GOING the EXTRA MILE
The fourth principle of Your Right to Be Rich is Going the Extra Mile. This means rendering more and better service than you’re being paid to render, and doing it all with a pleasant mental attitude. It’s a principle that many people have questioned in the past and seem to question even more deeply today. “Why should I give my company, my boss, one more minute’s work than I’m being paid for? What’s in it for me?” Here’s what’s in it for you: if you go the extra mile, sooner or later you’ll receive compensation exceeding the service you render. You will exhibit greater strength of character, maintain a positive attitude, and experience the thrill of courage and self-reliance. You will achieve these things, and more. Let Dr. Napoleon Hill prove that this is so and explain how you can do it.
Going the extra mile means rendering of more service and better service than you’re paid to render, doing it all the time, and doing it with a pleasant, pleasing mental attitude.
One of the reasons why there are so many failures in the world is that the majority of people do not even go the first mile, let along the second one. If they do go the first mile, they usually gripe as they go along and make themselves a darned nuisance to people around them. I suppose you know the type. But it doesn’t apply to any of you, because if you were like that before you got into this philosophy, you’re going to get over it very fast.
I don’t know of any one quality or trait that can get a person an opportunity quicker than to go out of his or her way to do somebody a favor, or do something useful. It’s the one thing you can do in life without having to ask anybody for the privilege of doing it. Unless you form the habit of going the extra mile and make yourself as indispensable as you possibly can, the only other way you’ll ever be free, and independent, and self-determining, and financially independent in old age will be by a stroke of good luck, a rich uncle or rich aunt dying, or something of that sort. I don’t know of any way anybody can make himself or herself indispensable except by going the extra mile, by rendering some sort of service that you’re not expected to render, and rendering it in the right sort of a mental attitude.
Mental attitude is important. If you gripe about going the extra mile, chances are that it won’t bring you very many returns. Where do you suppose I get my authority for emphasizing this principle of going the extra mile? Experience.
I’ve watched the way nature does things, because you won’t go wrong if you follow the way or the habits of nature. Conversely, if you fail to recognize and follow the way nature does things, you’ll get into trouble sooner or later—it’s just a question of time. There is an overall plan in which this universe operates, no matter what you call the first cause of that plan, or the operator of it, or the creator of it. There’s just one set of natural laws, and it’s up to every individual to discover them and adjust himself favorably to them. Above all, nature requests and demands that every living thing go the extra mile in order to eat, in order to live, and in order to survive. Man wouldn’t survive one season if it were not for this law of going the extra mile.
Don’t render a million dollars’ worth of service today and expect to get a bank check for it tomorrow. If you start out to render a million dollars’ worth of service, you might have to render it a little bit at a time. You’re going to have to get yourself recognized for doing it and you’ll have to go the extra mile for a little while before anybody takes notice of you. However, be careful not to go the extra mile too long without somebody taking notice of you. If the right fellow doesn’t take notice, look around until you find the right fellow who will. In other words, if your present employer doesn’t recognize you, fire the employer sooner or later and let his competitor know what kind of service you’re rendering. I assure you it won’t hurt your chances a bit. Have a little competition as you go along.
Nobody ever accepts a rule or does anything without a motive, and I have a great variety of reasons why you should go the extra mile.
The law of increasing returns means that you’ll get back more than you give out, whether it’s good or bad, whether it’s positive or negative. That’s the way the law of nature works. Whatever you give out, whatever you do to or for another person, or whatever you give out from yourself, comes back to you greatly multiplied in kind. No exception whatsoever. It doesn’t always come back very quickly; sometimes it takes longer than you expect. But you may be sure that if you send out some negative influence, it’s going to come back to you sooner or later. You may not recognize what caused it, but it’ll come back. It won’t overlook you.
