Link: http://www.nbcnews.com/watch/nbc-news/watch-starlings-form-spectacular-murmuration-392940611617
Tuesday, October 20, 2015
Starlings take flight
Link: http://www.nbcnews.com/watch/nbc-news/watch-starlings-form-spectacular-murmuration-392940611617
Why Killing a Bull Elephant With Big Tusks Hurts the Herd
Elephants
with large tusks, such as this one in Tanzania, are increasingly rare
because of heavy poaching, making them even more valuable to trophy
hunters. With elephant numbers in free-fall in many places, losing even
one big tusker is damaging to a herd.
Photograph by Mitsuaki Iwago, Minden Pictures/National Geographic
Why Killing a Bull Elephant With Big Tusks Hurts the Herd
Scientists say the loss of a mature bull elephant has a profound impact on the herd.
By now, news of the big bull elephant hunted
in Zimbabwe last week has made its way around the internet. The bull is
a “tusker”—an elephant genetically predisposed to being extra big, with
extra-large tusks.
His tusks are some of the biggest taken by a hunter in recent decades, according to commenters on an online forum where the photo
of the dead animal received fulsome praise from other hunters. The
tusks weighed in at 120 pounds and 122 pounds each, according to social
media posts.
The elephant was shot in a hunting concession in the Malipati region
of Zimbabwe, between Gonarezhou National Park and South Africa’s Kruger
National Park, which is home to many large bulls.
The shooting of this elephant is drawing the ire of conservationists
and scientists alike, who say that killing such an animal has
consequences both in terms of protecting the species and in promoting
cultural heritage.
Many hunters, on the other hand, argue that the elephant was either
past his breeding age or has passed on his genes enough times that he
has made a sufficient contribution to the gene pool.
“That’s nonsense,” said Joyce Poole, a researcher who has studied
elephant reproduction for decades. “That male they killed was in his
prime, and not only was he incredibly important to the females, he was
really important to other males as a leader in male society.”
“Old and experienced individuals are crucial,” said Vicki Fishlock,
the resident scientist at Amboseli Trust for Elephants, a research and
conservation organization in Kenya. “They are so much more than ‘a
breeder’—by the time these animals reach this size, they have been parts
of social networks for five or six decades and have accumulated social
and ecological experience that younger animals learn from.”
Experts place this elephant at around 50 years old. “Prime” breeding
age is considered mid-40s to around 50, and female elephants actually
prefer to mate with older, bigger bulls such as this one, research shows.
Plus, research
shows that younger male elephants can become aggressive when older
bulls aren’t around, much in the way juvenile delinquency in our own
cultures has been attributed to the absence of fathers, said Caitlin E.
O’Connell, a professor at the at the Stanford School of Medicine and an
elephant expert.
But there are very few bigger, older male African elephants left,
Poole said. Poachers have gotten many of them, which is why there’s now a
growing trend toward poaching even young elephants with small tusks.
And that’s part of the reason hunters have been celebrating this
particular kill. Getting to take home trophy tusks of this size has
become increasingly difficult. Nowadays, hunters say they’re excited for
anything bigger than 75 pounds. And while there have been a few big
elephants hunted in Zimbabwe this year, the average tusk size that hunters can expect is closer to 40 or 50 pounds, according to one website.
Tusk size is, in part, genetic. While the bull killed last week
surely has mated many times, the genes for big tusks are already on the
decline, meaning the genetic contribution of every elephant is
important. Elephants are now evolving to have smaller tusks because poaching and hunting has removed many big-tusked elephants from the gene pool.
Protections for Cultural Icons?
Aside from the biological impacts of removing a large-tusked male
from the breeding population, conservationists and even some hunters
have raised ethical and cultural concerns.
On the hunting forum accuratereloading.com,
one commenter, identified as Mike, said, “Shooting an elephant like
that is kind of like shooting the last tasmanian devil. This elephant
will not be replaced for a long time given the terrible state of African
elephants.”
Louis Muller, the chairman of the Zimbabwe Professional Hunters and Guides Association, told The Telegraph
that big elephants could benefit from the extra protection afforded by a
tracking collar. “‘We have suggested before to all concerned parties
that each elephant area should collar a few with biggest tusks, so that
we do not shoot them...Nobody responded to our suggestion last year. We
believe this might now be taken seriously.’”
Elephants as big as the Zimbabwe bull are iconic, and
conservationists have suggested that village communities would benefit
more from the tourism money the magnificent animals could bring than
from trophy hunting fees.
Hunting “is legal, but the thing is, the ethics [are] out the
window,” Johnny Rodrigues, the head of the Zimbabwe Conservation Task
Force, told BBC World Service.
“When you see an elephant like that, which you haven’t seen for years,
you should actually put a collar on it and use it as a marketing tool
because not everywhere in the world can you find an animal like that.”
Besides, elephants are feeling creatures, and that needs to be
considered, Joyce Poole said. They’re long-lived, intelligent, and
social. They’re self-aware animals that think about the future, think
about the past, that are aware of death. This elephant had friends who
cared about him, and it will make a difference to their lives that he’s
gone.”
To companions of all ages,” added Vicki Fishlock, “the loss of these individuals makes a profound difference.”
Elephants
tusk size has shrunk by half during the past 150 years. Here, a worker
carries a tusk to auction in Mombasa, Kenya, in 1969.
Photograph by Bruce Dale, National Geographic
What We Know About the Hunt
The identity of the hunter, a German, has not been made public.
Take Aim Safaris, a company owned by Carl Knight that offers elephant
hunts in the Gonarezhou region, where the bull was shot, was originally
given credit
for the hunt. Its website—now down for “scheduled maintenance”—featured
a photo of the dead elephant. According to the website, Take Aim
Safaris charges a $20,000 trophy fee for elephant with tusks of 90
pounds or more.
The hunt was led by a well-known professional hunter named Nixon Dzingai, who did not respond to emails or calls.
What’s In a Name?
There was originally some speculation that the elephant could have been Nkombo,
a tusker from Kruger National Park, but Nkombo was seen a few days
before the hunt more than 70 miles south, and it’s improbable he could
have traveled so far so fast. Besides, people who have tracked and
photographed Nkombo say he rarely strays far.
Hunters who saw the photo of the dead bull immediately worried that
he may have had a name. When people found out the lion killed in
Zimbabwe over the summer had a name, Cecil, it ignited a media storm.
“Really hope this elephant did not had [sic] a name,” said one
commenter on the hunting forum. (Read this, and other hunters’ reactions
to the kill here). Research shows that humans are more apt to sympathize with animals that share traits with us, such as intelligence, emotion—and names.
Conservationists in the Gonarezhou area have said that this elephant
hasn’t been sighted before, so it’s possible that he’d wandered up from
Kruger .
Regardless of opinions on sports hunting, the industry needs to
restrict hunting of elephants with tusks over a certain size, said
Caitlin O’Connell, who believes hunting has an economic role in Africa.
“There need to be checks and balances. There were no checks and balances
here here. This was a fluke event that someone should have stopped. It
should have been a huge gift to the country that he...was there.”
This story was produced by National
Geographic’s Special Investigations Unit, which focuses on wildlife
crime and is made possible by a grant from the BAND Foundation.
Wednesday, September 30, 2015
Earl Nightingale transcript provides inspiraton
Transcribed from The Strangest Secret audio program by Earl Nightingale
Some years ago, the late Nobel prize-winning Dr. Albert Schweitzer was asked by a reporter, “Doctor, what’s wrong with men today?” The great doctor was silent a moment, and then he said, “Men simply don’t think!”
It’s about this that I want to talk with you. We live today in a golden age. This is an era that humanity has looked forward to, dreamed of, and worked toward for thousands of years. We live in the richest era that ever existed on the face of the earth … a land of abundant opportunity for everyone.
However, if you take 100 individuals who start even at the age of 25, do you have any idea what will happen to those men and women by the time they’re 65? These 100 people believe they’re going to be successful. They are eager toward life, there is a certain sparkle in their eye, an erectness to their carriage, and life seems like a pretty interesting adventure to them.
But by the time they’re 65, only one will be rich, four will be financially independent, five will still be working, and 54 will be broke and depending on others for life’s necessities.
Only five out of 100 make the grade! Why do so many fail? What has happened to the sparkle that was there when they were 25? What has become of the dreams, the hopes, the plans … and why is there such a large disparity between what these people intended to do and what they actually accomplished?
THE DEFINITION OF SUCCESS
First, we have to define success and here is the best definition I’ve ever been able to find:
“Success is the progressive realization of a worthy ideal.”
