From the earliest writings of men, we know that the human race has been comprised of the haves and have-nots. When I was a kid back during the Great Depression, I was obsessed with the desire to know what invisible something separated the haves from the have-nots.
Being a 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 $4,000 a year. Only 7.6% have incomes between $7000 and $10,000 a year, and only 3.7% have incomes of $10,000 per year or more.
A man strives his working career in his twenties, often earlier. He is fortunate in that he lives in the free world. He has better than forty 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.
Why?
Let tell you how to find out for yourself. Conduct your own survey. Struck down the street in your neighborhood on any Saturday or Sunday and ask a 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 evaluated the blank stare you get in response to that question, ask question number two, which goes: how much money are you planning to be worth at age 65? I wonder Sherman becomes too unnerving, thank him and move on to the next house.
Ask fifty men, a hundred, a thousand 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?
You see people who earn large incomes aren’t lucky and they’re not crooks as those without money are so fond of 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 are 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 will 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 car to St. Louis, Missouri or Nacogdoches, Texas will never get roadmaps which show how to get to St. Louis or Nacogdoches. 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.
You see, people do what they make up their minds to do. So get rid of the ancient superstition once and for all that people who earn big money are special people or lucky or get the breaks or had money to begin with or knew someone or are smarter or anything else. These are alibis that can all be disproved a thousand 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 dreamed up and passed 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, I had never been there before, so I hired a taxi to drive me around the historical town. I particularly wanted to see the battery where that famous shot was fired on Fort Sumter. Along this beautiful drive over Charleston’s 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 and their lot in life. I didn’t say anything because I didn’t feel I was entitled to advise him or try 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 Lounsbury, the American scholar and educator put it, “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 takeoff 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 the job to his memory alone. He has another checklist that he goes over just as carefully before he begins his ride down of 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 buying an airplane and because of this, I think each of us needs a checklist too. 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 affix the checklist to your bathroom mirror. Stare at it as you brush your teeth in the morning and stare at it again as you prepare for bed at night. Go over each item and as you do, think of what each item represents.
Here’s number one. It’s the formula for getting rich. It also explains why you are 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 my life will always be in exact proportion to our contribution, our service.
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, our 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 and knows it. You can add it as a question on your survey if you want a 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 those forms and think about it until it’s as much a part of as your name. The reason that it’s 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.
All right. 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 your putting this checklist on your mirror. You will notice it’s pressure sensitive. I remember too, The Gold Mine. The Pulitzer prize-winning playwright Archibald MacLeish’s play, The Secret of Freedom Road, “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’ll never hear a truer statement.
The key to every human being’s success lies in his mind. The gold mine 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 that are 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 will 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 fifty lifetimes.
Back in the twenties, Sinclair Lewis wrote it, “You can kidnap a man, blind fold him, 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 a week and not be able to tell you what town he is in.” The streets are all alike. The buildings were all alike.
The businesses all looked 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. You know why? It’s because he’s been playing copycats since he was a year old and does it without thinking about it.
For 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 and 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.
Whose drum are you marching to, if indeed you’re marching to 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, not just a beneficiary, here is the first rule. It appears on your checklist as the gold mine. So think. Think deliberately and with the purpose. Use the goldmine between your ears. Begin by thinking of a special time every day.
Back during the Depression, a 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 close myself up in a quiet room, sit in a comfortable chair and ask myself how will my business be conducted 10 years from now, then I try 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 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.
Just think. Here’s the best way I have found to make yourself think. Start getting up a little earlier than you’re accustomed to. Right off the bed, 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, a dress, get yourself refreshed, hot cup of coffee if you are a 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. And then start to think. Think about your goal and what will it 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 some. Think of ways of improving what is now being done.
If you’re to increase your income by the amount you specified, you must find ways of increasing your contribution, your service. And the key to 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 stay with 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’ll 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 a thousand ideas a year. One idea can get you to that income you’re shooting for. The law of averages rings so far in your favor you just can’t miss. Try to develop a sense of expectancy, that is trying to hold the feeling that the goal you’re shooting for is a sure thing. And it is 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 is 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 you thinking. Keep it on course controlled. Keep it in one field specialized.
Now for the final item on your checklist. It appears as a 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”. Now this is something to think about — can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind. It’s 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 neighborhood 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 clear your environment can stand some improvement. You have only to improve your attitude and your world will gradually change to reflect the changing person.
Here is how to change your attitude. Beginning now, begin to act as would the person you most want to become. 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? Well do it now and tomorrow and the next day.
Begin how 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 and the unfailing courtesy you show to every person with whom you come in contact, begin to act the part of the person who has already achieved that which you’re shooting for.
The German philosopher Goethe gave us the secret when he said, “Before you can do something, you must first be something.” When you behave like the person you most want to become, the things that person would have will tend to come to you. It’s simply cause and effect. Don’t be in too big a hurry. It takes longer to build a skyscraper than a chicken coop.
Build slowly, steadily and well. Then when you make it, you’ll 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 call lucky. He’s not lucky; he’s just using our old friend cause-and-effect. His 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 spend 16 hours a day, seven days a week practicing your golf swing, in a relatively short time you’d ever grew 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.
Remember the formula: Our rewards in life will always be in exact proportion to our contribution, our service. Go with the ideas in this message every day until it’s as much a part of you as your name and your temporary address. You will notice that each time you listen, you’ll hear something new. You will get a new idea you failed to get before.
