Earl Nightingale_On Success Track 6

Imagination is the key to creating plans and achieving goals. Man can create anything he can imagine. Great leaders and artists became successful because they developed self-motivation. Don't be limited by your imagination. Organized planning is important for success. Decision-making and persistence are crucial. Surround yourself with a mastermind group for support and ideas. Enthusiasm and having a supportive partner are also important for achieving goals. Imagination is literally the workshop where in a fashion all plans created by man. The impulse, the desires given shape, form and action to the aid of the imaginative faculty of the mind. It's been said that man can create anything he can imagine. As Napoleon Hill teaches, whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve it. Man's only limitation within reason lies in the development and use of his imagination and subsequent motivation to action. The great leaders of business, industry, finance, and the great artists, musicians, poets and writers became great because they developed the power of self-motivation. As you go about your daily work, think constantly of ways in which it could be done better, more efficiently. Think of the changes that are inevitable. Can they be made now? And if you feel limited, remember the word to the late Frank Lloyd Wright, he said, the human race built most nobly when limitations were greatest and therefore when most was required of imagination in order to build it all. Limitations seem to have always been the best friends of architecture. As you build your future from this point onward, don't concern yourself with limitations, but remember that they may be your best friends since they require you to use your imagination. In a speech he said, the soul without imagination is what an observatory would be without a telescope. The sixth of Napoleon Hill's principles is organized planning. You've decided on your desire, your goal, now let's organize the plan for its accomplishment right on schedule. Let me quote again. You've learned that everything man creates or acquires begins in the form of desire. The desire is taken on the first lap of his journey from the abstract to the concrete in the workshop of the imagination where plans for its transition are created and organized. Earlier, you were instructed to take six definite practical steps as your first move in transforming the desire for whatever you want into its physical fulfillment. One of these steps is the formation of a definite practical plan through which this transformation may be made. One, ally yourself with one or more persons, a group of as many people as you may need for the creation and carrying out of your plan. Napoleon Hill calls these people your mastermind group. In a few minutes, we'll discuss the psychology and philosophy behind it as the ninth of the Fick and Rorich principles, the power of the mastermind. Two, before forming your mastermind alliance, decide what advantages and benefits you may offer the individual members of your group in return for their cooperation. No one will work indefinitely without compensation, though this may not always be in the form of money. Three, arrange to meet with the members of your mastermind group at least twice a week and more often than possible until you have jointly perfected the necessary plan or plans for the accomplishment of your goal. Four, maintain perfect harmony between yourself and every member of your mastermind group. Keep in mind these facts. First, you are engaged in and undertaking a major importance to you. To be sure of success, you must have plans which are as flawless as possible. Second, you must have the advantage of the experience, education, native ability, and imagination of other minds. This is in harmony with the methods followed by every person whose vision is above the average. Work at this until you have a well-executed, formal plan for reaching your objective. In this way, you are never confused or wondering what you should do next. Every morning, you know exactly what you're going to do and why. It is in this section of organized planning that Napoleon Hill gives us his 11 qualities of leadership. One, unwavering courage. Two, self-control. Three, a keen sense of justice. Four, definiteness of decision. Five, definiteness of plans. Six, the habit of doing more than paid for. Seven, a pleasing personality. Eight, sympathy and understanding. Nine, mastery of detail. Ten, willingness to assume full responsibility. Eleven, cooperation. Organized planning is one of Napoleon Hill's most important principles. It goes without saying that a man without a plan is like a ship without a course, with no place to go, disastrous of probability. The seventh principle is decision, the overcoming of procrastination. To quote, analysis of more than 25,000 men and women who had experienced failure disclosed the fact that lack of decision was near the head and the last of the 30 major causes of failure. This is no mere statement of a serious effect. Procrastination, the opposite of decision, is a common enemy which every man must conquer. Analysis of several hundred people who had accumulated fortunes well beyond the million dollar mark disclosed the fact that every one of them had the habit of