The Definite Major Purpose
This philosophy is based on seven major premises.
The First Premise
The first premise is that definiteness of purpose is the starting point of all achievement, because it is the starting point of all individual achievements. A definite purpose must be accompanied by a definite plan for implementation followed by appropriate action. You have to have a purpose, you have to have a plan, and you have to start putting that plan into action. It’s not too important that your plan be sound, because if you find that you have adopted a plan that’s not sound, you can always modify it. But it is very important to be definite about what you’re going after, what your purpose is. There can be no ifs or buts about it. Before you get through this lesson, you will see why it’s got to be definite.
Just to understand this philosophy, read it, or hear me talk about it, wouldn’t be of very much value to you. The value will come when you begin to form your own patterns out of this philosophy and put them into work in your daily life, your job, and your human relations. That’s where the benefits will really come.
The second premise: all individual achievements are the results of a motive or a combination of motives. You have no right to ask anybody to do anything at any time without giving that person an adequate motive.
Incidentally, that’s the warp and the woof of all salesmanship: the ability to plant in the mind of the prospective buyer an adequate motive for his buying.
There are nine basic motives. Everything that people do or refrain from doing can be classified under these nine. Learn to deal with people by planting in their mind adequate motives for doing the things that you want them to do.
A lot of people who call themselves salesmen have never heard of the nine basic motives. They do not know that they have no right to ask for a sale until they have planted a motive in the mind of the buyer for buying. The nine basic motives are:
1. Self preservation
2. Financial gain
3. Love
4. Sexuality
5. Desire for power and fame
6. Fear
7. Revenge
8. Freedom of body and mind
9. Desire to create
The Third Premise
The third premise: any dominating idea, plan, or purpose held in the mind through repetition of thought and emotion, allied with a burning desire for its realization, is taken over by the subconscious section of the mind and is acted upon through whatever natural and logical means that may be available.
In that paragraph, you’ve got a tremendous lesson in psychology. If you want the mind to pick up an idea and to form a habit so that the mind will automatically act upon that idea, you’ve got to tell the mind what you want over and over and over again.
When Mr. Émile Coué came over here some years ago with his famous formula, “Day by day, in every way, I’m getting better and better,” he cured thousands of people, but he didn’t cure a great number more than that, and I wonder if you would know why. There was no desire, no feeling put into that statement. You might just as well blow in the wind as to make a statement unless you put some feeling back of it.
Incidentally, if you tell yourself anything often enough, you’ll get to where you will believe it, even a lie. This is funny, isn’t it? But it happens to be true. There are people who tell little white lies (and sometimes they’re not so white as all that) until they get to where they believe in them themselves.
The subconscious mind doesn’t know the difference between right or wrong. It doesn’t know the difference between positive and negative. It doesn’t know the difference between a penny and a million dollars. It doesn’t know the difference between success and failure. It’ll accept any statement that you keep repeating to it in thoughts or words or any other means.
It’s up to you in the beginning to lay out your definite purpose, write it out so that it can be understood, memorize it, and start repeating it day in and day out until your subconscious mind picks it up and automatically acts upon it.
This is going to take a little time. You can’t expect to undo what you’ve been doing overnight. Your subconscious mind bounces back by allowing negative thoughts to get into it. You can’t expect that to change overnight. But you will find that if you emotionalize any plan that you send over to your subconscious mind and repeat it in a state of enthusiasm, backing it up with the spirit of faith, the subconscious mind not only acts more quickly, but it acts more definitely and more positively.
The Fourth Premise
The fourth premise: any dominating desire, plan, or purpose which is backed by that state of mind known as faith is taken over by the subconscious section of the mind and acted upon immediately. That state of mind is the only state of mind that will produce immediate actions through the subconscious mind. When I say faith, I don’t have reference to wishing or hoping or mildly believing. I have reference to a state of mind wherein you can already see whatever you’re going to do as a finished act before you even begin it. Now, that’s pretty positive, isn’t it?
I can truthfully tell you that never in my whole life have I failed to do anything that I made up my mind to do unless I got careless in my desire to do it and backed away from it or changed my mind or my mental attitude. And I’ll tell you that you can put yourself in a frame of mind where you can do whatever you make up your mind to do, unless you weaken as you go along, as so many people do.
Again: any dominating desire plan or purpose which is backed by that state of mind known as faith is taken over by the subconscious section of the mind and acted upon immediately.