A success is the school teacher who is teaching because that’s what he or she wants to do. A success is the entrepreneur who start his own company because that was his dream and that’s what he wanted to do. A success is the salesperson who wants to become the best salesperson in his or her company and sets forth on the pursuit of that goal.
A success is anyone who is realizing a worthy predetermined ideal, because that’s what he or she decided to do … deliberately. But only one out of 20 does that! The rest are “failures.”
Rollo May, the distinguished psychiatrist, wrote a wonderful book called Man’s Search for Himself, and in this book he says: “The opposite of courage in our society is not cowardice … it is conformity.” And there you have the reason for so many failures. Conformity and people acting like everyone else, without knowing why or where they are going.
We learn to read by the time we’re seven. We learn to make a living by the time we’re 30. Often by that time we’re not only making a living, we’re supporting a family. And yet by the time we’re 65, we haven’t learned how to become financially independent in the richest land that has ever been known. Why? We conform! Most of us are acting like the wrong percentage group and the 95 who don’t succeed.
GOALS
Have you ever wondered why so many people work so hard and honestly without ever achieving anything in particular, and why others don’t seem to work hard, yet seem to get everything? They seem to have the “magic touch.” You’ve heard people say, “Everything he touches turns to gold.” Have you ever noticed that a person who becomes successful tends to continue to become more successful? And, on the other hand, have you noticed how someone who’s a failure tends to continue to fail?
The difference is goals.
A success is the school teacher who is teaching because that’s what he or she wants to do. A success is the entrepreneur who start his own company because that was his dream and that’s what he wanted to do. A success is the salesperson who wants to become the best salesperson in his or her company and sets forth on the pursuit of that goal.
A success is anyone who is realizing a worthy predetermined ideal, because that’s what he or she decided to do … deliberately. But only one out of 20 does that! The rest are “failures.”
Rollo May, the distinguished psychiatrist, wrote a wonderful book called Man’s Search for Himself, and in this book he says: “The opposite of courage in our society is not cowardice … it is conformity.” And there you have the reason for so many failures. Conformity and people acting like everyone else, without knowing why or where they are going.
We learn to read by the time we’re seven. We learn to make a living by the time we’re 30. Often by that time we’re not only making a living, we’re supporting a family. And yet by the time we’re 65, we haven’t learned how to become financially independent in the richest land that has ever been known. Why? We conform! Most of us are acting like the wrong percentage group and the 95 who don’t succeed.
GOALS
Have you ever wondered why so many people work so hard and honestly without ever achieving anything in particular, and why others don’t seem to work hard, yet seem to get everything? They seem to have the “magic touch.” You’ve heard people say, “Everything he touches turns to gold.” Have you ever noticed that a person who becomes successful tends to continue to become more successful? And, on the other hand, have you noticed how someone who’s a failure tends to continue to fail?
The difference is goals.
People with goals succeed because they know where they’re going. It’s that simple.
Failures, on the other hand, believe that their lives are shaped by circumstances … by things that happen to them … by exterior forces.
Think of a ship with the complete voyage mapped out and planned. The captain and crew know exactly where the ship is going and how long it will take and it has a definite goal. And 9,999 times out of 10,000, it will get there.
Now let’s take another ship and just like the first and only let’s not put a crew on it, or a captain at the helm. Let’s give it no aiming point, no goal, and no destination. We just start the engines and let it go. I think you’ll agree that if it gets out of the harbor at all, it will either sink or wind up on some deserted beach and a derelict. It can’t go anyplace because it has no destination and no guidance.
It’s the same with a human being. However, the human race is fixed, not to prevent the strong from winning, but to prevent the weak from losing. Society today can be likened to a convoy in time of war. The entire society is slowed down to protect its weakest link, just as the naval convoy has to go at the speed that will permit its slowest vessel to remain in formation.
That’s why it’s so easy to make a living today. It takes no particular brains or talent to make a living and support a family today. We have a plateau of so-called “security.” So, to succeed, all we must do is decide how high above this plateau we want to aim.
Throughout history, the great wise men and teachers, philosophers, and prophets have disagreed with one another on many different things. It is only on this one point that they are in complete and unanimous agreement and the key to success and the key to failure is this:
WE BECOME WHAT WE THINK ABOUT
This is The Strangest Secret! Now, why do I say it’s strange, and why do I call it a secret? Actually, it isn’t a secret at all. It was first promulgated by some of the earliest wise men, and it appears again and again throughout the Bible. But very few people have learned it or understand it. That’s why it’s strange, and why for some equally strange reason it virtually remains a secret.
Marcus Aurelius, the great Roman Emperor, said: “A man’s life is what his thoughts make of it.”
Disraeli said this: “Everything comes if a man will only wait … a human being with a settled purpose must accomplish it, and nothing can resist a will that will stake even existence for its fulfillment.”
William James said: “We need only in cold blood act as if the thing in question were real, and it will become infallibly real by growing into such a connection with our life that it will become real. It will become so knit with habit and emotion that our interests in it will be those which characterize belief.”
Think of a ship with the complete voyage mapped out and planned. The captain and crew know exactly where the ship is going and how long it will take and it has a definite goal. And 9,999 times out of 10,000, it will get there.
Now let’s take another ship and just like the first and only let’s not put a crew on it, or a captain at the helm. Let’s give it no aiming point, no goal, and no destination. We just start the engines and let it go. I think you’ll agree that if it gets out of the harbor at all, it will either sink or wind up on some deserted beach and a derelict. It can’t go anyplace because it has no destination and no guidance.
It’s the same with a human being. However, the human race is fixed, not to prevent the strong from winning, but to prevent the weak from losing. Society today can be likened to a convoy in time of war. The entire society is slowed down to protect its weakest link, just as the naval convoy has to go at the speed that will permit its slowest vessel to remain in formation.
That’s why it’s so easy to make a living today. It takes no particular brains or talent to make a living and support a family today. We have a plateau of so-called “security.” So, to succeed, all we must do is decide how high above this plateau we want to aim.
Throughout history, the great wise men and teachers, philosophers, and prophets have disagreed with one another on many different things. It is only on this one point that they are in complete and unanimous agreement and the key to success and the key to failure is this:
WE BECOME WHAT WE THINK ABOUT
This is The Strangest Secret! Now, why do I say it’s strange, and why do I call it a secret? Actually, it isn’t a secret at all. It was first promulgated by some of the earliest wise men, and it appears again and again throughout the Bible. But very few people have learned it or understand it. That’s why it’s strange, and why for some equally strange reason it virtually remains a secret.
Marcus Aurelius, the great Roman Emperor, said: “A man’s life is what his thoughts make of it.”
Disraeli said this: “Everything comes if a man will only wait … a human being with a settled purpose must accomplish it, and nothing can resist a will that will stake even existence for its fulfillment.”
William James said: “We need only in cold blood act as if the thing in question were real, and it will become infallibly real by growing into such a connection with our life that it will become real. It will become so knit with habit and emotion that our interests in it will be those which characterize belief.”
He continues, ” … only you must, then, really wish these things, and wish them exclusively, and not wish at the same time a hundred other incompatible things just as strongly.”
My old friend Dr. Norman Vincent Peale put it this way: “If you think in negative terms, you will get negative results. If you think in positive terms, you will achieve positive results.”
My old friend Dr. Norman Vincent Peale put it this way: “If you think in negative terms, you will get negative results. If you think in positive terms, you will achieve positive results.”
George Bernard Shaw said: “People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don’t believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and if they can’t find them, make them.”
Well, it’s pretty apparent, isn’t it? We become what we think about.
Well, it’s pretty apparent, isn’t it? We become what we think about.
A person who is thinking about a concrete and worthwhile goal is going to reach it, because that’s what he’s thinking about.
Conversely, the person who has no goal, who doesn’t know where he’s going, and whose thoughts must therefore be thoughts of confusion, anxiety, fear, and worry will thereby create a life of frustration, fear, anxiety and worry. And if he thinks about nothing … he becomes nothing.
AS YE SOW, SO SHALL YE REAP
The human mind is much like a farmer’s land. The land gives the farmer a choice. He may plant in that land whatever he chooses. The land doesn’t care what is planted. It’s up to the farmer to make the decision.
The mind, like the land, will return what you plant, but it doesn’t care what you plant. If the farmer plants too seeds and one a seed of corn, the other nightshade, a deadly poison, waters and takes care of the land, what will happen?
Remember, the land doesn’t care. It will return poison in just as wonderful abundance as it will corn. So up come the two plants and one corn, one poison as it’s written in the Bible, “As ye sow, so shall ye reap.”
