From the earliest writings of man, we know that the human race has been comprised of the haves and the have nots. When I was a kid back during the Great Depression, I was obsessed with a desire to know what invisible something separated the haves from the have nots being I have not, I wanted to know why so few managed to be well off financially in a country where success is available to everyone. For example, in checking the Statistical Abstract of the United States published by the Bureau of the Census, I discovered just lately, that only 10% of the men in this country 65 years of age and older have incomes of $6,000 or more a year, more than 80% of all men 65 or older have incomes under 4000 a year. Only 7.6% of incomes between seven and 10,000 a year, and only 3.7% have incomes of 10,000, a year or more. A man starts his working career in his 20s often earlier, he’s fortunate in that he lives in the free world, he has better than 40 years to make the grade financially in the richest country on Earth. Yet, according to the statistics, only about 10 out of 100 will be financially secure by the time 65 rolls around, and only about four men out of 100 will be financially comfortable. Now why? Well, let me tell you how to find out for yourself. conduct your own survey, straight down the street in your neighborhood on any Saturday or Sunday and ask the man of every house two questions. The first question is, what are you doing at the present time to increase your income now? That is how much do you want to earn? And when you’ve evaluated the blank stare, you get in response to that question asked question number two, which goes, How much money are you planning to be worth at age 65. And when the silence becomes too unnerving, thank him and move on to the next house. Ask 50 Men 100 1000 until you’re completely convinced that the reason men don’t make more money during their working lives. And the reason men aren’t financially independent by the time they’re 65 is simply that they seldom if ever do any constructive thinking on either subject. It’s that simple. Unfortunately, the reason it’s so easy to earn far more money than the average man earns in this country is that so few, so very few are going about it the right way. This is a race without enough contestants to bother about. The few who are really in the race can all be winners, some will finish ahead of the others. But even the man who finishes last in this race will be financially secure. Most people more than 90% aren’t even in the race. To prove it. Ask yourself the two survey questions. Up until the time you started listening to this message. What were your plans for increasing your income? How much do you want to earn? And how much money had you decided to be worth? By the time you’re 65 is the people who earn large incomes aren’t lucky and they’re not crooks, as those without money are so fun to pretending nor are they endowed with more brains or talent necessarily than their friends and neighbors. Nor are they privy to occult secrets. And only a very few were lucky enough to have had rich fathers or grandfathers. Most of the people earning the big incomes today started the same way you and I did and most other people. The only difference between the men who earn big incomes and those who earn small incomes, is that those earning big incomes decided to earn more. They’re the people who made it their business to earn more. You see a woman who does not think about baking an apple pie for dinner tonight, we’ll never think of looking up the recipe for apple pie. Without the decision for pie. There’s no motivation for checking out the recipe. A man who does not think about driving his cartoons, St. Louis, Missouri or Nacogdoches, Texas will never get roadmaps, which show how to get to St. Louis or NACA dodges. And a man who never decides to earn more money will never think of learning how of looking up the rules for earning more money is the people do what they make up their minds to do so get rid of the ancient superstition once and for all that people who are in big money or special people are lucky or get the breaks or had money to begin with or knew someone or are smarter, or anything else. These are alibis. They can all be disproved 1000 times. The reason there are so many of these alibis around is that men who failed to make the grade financially are seldom honest enough to just admit that they really didn’t try and keep trying. So in order to justify their failure, in order to remain seated, they dream up and pass along these old alibis. We’re all self made, but only the successful will admit it. I once had occasion to visit Charleston, South Carolina had never been there before. So I hired a taxi to drive me around the historical town. I particularly wanted to see the battery with that famous shot was fired on Fort Sumter along this beautiful drive from Charleston. To oldest and finest homes look out over the bay. I commented to my cab driver on what lovely homes they were. And he said, yes, some of those homes have 40 rooms. And then he thought a moment, he said, and every one of them is owned by a crook. This is how the have nots justify themselves in their lot in life. I didn’t say anything because I didn’t feel I was entitled to advise him or tried to straighten out his thinking. This is a free country where as long as he doesn’t hurt others, everyone has the unalienable right to be just as wrong as he wants to be, as Thomas are Lounsbury, the American scholar and educator but we must view with profound respect the infinite capacity of the human mind to resist the inroads of useful knowledge. My taxi driver, and men and women like him all over the world have been kidding themselves and holding themselves down and refusing the bounty and abundance of the world for centuries. Knowledge is available to everyone, we can either listen to those qualified to teach us, or we can go along with those ancient stumbling blocks we get from people who don’t know any more than we do. The truth incidentally about those homes along that beautiful drive is that they were built by the men and women who made the largest contribution to the city of Charleston. In just a moment, I’m going to give you the formula for getting rich, but before I do, I want to remind you of something. Before a jet pilot begins his take-off from an airport, he carefully goes over a checklist item by item. He does this not only because it’s required by law, but because he cannot afford to trust