The law of increasing returns is eternal, automatic, and it’s working all the time. It’s just as inexorable as the law of gravitation. Nobody in the world can circumvent it, go around it, or have it suspended for one moment. It’s operating all the time. The law of increasing returns means that when you go out of your way to render more service and better service than you’re paid to render, it’s impossible for you not to get back more than you really did, because the law of increasing returns takes care of that. If you’re working for a salary, the law takes care of it in additional wages, greater responsibilities, promotions, or opportunities to go into business for yourself. In a thousand and one different ways, it’ll come back.
It doesn’t always come back from the source to which you rendered the service. Don’t be afraid to render service to a greedy buyer or a greedy employer. It makes no difference to whom you render service. If you render it in good faith and in good spirit, and keep doing it as a matter of habit, it’s equally impossible for you not to be compensated as it is to be compensated. Therefore, you don’t have to be too careful about the person to whom you render it. In fact, apply this principle with everybody, no matter who it is—strangers, acquaintances, business associates, and relatives, too. Make it your business to render useful service to everyone, regardless of the shape, form, or fashion in which you touch them.
The only way you can increase the space that you occupy in the world—and I don’t mean just the physical space, but also the mental and the spiritual space as well—will be determined by the quality and the quantity of the service that you render. In addition to the quality and the quantity, is the mental attitude in which you render it. Those are the determining factors as to how far you’ll go in life, how much you’ll get out of life, how much you’ll enjoy life, and how much peace of mind you’ll have.
Self-promotion elicits the favorable attention of other people. If you’re alert-minded and take notice, you’ll find in any organization those people that are going the extra mile. You’ll find out very quickly. And if you watch the procedure and the records of those people who are going the extra mile, you’ll see that when there are promotions around, they’re the ones that get them. They don’t have to ask for them; it’s not necessary at all. Employers look for people who will go the extra mile. It permits one to become indispensable in many different human relationships. It enables one to command more than the average compensation.
I want you to know that it also does something to your soul inside of you; it makes you feel better. And if there were no other reason in the world why you should go the extra mile, I’d say that would be adequate. There are a lot of things in life that cause us to have negative feelings or cause us unpleasant experiences and feelings. However, this is one thing that you can do for yourself that’ll always give you a pleasant feeling. And if you’ll go back through your own experiences, I’m sure you’ll remember that you never did a kind thing for anybody without getting a great deal of joy out of it. Maybe the other fellow didn’t appreciate it, but that’s unimportant.
It’s like love. To have loved, that alone is a great privilege. It makes no difference whatsoever whether your love was returned by the other person. You’ve had the benefit by the emotion of love itself. So it is by the principle of going the extra mile. It’ll do something to you. It’ll give you greater courage. It’ll enable you to overcome inhibitions and inferiority complexes that you’ve been storing through the years. There is so much benefit available to stepping out and making yourself useful to somebody.
If you do something courteous or useful for somebody who is not expecting it, don’t be too surprised when they look at you in a quizzical sort of way, as much as to say, “Well, I just wonder why you’re doing that.” Some people will be a little bit surprised when you go out of your way to be useful to them.
Going the extra mile in all forms of service will lead to mental growth and physical perfection across all areas as well as greater ability and skill in one’s chosen vocation. Whether you’re delivering a lecture or making up your notebook, or filling your job, if it’s something that you’re going to do over and over again in your life, make up your mind that every time you do it, you will excel beyond all previous efforts on your part. In other words, become a constant challenge to yourself. See how quickly and how rapidly you will grow if you’ll go at it in that way.
I have never delivered a lecture in my life that I didn’t intend to deliver better than I did previously. I don’t always do it, but that’s my intention. It makes no difference what kind of an audience I have, whether I have a big class or a small class. I don’t often have small classes, but when I do, I put just as much into a small class as a big one, not only because I want to be useful to my students, but because I want to grow and I want to develop. Out of effort, out of struggle, and out of the use of your faculties comes growth. It enables one to profit by the law of contrast. You won’t have to advertise that one very much—it’ll advertise itself—because the majority of people around you are not going to be going the extra mile, and that’s all the better for you.