The human mind is far more fertile, far more incredible and mysterious than the land, but it works the same way. It doesn’t care what we plant … success … or failure. A concrete, worthwhile goal … or confusion, misunderstanding, fear, anxiety, and so on. But what we plant it must return to us.
The problem is that our mind comes as standard equipment at birth. It’s free. And things that are given to us for nothing, we place little value on. Things that we pay money for, we value.
The paradox is that exactly the reverse is true.
Remember, the land doesn’t care. It will return poison in just as wonderful abundance as it will corn. So up come the two plants and one corn, one poison as it’s written in the Bible, “As ye sow, so shall ye reap.”
The human mind is far more fertile, far more incredible and mysterious than the land, but it works the same way. It doesn’t care what we plant … success … or failure. A concrete, worthwhile goal … or confusion, misunderstanding, fear, anxiety, and so on. But what we plant it must return to us.
The problem is that our mind comes as standard equipment at birth. It’s free. And things that are given to us for nothing, we place little value on. Things that we pay money for, we value.
The paradox is that exactly the reverse is true.
Everything that’s really worthwhile in life came to us free and our minds, our souls, our bodies, our hopes, our dreams, our ambitions, our intelligence, our love of family and children and friends and country. All these priceless possessions are free.
But the things that cost us money are actually very cheap and can be replaced at any time. A good man can be completely wiped out and make another fortune. He can do that several times. Even if our home burns down, we can rebuild it. But the things we got for nothing, we can never replace.
Our mind can do any kind of job we assign to it, but generally speaking, we use it for little jobs instead of big ones.
So decide now. What is it you want? Plant your goal in your mind. It’s the most important decision you’ll ever make in your entire life.
Do you want to excel at your particular job? Do you want to go places in your company … in your community? Do you want to get rich?
But the things that cost us money are actually very cheap and can be replaced at any time. A good man can be completely wiped out and make another fortune. He can do that several times. Even if our home burns down, we can rebuild it. But the things we got for nothing, we can never replace.
Our mind can do any kind of job we assign to it, but generally speaking, we use it for little jobs instead of big ones.
So decide now. What is it you want? Plant your goal in your mind. It’s the most important decision you’ll ever make in your entire life.
Do you want to excel at your particular job? Do you want to go places in your company … in your community? Do you want to get rich?
All you have got to do is plant that seed in your mind, care for it, work steadily toward your goal, and it will become a reality.
It not only will, there’s no way that it cannot. You see, that’s a law and like the laws of Sir Isaac Newton, the laws of gravity. If you get on top of a building and jump off, you’ll always go down and you’ll never go up.
And it’s the same with all the other laws of nature. They always work. They’re inflexible.
It not only will, there’s no way that it cannot. You see, that’s a law and like the laws of Sir Isaac Newton, the laws of gravity. If you get on top of a building and jump off, you’ll always go down and you’ll never go up.
And it’s the same with all the other laws of nature. They always work. They’re inflexible.
Think about your goal in a relaxed, positive way.
Picture yourself in your mind’s eye as having already achieved this goal.
See yourself doing the things you will be doing when you have reached your goal.
Every one of us is the sum total of our own thoughts.
Every one of us is the sum total of our own thoughts.
We are where we are because that’s exactly where we really want or feel we deserve to be and whether we’ll admit that or not.
Each of us must live off the fruit of our thoughts in the future, because what you think today and tomorrow and next month and next year and will mold your life and determine your future. You’re guided by your mind.
I remember one time I was driving through e a s t e r n Arizona and I saw one of those giant earth-moving machines roaring along the road with what looked like 30 tons of dirt in it and a tremendous, incredible machine and and there was a little man perched way up on top with the wheel in his hands, guiding it.
As I drove along I was struck by the similarity of that machine to the human mind.
I remember one time I was driving through e a s t e r n Arizona and I saw one of those giant earth-moving machines roaring along the road with what looked like 30 tons of dirt in it and a tremendous, incredible machine and and there was a little man perched way up on top with the wheel in his hands, guiding it.
As I drove along I was struck by the similarity of that machine to the human mind.
Just suppose you’re sitting at the controls of such a vast source of energy.
Are you going to sit back and fold your arms and let it run itself into a ditch?
Or are you going to keep both hands firmly on the wheel and control and direct this power to a specific, worthwhile purpose?
Are you going to sit back and fold your arms and let it run itself into a ditch?
Or are you going to keep both hands firmly on the wheel and control and direct this power to a specific, worthwhile purpose?
It’s up to you. You’re in the driver’s seat.
You see, the very law that gives us success is a double-edged sword.
We must control our thinking.
The same rule that can lead people to lives of success, wealth, happiness, and all the things they ever dreamed of and that very same law can lead them into the gutter.
It’s all in how they use it … for good or for bad.
We must control our thinking.
The same rule that can lead people to lives of success, wealth, happiness, and all the things they ever dreamed of and that very same law can lead them into the gutter.
It’s all in how they use it … for good or for bad.
That is The Strangest Secret!
Do what the experts since the dawn of recorded history have told us to do:
pay the price, by becoming the person you want to become.
Do what the experts since the dawn of recorded history have told us to do:
pay the price, by becoming the person you want to become.
It’s not nearly as difficult as living unsuccessfully.
The moment you decide on a goal to work toward, you’re immediately a successful person and you are then in that rare group of people who know where they’re going.
The moment you decide on a goal to work toward, you’re immediately a successful person and you are then in that rare group of people who know where they’re going.
Out of every hundred people, you belong to the top five.
Don’t concern yourself too much with how you are going to achieve your goal.
Leave that completely to a power greater than yourself.
Leave that completely to a power greater than yourself.
All you have to do is know where you’re going. The answers will come to you of their own accord, and at the right time.
Start today. You have nothing to lose and but you have your whole life to win.
30-DAY ACTION IDEAS FOR PUTTING THE STRANGEST SECRET TO WORK FOR YOU:
For the next 30-days follow each of these steps every day until you have achieved your goal.
1. Write on a card what it is you want more that anything else. It may be more money. Perhaps you’d like to double your income or make a specific amount of money. It may be a beautiful home. It may be success at your job. It may be a particular position in life. It could be a more harmonious family.
Write down on your card specifically what it is you want. Make sure it’s a single goal and clearly defined. You needn’t show it to anyone, but carry it with you so that you can look at it several times a day.
Think about it in a cheerful, relaxed, positive way each morning when you get up, and immediately you have something to work for and something to get out of bed for, something to live for.
Look at it every chance you get during the day and just before going to bed at night.
As you look at it, remember that you must become what you think about, and since you’re thinking about your goal, you realize that soon it will be yours. In fact, it’s really yours the moment you write it down and begin to think about it.
2. Stop thinking about what it is you fear.
Start today. You have nothing to lose and but you have your whole life to win.
30-DAY ACTION IDEAS FOR PUTTING THE STRANGEST SECRET TO WORK FOR YOU:
For the next 30-days follow each of these steps every day until you have achieved your goal.
1. Write on a card what it is you want more that anything else. It may be more money. Perhaps you’d like to double your income or make a specific amount of money. It may be a beautiful home. It may be success at your job. It may be a particular position in life. It could be a more harmonious family.
Write down on your card specifically what it is you want. Make sure it’s a single goal and clearly defined. You needn’t show it to anyone, but carry it with you so that you can look at it several times a day.
Think about it in a cheerful, relaxed, positive way each morning when you get up, and immediately you have something to work for and something to get out of bed for, something to live for.
Look at it every chance you get during the day and just before going to bed at night.
As you look at it, remember that you must become what you think about, and since you’re thinking about your goal, you realize that soon it will be yours. In fact, it’s really yours the moment you write it down and begin to think about it.
2. Stop thinking about what it is you fear.
Each time a fearful or negative thought comes into your mind, replace it with a mental picture of your positive and worthwhile goal.
And there will come a time when you’ll feel like giving up. It’s easier for a human being to think negatively than positively. That’s why only five percent are successful! You must begin now to place yourself in that group.
“Act as though it were impossible to fail,” as Dorothea Brande said. No matter what your goal, if you’ve kept your goal before you every day, you’ll wonder and marvel at this new life you’ve found.
3. Your success will always be measured by the quality and quantity of service you render.
And there will come a time when you’ll feel like giving up. It’s easier for a human being to think negatively than positively. That’s why only five percent are successful! You must begin now to place yourself in that group.