so important to job to his memory alone. He has another checklist that he goes over just as carefully before he begins his let down at his destination. He does this without fail every time he takes off, and every time he lands. Well, I think living successfully is as important as flying an airplane. And because of this, I think each of us needs a checklist to and that’s why there’s one included with this cassette, we need a checklist to go over item by item before we take off in the morning. And before we drop off to sleep every night. So I want to recommend that you affixed the checklist to your bathroom mirror, stare at it as you brush your teeth in the morning and stare at it again, as you’re preparing for bed at night. Go over each item. And as you do think of what each item represents. Now, here’s number one. It’s the formula for getting rich. It also explains why you in your present position, whether you’re earning 6000 a year, or 16,000 or 60,000, or 600,000. It applies to every adult, whether he’s employed or unemployed, it applies to the richest man and to the poorest and every person in between. And here it is. Our rewards in life will always be in exact proportion to our contribution, our service. Now that’s what the formula means. As the first item on your checklist. Memorize it. Our rewards in life will always be in exact proportion to our contribution or service. Listen to it, think about it until you know it emotionally as well as intellectually, it might give you some slight feeling of superiority to realize that there’s probably not another man within a mile of where you live. Who knows it, you can have it as a question on your survey. If you want proof of that. If you want it in another form, here it is as it applies to a man’s job. It’s the same thing really the same thing applies, but you can express it differently. The money you’re paid by the company you work for, will always be in direct ratio to the need for what you do, your ability to do it, and the degree of difficulty involved in replacing you. Maybe you want to write the formula down in both of its forms and think about it until it’s as much a part of you as your name. The reason it isn’t spelled out on your checklist is because you might not want everyone to know what you’re up to. The checklist is valuable only to a person who knows what the words really indicate. Alright, you’ve got the formula. As you think about it, its meaning will become clearer to you. With the formula, there are two rules which must be applied to properly use it. This formula together with the two rules is your recipe or your roadmap to earning all the money you really want. Now let’s take a look at item number two on your checklist. And I’m serious about you putting this checklist on your mirror you will notice his pressure sensitive. Item number two, the goldmine. The Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Archibald MacLeish, in his play the secret of freedom wrote, The only thing about a man that is a man is his mind. Everything else you can find in a pig or a horse.
Strong words, aren’t they? But as long as you live, you will never hear a truer statement. The key to every human being success lies in his mind, the goldmine between his ears. One idea can make you rich. A lot of good ideas can move you steadily upward in the work you do and ideas are free. And just think there’s nothing now being done commercially. That will not be done better, much better in the years ahead. Next year’s homes and most of what’s in them will be better than this year’s next year’s cars will be better next year’s manufacturing distributing marketing and selling and advertising should be better. Nothing is now being done as well as it must be done in the future. And every innovation, every new improvement will be somebody’s brainchild. Now, what’s your specialty? How many good ideas have you come up with during the past year? If you continue on as you have in the past, where would you be? And what would you be earning, say, a year from now, five years from now. Every day of our lives, we walk or drive by more opportunity than we could develop in a lifetime in 50 lifetimes. Back in the 20s, Sinclair Lewis wrote that you can kidnap a man blindfolded and take him to any city in the country with a couple of notable exceptions, put him in a chair in the downtown area, take off his blindfold, and he could sit there for a week and not be able to tell you what townies in the streets are all alike. The buildings are all alike. The businesses all look alike. This is still largely true today. The reason for this being that most businessmen in this country are playing a game called Follow the follower. If a man goes into business, no matter what line it happens to be, the first thing he does is make certain that his place of business outside and inside looks exactly like every other place of business of that type in the country. Do you know why is because he’s been playing copycats, since he was a year old and does it without thinking about it. But the same reason kids dress alike in school, he wants to be one of the gang. He doesn’t necessarily examine all the business establishments in his field and pattern his on the one outstanding example, the one that inspires him the one that he can really believe in. He just does what everybody else in his business is doing. And by this simple process, he guarantees his own mediocrity. Who is drummer you marching to if indeed you’re marching do anyone’s and why. Remember, whatever you now do for a living will be done differently, quite differently a few years from now, never in the history of mankind have the opportunities for all of us been so great. But the great majority of people will be the beneficiaries of progress, not those who bring it about Which group are you going to belong to? If you want to be a contributor, you’re not just a beneficiary. Here’s the first rule, it appears on your checklist as the gold mine. So THINK, THINK deliberately and with a purpose, use the goldmine between your ears, begin by thinking of a special time every day. Back during the depression in New York lumber dealer was growing rich while other lumber dealers were going broke. When asked how he did it, he said every evening when I get home, I closed myself up in a quiet room, sit in a comfortable chair and ask myself, How will my business be conducted 10 years from now than I tried to do it now. Instead of competing with every other lumber dealer, which