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MASTERING YOUR DEFINITE PURPOSE

Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen. Tonight I will discuss how important this principle of definiteness of purpose is, and how you can apply it to achieve success.

Ladies and gentlemen, you may be interested in knowing why I am so positive in connection with my statements about this principle and about all the principles I will discuss in upcoming broadcasts. I want you to know that each and every one of these principles that you will be studying here has been checked and double-checked by the laws of nature.

When you can get confirmation of the soundness of a principle by going to nature herself, you’re not going to go wrong. I want to give you an idea of the extent and the scope to which nature goes in making use of this lesson that we’re dealing with tonight, definiteness of purpose. Our greatest demonstration of the universal application of the principle of definiteness of purpose may be seen by observing how nature applies it.

First of all, it is seen in the orderliness of the universe, and the interrelation of all of the natural laws. Isn’t it a marvelous thing to know that this small ball of mud on which we live, revolving around the sun entirely every 365 days, keeping its proper distance from all of the other planets and from the sun, isn’t it a marvelous thing to know that all of it is organized? When the sun goes down in the evening, we go to sleep knowing that it’s going to arise again in the east next morning. So far as I’ve been able to understand and hear, the sun never has failed to come up after it went down in the evening. I have known of many cloudy times when you couldn’t see it here in Missouri, but it was there, just the same.

The orderliness of things goes to prove beyond any question of a doubt that there is a first principle or cause back of it all and that nature is very definite in carrying out that plan. How many billions or trillions or quadrillions of years this old planet has been floating around according to a definite plan, nobody knows. But we do know there’s something definite about it, and nature doesn’t allow that definiteness to be interfered with by any force whatsoever.

Yes, and we see the definiteness of nature in the fixation of all of the stars and planets, and their immovable relationship to one another. That relationship is so definite, ladies and gentlemen, that the astronomers can figure and foretell hundreds of years in advance the approximate relationship of any two given stars or planets at a given time. You couldn’t do that if there wasn’t a definite plan of operation being carried on by nature.

And then you see it in the operation of the law of gravitation, without cessation anywhere for any purpose whatsoever. Have you ever heard of the law of gravitation being stopped, or anyone violating it without ill effects? It’s there, it’s definite, it never varies in any form whatsoever. You can adjust yourself to it, and it becomes very helpful. But if you don’t adjust yourself to it, it can become very destructive.

You see it in the overall balancing of life on this earth, so that no single species may dominate. Do you know that the human race wouldn’t last twelve months if nature didn’t have a definite plan for balancing the insects and the birds, and the great variety of things smaller in importance than human beings? Sometimes she sends an epidemic of grasshoppers that do a great deal of damage, but in a little while, a flock of birds, gulls or something else, come over and gorge themselves on those grasshoppers to keep that balance going properly.

Some time ago, some people brought some starlings over here, I believe from England, with the intention of destroying some insect that the starlings like to feed on. But nature didn’t like that unbalancing of her affairs, and so she multiplied those starlings very rapidly, and they now have become a nuisance. I could put an adjective in front of that word “nuisance” if I wanted to. When you start interfering with nature’s overall balancing of things, you get into trouble, because she has a definite plan of keeping everything in balance, according to her overall intentions. This ought to be a cue to human beings.

Then you see it in the process of evolution, through which the operation of everything in existence, whether animate or inanimate, is the outgrowth of something of the same nature which preceded it. Isn’t that an interesting thing? Did you ever hear of a farmer planting wheat and going out and being surprised to know that corn had come up instead of wheat? No, you never did. Nature has a definite way of causing everything that reproduces itself to reproduce something very closely akin to its ancestors. That applies to human beings, the same as everything else. Nature doesn’t vary in her definiteness in carrying out these laws.

And it is seen in the impossibility of creating or destroying either matter or energy, or the modification of the amount of either. Isn’t it an astounding thing to recognize that you can’t destroy energy or matter? You can’t decrease or increase the amount of either. You can transform them from one state to another, but you cannot interfere with the amount. When you use up a certain amount of energy, nature has a way of replenishing it and balancing her storehouse of it. She doesn’t allow you to run out of the use of electricity, for instance. Someone said to me some time ago, “Well, some of these days, all of this electricity’ll be used up, and then what’s going to happen?” That would be a catastrophe, wouldn’t it? Ladies and gentlemen, don’t worry; that’s not going to happen.

Nature has everything throughout the universe balanced, and her plans are set, her laws are fixed. She doesn’t change her mind and decide one day that she’ll have the sun come up, and the next day that she’ll not have it come up. She doesn’t get careless and allow our earth to come into contact with some other planet and cause a smash-up.