“Act as though it were impossible to fail,” as Dorothea Brande said. No matter what your goal, if you’ve kept your goal before you every day, you’ll wonder and marvel at this new life you’ve found.
3. Your success will always be measured by the quality and quantity of service you render.
Most people will tell you that they want to make money, without understanding this law. The only people who make money work in a mint. The rest of us must earn money. This is what causes those who keep looking for something for nothing, or a free ride, to fail in life.
Success is not the result of making money; earning money is the result of success and and success is in direct proportion to our service.
Most people have this law backwards. It’s like the man who stands in front of the stove and says to it: “Give me heat and then I’ll add the wood.”
How many men and women do you know, or do you suppose there are today, who take the same attitude toward life? There are millions.
We’ve got to put the fuel in before we can expect heat.
Likewise, we’ve got to be of service first before we can expect money.
Don’t concern yourself with the money. Be of service … build … work … dream … create! Do this and you’ll find there is no limit to the prosperity and abundance that will come to you.
Don’t start your test until you’ve made up your mind to stick with it. If you should fail during your first 30 days and by that I mean suddenly find yourself overwhelmed by negative thoughts and simply start over again from that point and go 30 more days.
Gradually, your new habit will form, until you find yourself one of that wonderful minority to whom virtually nothing is impossible.
Above all … don’t worry! Worry brings fear, and fear is crippling.
The only thing that can cause you to worry during your test is trying to do it all yourself.
Know that all you have to do is hold your goal before you; everything else will take care of itself.
Take this 30-day test, then repeat it … then repeat it again. Each time it will become more a part of you until you’ll wonder how you could have ever have lived any other way.
Live this new way and the floodgates of abundance will open and pour over you more riches than you may have dreamed existed. Money? Yes, lots of it.
But what’s more important, you’ll have peace … you’ll be in that wonderful minority who lead calm, cheerful, successful lives.
Learn more about Earl Nightingale and his many timeless books and audio programs.
The Strangest Secret
Success is not the result of making money; earning money is the result of success and and success is in direct proportion to our service.
Most people have this law backwards. It’s like the man who stands in front of the stove and says to it: “Give me heat and then I’ll add the wood.”
How many men and women do you know, or do you suppose there are today, who take the same attitude toward life? There are millions.
We’ve got to put the fuel in before we can expect heat.
Likewise, we’ve got to be of service first before we can expect money.
Don’t concern yourself with the money. Be of service … build … work … dream … create! Do this and you’ll find there is no limit to the prosperity and abundance that will come to you.
Don’t start your test until you’ve made up your mind to stick with it. If you should fail during your first 30 days and by that I mean suddenly find yourself overwhelmed by negative thoughts and simply start over again from that point and go 30 more days.
Gradually, your new habit will form, until you find yourself one of that wonderful minority to whom virtually nothing is impossible.
Above all … don’t worry! Worry brings fear, and fear is crippling.
The only thing that can cause you to worry during your test is trying to do it all yourself.
Know that all you have to do is hold your goal before you; everything else will take care of itself.
Take this 30-day test, then repeat it … then repeat it again. Each time it will become more a part of you until you’ll wonder how you could have ever have lived any other way.
Live this new way and the floodgates of abundance will open and pour over you more riches than you may have dreamed existed. Money? Yes, lots of it.
But what’s more important, you’ll have peace … you’ll be in that wonderful minority who lead calm, cheerful, successful lives.
Learn more about Earl Nightingale and his many timeless books and audio programs.
The Strangest Secret
An Inspiring Secret
This is a transcript...
Some years ago, the late Nobel prize-winning Dr. Albert Schweitzer was asked by a reporter, "Doctor, what's wrong with men today?" The great doctor was silent a moment, and then he said, "Men simply don't think!"
It's about this that I want to talk with you. We live today in a golden age. This is an era that humanity has looked forward to, dreamed of, and worked toward for thousands of years. We live in the richest era that ever existed on the face of the earth ... a land of abundant opportunity for everyone.
However, if you take 100 individuals who start even at the age of 25, do you have any idea what will happen to those men and women by the time they're 65? These 100 people believe they're going to be successful. They are eager toward life, there is a certain sparkle in their eye, an erectness to their carriage, and life seems like a pretty interesting adventure to them.
But by the time they're 65, only one will be rich, four will be financially independent, five will still be working, and 54 will be broke — depending on others for life's necessities.
Only five out of 100 make the grade! Why do so many fail? What has happened to the sparkle that was there when they were 25? What has become of the dreams, the hopes, the plans ... and why is there such a large disparity between what these people intended to do and what they actually accomplished?
THE DEFINITION OF SUCCESS
First, we have to define success and here is the best definition I've ever been able to find: "Success is the progressive realization of a worthy ideal."
A success is the school teacher who is teaching because that's what he or she wants to do. A success is the entrepreneur who start his own company because that was his dream — that's what he wanted to do. A success is the salesperson who wants to become the best salesperson in his or her company and sets forth on the pursuit of that goal.
A success is anyone who is realizing a worthy predetermined ideal, because that's what he or she decided to do ... deliberately. But only one out of 20 does that! The rest are "failures."
Rollo May, the distinguished psychiatrist, wrote a wonderful book called Man's Search for Himself, and in this book he says: "The opposite of courage in our society is not cowardice ... it is conformity." And there you have the reason for so many failures. Conformity — people acting like everyone else, without knowing why or where they are going.
We learn to read by the time we're seven. We learn to make a living by the time we're 30. Often by that time we're not only making a living, we're supporting a family. And yet by the time we're 65, we haven't learned how to become financially independent in the richest land that has ever been known. Why? We conform! Most of us are acting like the wrong percentage group — the 95 who don't succeed.
GOALS
Have you ever wondered why so many people work so hard and honestly without ever achieving anything in particular, and why others don't seem to work hard, yet seem to get everything? They seem to have the "magic touch." You've heard people say, "Everything he touches turns to gold." Have you ever noticed that a person who becomes successful tends to continue to become more successful? And, on the other hand, have you noticed how someone who's a failure tends to continue to fail?
The difference is goals. People with goals succeed because they know where they're going. It's that simple. Failures, on the other hand, believe that their lives are shaped by circumstances ... by things that happen to them ... by exterior forces.
Think of a ship with the complete voyage mapped out and planned. The captain and crew know exactly where the ship is going and how long it will take — it has a definite goal. And 9,999 times out of 10,000, it will get there.
Now let's take another ship — just like the first — only let's not put a crew on it, or a captain at the helm. Let's give it no aiming point, no goal, and no destination. We just start the engines and let it go. I think you'll agree that if it gets out of the harbor at all, it will either sink or wind up on some deserted beach — a derelict. It can't go anyplace because it has no destination and no guidance.
It's the same with a human being. However, the human race is fixed, not to prevent the strong from winning, but to prevent the weak from losing. Society today can be likened to a convoy in time of war. The entire society is slowed down to protect its weakest link, just as the naval convoy has to go at the speed that will permit its slowest vessel to remain in formation.
That's why it's so easy to make a living today. It takes no particular brains or talent to make a living and support a family today. We have a plateau of so-called "security." So, to succeed, all we must do is decide how high above this plateau we want to aim.
Throughout history, the great wise men and teachers, philosophers, and prophets have disagreed with one another on many different things. It is only on this one point that they are in complete and unanimous agreement — the key to success and the key to failure is this:
WE BECOME WHAT WE THINK ABOUT
This is The Strangest Secret! Now, why do I say it's strange, and why do I call it a secret? Actually, it isn't a secret at all. It was first promulgated by some of the earliest wise men, and it appears again and again throughout the Bible. But very few people have learned it or understand it. That's why it's strange, and why for some equally strange reason it virtually remains a secret.
Marcus Aurelius, the great Roman Emperor, said: "A man's life is what his thoughts make of it."
Disraeli said this: "Everything comes if a man will only wait ... a human being with a settled purpose must accomplish it, and nothing can resist a will that will stake even existence for its fulfillment."
William James said: "We need only in cold blood act as if the thing in question were real, and it will become infallibly real by growing into such a connection with our life that it will become real. It will become so knit with habit and emotion that our interests in it will be those which characterize belief." He continues, " ... only you must, then, really wish these things, and wish them exclusively, and not wish at the same time a hundred other incompatible things just as strongly."
My old friend Dr. Norman Vincent Peale put it this way: "If you think in negative terms, you will get negative results. If you think in positive terms, you will achieve positive results." George Bernard Shaw said: "People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don't believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and if they can't find them, make them."