reaching decisions promptly and of changing these decisions slowly if and when they were changed. Napoleon Hill cites many examples, one of which is the case of Henry Ford. One of Henry Ford's most outstanding qualities was his habit of reaching decisions quickly and definitely and changing them very slowly. This quality was so pronounced in the late Mr. Ford that it earned him the reputation of being obstinate. It was this quality which prompted Mr. Ford to continue to manufacture his famous Model T, the world's ugliest but for the time most practical car, when all of his advisors were urging him to change it. His firmness of decision yielded a huge fortune. When you make up your mind, stay with it. The majority of people who fail to make the grade are generally easily influenced by the opinions of others easily swayed, opinions of the cheapest commodities on earth. Keep your own counsel when you begin to put into practice the principles we are describing here by reaching your own decisions and following them. Take no one into your confidence except the members of your mastermind group and be very careful in your selection of this group that you choose only those who will be in complete sympathy and harmony with your purpose. Close friends and relatives who are not meaning to do so often handicap one through uninformed opinions and sometimes through ridicule. Thousands of men and women carry inferiority complexes with them all through life because some well-meaning but ignorant person destroyed their confidence through ridicule. If a plan is worth anything at all, it's worth sticking to until it's been completely tried. The eighth principle is persistence. Napoleon Hill defines persistence as the power of will. Willpower and desire when properly combined make an irresistible pair. Persistence to an individual is what carbon is to steel. In uncounted thousands of cases, persistence has stood as the difference between success and failure. It's this quality more than any other that keeps the majority from great accomplishment. As soon as the going gets tough, they fold. Experience with thousands of people has proved that lack of persistence is a weakness common to the majority of men. It's a weakness which may be overcome by effort. If you're to accomplish the goal you set for yourself, you must form the habit of persistence. Things will get difficult. It'll seem as though there's no longer any reason to continue. Everything in you will tell you to give up, to quit trying. And it's right here that the men are separated from the boys. It's right here that if you go that extra mile and keep going, that the sky is room clear and you'll begin to see the first signs of the abundance that is to be yours because you had the courage to persist. Persistence will become success. Persistence is a state of mind. Therefore, it can be cultivated. Like all states of mind, persistence is based upon definite causes. Among these are 1. Definiteness of purpose, knowing what you want. 2. Strength of desire. 3. Self-reliance. 4. Definiteness of plans. 5. Accurate knowledge, knowing that your plans are sound. 6. Cooperation. Sympathy, understanding, and harmonious cooperation with others tend to develop persistence. 7. Willpower. 8. Habit. Persistence is the direct result of habit. The ninth principle is power of the master mind. It's in discussing this principle that Napoleon Hill describes the importance of forming a group of persons sympathetic to your desire. They may be individuals with similar plans. A master mind group can be made up of two or more individuals. No two minds ever come together without thereby creating a third invisible intangible force which may be likened to a third mind. You may have noticed many times that by discussing something with another person, you suddenly get good ideas as a result of the discussion. Ideas you would not have gotten without this association. Well, the same thing happens to the other person. A lot of good ideas have been born in individual minds as a result of having met a committee. Associating with your master mind group is not meant as a means of letting others figure thinking for you, far from it. It's to stimulate your own thinking through the association with other minds. No one knows everything. The more sympathetic minds you get together, and by sympathetic I mean working for a common purpose, the more related information is going to be available. And great ideas are a combination of related information. So pick the members of your master mind group with care. Make sure they're people you respect and who are hard working and conscientious. You'll have a lot of fun and you'll reach your goals just that much sooner. Napoleon Hill's tenth principle could be called enthusiasm. That is, the enthusiasm that comes from the channeling of all personal drives into positive worthwhile outbursts. It's this connection that he describes the importance of the wife or sweetheart, the one and only woman in the achievement of a worthwhile goal. It seemed to him quite significant that behind practically every great leader has been the supporting love and inspiration of a woman. When things get tough and you can count on it, they will. You may be deserted by some you thought were friends. If you've got a good woman, you'll never be alone. She'll