If everybody went the extra mile this would be a grand world to live in, but you wouldn’t be able to cash in on this principle as definitely as you can now because you’d have a tremendous amount of competition. Don’t worry. I can assure you you’re not going to have it. You’ll be in a class by yourself. There will be cases where people you work with or are associated with will be shown up for not going the first mile, let alone the second one, and they won’t like that. Are you going to cry about that one and quit and go back to your old habits, just because the other fellow doesn’t like what you’re doing? Of course not.
It’s your individual responsibility to succeed. That’s your sole responsibility. You can’t afford to let anybody’s ideas, idiosyncrasies, or notions get in the way of your success. You can’t afford to do that. You should be fair with other people, but beyond that, you’re under no obligations to let anybody’s opinions or ideas stop you from being successful. I’d like to see the person that could stop me from being successful. I’d love to see what he looks like, and I want you to feel that way about it, too. I want you to make up your mind that you’re going to put these laws into operation and that you’re not going to let anybody stop you from doing it. It leads to the development of a positive, pleasing mental attitude, which is among the more important traits of a pleasing personality—actually, not among the more important; it is the most important one. A positive mental attitude is the first trait of a pleasing personality.
It’s a marvelous thing to know what you can do to change the chemistry of your brain so that you’re positive instead of negative. Do you know how easy it is? It’s as easy as getting in that frame of mind where you want to do something useful for the other fellow, without rendering service on the one hand and picking his pocket with the other. You’re doing it just because of the goodness that you get out of doing it. You know that if you render more service and better service than you’re paid to render, sooner or later you’ll be paid for more than you do and you’ll be paid willingly. That’s the way the law works. That’s the law of compensation. It’s an eternal law, it never forgets, and it has a perfectly marvelous bookkeeping system. You may be sure that when you are giving out the right kind of service with the right kind of a mental attitude, you are piling up credits that’ll come back to you multiplied, sooner or later.
Going the extra mile tends to develop a keen, alert imagination because it is a habit that keeps you continuously seeking new and more efficient ways of rendering useful service. The reason that’s important is that, as you begin to look around to see how many places, and ways, and means there are in helping the other fellow to find himself, you find yourself.
One of the most outstanding things that I discovered in my research was that when you have a problem or an unpleasant situation you don’t know how to solve, when you’ve done everything you know, and when you’ve tried every source you know of, and you’re still at a stalemate, there is always one thing that you can do. I want to tell you that if you’ll do that one thing, the chances are that you not only will solve your problem, but you’ll also learn a great lesson. That one thing is to find somebody who has an equal or a greater problem and start where you stand, then and there, to help that other person. Lo and behold, it unlocks something in you. It unlocks cells of the brain, unlocking cells that permit Infinite Intelligence to come into your brain and give you the answer to the solution of your problem.
I don’t know why that works, but do you know how I know that it does work? Do you know why I can make that statement so positive and not qualify it? I arrived at that decision by experience, by trying it out hundreds and hundreds of times myself, and by seeing it tried out hundreds and hundreds of times by my students to whom I have recommended that same thing. What a simple thing that is! I don’t know what it does and I don’t know why it works. There are a lot of things in life I don’t know and there are a lot of things you don’t know. There are also some things that you do know that you don’t do much about. This is one of those things that I don’t know anything about but I do something about.
I follow the law because I know that if I need my own mind to be opened up to receive opportunity, the best way in the world to open it up is to start looking around to see how many other people I can help.
Personal initiative gets you into the habit of looking around for something useful to do and going out and doing it without somebody telling you to do it. That old man Procrastination is a sour old bird and he causes a lot of trouble in this world. People put off things until the day after tomorrow that they should have done the day before yesterday. Every one of us is guilty of it. I know I’m not free of it and I know you’re not, either. But I can tell you I’m freer of it than I was a few years back. I can find a lot of things to do now and I find them because I get joy out of doing them. Anytime you’re going the extra mile, you’re going to get joy out of what you’re doing; otherwise, you won’t go the extra mile. It will help you develop the quality of personal initiative and help you overcome the quality of procrastination.