Well, it's pretty apparent, isn't it? We become what we think about. A person who is thinking about a concrete and worthwhile goal is going to reach it, because that's what he's thinking about. Conversely, the person who has no goal, who doesn't know where he's going, and whose thoughts must therefore be thoughts of confusion, anxiety, fear, and worry will thereby create a life of frustration, fear, anxiety and worry. And if he thinks about nothing ... he becomes nothing.
AS YE SOW — SO SHALL YE REAP
The human mind is much like a farmer's land. The land gives the farmer a choice. He may plant in that land whatever he chooses. The land doesn't care what is planted. It's up to the farmer to make the decision. The mind, like the land, will return what you plant, but it doesn't care what you plant. If the farmer plants too seeds — one a seed of corn, the other nightshade, a deadly poison, waters and takes care of the land, what will happen?
Remember, the land doesn't care. It will return poison in just as wonderful abundance as it will corn. So up come the two plants — one corn, one poison as it's written in the Bible, "As ye sow, so shall ye reap."
The human mind is far more fertile, far more incredible and mysterious than the land, but it works the same way. It doesn't care what we plant ... success ... or failure. A concrete, worthwhile goal ... or confusion, misunderstanding, fear, anxiety, and so on. But what we plant it must return to us.
The problem is that our mind comes as standard equipment at birth. It's free. And things that are given to us for nothing, we place little value on. Things that we pay money for, we value.
The paradox is that exactly the reverse is true. Everything that's really worthwhile in life came to us free — our minds, our souls, our bodies, our hopes, our dreams, our ambitions, our intelligence, our love of family and children and friends and country. All these priceless possessions are free.
But the things that cost us money are actually very cheap and can be replaced at any time. A good man can be completely wiped out and make another fortune. He can do that several times. Even if our home burns down, we can rebuild it. But the things we got for nothing, we can never replace.
Our mind can do any kind of job we assign to it, but generally speaking, we use it for little jobs instead of big ones. So decide now. What is it you want? Plant your goal in your mind. It's the most important decision you'll ever make in your entire life.
Do you want to excel at your particular job? Do you want to go places in your company ... in your community? Do you want to get rich? All you have got to do is plant that seed in your mind, care for it, work steadily toward your goal, and it will become a reality.
It not only will, there's no way that it cannot. You see, that's a law — like the laws of Sir Isaac Newton, the laws of gravity. If you get on top of a building and jump off, you'll always go down — you'll never go up.
And it's the same with all the other laws of nature. They always work. They're inflexible. Think about your goal in a relaxed, positive way. Picture yourself in your mind's eye as having already achieved this goal. See yourself doing the things you will be doing when you have reached your goal.
Every one of us is the sum total of our own thoughts. We are where we are because that's exactly where we really want or feel we deserve to be — whether we'll admit that or not. Each of us must live off the fruit of our thoughts in the future, because what you think today and tomorrow — next month and next year — will mold your life and determine your future. You're guided by your mind.
I remember one time I was driving through e a s t e r n Arizona and I saw one of those giant earthmoving machines roaring along the road with what looked like 30 tons of dirt in it — a tremendous, incredible machine — and there was a little man perched way up on top with the wheel in his hands, guiding it. As I drove along I was struck by the similarity of that machine to the human mind. Just suppose you're sitting at the controls of such a vast source of energy.
Are you going to sit back and fold your arms and let it run itself into a ditch? Or are you going to keep both hands firmly on the wheel and control and direct this power to a specific, worthwhile purpose? It's up to you. You're in the driver's seat. You see, the very law that gives us success is a doubleedged sword. We must control our thinking. The same rule that can lead people to lives of success, wealth, happiness, and all the things they ever dreamed of — that very same law can lead them into the gutter. It's all in how they use it ... for good or for bad. That is The Strangest Secret!
Do what the experts since the dawn of recorded history have told us to do: pay the price, by becoming the person you want to become. It's not nearly as difficult as living unsuccessfully.
The moment you decide on a goal to work toward, you're immediately a successful person — you are then in that rare group of people who know where they're going. Out of every hundred people, you belong to the top five. Don't concern yourself too much with how you are going to achieve your goal — leave that completely to a power greater than yourself. All you have to do is know where you're going. The answers will come to you of their own accord, and at the right time.
Start today. You have nothing to lose — but you have your whole life to win.
30-DAYACTION IDEAS FOR PUTTING THE STRANGEST SECRET TO WORK FOR YOU
For the next 30-days follow each of these steps every day until you have achieved your goal.
1. Write on a card what it is you want more that anything else. It may be more money. Perhaps you'd like to double your income or make a specific amount of money. It may be a beautiful home. It may be success at your job. It may be a particular position in life. It could be a more harmonious family.
Write down on your card specifically what it is you want. Make sure it's a single goal and clearly defined. You needn't show it to anyone, but carry it with you so that you can look at it several times a day. Think about it in a cheerful, relaxed, positive way each morning when you get up, and immediately you have something to work for — something to get out of bed for, something to live for.
Look at it every chance you get during the day and just before going to bed at night. As you look at it, remember that you must become what you think about, and since you're thinking about your goal, you realize that soon it will be yours. In fact, it's really yours the moment you write it down and begin to think about it.
2. Stop thinking about what it is you fear. Each time a fearful or negative thought comes into your mind, replace it with a mental picture of your positive and worthwhile goal. And there will come a time when you'll feel like giving up. It's easier for a human being to think negatively than positively. That's why only five percent are successful! You must begin now to place yourself in that group.
"Act as though it were impossible to fail," as Dorothea Brande said. No matter what your goal — if you've kept your goal before you every day — you'll wonder and marvel at this new life you've found.
3. Your success will always be measured by the quality and quantity of service you render.
Most people will tell you that they want to make money, without understanding this law. The only people who make money work in a mint. The rest of us must earn money. This is what causes those who keep looking for something for nothing, or a free ride, to fail in life. Success is not the result of making money; earning money is the result of success — and success is in direct proportion to our service.
Most people have this law backwards. It's like the man who stands in front of the stove and says to it: "Give me heat and then I'll add the wood." How many men and women do you know, or do you suppose there are today, who take the same attitude toward life? There are millions.
We've got to put the fuel in before we can expect heat. Likewise, we've got to be of service first before we can expect money. Don't concern yourself with the money. Be of service ... build ... work ... dream ... create! Do this and you'll find there is no limit to the prosperity and abundance that will come to you.
Don't start your test until you've made up your mind to stick with it. If you should fail during your first 30 days — by that I mean suddenly find yourself overwhelmed by negative thoughts — simply start over again from that point and go 30 more days. Gradually, your new habit will form, until you find yourself one of that wonderful minority to whom virtually nothing is impossible.
Above all ... don't worry! Worry brings fear, and fear is crippling. The only thing that can cause you to worry during your test is trying to do it all yourself. Know that all you have to do is hold your goal before you; everything else will take care of itself.
Take this 30-day test, then repeat it ... then repeat it again. Each time it will become more a part of you until you'll wonder how you could have ever have lived any other way. Live this new way and the floodgates of abundance will open and pour over you more riches than you may have dreamed existed. Money? Yes, lots of it. But what's more important, you'll have peace ... you'll be in that wonderful minority who lead calm, cheerful, successful lives.
Learn more about Earl Nightingale and his many timeless books and audio programs.
The Strangest Secret - Advantedge Article By Earl Nightingale
LINK: http://www.nightingale.com/ae_article~i~22~article~strangestsecret.aspx
The Strangest Secret Earl Nightingale Conant 1950's Origional FULL 31:35 Min.
31:35 - 4 years ago
Earl Nightingale Conant The Strangest Secret 1956 1950's
The Strangest Secret
Some years ago, the late Nobel prize-winning Dr. Albert Schweitzer was asked by a reporter, "Doctor, what's wrong with men today?" The great doctor was silent a moment, and then he said, "Men simply don't think!"
It's about this that I want to talk with you. We live today in a golden age. This is an era that humanity has looked forward to, dreamed of, and worked toward for thousands of years. We live in the richest era that ever existed on the face of the earth ... a land of abundant opportunity for everyone.
However, if you take 100 individuals who start even at the age of 25, do you have any idea what will happen to those men and women by the time they're 65? These 100 people believe they're going to be successful. They are eager toward life, there is a certain sparkle in their eye, an erectness to their carriage, and life seems like a pretty interesting adventure to them.
But by the time they're 65, only one will be rich, four will be financially independent, five will still be working, and 54 will be broke — depending on others for life's necessities.
Only five out of 100 make the grade! Why do so many fail? What has happened to the sparkle that was there when they were 25? What has become of the dreams, the hopes, the plans ... and why is there such a large disparity between what these people intended to do and what they actually accomplished?