Almost every year we see some excitement in the newspapers about a group of misguided and unfortunate people who predict the ending of the world. Generally they dispense with all of their worldly goods, let other people cheat them out of them, get up on top of houses and in trees, and get ready for the ascension to, well, wherever it is they’re going. Because the world’s coming to an end. I’ve seen that happen, I think, six times during my lifetime, and this old world is rolling right along, just like it was the first time I ever observed it. I suspect it’ll be rolling along in the same way for a long time to come.

If you want to get a good idea of the importance of definiteness, you should watch nature in everything she does, and you’ll get some very fine ideas. You should also observe the profoundly ingenious system of the human mind, which has been so definitely fixed through its design that every individual may project himself into circumstances of the life of his own choice. He may fix the space he shall occupy as an individual, and determine in many respects his own earthly destiny, this being the only thing over which any individual has complete control.

Isn’t it a marvelous thing to know that nature has definitely given to every human being the right to determine his own earthly destiny, to use his mind, to engage in the sort of activities he wants to engage in? Right away you’re going to say, “Well, that doesn’t apply to Russia today, and it didn’t apply to Germany for a time. And as matters are going right now, if we keep on, it’s not going to apply to us here in the United States. We’re not going to be so free to do whatever we want to, work when we please, engage in the occupation we please.”

But, ladies and gentlemen, let me turn you backwards some five or six thousand years and call your attention to the fact that every single solitary person who has ever undertaken to divert the plans of nature has come to grief. Those men over in the Kremlin and in other parts of the world who are now trying to take away from mankind this great prerogative of control of the individual mind are going to come to grief. There’s the element of timing there; sometimes we think the timing is strung out too much. Right now, it seems that it is. But if I’m not misinformed, nature has a great deal of time on her hands. She can wait quite a long while to punish Joseph Stalin and the others, but punish him she will. That’s definite. She will never allow him to take away the liberty of the people, because that’s the one thing that the Creator saw to it that every human being should have: definiteness and the impossibility of circumventing or suspending even for one second any of nature’s laws.

Now, surely, there is fixation definiteness of purpose. You’ve never heard of anybody circumventing any of nature’s laws, or undertaking to do it, without coming to grief … sometimes immediately. You can try to defy the law of gravitation, sure. You can get on top of a tall building and jump off, if you’re foolish enough to do it. Unless you have somebody intervening down there with a net or something to catch you in, you’ll come to a lot of grief, but you won’t know anything about it.

Sure, you can try to defy nature’s laws. You can defy all of them. But if you do, you’re going to have to pay a price. Nature has definite penalties for the violation of all of her laws, and definite rewards for the observation of them. There’s no escape from that. It wouldn’t make any difference what your religion is, not the slightest difference. You would have to come to the conclusion that nature has definite plans for dealing with human beings here on earth now, and that she has great rewards to give out to individuals who find out what her plans are and adapt themselves to those plans, and great penalties for those who fail to do so.

It’s one of the burdens, and one of the privileges, of this success philosophy I have discovered to guide people in a practical, understandable way to the ways of nature, to the laws of nature, and to the ways and means of adapting the individual’s actions in life to those laws.

Now, ladies and gentlemen, I want to give you some of the important factors that go into the business of applying definiteness of purpose. The first one is that the starting point of all individual achievements is the adoption of a definite purpose accompanied by a definite plan for its attainment followed by appropriate action. There’s three key words in there to remember, if you can’t remember all I’ve said. There must be a purpose, there must be a plan, and there must be an action—purpose, plan, action. It’s not enough to say, “Well, some of these days, I’m going into the lumber business.” Some of these days. Some of these days never come. But if you said, “Starting next week, I am going to order a stock of material and go into the lumber business in Paris, Missouri,” and if you have the capital available for doing it and start out doing it, that’s definite.

The second factor is that all individual achievements are the results of a motive or a combination of motives. Everything you do from the time you reach the age of consciousness of yourself until you die is the result of a motive. Nobody ever does anything without a motive. And there are only nine basic motives.

The importance of what I want to do now is to impress you that these nine basic motives are the ABC’s of success. You should never, under any circumstances, ask or expect anybody to do anything without planting in that person’s mind a motive or a combination of motives justifying what you ask them to do. Under no circumstances would I ever ask anybody to do anything until I first felt in my own heart that I had planted in that person’s mind a motive, and also had justified the request. If you’ll do that, you’ll never go wrong.

Here are the nine basic motives, some combination of which is used by all people who accomplish anything:

The first one is the emotion of love. You’d be surprised to know how many human relationships are established, how many fortunes are made and how many fortunes are lost, and how many things happen in this world as a result of this motive of love. It is the greatest of all of the motives and the greatest of all of the emotions, and yet the most dangerous, especially for those who let loose of both ends of the string and say, “I’m going off the deep end.” I have known of people doing just that.

The second of these nine basic motives is the emotion of sex, that great creative force that is employed by nature to perpetuate the species of all living things.

