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THE FIFTEEN MAJOR CAUSES OF FAILURE

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to our first of two programs on the subject of the causes of failure. As many of you know, I’ve had the privilege of giving the world its first practical philosophy of success, and in order to give you a philosophy that brings about success to individuals, it’s necessary to tell you not only what to do, but what not to do. It’s just as important to know the negative side as it is the positive. This broadcast and the next deal entirely with the things one must not do in order to succeed.

There is a law of nature which provides that every adversity, every defeat, every setback, every failure, every heartache, every disagreeable circumstance that you may experience, carries within itself the seed of an equivalent benefit. I didn’t say the full-blown flower of benefit, or the ripened fruit, I said only the seed. In order to benefit by that seed, you first have to recognize it, you have to know that it’s there. You have to expect it and be looking for it, instead of looking at the adverse side or the negative side of the experience.

Second, you must germinate it through some sort of action, and develop it and make use of it. That is absolutely essential. I think, perhaps, of all of the things that I discovered during my forty-odd years of research in this field of philosophy, nothing to me was more astounding or more surprising than the fact that nature had very cleverly arranged that nothing shall be taken away from anyone without giving him something in return. Nothing which nature gave in the way of an asset to any individual shall ever be taken away from him, for any cause whatsoever, without something of an equivalent benefit being given back to him in return. That great law of compensation was described so effectively by Ralph Waldo Emerson in his book of essays.

There are fifteen major causes of failure that I have discovered, and I’m going to give them to you with a brief comment on each one. The first one is the habit of drifting through life without a definite purpose or a definite plan for attaining it. You may be surprised that ninety-eight out of every hundred people belong in that category, as drifters. They’re like goldfish in a bowl: they go round and round, always coming back to the starting point, but never getting anywhere. The reason they don’t get anywhere is, first of all, they don’t discover this marvelous gift of the mind, which is capable of determining their earthly destiny. Second, if they do discover it, they don’t make proper use of it. Drifting. Lacking in singleness of purpose. Lacking a plan for carrying out the purpose. There you have the major reason for all failures in this world.

Number two is unfavorable physical heredities at birth. That’s something the individual cannot control, but it has been proved, over and over again, that an unfavorable physical condition at the time of birth need not necessarily be a cause for a permanent failure and defeat. I think I have proved this in the case of my son Blair, who was born without any ears, but who became an outstanding young man, and who finally developed a hearing capacity sixty-five percent of normal. I have observed over and over again that even an affliction of that kind carries with it the seed of an equivalent benefit. In the case of my son Blair, that seed of an equivalent benefit consisted in the fact that people looked upon him with a great deal of sympathy. He didn’t have the physical capabilities that the other children had, because of his condition, so he had to work harder to get ahead.

I think about men like the late Charles P. Steinmetz, a genius if ever there was one, who was born with a curvature of the spine, stoop-shouldered and afflicted. He looked more like an ape than he did a man, but he had that marvelous brain inside of his skull, and he didn’t in any way allow that affliction to deter him from becoming an outstanding success as a mathematician and electrical engineer. His physical limitations led him to fully develop his mind. When I see men like that, I recognize that even though one may have been born with an unfavorable physical hereditary background, that need not keep one from benefiting by that very affliction.

Number three as a cause for failure is meddlesome curiosity in connection with other people’s affairs. Of course, none of my listeners belong in that category—meddlesome curiosity in connection with other people’s affairs. You’d be surprised to know how much brainpower, how many hours of brainpower, are spent every day by millions of people throughout the world, through pure meddlesome curiosity. Or maybe it’s not so pure; maybe it’s rather impure. Meddlesome curiosity in the affairs of other people. Life is so complex, and there are so many obstacles in it, that if we’re going to succeed, if we’re going to develop our God-given qualities of mind, we must devote all of our time to things that concern us, and not mess with the affairs of other people, especially when they have no impact on us.