THE DEFINITION OF SUCCESS
First, we have to define success and here is the best definition I've ever been able to find: "Success is the progressive realization of a worthy ideal."
A success is the school teacher who is teaching because that's what he or she wants to do. A success is the entrepreneur who start his own company because that was his dream — that's what he wanted to do. A success is the salesperson who wants to become the best salesperson in his or her company and sets forth on the pursuit of that goal.
A success is anyone who is realizing a worthy predetermined ideal, because that's what he or she decided to do ... deliberately. But only one out of 20 does that! The rest are "failures."
Rollo May, the distinguished psychiatrist, wrote a wonderful book called Man's Search for Himself, and in this book he says: "The opposite of courage in our society is not cowardice ... it is conformity." And there you have the reason for so many failures. Conformity — people acting like everyone else, without knowing why or where they are going.
We learn to read by the time we're seven. We learn to make a living by the time we're 30. Often by that time we're not only making a living, we're supporting a family. And yet by the time we're 65, we haven't learned how to become financially independent in the richest land that has ever been known. Why? We conform! Most of us are acting like the wrong percentage group — the 95 who don't succeed.
GOALS
Have you ever wondered why so many people work so hard and honestly without ever achieving anything in particular, and why others don't seem to work hard, yet seem to get everything? They seem to have the "magic touch." You've heard people say, "Everything he touches turns to gold." Have you ever noticed that a person who becomes successful tends to continue to become more successful? And, on the other hand, have you noticed how someone who's a failure tends to continue to fail?
The difference is goals. People with goals succeed because they know where they're going. It's that simple. Failures, on the other hand, believe that their lives are shaped by circumstances ... by things that happen to them ... by exterior forces.
Think of a ship with the complete voyage mapped out and planned. The captain and crew know exactly where the ship is going and how long it will take — it has a definite goal. And 9,999 times out of 10,000, it will get there.
Now let's take another ship — just like the first — only let's not put a crew on it, or a captain at the helm. Let's give it no aiming point, no goal, and no destination. We just start the engines and let it go. I think you'll agree that if it gets out of the harbor at all, it will either sink or wind up on some deserted beach — a derelict. It can't go anyplace because it has no destination and no guidance.
It's the same with a human being. However, the human race is fixed, not to prevent the strong from winning, but to prevent the weak from losing. Society today can be likened to a convoy in time of war. The entire society is slowed down to protect its weakest link, just as the naval convoy has to go at the speed that will permit its slowest vessel to remain in formation.
That's why it's so easy to make a living today. It takes no particular brains or talent to make a living and support a family today. We have a plateau of so-called "security." So, to succeed, all we must do is decide how high above this plateau we want to aim.
Throughout history, the great wise men and teachers, philosophers, and prophets have disagreed with one another on many different things. It is only on this one point that they are in complete and unanimous agreement — the key to success and the key to failure is this:
WE BECOME WHAT WE THINK ABOUT
This is The Strangest Secret! Now, why do I say it's strange, and why do I call it a secret? Actually, it isn't a secret at all. It was first promulgated by some of the earliest wise men, and it appears again and again throughout the Bible. But very few people have learned it or understand it. That's why it's strange, and why for some equally strange reason it virtually remains a secret.
Marcus Aurelius, the great Roman Emperor, said: "A man's life is what his thoughts make of it."
Disraeli said this: "Everything comes if a man will only wait ... a human being with a settled purpose must accomplish it, and nothing can resist a will that will stake even existence for its fulfillment."
William James said: "We need only in cold blood act as if the thing in question were real, and it will become infallibly real by growing into such a connection with our life that it will become real. It will become so knit with habit and emotion that our interests in it will be those which characterize belief." He continues, " ... only you must, then, really wish these things, and wish them exclusively, and not wish at the same time a hundred other incompatible things just as strongly."
My old friend Dr. Norman Vincent Peale put it this way: "If you think in negative terms, you will get negative results. If you think in positive terms, you will achieve positive results." George Bernard Shaw said: "People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don't believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and if they can't find them, make them."
Well, it's pretty apparent, isn't it? We become what we think about. A person who is thinking about a concrete and worthwhile goal is going to reach it, because that's what he's thinking about. Conversely, the person who has no goal, who doesn't know where he's going, and whose thoughts must therefore be thoughts of confusion, anxiety, fear, and worry will thereby create a life of frustration, fear, anxiety and worry. And if he thinks about nothing ... he becomes nothing.
AS YE SOW — SO SHALL YE REAP
The human mind is much like a farmer's land. The land gives the farmer a choice. He may plant in that land whatever he chooses. The land doesn't care what is planted. It's up to the farmer to make the decision. The mind, like the land, will return what you plant, but it doesn't care what you plant. If the farmer plants too seeds — one a seed of corn, the other nightshade, a deadly poison, waters and takes care of the land, what will happen?
Remember, the land doesn't care. It will return poison in just as wonderful abundance as it will corn. So up come the two plants — one corn, one poison as it's written in the Bible, "As ye sow, so shall ye reap."
The human mind is far more fertile, far more incredible and mysterious than the land, but it works the same way. It doesn't care what we plant ... success ... or failure. A concrete, worthwhile goal ... or confusion, misunderstanding, fear, anxiety, and so on. But what we plant it must return to us.
The problem is that our mind comes as standard equipment at birth. It's free. And things that are given to us for nothing, we place little value on. Things that we pay money for, we value.
The paradox is that exactly the reverse is true. Everything that's really worthwhile in life came to us free — our minds, our souls, our bodies, our hopes, our dreams, our ambitions, our intelligence, our love of family and children and friends and country. All these priceless possessions are free.
But the things that cost us money are actually very cheap and can be replaced at any time. A good man can be completely wiped out and make another fortune. He can do that several times. Even if our home burns down, we can rebuild it. But the things we got for nothing, we can never replace.
Our mind can do any kind of job we assign to it, but generally speaking, we use it for little jobs instead of big ones. So decide now. What is it you want? Plant your goal in your mind. It's the most important decision you'll ever make in your entire life.
Do you want to excel at your particular job? Do you want to go places in your company ... in your community? Do you want to get rich? All you have got to do is plant that seed in your mind, care for it, work steadily toward your goal, and it will become a reality.
It not only will, there's no way that it cannot. You see, that's a law — like the laws of Sir Isaac Newton, the laws of gravity. If you get on top of a building and jump off, you'll always go down — you'll never go up.
And it's the same with all the other laws of nature. They always work. They're inflexible. Think about your goal in a relaxed, positive way. Picture yourself in your mind's eye as having already achieved this goal. See yourself doing the things you will be doing when you have reached your goal.
Every one of us is the sum total of our own thoughts. We are where we are because that's exactly where we really want or feel we deserve to be — whether we'll admit that or not. Each of us must live off the fruit of our thoughts in the future, because what you think today and tomorrow — next month and next year — will mold your life and determine your future. You're guided by your mind.
I remember one time I was driving through e a s t e r n Arizona and I saw one of those giant earthmoving machines roaring along the road with what looked like 30 tons of dirt in it — a tremendous, incredible machine — and there was a little man perched way up on top with the wheel in his hands, guiding it. As I drove along I was struck by the similarity of that machine to the human mind. Just suppose you're sitting at the controls of such a vast source of energy.
Are you going to sit back and fold your arms and let it run itself into a ditch? Or are you going to keep both hands firmly on the wheel and control and direct this power to a specific, worthwhile purpose? It's up to you. You're in the driver's seat. You see, the very law that gives us success is a doubleedged sword. We must control our thinking. The same rule that can lead people to lives of success, wealth, happiness, and all the things they ever dreamed of — that very same law can lead them into the gutter. It's all in how they use it ... for good or for bad. That is The Strangest Secret!
Do what the experts since the dawn of recorded history have told us to do: pay the price, by becoming the person you want to become. It's not nearly as difficult as living unsuccessfully.
The moment you decide on a goal to work toward, you're immediately a successful person — you are then in that rare group of people who know where they're going. Out of every hundred people, you belong to the top five. Don't concern yourself too much with how you are going to achieve your goal — leave that completely to a power greater than yourself. All you have to do is know where you're going. The answers will come to you of their own accord, and at the right time.
Start today. You have nothing to lose — but you have your whole life to win.
30-DAYACTION IDEAS FOR PUTTING THE STRANGEST SECRET TO WORK FOR YOU
For the next 30-days follow each of these steps every day until you have achieved your goal.