Third is the desire for material wealth. That’s sort of an inborn trait. It’s one of the outstanding motives that inspire men to engage in great undertakings. I’ve never heard of anybody who turned down an opportunity to make money legitimately. And sometimes, unfortunately, they’re willing to make it otherwise.

The fourth of these nine basic motives is the desire for self-preservation. That’s an inborn motive. You do things that at times seem almost superhuman as a result of carrying out this motive for self-preservation. Many have been the times since I’ve been driving an automobile during the last forty-odd years that I’ve performed feats of driving that I couldn’t begin to perform deliberately, if I had plenty of time. That is to say, these are cases of near emergencies when something inside of me would take over the wheel and throw the car off of the road, and then back on it again. I had something happen like that the second time that I came up here to Paris. My car turned around entirely in the road, turned around and started back up toward Paris. I think the car wanted me to come back up here and finish the job. There I was, headed this way again. The desire for self-preservation is an outstanding motive.

The fifth basic motive is the desire for freedom of body and mind. The Creator not only gave you the right to freedom, the inborn right to control your own mind and by that control to gain freedom for yourself, but he planted in your mind a desire for that freedom. If there is one thing that we here in America prize above all other things today, it’s our privilege of being ourselves, saying the things we want to say, doing the things we want to do. Of course, we can’t always say the things we’d like to say, but we can come pretty close to it. Freedom. We have a great amount of freedom in the United States, more than they have in any other nation on earth. That’s one of our motives for doing some of the things we do now, in order to protect that freedom.

The sixth motive is the desire for personal expression and recognition—personal expression and recognition. I’ve never known of anybody yet that didn’t want to do one or the other of two things: first, be able to make a speech—What about? Oh, anything—and second, to write a book—What about? Oh, anything. The desire for personal expression is an inherent desire, and one of the great motives that prompt men and women to engage in far-reaching undertakings.

Perhaps it was the motive of desire for personal expression that prompted me to go through twenty years of near starvation while I was organizing this philosophy and getting it ready for the public. I don’t think any other motive could have caused me to have kept at that job when it wasn’t profitable.

The seventh major motive is the desire for perpetuation of life after death—that’s also an inherent motive.

Now I come to the last two motives, and they’re both negative. Number eight is the desire for revenge. You would be surprised at the amount of energy spent by people every day as the result of their attempt to take revenge on somebody for some real or imaginary grievance. The desire for revenge is a very destructive thing. It may work hardship or injustice upon others, but it’s sure to work hardship on the one who engages in it. There are lots of people in this world of whom I don’t approve, some that I don’t particularly like. But if I had every privilege in the world of engaging in any form of revenge, I wouldn’t do it. Not because there aren’t some people that deserve it, perhaps, but because I couldn’t afford to hurt myself. If you’re living the proper way, have a well-balanced life, you get to the point at which you don’t want to take revenge on anybody for anything.

The ninth and last motive is the grandfather of them all, ladies and gentlemen, the emotion of fear.

You’ll not be a free agent as long as you’re afraid of anything, or anybody. You’ve got to become free in your own mind. If there’s something that you fear, find out why you fear it and get rid of that fear. If it’s something that you can do something about, do it, and if it’s something you can’t do anything about, forget about it. Or at least fill your mind so full of something else that you won’t be thinking about it and nursing it.

The next factor that enters into this business of definiteness of purpose is this great, outstanding truth: namely that any dominating idea, plan, or purpose which you hold in your mind through repetition of thought is taken over by the subconscious section of the mind and acted upon through whatever natural and logical means that may be available. You will observe that, through my tone of voice, I emphasized certain words in that statement. Through whatever natural and logical means that may be available. I didn’t say anything about supernatural means. I don’t know anything about working through supernatural means. I only know about working through natural laws.

I want each and every one of you to feel that there is a part for you to play. There is some person or persons or group of people with whom you have contact to whom you may start teaching this philosophy. You may not be the best teacher in the world, but make that your definite purpose, that you’re going to commence expounding the philosophy and passing it on to other people who may need it. You’ll find that as you undertake to teach others, as you begin to tell them about it, you will begin to get a better grip on the philosophy yourself. That’s a law of nature, too: whatever you do to or for another person, you do to or for yourself. You’ll never, ladies and gentlemen, get the full benefit of this philosophy until you look around you and find somebody who needs it, and start teaching that person. Let him become acquainted with us, let him tune in on this atmosphere and make up his own mind whether this fellow Hill came up here to take in a lot of people and get them all stirred up, as one man said that he thought I did. Well, I’ll admit, just in case there’s any doubt about it, I did come up here with the intention of getting a lot of people stirred up, awakened, if you please, and interested in doing something not only to help themselves, but to help this community in which they live.

Thank you for joining me tonight, friends. Please tune in next time when I will explain the importance of accurate thinking in reaching your success goals.