel. George Amos Dorsey wrote, normal old age should be only less delightful than youth. But premature senility is plain tragedy. I spoke with a middle-aged man a few days ago who's a good example of this tragic figure Dorsey wrote about. I knew before we'd talked more than a few minutes that he'd fit into this classification because of this statement. He said, you know, I don't see why you spend so much effort in writing books which hope to prolong people's lives. You make life seem too important. As for me, I don't care if I die tomorrow, he said. That immediately classified him in my mind as an unhappy man. And for a very old person to make such a statement may at times seem excusable. However, when a man in the 40s says it, then he's prematurely old. I think one of the chief manifestations of premature aging is this willingness to throw in the sponge, this perfectly unnatural acquiescence to surrender a great part of the few billion seconds we were given at birth. For only a man beaten in spirit, one in whom the daily waking is just another one of those days, can admit to a willingness to surrender this spirit.

Have you given much thought to the fact that you create yourself?

You do, to an altogether unsuspected extent, simply by the choices you make, by the things you decide to do or decide not to do.

As Kierkegaard once said, the self is only that which it is in the process of becoming.

So it is that an adult can stand in front of a full-length mirror and take a good long look at what he's created. We leave home and we form ourselves into new people, and we learn, as Thomas Wolfe learned, that We can't go home again, that we don't fit as well as we used to. We wonder after a visit as we leave to regain our own lives, what happened, if something is wrong, what the strangeness was. It's simply that we're different now, and going back home again is like trying to get a 2-year-old shoe on a teenager. It's not gonna fit anymore. We've shaped ourselves into new people, and we've done so by our own decisions. There's no going back, of course, and I guess most of us wouldn't want to. Even if we could, although we're acutely conscious of mistakes we've made, we have to remember that each of us is new at this business of living and content ourselves with the fact that most of us have plenty of time to make good decisions in the future. If there's a rule in making decisions, I suppose it would be to listen to that inner voice and try to make decisions that tend to be growth-oriented. There's really no standing still, even if we'd like to. I wonder how many mothers in poor families have said to their children, I want you to get an education and make something of yourselves.

That old term, make something of yourself, carries with it the clear message that we invent, that we make, we create ourselves.

I do think, however, that most really try to play it safe. That is, select those decisions which seem to carry the least risk of failure, and by so doing, live out their lives well below their real potentials as persons. Sayings such as, I'm not gonna stick my neck out, and don't rock the boat, to say nothing of the popular take it easy, and never volunteer all indicate a reluctance to live fully extended or at the leading edge of life. In business, every time a suggestion is made that involves any sort of innovation, some old-timer will ask, well, who else is doing it? He needs reassurance that the idea is not completely new, that it's been tested by someone else before he'll venture a yes vote. Professor Sidney Hook writes, my observations lead me to the conclusion that human beings have suffered greater deprivations from their fear of life than from its abundance.

If any organism fails to fulfill its potentialities, it becomes sick, just as your legs would wither if you never walked. But the power of your legs is not all you would lose. The flowing of your blood, your heart action, your entire organism would be the weaker. And in the same way, if man does not fulfill his potentialities as a person, he becomes to that extent constricted and ill. This is the essence of neurosis: the person's unused potentialities. Now I think that that's worth our making a mental note about. Think of that. This is the essence of neurosis. The person's unused potentialities, blocked by hostile conditions in the environment, past or present, and by his own internalized conflicts, turn inward and cause morbidity. Now here's something that William Blake said that I think we ought to have printed and emblazoned on our wall. Energy is eternal delight, said William Blake, and he who desires but acts not breeds pestilence. I'm going to repeat that.

Let's all remember that 'Cause golly, that could change a person's life, huh?

Energy is eternal delight. And he who desires but acts not, in other words, does nothing about his desires, breeds pestilence. Kafka was a master at the gruesome task of picturing people who do not use their potentialities and therefore lose their sense of being persons. And the chief character in The Trial and in The Castle has no name. He is identified only by an initial, a mute symbol of one's lack of identity in one's own right. And in the staggering and frightful parable Metamorphosis, Kafka illustrates what happens when the human being forfeits his powers. Now the hero of this story is a typical empty modern young man who lives a routine vacuous life. In this case, he's a salesman returning regularly to his middle-class home, eating the same menu of roast beef every Sunday while his father goes to sleep at the table. The young man's life was so empty, implies the author, that he woke up one morning no longer a human being, but a cockroach. Because he had not fulfilled his status as a man, he forfeited his human potentialities. A cockroach, like lice and rats and vermin, lives off others' leavings. It is a parasite, and in most people's minds, a symbol for what is unclean and repugnant. Could there be any more powerful symbol of what happens when a human being relinquishes his nature as a person? That's powerful, isn't it? That's what happens to a person when he does not use his potentialities, when he does not use his energy. Because as William Blake said, energy is eternal delight, and it is. And I really believe, and I think you'll agree with me, that most people, if they don't know that, is because they've never tried. Now remember what this fine psychiatrist said when he wrote this. If any organism— now that includes the human organism, a human person— fails to fulfill its potentialities, it becomes sick. But to the extent that we do fulfill our potentialities as persons, to the extent that we do fulfill them, we experience the profoundest joy to which the human being is heir. When a little child is learning to walk up steps or lift a box, he'll try again and again, getting up when he falls down and starting all over again. And finally, when he does succeed, he laughs with gratification. His expression of joy is in the use of his powers. But this is nothing in comparison to the quiet joy when the adolescent can use his newly emerged power for the first time to gain a friend. Or the adult's joy when he can love, plan, and create. Plan and create. Joy is the effect which comes when we use our powers. And here's something I liked very much. Joy rather than happiness, is the goal of life. For joy is the emotion which accompanies our fulfilling our natures as human beings. It is based on the experience of one's identity as a being of worth and dignity who is able to affirm his being, if need be, against all other beings and the whole inorganic world. This power in its ideal form is shown in the life of Socrates, who was so confident in himself and his values that he could take his being condemned to death not as a defeat, but as a greater fulfillment than compromising his beliefs. Now, we're not trying to imply that such joy is only for the heroic and the outstanding. It is as present qualitatively in anyone's act, no matter how inconspicuous, which is done in an honest and responsible expression of his own powers. Well, now that's the point I wanted to make.