I suspect that only a relatively small number of people really understand the principle of faith and know how to apply it. Even if you do understand it, if you don’t back it up with action and make it a part of your habit life, you might just as well not understand it, because faith without deeds is dead, faith without action is dead, faith without absolute, positive belief is dead. I don’t know how you’re going to get any results through believing unless you put some action back of that belief.
Incidentally, if you tell your mind often enough that you have faith in anything, the time will come when your subconscious mind will accept that, even if you tell your mind often enough that you have faith in yourself. Have you ever thought what a nice thing it would be if you had such complete faith in yourself that you wouldn’t hesitate to undertake anything you wanted to do in life? Have you ever thought about what the benefits of that would be to you?
Many people sell themselves short all the way through life because they don’t have the right amount of confidence, let alone faith. They amount to somewhere between 98 and 100 percent of people. They never in their whole lives develop a sufficient amount of confidence in themselves to go out and undertake the things they want to do in life. They accept from life whatever life hands them.
I have never in my whole life accepted, from life or from anything else, anything I didn’t want. A lot of things were pushed over on my side of the street that I didn’t like, that didn’t smell so good, but I didn’t accept them; I didn’t become a part of them.
The greatest man I have ever known beyond any question of a doubt—and I have known many very great men—measured by his ability to apply this philosophy, was the late Mahatma Gandhi. Now there was a man who understood the principles of faith. He not only understood them, he freed India with them.
It’s a marvelous thing to learn the art of depending upon yourself and using your own mind. Isn’t it strange how nature works? She gives you a set of tools, everything that you need to attain all that you can use or aspire to have in this world. She gives you a set of tools adequate for your every need, and she rewards you bountifully for accepting those tools. That’s all you have to do: just accept them and use them.
Nature penalizes you beyond compare if you don’t accept them and use these gifts. Nature hates vacuums and idleness. She wants everything to be in action, and she especially wants the human mind to be in action. The mind is no different from many other parts of the body. If you don’t use it, if you don’t rely upon it, it atrophies and withers away and finally gets to where anybody can push you around. Oftentimes you don’t even have the willpower to resist or protest.
The Fifth Premise
The fifth premise: the power of thought is the only thing over which any human being has complete and unquestionable means of control. This fact is so astounding that it connotes a close relationship between the mind of man and infinite intelligence.
There are only five known things in the whole universe, and out of those five, nature has shaped everything that’s in existence, from the smallest electrons and protons of matter on up to the largest stones that float out there in the heavens, including you and me. Just five things: time, space, energy, and matter, and those four things would be no good without the fifth thing. Everything would be chaos. You and I never could have existed without that fifth thing.
It’s universal intelligence, and it reflects itself in every blade of grass, everything that grows out of the ground and all of the electrons and protons. It reflects itself in space and in time. In everything that is, there is intelligence, operating all the time. This intelligence permeates the whole universe; space, time, matter, energy, everything.
The person who is the most successful is the one who finds ways and means of appropriating the most of this intelligence through his brain and putting it into action. Every individual has the privilege of appropriating to his own use as much of this intelligence as he chooses. He can only appropriate it by using it. Just understanding it or believing in it is not enough. You’ve got to put it into specialized use in some form.
I believe in miracles. But I saw a lot of miracles fifty years ago that I can explain away very easily now: they’re not miracles anymore. In the final analysis, of course, there is no such thing as a miracle, because every effect has a natural cause. When we can’t discover that cause, oftentimes the effect is so astounding that we call it a miracle.
To me, the most outstanding miracle is the human mind. The mind of the humblest person is capable of extending itself into proportions beyond belief and imagination. Think of a man like Henry Ford or Thomas Edison, starting out without education and building two great empires, Mr. Edison ushering in the great electrical age, Mr. Ford ushering in the great automotive age. And then think of Napoleon Hill in one lifetime, creating a philosophy that is benefiting millions of people and will benefit millions after he’s gone. How could he have done that if he hadn’t have made use of his mind?
It wasn’t my education that permitted me to do such a gigantic thing, because I had very little. It wasn’t my financial backing because of that I had none. Even Mr. Carnegie refused to subsidize me, which was one of the finest things I’ve ever came across, although I didn’t think so at the time.
Honestly, the things that have happened are so fantastic that when my business associate Mr. W. Clement Stone and I go out to make speeches, we have to tone down the facts. If we told all of them, they would seem so fantastic, so impossible, that people who do not know of my background wouldn’t believe them. Sometimes I wonder if I believe them myself.