Going the extra mile also serves to build the confidence of others on one’s integrity and general ability, and it aids one in mastering the destructive habit of procrastination. It develops definiteness of purpose, without which one cannot hope for success. That alone would be enough to justify it. It gives you an objective, so that you don’t go around and around in circles like a goldfish in a bowl, always coming back to where you started with something that you didn’t start out with. Definiteness of purpose comes out of this business of going the extra mile. It also enables you to make your work a joy instead of a burden—you get to where you love it. If you’re not engaged in a labor of love, you’re wasting a lot of your time.
One of the greatest joys in the world is being permitted to engage in the thing that you would rather do than all other things. When you’re going the extra mile, you’re doing just exactly that. You don’t have to do it, nobody expects you to do it, and nobody asks you to do it. Certainly no employer would ask his employees to go the extra mile. He might ask for extra help once in a while, but he wouldn’t do it as a regular thing. It’s something that you do on your own initiative, and it gives a dignity to your labor. Even if you’re digging a ditch, you’re helping somebody, and there’s a certain dignity to that which takes the fatigue and the unpleasantness out of the labor.
Going the extra mile often gives the greatest amount of joy. You might think you go the extra mile being married, but what about before you get married? Believe me, I spent a lot of time burning midnight oil and I didn’t consider it hard work at all. It was my own idea and I used my initiative, but I also got a lot of joy out of doing it and I made it pay off. When you’re courting the girl of your choice (or being courted by the man of your choice), it’s marvelous how much sleep you can lose and still not be seriously hurt by it. Wouldn’t it be a wonderful thing if you could put the same attitude into your relations with people professionally or in the business that you put into courtship? We’re going to start sparking again. It’s going to start at home, with our own mates. I couldn’t begin to tell you the number of married couples that I’ve started in on a new sparking spree. They’re getting a lot of joy out of it. It saves a lot of friction and a lot of argument. It cuts down expenses. Go ahead and laugh, but it will do you good.
I don’t mean to be facetious. I’m very serious when I say that there is one of the finest places in the world to start going the extra mile. When you start going the extra mile with somebody that you haven’t seen, sit down and have a little sales talk with them. Tell them that you’ve changed your attitude and you want a mutual agreement for both parties to change the attitude so that from here on out, all of us are going the extra mile. We’re going to relate together on a different basis, where we’ll all get joy out of it, more peace of mind, and more happiness in living. Wouldn’t it be a wonderful thing if you went home tonight and had that kind of speech with your mate? It wouldn’t hurt; it might help. Your mate might not be impressed by it, but you will be. Nothing will hinder you from enjoying it.
What about that person in business that you haven’t been getting along so well with? Why not go in tomorrow morning with a smile and walk over to him or her and shake his hand and say, “Now look here and listen up, pal. From here on out, let’s you and I enjoy working together.” What would he say? It wouldn’t work, huh? Oh, yes, it would. You try it and see. There’s another thing that we have called pride, and if there’s one thing that does more damage in this world than any other one, it’s that little thing called pride. Don’t be afraid. Don’t be afraid to humiliate yourself if it’s going to build better human relations with the people that you have to associate with all the time.
“Those final remarks are not in my notes, but I’ll tell you where they were: they were in my heart. [Applause.] Thank you. And one of the reasons why you and I get along so well is that very often I deviate from my notes and go down into my heart and dig up things for you that I want you to have—little morsels of food for your soul that I want you to have, because I know they’re good. I know they’re good, because I know where I got them and what they’ve done for me through the years.”