1. Write on a card what it is you want more that anything else. It may be more money. Perhaps you'd like to double your income or make a specific amount of money. It may be a beautiful home. It may be success at your job. It may be a particular position in life. It could be a more harmonious family.
Write down on your card specifically what it is you want. Make sure it's a single goal and clearly defined. You needn't show it to anyone, but carry it with you so that you can look at it several times a day. Think about it in a cheerful, relaxed, positive way each morning when you get up, and immediately you have something to work for — something to get out of bed for, something to live for.
Look at it every chance you get during the day and just before going to bed at night. As you look at it, remember that you must become what you think about, and since you're thinking about your goal, you realize that soon it will be yours. In fact, it's really yours the moment you write it down and begin to think about it.
2. Stop thinking about what it is you fear. Each time a fearful or negative thought comes into your mind, replace it with a mental picture of your positive and worthwhile goal. And there will come a time when you'll feel like giving up. It's easier for a human being to think negatively than positively. That's why only five percent are successful! You must begin now to place yourself in that group.
"Act as though it were impossible to fail," as Dorothea Brande said. No matter what your goal — if you've kept your goal before you every day — you'll wonder and marvel at this new life you've found.
3. Your success will always be measured by the quality and quantity of service you render.
Most people will tell you that they want to make money, without understanding this law. The only people who make money work in a mint. The rest of us must earn money. This is what causes those who keep looking for something for nothing, or a free ride, to fail in life. Success is not the result of making money; earning money is the result of success — and success is in direct proportion to our service.
Most people have this law backwards. It's like the man who stands in front of the stove and says to it: "Give me heat and then I'll add the wood." How many men and women do you know, or do you suppose there are today, who take the same attitude toward life? There are millions.
We've got to put the fuel in before we can expect heat. Likewise, we've got to be of service first before we can expect money. Don't concern yourself with the money. Be of service ... build ... work ... dream ... create! Do this and you'll find there is no limit to the prosperity and abundance that will come to you.
Don't start your test until you've made up your mind to stick with it. If you should fail during your first 30 days — by that I mean suddenly find yourself overwhelmed by negative thoughts — simply start over again from that point and go 30 more days. Gradually, your new habit will form, until you find yourself one of that wonderful minority to whom virtually nothing is impossible.
Above all ... don't worry! Worry brings fear, and fear is crippling. The only thing that can cause you to worry during your test is trying to do it all yourself. Know that all you have to do is hold your goal before you; everything else will take care of itself.
Take this 30-day test, then repeat it ... then repeat it again. Each time it will become more a part of you until you'll wonder how you could have ever have lived any other way. Live this new way and the floodgates of abundance will open and pour over you more riches than you may have dreamed existed. Money? Yes, lots of it. But what's more important, you'll have peace ... you'll be in that wonderful minority who lead calm, cheerful, successful lives.
Learn more about Earl Nightingale and his many timeless books and audio programs.
The Strangest Secret - Advantedge Article By Earl Nightingale
LINK: http://www.nightingale.com/ae_article~i~22~article~strangestsecret.aspx
31:35 - 4 years ago
Earl Nightingale Conant The Strangest Secret 1956 1950's
Sunday, August 9, 2015
Avoid Strategy Traps
BostonConsultingGrp @BCG Aug 8
5 questions companies need to answer first to avoid a #strategy trap: http://on.bcg.com/1KQBtEd
#strategyneedstrategy
Monday, March 2, 2015
Nietzsche Quotes
Drawing by Hans Olde from the photographic series, The Ill Nietzsche, mid-1899.
Friedrich Nietzsche Quotes“Without music, life would be a mistake.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, Or, How to Philosophize With the Hammer
“It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
“That which does not kill us makes us stronger.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
“I'm not upset that you lied to me, I'm upset that from now on I can't believe you.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
“It is hard enough to remember my opinions, without also remembering my reasons for them!”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
“And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
“There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
“You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
“You must have chaos within you to give birth to a dancing star.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
“Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
“In heaven, all the interesting people are missing.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
“Sometimes people don't want to hear the truth because they don't want their illusions destroyed.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
“We should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
There are no facts, only interpretations.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
tags: perspective, truth
“The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
tags: individuality
“The man of knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies but also to hate his friends.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
tags: enemies, friends, friendship, hatred, intelligence, knowledge, love, wisdom
“I cannot believe in a God who wants to be praised all the time.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
tags: agama, agnosticism, prayer, religion
“He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
tags: how, life, purpose, questioning, questions, why
“When we are tired, we are attacked by ideas we conquered long ago.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
tags: past, philosophy
“The snake which cannot cast its skin has to die. As well the minds which are prevented from changing their opinions; they cease to be mind.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
tags: change, mind, nietzsche
“In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
tags: insanity, society
“The advantage of a bad memory is that one enjoys several times the same good things for the first time.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
tags: forgetfulness, forgetting, happiness, memory
“Man is the cruelest animal.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
tags: animals, cruelty, evil, man
“The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
tags: corruption, individuality, peer-pressure, youth
“I would believe only in a God that knows how to dance.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
tags: philosophy
“Is man merely a mistake of God's? Or God merely a mistake of man?”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
tags: atheism, organized-religion, paradox, religion
“Faith: not wanting to know what the truth is.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
“Every deep thinker is more afraid of being understood than of being misunderstood.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
“Thoughts are the shadows of our feelings -- always darker, emptier and simpler.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
“A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
tags: belief, delusions, faith, insanity
“The true man wants two things: danger and play. For that reason he wants woman, as the most dangerous plaything.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
tags: philosophy, women
“What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: 'This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more' ... Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: 'You are a god and never have I heard anything more divine.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science: with a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs
tags: demons, happiness, judgement, kronofobi, life, reincarnation, sadness
“There are no beautiful surfaces without a terrible depth.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
“The thought of suicide is a great consolation: by means of it one gets through many a dark night.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
tags: suicide
“The higher we soar the smaller we appear to those who cannot fly.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra
tags: inspirational
“A thinker sees his own actions as experiments and questions--as attempts to find out something. Success and failure are for him answers above all.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
tags: failure, intelligence, science, scientific-process, success, truth
“Be careful, lest in casting out your demon you exorcise the best thing in you.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
tags: self-exploration
“We have art in order not to die of the truth.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
tags: art
“A good writer possesses not only his own spirit but also the spirit of his friends.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
tags: friends, friendship, observation, writers, writing
“There are two different types of people in the world, those who want to know, and those who want to believe.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
“One ought to hold on to one's heart; for if one lets it go, one soon loses control of the head too.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
tags: emotions, heart, insanity, love, rationality, reason
“In truth,there was only one christian and he died on the cross.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
tags: christian-behavior, christianity, religion
“All truly great thoughts are conceived while walking.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, Or, How to Philosophize With the Hammer
tags: exercise, intelligence, reflection, thinking, walking
“Ah, women. They make the highs higher and the lows more frequent.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
tags: battle-of-the-sexes, gender-stereotypes
“That which is done out of love is always beyond good and evil.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
“All things are subject to interpretation. Whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
tags: perception
“Art is the proper task of life. ”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
tags: art, inspirational, life
“All I need is a sheet of paper
and something to write with, and then
I can turn the world upside down.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
tags: writing
“I am a forest, and a night of dark trees: but he who is not afraid of my darkness, will find banks full of roses under my cypresses.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra
tags: darkness
“Meaning and morality of One's life come from within oneself. Healthy, strong individuals seek self expansion by experimenting and by living dangerously. Life consists of an infinite number of possibilities and the healthy person explores as many of them as posible. Religions that teach pity, self-contempt, humility, self-restraint and guilt are incorrect. The good life is ever changing, challenging, devoid of regret, intense, creative and risky.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
“What does your conscience say? — 'You should become the person you are'.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
“There is not enough love and goodness in the world to permit giving any of it away to imaginary beings.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human
tags: irreligion, religion
“Amor Fati – “Love Your Fate”, which is in fact your life.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
tags: fate, inspirational, life, love
