PNTV: The Essence of Success by Earl Nightingale (#183)

Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to Philosopher's Notes TV Today, another great book, the Essence of Success by Earl Nightingale. This, like the other books we've reviewed. The Strangest Secret in the World and Lead the Field by Earl Nightingale are transcripts of his audio programs. Again, Nightingale started Nightingale, Conan. Almost all of his work was done via audio tapes at the time. And this book is a transcription of over 700 hours of his audio programs. The editors went through and found the best stuff. He kept on coming back to creativity and courage and goals and happiness and success. And this book is essentially kind of like a greatest hits collection. Good stuff, densely packed with wisdom. Philosopher's Note with a bunch of my favorite big ideas and five of them we're going to cover today. First big idea, what else? He tells the story of a scientist, the guy who discovered the effects of stress in our bodies, who was studying the effects of having an alcoholic father. And he happened to interview two young men who grew up with this father who was an alcoholic. They left at a relatively young age and went their separate ways. One wound up kind of clean shaven guy who never drank again, and the other one was kind of a drunken mess, much like his dad. And he asked him, how did you become like this? You know, what do you think is the reason? And they both gave the exact same answer. They both said, what else would you expect having a father like I had? What else would you expect but two exact opposite experiences? Point being, obviously what happens to us isn't what dictates what we create in our lives. We come back to this again and again and again because it's a huge idea. Whatever happened in our past, I happen to be the child of an alcoholic father who is the son of an alcoholic who killed himself. But these things don't determine who we become. And as the guy who never drank again said, what else would you expect growing up in that household? I don't drink. And I take myself in these ideas and these practices really seriously, in large part because of that upbringing. But it's just as easy to say, well, what else do you want me to become? So we need to notice how often we use things that have happened to us in the past and other things that aren't going quite the way we want as excuses for not showing up. We need to focus less on the criticizing, the complaining, the blaming, the gossiping, and more on what we want. What do you want to create? That's the question. What do I want to create in this moment in my life is the transition from Victim to creator, getting out of complaining and into creating. That's the first big idea. What else would you expect from the son of a father like that? Big idea. Second one worry fog involves a prop. Very exciting moment. Now, imagine fog 100ft deep, over seven city blocks. Crazy amount of fog, 100 hundred feet deep, seven city blocks. Now, Nightingale tells us that apparently if you were able to bring all of the water responsible for that enormous amount of fog into one place, it wouldn't even fill a water glass like this. All of that fog created by a tiny amount of water. And he says it's exactly like that with our worries. We have a tiny amount of worry that creates this huge fog in our lives where we can't see where we're headed. We can't appreciate the beauty of our lives because of a small amount of fog. It's a really powerful way to frame it. So what do we do? Well, we acknowledge that, that our worries can tend to dissipate in fog and cloud over our entire lives. And then I like to think of it as imagine having your worries, your stress, to go back to the last big idea as well. And rather than avoiding it, drinking it like it's an energy drink, eating the stress like it's an energy bar, that's what the top performers do. They don't try to avoid it. They move straight into it. And as Joseph Campbell says, when you swallow the demon that freaks you out, you get its power. So when you swallow your worries, when you swallow your stress, you get its power, and you take massive action. That's the solution. You stressed out, get to work, talk about that again and again and again and again. Don't we as well. Thank you, Glass, for being such a great prop. Third big idea, the odds, craziest story. Earl Nightingale is an amazing storyteller. As you know, if you've listened to his programs. Get this, a kid is born, he only has, like, a stump for an arm. Doesn't have an arm. His right foot is only half of a foot. So he doesn't have an arm and he doesn't have a full foot. And he wants to play sports like all the other kids. He wants to go out and play sports. Now, what are the odds of that kid growing up to be a professional athlete, a professional football player, of all things? The odds are very, very, very, very low. Yet that's exactly what happened with this kid. So Earl tells the story of how he grows up. His parents want to allow him to play sports, so he gets this little wooden foot that could Fit inside of a little football, kind of a small football shoe. And he practices kicking hour after hour after hour. Day in and day out, he's practicing this kicking. He gets hired by the New Orleans Saints to be their kicker. And then in front of 70,000 people one night, he kicks the longest field goal in NFL history at the time to win the game with 2 seconds left. What are the odds? Near zero. But because something is difficult does not mean that it's impossible. This is another theme we come