Going the extra mile is the only thing that gives one the right to ask for promotions or more pay. Did you ever stop to think about that? You don’t have a leg to stand on if you go to the purchaser of your services and ask for more money or for promotion to a better job unless, for some time previously, you have been going the extra mile and doing more than you’re paid for. Obviously, if you’re doing no more than you’re paid for, then you’re being paid for all you’re entitled to, aren’t you? Certainly, you are. So you have to first start going the extra mile and put the other fellow under obligation to you before you can ask any favors of him. And if you have enough people whom you have put under obligations to you by going the extra mile, when you need some favor, you can always turn in one direction or other and get it. It’s a nice thing to know that you have that kind of credit hanging around, isn’t it? I want you to have that kind of credit with other people and I want to teach you the technique by which you can do that.
We get our cue as to the soundness of the principle of going the extra mile by observing nature, and there’s quite a bit of illustration regarding that. You will see that nature goes the extra mile by producing not only enough of everything for her needs but also a surplus for emergencies and waste. It shows this by the blooms on the trees and the fishes in the seas. She doesn’t just produce enough fish to perpetuate the species; she produces enough to feed the snakes and the alligators and everything else. She produces those that die of natural causes, and even more, so there’s enough to perpetuate the species. Nature is most bountiful in her business of going the extra mile, and in return, she is very demanding in seeing that every living creature goes the extra mile. Bees are provided with honey as compensation for their services in fertilizing the flowers in which the honey is attractively stored. But they have to perform the service to get the honey, and it must be performed in advance.
You’ve heard it said that the birds of the air and the beasts of the jungle neither weave nor spin, but they always live and eat. If you observe wildlife at all, you’ll see they don’t eat without performing some sort of service, without working or doing something before they can eat. Take a flock of common old cornfield crows, for instance. They have to be organized in order to travel in flocks. And they have sentinels to protect them and codes by which they warn one another. In other words, they have to do a lot of educating before they can even eat safely.
Nature requires man to go the extra mile if he’s going to have food. All food comes out of the ground, and if he’s going to have food, he’s got to plant seed. He can’t live entirely on what nature plants (at least not in civilized life). On islands where they’re not civilized, I suppose they depend on eating raw coconuts and what have you, but in civilized life, we have to plant our food in the ground. We have to clear the ground first before we plow it, harrow it, fence it, protect it against predatory animals and so forth. All of that costs labor and time and money. All of that has to be done in advance or you’re not going to eat. I wouldn’t have any trouble at all selling this idea that nature makes everybody go the extra mile to a farmer, because he already knows it beyond any question of a doubt. He knows every minute of his life that if he doesn’t go the extra mile, he doesn’t eat and he doesn’t have anything to sell. A new employee can’t start going the extra mile and immediately demand top wages or the best job in the place. It doesn’t work out that way. You have to establish a record, a reputation. You have to get yourself recognized and received before you can begin to put the pressure on to get compensation back. If you go the extra mile in the right sort of mental attitude, chances are a thousand to one you’ll never have to ask for compensation for the service you render, because it’ll be tendered to you automatically, in the way of promotions or increased salary.
Throughout the whole universe, everything has been so arranged through the law of compensation (and so adequately described by Emerson) that nature’s budget is balanced. Everything has its opposite equivalent in something else. Positive and negative in every unit of energy, day and night, hot and cold, success and failure, sweet and sour, happiness and misery, man and woman. Everywhere and in everything, one may see the law of action and reaction in operation. Everything you do, everything you think, and every thought that you release causes a reaction, on somebody else or on you as the person releasing the thought. Because when you release a thought, you’re not through with it. Every thought that you express, silently even, becomes a definite part of the pattern of your subconscious mind.
If you store in that subconscious mind enough negative thoughts, you’ll be predominantly negative. And if you follow the habit of releasing only the positive thoughts, your subconscious pattern will be predominantly positive, and you will attract to you all of the things that you want. If you’re negative, you’ll repel the things that you want and attract only the things you don’t want. That’s a law of nature, too. Going the extra mile is one of the finest ways that I know to educate your subconscious mind to attract to you the things you want and to repel the things you don’t want.