Number four as a cause of failure is the lack of a definite, major purpose as a life goal. A major purpose, now. We all have minor purposes, but most of them are not really purposes; they are hopes and wishes. A hope and a wish is not going to get one very far. We all hope to marry well when we marry. Women hope to marry tall, handsome, dark-haired men with lots of money. Men hope to marry beautiful and charming women with personalities. Sometimes they do, and find out that that doesn’t even bring success or happiness.

Men and women hope for success in business or in a profession, for money, for fame, for fortune; they hope for those things, wish for them. But that’s not the equivalent of a definite, major purpose. If you’re going to succeed in life, you’ve got to have a major goal, an overall objective, an overall purpose. You’ve got to put the best of your efforts behind that purpose. The majority of people don’t have such an aim, and even those who do oftentimes back it only with hopes and wishes, and not with definiteness.

The fifth major cause of failure is inadequate schooling—inadequate education I should have said, instead of schooling, because schooling and education are two separate and distinct terms. A lot of people think that because they go through the grade schools and high schools, college, get some degrees, that they are educated. Perish the idea. That’s not what makes people educated. As a matter of fact, I discovered some years ago that the word “educate” itself is very much misunderstood by the majority of people, and all of the dictionaries I’ve ever had the privilege of examining give the wrong definition of the word “educate.” They say substantially that it means to impart knowledge. It doesn’t mean anything of the kind. The word “educate” comes from the Latin word, if I remember correctly, educio, which means to draw out, to develop from within.

To develop what? To develop that which you were born with: a mind. Some of the most successful men I have ever had the privilege of knowing and working with had very little formal schooling. But they did have great educations. Among them are Henry Ford and Thomas A. Edison, two of the outstanding ones that had hardly any schooling, but they did have a great amount of development from within. They developed by recognizing the powers of their own minds, recognizing that the Creator gave man control over but one thing, and that was the right to make his mind do whatever he wanted it to do, negative or positive. That’s what makes people educated.

If you’re looking for an educated person, you’ll have to find a person who has discovered himself. Generally speaking, when you find him, you’ll find that he graduated from the greatest of all universities, the one in which I hold a master’s degree: the University of Hard Knocks. It’s one of the greatest schools upon the face of this earth, and if you can survive it, if you can take the tests and go through it, the chances are that you will become truly an educated person, not merely a schooled person. A schooled person usually is just a person who has a good memory and can remember facts long enough to get by at examination time.

I hope I’m not saying anything that steps upon the toes of any of my schoolteacher listeners, but if I am, I must still claim that I’m telling the truth. It’s not the schoolteachers’ fault our system is what it is; it’s the fault of the school system itself, that people are not taught the real meaning of education, and that we do not have school systems that really educate people. People learn by doing, by knowing, by being put on their own, and by being introduced to themselves, to that other self, the one you do not see when you look into a mirror. A lot of people believe when they look at themselves in the mirror that they see themselves, the real self. They don’t see anything at all. They only see the house in which the real self lives. If they discover that other self, and make use of it as the Creator intended, the chances are they’ll become educated and, consequently, successful.

The sixth cause of failure is lack of self-discipline, generally manifesting itself through excesses in eating, drinking, and sex, and indifference toward opportunities for self-advancement. Lack of self-discipline. What does self-discipline mean? It means that you’ll take entire control of your own mind, and make it do whatever you want it to do, instead of being influenced by the minds of your neighbors or those nearest to you, or by those who criticize you. That’s what self-discipline means. It means you will run your own life. That doesn’t suit a lot of people.

There are some people who want to run the lives of others for them. That very often happens in families: Some member of the family will want to run the lives of every person there. I was brought up in a family somewhat like that myself. But fortunately I kicked over the traces. I was a very bad boy, and I’m glad that I was. I was so bad that I listened to no one, and I didn’t allow my father or anybody else to control me. I did my own thinking. It wasn’t very good thinking in the beginning, but I finally got straightened out, and drew a bead on the things that make for success in life. I wouldn’t have done that if I hadn’t had some self-discipline. I had some criticism down through the years, too. I had self-discipline enough not to pay any attention to that, to criticism.