I started with a tremendous handicap, one that I brought over with me from the previous plane as well as that which I found awaiting me when I got here. With all of that, by a series of manipulations, based upon the use of my own mind, I was able to enter, penetrate, examine, and take out the sum and the substance of what five hundred of the smartest men in this country gained by a lifetime of effort. I have put it in a shape so that the humblest person not only can understand it but can embrace it, apply it, and use it to his own benefit. Never in the history of the world has an achievement like this been produced in the life of one author. Never in the history of the world has any other author produced in simple terms a philosophy that you can live by day in and day out, wherever you are, whoever you are, and whatever you’re doing.
All this goes back to the miraculous power of the human mind, but that power is going to do you no good unless you recognize it, embrace it, and use it. The main responsibility of this course is to give you a pattern, a blueprint, by which you can take possession of your own mind and put it into operation. All you have to do is to follow the blueprint. Don’t just pick out the part of it that you like best and discard the others. Take it all as is.
I met a man not long ago who had made quite a huge fortune. He’d made it in a very few years, and he made it honestly. He said, “Napoleon Hill, I want to tell you something that may astound you. When I got hold of one of your books, my wife and I read the book together. My wife pooh-poohed it and didn’t accept it. I wasn’t as smart as she was, but I accepted it, and I became immensely wealthy.”
You will find people who are very much smarter than you. They know all the answers, and they’ll be reluctant to accept this philosophy. They just know it can’t work for them. You will find people like that. Don’t be too disturbed.
I used to become disturbed when not everyone would accept and embrace this philosophy. I got a lesson some years ago that did me more good than anything that had happened up to that time. I was complaining about the ingratitude of one of my students when a man very much older than myself said, “Look here, Napoleon Hill, about nineteen hundred years ago, a very fine man came to this world, and he had a very fine philosophy to live by. And would you believe it, sir? He didn’t get a 100 percent following either. As a matter of fact, you’re doing much better than he did. He only had twelve disciples, and one of them went sour on him. What does it matter if a few go sour on you? Who are you to expect that some of them won’t go sour? If they do, it’s their misfortune, not yours; just remember that.”
Don’t let people disturb you because they disbelieve. You can’t expect all people to believe. If all people had the capacity to believe that you’re going to have when you assimilate this philosophy, this would be a utopia. You won’t be afraid of the H-bomb or of any other kind of a bomb.
The Sixth Premise
The sixth premise: the subconscious section of the mind appears to be the only doorway of individual approach to infinite intelligence. I want you to study that language carefully. I said it “appears to be.” I don’t know if it is. I doubt if you do, and I doubt if anyone knows it definitely. A lot of people have a lot of different ideas about it, but from the best observations that I have been able to make through thousands of experiments, it appears to be true that the subconscious section of the mind is the only doorway of individual approach to infinite intelligence, and it is capable of being influenced by the individual through the means described in this and subsequent lessons.
The basis of approach is faith based upon definiteness of purpose. That one sentence gives you the whole key to that paragraph. Faith based upon definiteness of purpose. Do you have any idea why you don’t have as much confidence in yourself as you should have? Have you ever stopped to think about that? Have you ever stopped to think about why it is, when you see an opportunity coming along or what you believe to be an opportunity, you begin to question your ability to embrace it and use it? Haven’t you had that happen to you many times?
If you’ve had a chance to be closely associated with people who are very successful, you’ll know that that is one thing that they are not bothered by. If they want to do something, it never occurs to them that they can’t do it.
I hope that in your association with Napoleon Hill Associates, you’d come to know my distinguished business associate Mr. Stone better, because if I ever saw a man that knows the power of his mind and is willing to rely upon that mind, Mr. Stone is that man. As a matter of fact, it’s rubbing off on me. I thought I had a great supplier, but believe you me, I can go to Mr. Stone anytime and have my batteries recharged too. What a grand thing it is to be around somebody who has complete control of himself, who has everything under control. I don’t think Mr. Stone has any worries. I don’t believe he would tolerate a worry. Why? Because he has confidence in his ability to use his mind and to make that mind create the circumstances that he wants to create. That’s the condition of operation of any successful mind, and that’s going to be the condition of your mind when you get through with this philosophy. You’re going to be able to project your mind into whatever objective you choose, and there’ll never be a question in your mind as to whether you can do what you want to do or not. Never a question in the world.
The Seventh Premise
The seventh premise: every brain is built of a receiving set and a broadcasting station for the vibrations of thought. This fact explains the importance of moving with definiteness of purpose instead of drifting, since the brain may be so thoroughly charged with the nature of one’s purpose that it will begin to attract the physical or material equivalents of that purpose.