be willing to start over again if necessary and she'll give you the new enthusiasm that comes through her faith in you. Having someone to love is having someone to share your success and accomplishments, to give you the praise that all of us need from time to time. A man can become successful without a wife and family, but much of the real joy is lost if it cannot be shared. Take care of your wife and children as your greatest possessions. The eleventh principle has to do with the subconscious mind. The subconscious mind is a mental area in which all inputs through any of the five senses are classified and recorded and from which they may be recalled or withdrawn like data from the storage banks of a limitless computer. No one knows very much about what we call the subconscious mind, but you know that it is incalculably powerful and can solve our problems if we go about using it the right way. And the best way is to hold in your conscious mind as often as possible a clear picture of yourself already having accomplished your goal. Know what you want, define it clearly, and then project it on the motion picture screen of your mind. Hold it. See yourself doing the things and having the things you will have when your objective will have been reached. Do this as often as practical and particularly at night just before you go to sleep and the first thing upon arising. As you do this, your subconscious will begin to lead you toward your objective. Don't fight it. Follow your subconscious. The ideas that come into your mind knowing that they may well represent subconscious knowledge. If you keep at this, you'll be amazed and delighted by the ideas that just seem to come from nowhere. Later we'll talk more about this sixth sense that seems to have contributed so much to the lives and thought of the great men and women of all time. Time, by the way, means nothing to your subconscious. A man can work steadily at his job for years and not appear to accomplish as much as is possible in a few hours of brilliant insight. Your subconscious mind cannot remain idle. If you fail to plant desires in your subconscious mind, it will feed upon the random thoughts which reach it as a result of your neglect. Know what you want. It's not once and for all that it will be yours. Remain steadfast on course propelled by faith and your subconscious mind, your conscious mind, your will and unremitting effort will do the rest. The twelfth principle outlined in Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill has to do with the brain. If you had access to all the wealth in the world and used only a penny, you would be doing exactly what you very probably have been doing in the use of your brain. Nothing in the world is more pitiful than the misunderstanding by the average person of the power of his brain. You own in your brain the most marvelous, miraculous, inconceivably powerful force the world has ever known. Take for example the fact that the number of lines which connect the brain cells with one another equal the figure 1 followed by 15 million ciphers. It's been determined that there are from 10 to 14 billion cells in the average human cerebral cortex. It is inconceivable that such a vast and intricate network should be in existence for the sole purpose of carrying on only the functions incidental to growth and maintenance of the physical body. It is the brain that has given us the supersonic airplane, our deep rocket probes into outer space, the sciences, the arts. All that we know today and will use tomorrow has hatched from this small gray mass each of us carries around. Can you doubt even for a moment that your brain can bring you and yours everything you want here on earth? Of course it can. If you recognize its power and stop acting like those who have never even thought about it, give it the job you've decided to accomplish and watch it handle it. The 13th and final principle is called the 6th sense. The 6th sense can be described as the sense through which your infinite intelligence may and will communicate. This principle is the apex of the philosophy. It can be assimilated, understood, and applied only by first mastering the other 12 principles. The 6th sense is that function of the subconscious mind which has been referred to as the creative imagination. It's also been referred to as the receiving set through which ideas flash into the mind. The flashes are sometimes called functions or inspirations. The 6th sense defies description. It cannot be described to a person who has not mastered the other principles of this philosophy because such a person has no knowledge and no experience to serve as points of reference. The 6th sense is not something one can take off and put on at will. Ability to use this great power comes slowly through application of the other principles we've outlined. So begin to develop it now by applying the principles we've talked about here. Remember this. Man can create nothing which he does not first conceive in the form of an idea, a desire. Keep fear out of your mind. Concentrate on the mental picture of yourself achieving your desire. Cut yourself away from the average, from the mediocre, and chart your course on the dream in your heart. These 13 principles will never let you down. You need only remember and use them. Thank you.