This was written by Dr.

Rollo May and is in the book Man's Search for Himself, published by Norton, which is considered a classic in its field.

Lin Yutang, the famous Chinese philosopher, wrote, we do not know a nation until we know its pleasures of life. Just as we do not know a man until we know how he spends his leisure. It is when a man ceases to do the things he has to do and does the things he likes to do that the character is revealed. It's when the repressions of society and business are gone, and when the goads of money and fame and ambition are lifted, and a man's spirit wanders where it listeth, that we see the inner man, his real self. Have you ever thought much about that? Your leisure gives you away. I used to know a man who was head of a very large commercial empire. Beginning with nothing but ambition, he became a multimillionaire and finally retired as head of his far-flung company. He bought a large and magnificent yacht with which to cruise the world. And you know what he did with his free time? He read salacious paperbacks and got falling-down drunk and had to be carried unconscious to bed every night. He's dead now. His leisure gave him away. There was nothing there, just nothing at all. He was a one-idea man. Once he was away from that idea, he was a, a lost child in the wilderness. He didn't enjoy his yacht or his time. Travel meant nothing to him. He was a pitiful, unhappy cipher. His millions, which could have given him access to the whole world, were worthless to him. The thing that's always bothered me is how a human being can live for 30 or 40 or 50 years and find no interest, no charm and excitement in the world. Talk about wearing blinders. I guess it has to do with the way a person looks at life. If it's nothing more to him than getting through one day after another as best he can, that's one thing. But if he's searching for meaning, Well, that's something else. It doesn't mean that you'll find it, but the search, the journey itself, can be filled with interest and excitement. When FDR first took office as President of the United States, one of his first acts was to call on the Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, Oliver Wendell Holmes. He was admitted to the old jurist's chambers and found him reading Plato. Justice Holmes was in his 90s. Why are you reading Plato, Mr. Justice? The president asked. To improve my mind, Mr. President, the great judge replied. To improve my mind. What do you do with your leisure time? It's a good idea to examine carefully this important segment of your life. It exposes the real person, but not the finished person. We can change. We can, like Justice Holmes, still be growing and improving our minds at 92. I don't mean we need to read Plato, although it's an excellent idea, but to find fulfillment, meaning, and interest, we need to grow towards something. When we stop growing, like my millionaire friend with a big yacht, we get sick and die. We We may stick around a few more years and go through the motions, but for all practical purposes, we've really ceased to live. We do not know a man until we know how he spends his leisure. It is when a man ceases to do the things he has to do and does the things he likes to do that the character is revealed. It is then we see the inner man, his real self.

According to the Bureau of Standards, a dense fog covering 7 city blocks to a depth of 130 feet feet is composed of something less than one glass of water. That is, all the fog covering 7 city blocks, 100 feet deep, could be, if it were gotten all together, held in a single drinking glass. It would not quite fill it. And this can be compared to our worries. If we can see into the future, and if we can see our problems in their true light, they wouldn't tend to blind us to the world, to living itself, but instead could be relegated to their true size and place. And if all the things most people worry about were reduced to their true size, you could probably put them all into a water glass too. It's a well-established fact that as we get older, we worry less. We learn that with the passing of the years and the problems each of them yields, that most of our worries are not really worth bothering ourselves about too much, and that we can manage to solve the important ones. But to younger people, they often find their lives obscured by the fog of worry. Yet here's an authoritative estimate of what most people worry about: things that never happen, 40%. That is, 40% of the things you worry about will never occur anyway. Things over and past that can't be changed by all the worry in the world, 30%. Needless worries about our health, 12%. Petty miscellaneous worries, 10%. Real legitimate worries, 8%. Only 8% of your worries are worth concerning yourself about. 92% are pure fog with no substance at all. But how do you know which is which? Well, it seems the first thing to do is to stop concerning yourself with things which have already happened and about which there's nothing you or anyone else can do. Forget them. This is the one that the experts claim does most to wreck marriages. The wife or husband will nurse and cling to things which have happened or have been said in the past and keep exhuming them like desiccated corpses. If the collection gets large enough, and it could easily get large enough in even the best of households, if a person never forgets every little slight or oversight or word spoken in impatience or anger, the marriage will wind up on the rocks. The largest cause of all arguments in the home, incidentally, is worry about money. And this wouldn't be such a problem— in fact, it could be a source of gratification— if we could just learn to live within our means and save a part of every dollar we earn. It isn't easy, but it will get rid of the worries and most of the arguments about money. Ben Franklin said there are two ways of solving money problems: augment your means, that is, make more money, or diminish your wants. Either will do, but the best plan of all is to do both at the same time. Think of ways to earn more money and diminish your wants. In this way, you'll live well within your means and always have a nice surplus of money. People will say that isn't easy. What's easy? What's worthwhile is easy. It's said that work never killed anyone. It's worry that does the job. Take the fog of your worries and put it where it really lungs in 8% of the space it's now occupying. Easier said than done, but possible.