I want you to go over the previous paragraph, analyze it, read it many times, and get it into your consciousness. The first radio broadcasting and receiving set was the one that exists in the brain of man. Not only does it exist in the brain of man, but it exists in a great many animals. I have a couple of Pomeranian dogs, and they know exactly what I’m thinking, sometimes before I know. They’re so smart that they can tune on me. When we start off for an automobile ride, they know whether they’re going or not. You don’t have to say a word, because they’re in constant attunement with this through telepathy.
Your mind is sending out vibrations constantly. If you’re a salesman and you’re going to call on a prospective buyer, the sale ought to be made before you ever come into presence of the buyer. Have you ever thought of that? If you’re going to do anything requiring the cooperation of other people, condition your mind so that you know the other fellow is going to cooperate.
Why? First, because the plan that you’re going to offer him is so fair and honest and beneficial to him that he can’t refuse it. In other words, you have a right to his cooperation. You would be surprised to know what a change there will be in people when you come sending out positive thoughts over this broadcasting station of yours instead of thoughts of fear.
If you want a good illustration of how this broadcasting station works, say you need a thousand dollars really badly. You’ve got to have that thousand by the day after tomorrow, or they’re going to take back the car or the furniture. You just have to have that thousand dollars. You go down to the bank, and the moment you walk inside of the door, the banker can tell that you just have to have it, and he doesn’t want you to have it.
Isn’t that funny? No, it’s not funny. It’s tragic. You carry the matches around in your pocket oftentimes and set your own house afire. You broadcast your thoughts, and they precede you. When you get there, you find that instead of getting the cooperation you want, the other person reflects back to you that state of doubt, that state of mind that you sent out ahead of you.
I used to teach salesmanship. I made my living that way for a long time while I was doing the research on this philosophy, and I have taught over thirty thousand salesmen. Many of them now have become members of the Million Dollar Round Table in the life insurance field. And if there is one thing in this world that has to be sold, it’s life insurance. Nobody ever buys life insurance. It has to be sold. The first thing that I taught those people under my direction was that they must make the sale to themselves before they try to make it to the other fellow. If they don’t do that, they’re not going to make a sale. Somebody might buy something from them, but they’ll never make a sale unless they first make it to themselves.
Another thing that I’ll call to your attention: Sometimes you feel moody, you feel a little bit blue. You don’t know what the trouble is. Do you ever feel that way?
I don’t anymore. If you’re in a bad frame of mind, study yourself carefully and trace down the cause of it. Did you know that you’re constantly picking up the vibrations being released by other moody people, people who are in a state of frustration? Did you know that now their world is in a state of chaos? People are talking about the total destruction of mankind. They’re looking and praying for the day when the H-bomb will come along and wipe out whole cities. What do you expect is going to happen if millions of people all over the world keep expecting, looking for, and praying for destruction? Why do you think it’s going to happen? The inevitable, that’s what will happen.
This world needs a renaissance that will cause people to know the power and dignity of their own minds, so that they can keep those minds on the things that are constructive and off the things that are destructive. Every brain is a broadcasting station and a receiving set.
Some years ago, when I was first starting out, I delivered a series of lectures at the Harvard Business School. I told the students that my observations under Dr. Alexander Graham Bell and under Dr. Elmer R. Gates had been such that I believed the ether was constantly carrying sounds that we couldn’t interpret with the human ear, that the human brain was constantly picking up thoughts from other brains, and that the human brain was constantly sending out thoughts that other brains are picking up in turn.
I didn’t get much further than that when I heard the scraping of feet all over the room. Then I saw a broad grin break out over their faces, and then they broke out into a horse laugh. They gave me the boot.
I might go back to Harvard and that same group of men and women. I might start off by apologizing for having to be in competition with so many noises here in this room, all of the orchestras—people singing, people playing, people talking in competition with me—and would they please bear with me and not pay attention to the others? They’ll just listen to me. There’ll be no shuffling of the feet. There’ll be no laughing if I said that this time, because you know that’s true.
There’s a great myriad of variety of noises here in this room right now. The ether is the medium that carried them. The ether is a medium that carries your thought from your brain to other brains. You can be so attuned with another person that you can communicate with that person by telepathy.