is what they were doing, he was creating, he was doing the very thing man was designed to do the very thing man does best. A company growing at the rate of 10% a year will double its size in less than eight years. But a man can improve his effectiveness 50% or 100% a year or more. The experts tell us that every one of us has within him deep reservoirs of ability, even genius that he habitually fails to use. Well, let’s begin now to reach into these deep rich areas of pure net profit and use more more of our real abilities. Let’s think here’s the best way I’ve found to make yourself think start getting up a little earlier than you’re accustomed to. Right off the bat. This gives you extra time that 95% of the men in this country are not using at all, one hour earlier a day gives you six and a half extra 40 hour weeks a year. But at this time in the morning, take a refreshing shower address, get yourself a fresh hot cup of coffee, have your coffee man and then sit down to a clean sheet of paper. At the top of the paper. Write your financial goal. Now this is the amount of money per year you intend to earn soon. Incidentally, you might like to keep this to yourself too. It’s nobody’s business but yours. Then start to think. Think about your goal and what it’ll mean to you and your family. Then see how many ideas you can come up with to help you reach that goal ideas to improve what you now do for a living ways of increasing your contribution to match your income goal. You know jobs don’t have futures people do. No matter what line of work you may be in there is within it more than enough opportunity to last a lifetime. You don’t have to think of brand new ideas or revolutionary new ways of doing things. Although you well might come up with them. Think of ways of improving what is now being done. If you want to increase your income by the amount you specified, you must find ways of increasing your contribution your service. And the heat of this is to be found in your mind in that Goldmine between your ears. Try for five ideas every morning and write them down and save those sheets of paper in a special idea file. Many, perhaps most of your ideas will be worthless, but some of them will be very good. A few will be excellent. And every once in a while you will come up with something really outstanding. You see five ideas a day is 25 a week if you don’t think on weekends. Now that’s more than 1000 ideas a year. One idea can get you to that income you’re shooting for the law of averages swing so far in your favor. You just get admits, try to develop a sense of expectancy. That is try to hold the feeling that the goal you’re shooting for is is your thing, and that it’s only a matter of time before it’s realized. You know, Henry Ford didn’t start making cars until he was 45, a friend of mine started a new company at 65. He’s still going strong, and his new company has sales of better than $300 million a year. It’s almost never too late. Try not to think of things outside of your own line of work or whatever it is you’re most interested in. To think well and profitably, you must discipline your thinking, keep it on course controlled, keep it in one field specialize. Now for the final item on your checklist, it appears as the Word and the Word is attitude. Attitude has been called the most important word in the language. William James put it this way. He said the greatest discovery of my generation is that human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind. This is something to think about can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind is another way of saying we become what we think about. Look at it this way, your total environment, if you’ve been an adult for any appreciable period of time, your total environment is a reflection of you as a person, the House and the neighbourhood in which you live, the car you drive the clothes you wear the job you do, the people with whom you regularly associate, your total environment is an exact and merciless mirror of you as a human being. Now if you feel your environment can standard some improvement, you have only to improve your attitude and your world will gradually change to reflect the changing person is that a change your attitude, beginning now begin to act as would the person you most want to become. Now that is if you were already in possession of the goal you’re shooting for how would you conduct yourself in all of your affairs. We’ll do it now and tomorrow, and the next day, begin now to act the part of the person you most want to become and you will end by becoming that person. Subtly in little ways in the way you dress in the way you talk in the unfailing courtesy you show to every person with whom you come in contact, begin to act the pride of the person who has already achieved that what you’re shooting for. The German philosopher Greta gave us the secret when he said before you can do something, you must first be something when you behave like the person you must want to become the things that person would have will tend to come to you is simply cause and effect. Don’t be in too big a hurry. It takes longer to build a skyscraper than a chicken coop builds slowly, steadily and well. Then when you make it you will keep it you will stay on top. Always be suspicious of the so called Get rich quick scheme or sudden success. Never forget that word, attitude. It’s your attitude toward the people with whom you come in contact that will determine their attitudes toward you. The person with a great attitude toward life and the world is the person other people go lucky. He’s not lucky. He’s just using our old friend cause and effect is causes are excellent. And his effects have to be just as good. Well, that’s it three things to remember three things to practice every day. If you spent 16 hours a day seven days a week practicing your golf swing in a relatively short time you’d have a grooved beautiful swing like the pros. So practice your new attitude every day, every waking hour. Practice thinking a few minutes every morning, and you’ll find yourself thinking all day long. And remember the formula. Our rewards in life will always be in exact proportion to our contribution, our service. Go over the ideas in this message every day until there’s much a part of you is your name and your temporary address. You will notice that each time you listen you will hear something new.
You will get a new idea you fail to get before. This is Earl Nightingale and thank you