Number seven is lack of ambition to aim above mediocrity. There’s one of the outstanding causes of failures: lack of the ambition to aim above mediocrity. People come into the world without their consent. They spend a little time going to school, and they take a job. What kind of job? Why, any kind of job they can make a living from. A job that they like? No, not necessarily, but they have to eat and they have to sleep under a roof, and have to wear a few clothes. They go all the way through life, never aiming at anything other than just enough merely to keep soul and body together, and practically always, that’s just about how much they get out of life. Now and then, a man or woman will step out of the line and say, “I’m aiming for a goal way beyond anything that any of my people attained.” If that person stands by that goal and lives to see its achievement, it is a rare feat to be applauded.

Number eight is ill health, generally due to wrong thinking, improper diet, and lack of exercise. Ill health can be a cause for failure. But if you live right and you eat right and exercise right and think right, the chances are that you’ll not be bothered with ill health. Most ailments are due to bad thinking and wrong eating and wrong exercise—particularly bad thinking. Do you know that many of the people who go to doctors’ offices, I don’t mean those who are hospitalized or who are bedridden, but many of those who are on their own two legs, and can walk down to the doctor’s office, are suffering with nothing more serious than a certain $64 word called hypochondria, which means imaginary illness. Think of that. You can get mighty sick if you set your mind on the fact that you’re going to be sick. Incidentally, you can be very sick, and if you make up your mind you’re going to get well, the chances are that you can get well, too.

The ninth major cause of failure is unfavorable environmental influences during childhood. I have met with many a person who was a failure and never will be anything else because of certain negative influences experienced during childhood. I had a flock of those influences to overcome. I know what they can do to people. But I did have some good help in my stepmother and in Andrew Carnegie, and in the men who worked with me in building this philosophy. I had a fortunate break in life, so fortunate that I broke the grip of those negative influences that I had to meet with in my early childhood, which would have been enough to have brought me down to failure if I had not overcome them.

Number ten is lack of persistence in carrying through to a finish that which one starts. Persistence. You know, we are all good starters, but very few of us are good finishers. Do you have any idea, ladies and gentlemen, how many times the average person has to meet with failure or defeat before he quits? Do you have any idea? Well, I’d hate to give you the real statistics on it. You would be surprised but there are a great number of people who quit and accept defeat even before they start, because they lack courage and they don’t ever begin anything, let alone persistently carry it through.

If you recognize the patterns of life by observing other people, you’ll see that it’s in the cards for everyone to meet with some defeat. The person who succeeds uses defeat, not as a stumbling block but as a stepping-stone, and rises from it with a greater urge, greater willpower, greater determination, and greater faith. Quitting, whether before or after meeting with adversity, guarantees failure.

The eleventh cause of failure is a negative mental attitude … a negative mental attitude. Take the average person and put any kind of a proposition before him, a new proposition, maybe one in which there exists a great opportunity for him to benefit. What is his reaction? I can tell you what it is. Immediately he begins to think about all the things in connection with it which he can’t do and can’t manage.

When I was offered the commission by Andrew Carnegie to become the author of the world’s first philosophy of individual achievement, and was guaranteed by Mr. Carnegie that I would have the backing of the most successful men in America, to whom he would introduce me, I searched in my mind for what seemed an interminable time trying to find words with which to tell him that I didn’t have the education, I didn’t have the background, I didn’t have the finances to sustain myself. I could think of a dozen reasons why I couldn’t accept that commission. One of the most outstanding ones was that I didn’t exactly know the meaning of the word “philosophy.” When I left Mr. Carnegie’s study, I had to go over to the public library to look it up, to see just what it meant. That’s how unprepared I was. But something inside of me said, “If Mr. Carnegie has kept you here interviewing you for three days and nights, has sold you the idea of becoming the author of this philosophy, and has promised you all of this cooperation, he must see in you something that you don’t know is there. You go ahead and tell him that you can do it.” And I blurted out, “Yes, Mr. Carnegie, I not only will accept the commission, but you may depend upon it, sir, that I will complete it.” He said, “That’s what I wanted to hear you say, and that’s the tone in which I wanted to hear you say it.”