It’s an established fact that if you neglect to develop and apply this principle of going the extra mile, you will never become personally successful, and you will never become financially independent. I know it’s sound because I’ve had a great privilege that you haven’t had yet, but you will have, in time. I’ve had the privilege of observing a great many thousands of people, some of whom applied the principle of going the extra mile and some of whom did not. I’ve had the privilege of finding out what happened to those who did and those who didn’t. And I know beyond any question of a doubt that nobody ever rises above the ordinary stations in life or mediocrity without the habit of going the extra mile. It just doesn’t happen. If I had discovered one case, just one case where somebody went on to the top without going the extra mile, I would say then that there are exceptions, but I am in a position to say there are no exceptions because I have never found that one case. I can definitely tell you from my own experiences that I have never had a major benefit of any kind in the world that I didn’t get as the result of going the extra mile.
I want you to become self-determining, so you can do these things without the help of anybody. The payoff will come to you when you can go out and do anything in this world that you want to do, and regardless of whether anybody wants you to do it or whether they want to help you or whether they don’t, you can do it on your own. That’s one of the grandest, most glorious feelings that I know—that whatever I want to do, I can do it. I don’t have to ask anybody, not even my wife. But if I had to ask her, I would, because I’m on good terms with her.
Here’s a little item now that’s not to be sniffed at: peace of mind that I got out of all those twenty years of going the extra mile. Do you have any idea how many people there are in the world at any one time who are willing to do anything for twenty years in succession without getting something back out of it? Do you have any idea how many people there are in this world who are willing to do something for only three days in succession without being sure they’re going to get something out of it? You’d be surprised at how few there are.
We’re looking at one of the grandest opportunities that a human being could possibly have, especially here in this country where we really can create our own destiny and where we can express ourselves any way we want. Speech is free, activities are free, and education is free. There’s wonderful opportunity to go the extra mile in any direction you want to travel in life. And yet, most people are not doing it. I have seen a time when there were not so many people interested in the philosophy because they were prosperous. They were doing all right and they had no troubles to speak of. Today, almost everybody has troubles, or they think they do.
Do you know what I do instead of finding out what’s wrong with the rest of the world? Do you know how I put in my time? I try to find out what I can do to correct this guy here. I have to eat with him, sleep with him, shave his face every morning, wash his face, and give him a bath now and then. You have no idea how many things I have to do for him! I have to live with the guy, twenty-four hours a day.
I put in my time trying to improve myself, and, through myself, I try to improve my friends and my students, by writing books, by delivering lectures, and by teaching in other ways. It pays off very much better than it would if I sat down and took the old newspapers and read all of the murder stories and all of the divorce scandals and everything that’s blazoned across the pages every day. I’m still talking about this fellow Napoleon Hill, who didn’t have sense enough to decline Andrew Carnegie’s offer to work twenty years for nothing. His declining years will be years of happiness because of the seeds of kindness and help he has sown in the hearts of others.
If I had my life to live over again, I’d live it just exactly the way I have. I’d make all the mistakes I made. I’d make them at the time in life when I made them, early on so I’d have time enough to correct some of them. And that period during which I would come into peace of mind and understanding would be in the afternoon of life, not in the forenoon, because I couldn’t take it. When you’re young, you can take it. But when you pass the noon hour and you go into the afternoon, your energies are not as great as they were before. Your physical energy, and sometimes your mental capacity, is not as great. You can’t take as much trouble as you can in your days of youth. And you haven’t got so many years left to correct the mistakes that you made.
To have the tranquility and the peace of mind that I have today, in the afternoon of life, is one of the great joys that has come out of this philosophy. If you ask me what has been my greatest compensation, I would say that’s it. There are so many people at my age, and even much younger than I, who haven’t found peace of mind and never will. They never will, because they’re looking for it in the wrong place. They’re not doing anything about it; they’re expecting somebody else to do something about it for them. Peace of mind is something that you’ve got to get for yourself. First of all, you’ve got to earn it. As to how anybody can get peace of mind, a few of you would be surprised where you have to really start looking for it. It’s not where the average person is looking for it. It’s not out there in the joys of what money will buy or out there in the joys of recognition and fame and fortune. You’ll find peace of mind in the humility of the one individual’s own heart.