back to. Scott Adams, who we talked about the other day, cured himself essentially of two incurable illnesses. One weird thing with his pinky finger, which no one had ever been cured, had been. Had healed themselves from. In another one where he couldn't talk, his voice would go away weirdly at different times as he talked. Super strange. And he said, what were the odds? No one on earth had ever beaten this little issue he had with his finger which would have prevented him from becoming the cartoonist he became right in the beginning of his career. And he said, what were the odds? One in a million, one in 10 million. I didn't care. He said, I was going to be the first one. So we need to look at what's hard and quit saying that it's impossible. Just because it's hard doesn't mean it's impossible. I share another story in the note about the guy who jumped on a bike in Sweden, rode to Mount Everest, climbed Mount Everest with no oxygen and no Sherpa, descended Everest, hopped back on his bike and rode back to Sweden. Joe decenna, who shared that story in Spartan up, says, look, that's difficult. Very, very difficult, in fact, but it's not impossible. So what in your life have you said is impossible that you may want to reframe as just a bit challenging? Look at the odds. Scott Adams says, look, you also want to look at it and say, maybe you're just bad at setting odds. Maybe it's actually not as hard as you think if you just gave it a shot. Huge idea. Fourth big idea. Another Nightingale story. Sharing a story from, I think Carl Sandburg, a farmer. He calls him a sod buster. Sitting on the side of the road, thinking about life. Somebody comes up. I don't know if they're in a carriage or their horse or whatever, but they say, hey, what are the folks like in this part of town, in this part of the country? The sod buster says, well, what were they like where you came from? And the person says, ah, they were liars and thieves and mean people. Didn't like them at all. The sod Buster farmer guy says, well, that's pretty much what you're going to find here. And they drive off. Just as they're about heading out of his sight, another family comes in and he asks, they ask the same question. What are people like in this part of the country? The sod buster says, well, what were they like in the town that you just came from? And they say, oh, they were amazing, Sweetest, nicest, most honest people in the world. And of course the farmer says, well, those, that's exactly what you're going to find here. Moral of the story. We create our reality. We don't realize it, but as Emerson says, your opinion of the world is a confession of your own character. How you see the world and how you describe the world says more about you than it does about the world. It's a very powerful thing. And the more you change how you see the world, the people in your world change. That's another one of those universal truths that all the teachers come back to. So pay attention to that. If you think all people are a certain way, realize you're creating that either for your detriment or for your gain. What kinds of folks? Final big idea. What kind of vessel are you? Is the question that Nightingale asks us. And he says he grew up by the ocean. So he shares a lot of stories about the ocean and ships and captains and all that kind of stuff. He says, look, who are you? Think about it in terms of a type of boat in the ocean. The ocean is life. Now are you a little skiff, a little rowboat that gets tossed even when it's sitting in the harbor, totally safe? The little ripples of waves can knock that thing around. We get all stressed out and moved around, right? That's what happens to a little rowboat and in a harbor. Now a huge ocean liner on the other hand, doesn't even feel those little waves. They don't even feel mid sized waves when they get out to the open sea. It's the huge swells that challenge the ocean liner. Now the rowboat isn't safe to take out to open sea. You can't take. That guy out there can't handle the huge waves. The ocean liner can. So the question is, which one are you? And are you a little rowboat that gets rocked by the tiniest of issues or are you an ocean liner that can manage that? T harv Eker says the same thing. He says, if you have big problems in your life, all that means is that you're Being a small person, that's all that means. Here's your little size of problems, right? 10 size problem. Now if you have a problem that's like a three and you look up at it and you say, oh man, I got this huge problem in my life, T harp would say that's just proving to you that you're a small person. Now I like to joke that if you get cut off in traffic on the way to work, which is about a point, I don't know, 03 issue. If you're stressed about that, you can't even see this little fleece sized person. But that's about the size of the person you're being. Now look, if you grow yourself so you're a size, whatever that is, six or seven person, that size three problem isn't that big of a deal. That's exactly the same thing we're talking about with the rowboat and the ocean liner. Which one are you? How do you build yourself? You build your character, you build your ability to deal with bigger challenges and build that ocean liner that is you by putting all these ideas into practice, becoming the person you're capable of becoming a little bit more moment to moment to moment, day in and day out. So there you go, the essence of success. Earl Nightingale, I hope you enjoyed and I look forward to sharing more with you soon. Have another awesome day. See you.