I found out later on he was sitting there with a stopwatch, timing me. He was giving me sixty seconds in which to say yes or no, after I had all of the facts. I found out I had consumed exactly twenty-nine seconds; I had thirty-one seconds between me and such a destiny as no other author in my field ever, in the history of this world, has experienced. Thirty-one seconds to go, ladies and gentlemen. Because I did get my mind over on that positive side, that yes side, that can-do side, I did not let that thirty-one seconds pass by and shut me out.

Do you know there’s a great river flowing in life? It’s a strange river. Most people have never seen it, yet it affects their lives. Most people have been in one side or the other of it. The strangeness of this river consists in the fact that one half of it flows in one direction, and all who get into that side of it are carried to success inevitably, regardless of what they do. The other half flows in the opposite direction, and all who get in that side, just as inevitably are carried down to failure, no matter how much education they have and no matter how much effort they may put into their lives. And you say, “Fantastic. Who ever heard of a river like that?” You may not recognize it, ladies and gentlemen, but you’re in that river on one side or the other right this very moment, every single solitary one of you. You’re either in the negative side or you’re in the positive side. One or the other, sure as you live.

And what is this river? It’s not an imaginary river. It’s a realistic river; it’s the human mind, the power of the human mind, and you have control over it. It’s the only thing in this world that you do control, or ever can control. You can switch it over to the positive side, and in a fraction of a second, you can take yourself out of the failure class into the success class, by your thinking, your mental processes, your attitude. Adversities? We all meet with adversities. But a person who has learned to negotiate this river properly and to stay in the positive side, who has learned to keep his mind positive and not negative, doesn’t mind adversities. He doesn’t mind defeats. He doesn’t mind failures.

A person on the positive side is Marshall Field, whose successful store in Chicago burned down, and he said, “Right in that very place where those smoking embers are, I’ll build the greatest store on the face of this earth.” And there it stands today, ladies and gentlemen, in the Loop District of Chicago. His mental attitude was positive, in comparison with those other merchants whose stores were burned in that great Chicago fire, who said, “I’m going, we are going to move on out west. Everything’s done for in Chicago.” One man stood pat, grabbed the can-do side of his mental attitude, applied it to that circumstance of adversity there, and made it pay off as no other retail store has ever paid off in the world.

The twelfth major cause of failure is lack of control of the emotions of the heart. You know and I know that the emotion of love is the most precious, the most outstanding, and the most desirable thing of all, and the most dangerous. The most dangerous, underscored, exclamation point, two exclamation points. It’s dangerous if you let go of both ends of the strings of your heart. If you don’t have a string around your love emotions, if you let go of both ends of the strings, it’s dangerous, and I do not care to whom you may release those strings. You will always run the risk of loss of control over your emotions.

I am in the business of counseling individuals and firms. I have counseled the biggest of firms. I’ve had the privilege of counseling two presidents of the United States, Woodrow Wilson and Franklin D. Roosevelt. I’ve had the privilege of counseling men who were down and out and needed a job, a place to sleep. I’ve had the privilege of counseling all kinds of people, and I know beyond any shadow of a doubt that if you learn to take possession of your emotions, to make the best use of them, to control them, you can rise to great heights of achievement. I also know from my observation that more people fail and fall down because of the lack of control over this emotion of love than they do because of any of the other emotions.

Thus we see that the most desirable thing in life can become the most dangerous and the most detrimental, and the greatest liability, if it is not controlled. I let loose of both ends of the string of my emotions just one time in my life, and I’m still paying for it. It cost me a million dollars right off the bat, the first year. And that was just chicken feed to what it cost me in subsequent years. I needn’t go into the details; I’m afraid my wife will hear about them. Although she does know, she doesn’t like to have me speak of them in public.

The number thirteen cause of failure is the desire for something for nothing, usually expressed in some form of gambling. Think of all the energy that people waste in this world trying to get something for nothing, or trying to get it for less than its value. We’re living in an age now when we’re seeing the great forces of our own government contributing to the downfall of people in this respect: The government knows that some people want to get something for nothing. People who want security, economic security, now look to the government for it. I’ll tell you where you can get economic security: You can go out here and break into a bank, or commit a murder or something, and get into the penitentiary for life, and you needn’t worry from then on out. You’ll have economic security.

