No. 8 | I am a big proponent of self-improvement. I have not always been. I have often referred to myself as the late-bloomer of late-bloomers. It is a curious thing to look back and wonder at how this perspective change came about. Looking back, there were many moving parts.
One experience early on was a comment made in a class that I was taking. My employer had sent me to this class; the topic was selling. Early on in my work-life, I worked in sales. This fellow teaching this class said, “Have any of you heard that old statement, ‘You are earning exactly the amount of money you have decided to earn?’” Those may not be his precise words, but that was the gist of the statement he made.
Once he had raised the point, others in the class started talking about a “famous audio piece” by some speaker with an especially memorable voice. Many of the more seasoned salespeople in the group were familiar with this recording and the idea. None of them recalled who this speaker was or the name of the talk.
Nobody in the group spoke out against the idea. I was likely the youngest in the group, and I did not like the idea being expressed and expounded. I did not like it at all. I was unsettled, to say the least. I did not feel that I was earning the amount of money that I had “decided” to earn.
The whole experience sent me, a skeptic on a mission, looking for this speaker and this talk. It was Earl Nightingale and his talk was The Strangest Secret. You can find it on YouTube.
I was attending the class to learn the basics, and perhaps a couple of the finer points, of selling. I do not know what my employer paid for me to be able to take the class. It was an immense benefit to me. It was not the discovery of Earl Nightingale and his work only, but that was for me an incredibly valuable takeaway.
I had wanted to find Nightingale to be a complete crackpot. I had wanted to justify everything about my current life-outlook, work, and personal habits, presuppositions, and beliefs. Nightingale and the age-old ideas he stated so well made a lot of sense.
I should state that I do not believe it to be as simple as Nightingale or anyone else who proclaims similar ideas could lead one to believe. I was nearly run over by a distracted driver after I purchased cookies for my sweet wife and darling daughter a few days ago on Valentine’s Day. Had my peripheral vision not been so keenly on top of its job, my choices for at best a few months would have been significantly limited. If an hour before walking through this parking lot I had decided to make some sum of money with a wonderful and useful product that I had dreamed over the next number of years, this grand plan of mine may have still been possible. Depending on the very real and unfortunate outcome of the collision that almost was, my business plans may have also been made nearly or actually impossible.
All that said, we can choose to enact positive change in our lives. We have a will and the ability to enact it. We are the product of our habits. I have improved my life in so many ways since feeling defensive and offended on that day. Many of the positive changes have taken shape more slowly than I would have preferred. The habits that brought them about, those have changed as soon as I truly decided that they would, in but a moment. I have so many thoughts on this topic. I will leave it at that for now.
I believe you would do well to listen to Nightingale. I believe you would also do well to read Proverbs.
There are lots of recordings out there of Nightingale’s The Strangest Secret. If you are curious, here is one you can check out on YouTube.