“Perhaps I know best why it is man alone who laughs; he alone suffers so deeply that he had to invent laughter.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
tags: life
“Silence is worse; all truths that are kept silent become poisonous.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra
tags: on-self-overcoming
“you must be ready to burn yourself in your own flame;
how could you rise anew if you have not first become ashes?”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra
“Doubt as sin. — Christianity has done its utmost to close the circle and declared even doubt to be sin. One is supposed to be cast into belief without reason, by a miracle, and from then on to swim in it as in the brightest and least ambiguous of elements: even a glance towards land, even the thought that one perhaps exists for something else as well as swimming, even the slightest impulse of our amphibious nature — is sin! And notice that all this means that the foundation of belief and all reflection on its origin is likewise excluded as sinful. What is wanted are blindness and intoxication and an eternal song over the waves in which reason has drowned.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality
tags: atheism, belief, blind, blind-faith, blindness, christian-faith, christian-miracle, critical-thinking, critical-thought, death-of-reason, doubt, doubt-is-sin, eternity, existence, foundation-of-belief, human-nature, intoxication, meaning, meaning-of-life, metaphor, miracle, myth, nature, origin, philosophy, purpose, purpose-of-life, reason, reflection, religious-faith, resurrection, resurrection-of-jesus, sin, sinful, thinking, thoughts, wasted-life
“Invisible threads are the strongest ties.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
tags: connection, invisibility, thread, ties
“Stupidity in a woman is unfeminine.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human
“Blessed are the forgetful, for they get the better even of their blunders.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
tags: beatitudes, bless, blessed, blunders, forget, forgetful, friedrich, memory, nietzsch
After coming into contact with a religious man I always feel I must wash my hands.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
tags: atheism
“He who would learn to fly one day must first learn to walk and run and climb and dance; one cannot fly into flying. ”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
tags: inspirational
“A thought, even a possibility, can shatter and transform us.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
tags: possibility, profundity, thought
“Today as always, men fall into two groups: slaves and free men. Whoever does not have two-thirds of his day for himself, is a slave, whatever he may be: a statesman, a businessman, an official, or a scholar.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
tags: humour, men, slavery, slaves
“The lonely one offers his hand too quickly to whomever he encounters.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra: A Book for All and None
“The visionary lies to himself, the liar only to others.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
tags: lies, lying, self-deception, vision, visionaries
“They muddy the water, to make it seem deep.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
“To predict the behavior of ordinary people in advance, you only have to assume that they will always try to escape a disagreeable situation with the smallest possible expenditure of intelligence.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
tags: reality
“The most perfidious way of harming a cause consists of defending it deliberately with faulty arguments.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
tags: perception, philosophy, scientific-process, truth
“Ultimately, it is the desire, not the desired, that we love.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
tags: desire, love
“Is life not a thousand times too short for us to bore ourselves?”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
tags: boredom, life
“Become who you are!”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra: A Book for All and None
“I know of no better life purpose than to perish in attempting the great and the impossible.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
“God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
tags: philosophical
“Talking much about oneself can also be a means to conceal oneself. ”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
“Is it better to out-monster the monster or to be quietly devoured?”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
“One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
tags: creative-process, creativity, inspirational, mental-illness, outsider, self-discovery
“the voice of beauty speaks softly; it creeps only into the most fully awakened souls”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
tags: awakened, beauty, gentle, voice
“Everything the State says is a lie, and everything it has it has stolen.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
tags: anarchy, lies
“Hope in reality is the worst of all evils because it prolongs the torments of man.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
“Remorse.-- Never yield to remorse, but at once tell yourself: remorse would simply mean adding to the first act of stupidity a second.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
“Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
“Whenever I climb I am followed by a dog called 'Ego'.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
“True, we love life, not because we are used to living, but because we are used to loving. There is always some madness in love, but there is also always some reason in madness.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
“There is more wisdom in your body than in your deepest philosophy.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra
“I assess the power of a will by how much resistance, pain, torture it endures and knows how to turn to its advantage”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
tags: ant-christ, atheism, philosophy, religion
“Love is a state in which a man sees things most decidedly as they are not.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
“One repays a teacher badly if one always remains nothing but a pupil.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra
tags: existentialism, student, teacher
“Battle not with monsters, lest ye become a monster, and if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
tags: fear, monsters, nietzsche
“One must give value to their existence by behaving as if ones very existence were a work of art.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
Source: http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/1938.Friedrich_Nietzsche
Perfection and Unity
Where there is perfection and unity, there can be no suffering.
The capacity to suffer arises where there is imperfection, disunity and separation from an embracing totality. . . . For the individual who achieves unity within his own organism and union with the divine Ground, there is an end of suffering. The goal of creation is the return of all sentient beings out of separateness and that infatuating urge-to-separateness which results in suffering, through unitive knowledge into the wholeness of eternal Reality.
(Aldous Huxley, The Perennial Philosophy. New York: Harper and Row, 1944. p. 227)
Joseph Campbell said, “Participate joyfully in the sorrows of life,” recognizing that life contains hardship and an individual should embrace the experience of being alive by living affirmatively in the face of inevitable sorrow and suffering. Buddhist teaching calls for "joyful participation in the sorrows of the world."
Quotes
Deep within man dwell those slumbering powers; powers that would astonish him, that he never dreamed of possessing; forces that would revolutionize his life if aroused and put into action.
Orison Swett Marden
I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.
Isaac Newton
If I have seen further than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants.
Isaac Newton
A good memory is one trained to forget the trivial.
Clifton Fadiman
The latter part of a wise man's life is taken up in curing the follies, prejudices, and false opinions he had contracted in the former.
Jonathan Swift
Natural wealth is limited and easily obtained; the wealth defined by vain fancies is always beyond .
reach
Epicurus
The moral flabbiness born of the bitch-goddess Success, that - with the squalid cash interpretation put on the word success - is our national disease.
William James
1906
Sob, heavy world,
Sob as you spin,
Mantled in mist,
remote from the happy.
W.H. Auden
The Age of Anxiety
1947
We need some imaginative stimulus, some impossible ideal such as may shape vague hope, and transform it into effective desire, to carry us year after year, without disgust, through the routine work which is so large a part of life.
Walter Pater
1885
To avoid criticism, do nothing, say nothing, be nothing.
Elbert Hubbard
In the factory we make cosmetics; in the store we sell hpe.
Charles Revson
Statistically, the probability of any of us being here is so small that you'd think the mere fact of existing would keep us all in a contented dazzlement of surprise.
Lewis Thomas
In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.
Albert Camus
Every situation - nay, every moment - is of infinite worth; for it is the representative of a whole eternity.
Goethe
I am in the present. I cannot know what tomorrow will bring forth. I can know only what the truth is for me today.That is what I am called upon to serve, and I serve it in all lucidity.
Igor Stravinsky
1936
To the dull mind nature is leaden. To the illumined mind the whole world sparkles with light.
Emerson
Thunder is good, thunder is impressive; but it is lightning that does the work.
Mark Twain
A short saying often contains much wisdom.
Sophocles
Worth begets in base minds, envy; in great souls, emulation.
Henry Fielding
1707 - 1754
Wise men appreciate all men, for they see the good in each and know how hard it is to make anything good.
Baltasar Gracian
1647
Got no check books, got no banks.
Still I'd like to express my thanks--
I got the sun in the mornin'
and the moon at night.
Irving Berlin
Let us be thankful for the fools; but for them the rest of us could not succeed.
Mark Twain
Believe nothing, no matter where you read it - even if I have said it - unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.
Buddha
To see a world in a grain of sand
And heaven in a wild flower,
To hold infinity
in the palm of your hand,
And Eternity in an hour.
William Blake
Be not simply good; be good for something.
Thoreau
Great minds have purposes, others have wishes.
Washington Irving
In life, as in football, you won't go far unless you know where the goalposts are.
Arnold Glasow
The highest prize of life, the crowning fortune of a man, is to be born with a bias to some pursuit which finds him in employment and happiness.
Emerson
Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius,power and magic in it.
Goethe
Forget goals. Value the process.
Jim Bouton
Faith is the bird that feels the light and sings when the dawn is still dark.
R. Tagore
He is his own best friend, and takes delight bin privacy; whereas the man of no virtue or ability is his own worst enemy and is afraid of solitude.
Aristotle
For anything worth having one must pay the price; and the price is always work, patience, love, self-sacrifice.
John Burroughs
Study: concentration of the mind on whatever will ultimately put something in your pocket.
Elbert Hubbard
The successful people are the ones who can think up things for the rest of the world to keep buy at.
Don Marquis
First, have a definite, clear, practical ideal - a goal, an objective. Second, have the necessary means to achieve your ends - wisdom, money, materials and methods. Third, adjust all your means to that end.
Aristotle
It is only the farmer who faithfully plants seeds in the Spring, who reaps a harvest in the Autumn.
B.C. Forbes
Gardens are not made by singing "Oh, how beautiful," and sitting in the shade.
Rudyard Kipling
Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which she or he has overcome while trying to succeed.
Booker T. Washington
Isaac Newton
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