Dr. Hill’s “inner wall” that appears next is part of his system of walls that he describes in the lecture on Principle #8: Self-Discipline. To help you understand his words here, he is referring to his inner spiritual sanctuary. The “wall” keeps all else from entering this sanctuary, which is reserved for him and God alone.
I get peace of mind mostly through an “inner wall,” a place I go within where the wall is as high as eternity. I go into meditation many times each day and there’s where I get my real peace of mind. I can always withdraw into that inner wall area, cut out every earthly influence, and commune with the higher forces of the universe. Anybody can do that. You can do that. When you get through with this philosophy, you’ll be able to do anything you want to do, just as well or better than anything I can do. I’m hoping that every student that I turn out will eventually excel me in every way that I know possible. Maybe through writing books, you’ll take up where I left off and write better books than I wrote. Why not? I haven’t said the last word in my books nor in my lectures, or in anything else. As a matter of fact, I’m just a student, a fairly intelligent student, I think, but just a student on the path. The only state of perfection that I have achieved (and which cannot be surpassed by anyone) is that I have actually found peace of mind, and how to get it.
Engage in at least one act of going the extra mile every day. You can choose your own circumstance, even if it’s nothing more than telephoning an acquaintance and wishing him good fortune. You’ll be surprised what’ll happen to you when you begin to call up your friends that you have been neglecting for some time and just say, “You were on my mind. I was thinking about you, and I just wanted to call and say how do you do, and I hope you are feeling as good as I am.” You’d be surprised at what that’ll do to you and what it’ll do to your friend, too. It doesn’t have to be a close personal friend. It just has to be somebody you know. Or, maybe relieve a friend from duty for half an hour or so, or have a neighbor send over his children while he attends the movies, or do a little babysitting for one of your neighbors. If you’re going to be at home anyway, with children of your own, maybe you know a neighbor who would like to get off and go down to the movies but can’t get away from her children. The children may be noisy, and they’ll probably fight with your children, but if you’re a real diplomat, you’ll keep them apart. She’ll be under obligation to you, and you’ll feel that you’ve really been kind by helping out somebody who otherwise wouldn’t have had a little freedom. It’d be a nice thing for some of you people who don’t have any children to say, “Why don’t I come over and baby-sit for you while you go out? You and your husband can go on a little courtship. Let me come over and babysit for you while you go out to the movie or go to a show.” You’ll have to know your neighbors pretty well in order to do that. Certainly, most of you would have some neighbor that you could approach on some such basis, and they wouldn’t think you were crazy.
It’s not so much what you do to the other fellow. It’s what you do to yourself by finding ways and means of going the extra mile in little ways. Did you know that both the successes in life as well as the failures are made up of little things? So little that they’re often overlooked, because the things that make success are such small and seemingly insignificant things.
I know people who are so popular they couldn’t have an enemy. One of them is my distinguished business associate, Mr. Stone. He always goes the extra mile and look how prosperous he is. Look how many people are going the extra mile for him. There are a lot of people who, if they didn’t make good money working for Mr. Stone, they’d pay him a salary just to work for him. I’ve actually heard one say that he’s become immensely wealthy himself working for Mr. Stone. He said, “If I didn’t make money out of working for him, I’d pay him if I had to, just for the association with him.” Mr. Stone’s not different from you or me or anybody else, except in his mental attitude toward people and toward himself. He makes it his business to go the extra mile. Sometimes, people take advantage of that. They don’t act fairly with him. I’ve seen that happen, but he doesn’t worry about that too much. In fact, he doesn’t worry about anything at all, period. He’s learned to adjust himself to life in such a way that he gets great joy out of living and gets great joy out of people. Write a letter to some acquaintance, offering him encouragement. In your job, do a little more than you’re paid to do, stay a little longer on the job, or make some other person a little happier.