PNTV: The Strangest Secret by Earl Nightingale (#174)

Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to Philosopher's Notes tv. Another great book, the Strangest Secret in the World by Earl Nightingale. Now this is a little book which captures the audio program that Earl did that millions of people listened to. He went on to create Nightingale Conant and revolutionized the way we learn self development material via audio cassettes. CDs now everywhere, right? But Earl Nightingale is amazing, one of the leading teachers and figures in the self development world the second half of the 20th century. And this book is great. The Strangest Secret, which we're going to talk about. We a Philosopher's Note where we go off on a bunch of big ideas. We're going to look at five of our favorite, my favorite ideas right now. The first one is, well, what is this secret? What's the secret that Earl Nightingale shares with us here? It is very simple. We become what we think about. That is the strangest secret in the world. We become what we think about. All the great teachers tell us this. He goes off on a quote fest, like I often do in the Philosopher's Notes, referencing Marcus Aurelius, William James, Ralph Waldo Emerson. Everybody says the same thing. What you think about is going to control and determine your destiny. If you're focused on negative stuff, that's what your life is going to look like. Anxiety, stress, depression, need to get more of that. We're going to talk about some of the ideas here, but if you focus on what you want in your life, you're going to see more of that come to fruition. We become what we think about is what this book is all about. That is the secret. Now he talks about successful people and people who are failures. He says the definition of success that he likes the most is essentially someone who's making progress on a worthy ideal. They're trying to improve themselves. They have a clear sense of where they're headed and they're moving toward that. He says if that is what your life looks like, you have a clear sense of where you're headed, a worthy ideal, and you're making progress, you are a success, period. Doesn't matter what the external environment might look like for you in this moment, you are a success. Now. If you don't have a sense of where you're going and you aren't making conscious progress, he puts you into the 95% of the world that doesn't achieve a lot of success or happiness. And he says the difference between these two people and what we need to primarily think about is this, our goals. What do you want? What do you want in your life. If everything went perfectly, if you could map out your ideal, you can wave a magic wand and a little angel appeared in your shoulder. Who can sit there and help you create your ideal? What would you want? Do you think about that? That's an amazing thing to think about. And the reality is you have a lot more power than you may think to create that. But it takes the discipline to turn off the constant stimulation from our entertainment TV and constant movies and social streams and all the things we talk about in these videos all the time, unplug from that, swap out that time for some time to reflect on what you actually want in your life and start creating a path to get there. He uses another example to help us understand the difference. Imagine this. Two different ships, let's say they're sailing from New York harbor to London or to England, right? Heading from the US To England. That's the first ship. The first ship is very, very clear on where it wants to go. It wants to go from here to there. They've got a clear plan. They know precisely how long it's going to take. The crew comes on board, the captain comes on board at the helm and. And they will get to where they want to go. Earl tells us 9,000, 999 times out of 10,000, they will go from this port to that port successfully. They know where they want to go. They have a goal, they have a plan, and they've got the vision and the leadership to go do it. He says, okay, that's one scenario. Imagine another ship, this ship. It's exactly the same ship as this other one. But let's not put a captain on, let's not put a crew on. Let's not determine where we want it to go. Let's just turn the engines on, then just kind of let it go and see where it goes. What's going to happen to this one? If it even gets out of the harbor, That's a miracle. It's going to wreck. It's literally just going to be a shipwreck at some point. And he says, which one are you? Do you have a clear destination in which you're headed, or have you not taken the time to actually figure that out? You just kind of. Your engine is just going every day. Well, you tell me which one's going to work out better. We are what we think about all the time. What are you thinking about if all you're thinking about is pop culture and everything that's coming in? Not going to work? Get clear on what you want. And then he says, have a checklist. He says, airline pilots have checklists. He says, our lives are at least as important as flying a plane. What's your checklist? And he's got his ideas about what should be on that checklist. Rather than go through those right now, I talk about them a little bit in the note. I want you to think about what's your checklist. Why I do what I do is to give you a ton of ideas. Not all of them are going to land. You may not even agree with x percent of them, but which ones really jump out at you and you say, wow, that's awesome. Or I kind of already knew that, but that's exciting. I want to implement that more into my life. Put that on your checklist. Create your own personal life philosophy with these big ideas and then consistently live them again. A pilot, whether it's a ship or a captain on a ship or a pilot in an airplane, they have a checklist. They go through this, this, this, this, this. To ensure a safe, successful flight, we should do the same thing. What's on your checklist? What do you do when you're on and how do you do that consistently so you're consistently on? Not complicated. Think about that. Think about your checklist and the things you're going to do to make today a masterpiece. You know me and you've heard me describe what's on my checklist. I turn off my electronics when the sun goes down, which helps me make sure I can get to bed early so I can sleep well, so I can get up early and feel great, meditate, do a little yoga, do my writing, create a philosopher's note recording this mid morning. Then I do my MP3s and TV episodes like this. And I turn off again at noon. I do my reading. This is my checklist for how I'm going to create a masterpiece. Am I perfect on that every day? Of course not. But getting a little bit better and a little bit better and having a checklist to guide us. So we're thinking about how we can get a little bit better makes it more likely we're going to experience the things we want to experience. So what's your checklist look like? Get on that. And then the final idea here is do your work. Do your work. Earl Nightingale talks about this idea that we were confused about what's going to make us happy. And Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, who wrote Flow, talks about something he calls the paradox of work. The irony is most people want More leisure time rather than work. But if you actually track how they feel during the day. And this is what Cikszev has done relentlessly. People walking around in the old days with pagers, and when they got paged by his lab, they need to write down how they felt. And he studied the data, and what he found was that people were happiest when they were at work, when they were engaged in doing something productive, way happier than when they were lounging in front of the tv. That's weird, because most people, all they want to do is get home so they can lounge in front of the tv. But the science shows that we need to have a clear focus, we need to have a clear goal, we need to have a target. We've been talking about the fact that Aristotle says that we are teleological beings. Telos is the Greek word for target or goal. Essentially, it's the target that an archer shoots at. We are teleological. We need to aim toward a goal. I just missed, but I got it on the second try. We need to aim toward a goal. If you don't have a goal or a target, you're literally aimless. It doesn't feel good. Now, when you have clear goals within your work, in your personal development life, that's inspiring, that engages you. That's how you get into flow. First rule of getting into flow, the state of optimum experience is to have a clear goal, a clear target. If you're aimlessly going through the day, you're never going to feel great. You're going to feel best when you're clear on, I want to do this, I want to do it to the best of my ability. Guess what? Your energy gets focused, and that feels really, really good. So do your work. Have a checklist, create your own, Evolve it, play with it, experiment with different things. Emerson says all life is an experiment. The more experiments, the better. Just test different things, see what works, get better and better and better. Two ships. Which ship are you? Are you the ship with a clear plan? A captain, A crew cruising from one point to another? Or are you the ship that's just kind of going through the harbor and chewing up everything in its way without a clear plan? Shipwreck style. The difference between our successful people and our not so successful people, AKA failures, is successful people have goals. And then the secret, the greatest, strangest secret in the world, we become what we think about. What are you thinking about? Get your mind right. Have fun and I hope you enjoyed. Look forward to sharing more with you soon. Have another awesome day. See you.