Build Success Into Your Thinking

Today, in spite of all of our labor-saving devices, we still hear the complaint: “There isn’t enough time for everything that has to be done.” We are still looking for some magic time-stretcher, and all too often ignoring the time savers that we have.

We still have the same number of hours as our grandparents, or even great-grandparents, had, and on a man-to-man basis each of us can produce eight times as much in a 40-hour week as the best could do in a 60-hour week. We are better fed, housed and clothed.

Our nightly entertainment, at the flick of a television dial, provides a range of diversions from grand opera and Shakespeare to slapsticks. We have all of this—riches beyond their wildest dreams—and yet as many of us “think poor” today as did in their time. Why?

How often growing up did your elders say: “Be content with your lot.” “Let well enough alone.” “A penny saved is a penny earned.” “The rich get richer while the poor get poorer.” “Get an education and find a job that’s secure for life.” “A penny saved is a penny earned.” (There’s plenty more, but you get the idea.)

We call ourselves enlightened, but that kind of “thinking poor” is still with us. Any person in the United States has available to him through town, city, and state libraries more information than did all the world leaders prior to the 20th Century combined, and just as much as any world leader of today.

Compared to us, men like Andrew Carnegie, Thomas Edison, John D. Rockefeller, and Henry Ford, were poorly informed, and what information they had was often poorly organized, and even more often inaccurate. But they “thought rich” and rich thinking helps to create riches.

Though the advances of the last quarter of a century have been called vast or overwhelming, every survey by academic, commercial, and governmental agencies indicates that greater advances will be made during the next decade than during the previous quarter-of-a-century.

Not only will this open new opportunities that didn’t exist a few years ago, but it will create a great need for success-oriented people to match the accelerated rate of expansion. Those who get the leading jobs will be the ones who think rich enough to get them.

The Idea Comes First

Money is only frozen energy. It becomes useful only after you defrost it and exchange it for what you want. The way you think, therefore, influences the way you use money. What you think you want, you buy—assuming you have the money.

If you want something enough, you will devote the time and energy needed to acquire the money with which to buy it. By the same token, if you don’t want much—if you “think poor”—you will only work enough to get the “poor” things you want.

Make rich thinking a habit for it will work wonders for your career. It is not that thinking makes it so, any more than in the words of the old song, “wishing will make it so.” But success-oriented thoughts, supported by knowledge of your own achievements and guided by intelligent planning, will certainly make it so.

Some have said that the reward of being satisfied with one’s lot is that at least one has peace of mind. The idea suggested is that if one does not strive to better himself, he will not be hurt and frustrated if he does not make it.

Quite the opposite is true. Man is a proud creature, but pride, unless it is false, can be based only on achievement. When a man’s work become so routine that all sense of achievement is lost, pride suffers, and all the platitudes about contentment cannot soothe an injured pride.

To put it more strongly, achievement on which to feed one’s pride is as necessary to the complete man as income on which to feed his family. A poorly fed pride means a poorly fed family, with a further loss of pride and a greater increase of worry and frustration.