The only kind of economic security I want is that which I can earn with my own brain. Yet we’ve been educated, and we’re in the process of being educated, herded, if you please, into the idea of depending upon the government for economic security. It’s a false illusion. It’s not going to work out.

The greatest of all privileges is the privilege of becoming self-determining, like the men who made this great country in which we live. They didn’t look for economic security. Those fifty-six brave souls who signed the most marvelous document ever penned by man, the Declaration of Independence, weren’t looking for economic security. They weren’t looking for bodily security. They were risking their lives because every man whose name was on that document knew that he signed what might well become his death warrant, or his license to freedom. He signed, and signed willingly. He was not looking for subsidies. He was willing to take chances, not looking for something for nothing.

I have lived, ladies and gentlemen, in the most marvelous period of this world. I have seen the death of an old age and the birth of a new one. I lived long enough in that old age to see its advantages and its disadvantages in comparison with this new and marvelous age we are living in now. I can tell you truly that anything we have that we call great in this nation, we never acquired through that tendency of people wanting to get something for nothing. That’s one of the outstanding causes of failure in the lives of individuals.

Number fourteen is procrastination, the lack of the habit of reaching decisions promptly and definitely. Lack of the habit of reaching decisions promptly and definitely, especially when we have all facts in hand. People tend to put things off until tomorrow, or next week, or never. The hardest thing in the world is to get people to reach decisions. “Oh, I’ll think it over,” or “I’ll ask my wife.” When I hear a man say “I’m gonna talk it over with my wife,” I know he’s not going to even let his wife know anything about it. It’s just an excuse for inaction, ninety-nine times out of a hundred.

The number fifteen cause of failure is giving in to one or more of the seven basic fears. I wonder if you know what the seven basic fears are? The first one is the fear of poverty. Why a person in a great country like this, where opportunity is abundant for every living being, should be afraid of poverty, I don’t know. But I do know that the vast majority of people are afraid they’ll lose what they have. Afraid they’ll lose their job; afraid they’ll lose their home. Afraid of this, afraid of that, afraid of the other thing.

Number two of the seven basic fears is the fear of criticism. Isn’t that an astounding thing, how that’ll slow men down? Afraid of what “they” will say. I have heard people talk about “they” a long time; I have never seen “they” in person. I don’t know who “they” are. But there are millions of people who stand in mortal fear of what somebody will say if they step out of line, one step away from the beaten path, and do something in a new way. Henry Ford wasn’t afraid of criticism, and he got plenty of it when he put out that horseless carriage. As a matter of fact, they threatened to have him arrested if he brought it onto the streets of Detroit. He had to get a special permit to operate it. He wouldn’t be stopped just because people criticized him.

I can remember when I was first building this philosophy. People criticized me and said, “Napoleon Hill thinks he is building the world’s first philosophy of success, and he himself doesn’t have two nickels to rub together.” The unfortunate part of it, ladies and gentlemen, was they were telling the truth. I didn’t have two nickels, but I have two nickels now. I have a lot of other things economically and financially and otherwise now that the majority of people never do acquire in life, because I not only acquired these principles, but I put them to use in my own life. I not only teach them, but I live them. And they have brought me the blessings of life that the majority of people want but never get.

The third basic fear is the fear of ill health, the fourth is the fear of loss of love, the fifth is the fear of old age, the sixth is the fear of the loss of liberty, and the seventh is the fear of death.

Ladies and gentlemen, if you want the real causes of failure, there they are, done up in a package that you can understand. Remember that crooked river I mentioned before, crooked because it followed the path of least resistance? So many of these fifteen major causes of failure, such as drifting, lack of a definite major purpose, inadequate education, lack of self-discipline, lack of ambition, lack of persistence, the desire for something for nothing, and failure to make decisions, are caused by taking this path. The successful man always fights hard to do the right thing, and never chooses the path of least resistance. All rivers do choose this path, but successful men never do.

Please join me next time when I will focus on how to overcome these causes of failure. And I thank you.