I wouldn’t make that statement if I didn’t know it was true. And how do you think I do? Only because I have experienced it. I was walking in Central Park in New York some years ago, and I imagine that at least three or four thousand other people were out there. My wife wanted me to go over to the Columbia Broadcasting Station, where I was negotiating for a program, and to be there at one o’clock for an important conference. She sent out the call mentally. I picked it up. Instead of going back to my house, I went straight to the Columbia Broadcasting Station. When I got there, I got in under the wire, with just one minute to go. If I’d had a letter delivered to me giving me that information, it couldn’t have been any more definite.
I was lecturing over in New Jersey some years ago, at the Rotary Club. After the lecture was over, a lot of them gathered around, and we sat down for a bull session. An hour and half elapsed, and all of a sudden I said, “Excuse me gentlemen, I have to answer a telephone call. My wife is calling me,” and I went to the phone and answered her. She said, “You’re late.”
I went back and said, “Excuse me, gentlemen, my wife is anxious about me because I was late; she wanted to know if anything had happened.”
They said, “How did you know your wife was calling you?”
“Oh, that’s a state secret,” I said. I didn’t go to the trouble of explaining to them because I was afraid that they would discount the fine speech I had just given them. I thought it was just as well not to tell too much.
But with you, my students, I feel I can be frank; I can take you into my confidence. I can tell you about some of the extracurricular experiences that I’ve had that indicate beyond any question of a doubt that your brain is a broadcasting station and a receiving set, and you can tune that brain so that it will attract only the positive vibrations released by other people. That’s the point. You can train your own mind to pick up, out of the myriad of vibrations that are floating out there constantly, only the things that are related to what you want most in life.
How do you do that? By keeping your mind on what you want most in life: your definite major purpose. It’s all by repetition, by thought, by action, until finally the brain will not pick up anything not related to that definiteness of purpose. You can educate your brain so that it will absolutely refuse to pick up any vibrations except those related to what you want. When you get your brain under control like that, you will be on the path; you will really and truly be on the beam.
Benefits of Definiteness of Purpose
Now let’s look at some of the benefits of definiteness of purpose. I’ve never in my whole life suggested that anybody do anything without giving them a good reason for doing it. When I speak about planting motives in people’s minds, that’s not just something for you to follow; it’s something that I follow too. And I can give you some very good motives for following this lesson to the letter.
First of all, definiteness of purpose automatically develops self-reliance, personal initiative, imagination, enthusiasm, self-discipline, and concentration of effort, all of these being prerequisites for any success of vital importance. That’s quite an array of things that you develop if you develop definiteness of purpose, that is to say, knowing what you want, having a plan for getting it, and having your mind mostly occupied with carrying out that plan.
If you have to adopt a plan, unless you’re an unusual person, you’re almost sure to adopt some plans that are not going to work so well. When you find out that your plan is not right, immediately discard it, get another one, and keep on until you find one that will work. In the process of doing this, just remember one thing: that maybe infinite intelligence, being gifted with a great deal of wisdom, might have a plan for you better than the one you had yourself.
Have an open mind. If you adopt a plan to carry out your major purpose or a minor purpose and it doesn’t work well, dismiss that plan and ask for guidance from infinite intelligence. You may get that guidance.
What can you do to be sure that you will get it? How can you believe that you’ll get it? You can believe that you’ll get it, and it’s not going to hurt if you say out loud that you believe it. I suspect that the Creator can know your thoughts, but I found that if you express yourself with a lot of enthusiasm, it doesn’t hurt any. And I’m sure that it doesn’t hurt in arousing your subconscious mind.
When I wrote Think and Grow Rich, its original title was The Thirteen Steps to Riches, and both the publisher and I knew that that was not a box-office title. We had to have a million-dollar title.
The publisher kept prodding me every day to give him the title that I wanted. I wrote five or six hundred titles, and none of them were any good. Then one day he scared the dickens out of me. He called me up and said, “Tomorrow morning, I’ve got to have that title, and if you don’t have one, I have one that’s a humdinger.”
“We’re going to call it Use Your Noodle and Get the Boodle.”
“My goodness,” I said, “you’ll ruin me. This is a dignified book, and that’s a flip title. That would ruin the book and me too.”
“Whether it will or not, that’s the title unless you give me a better one by tomorrow morning.”
I want you to follow this incident, because it has potent food for thought. That night I sat down on the side of the bed, and I had a talk with my subconscious mind. I said, “Now, look, you old stub, you and I have gone a long way together. You’ve done a lot of things for me and some things to me, thanks to my ignorance, but I’ve got to have a million-dollar title, and I’ve got to have it tonight. Do you understand that?”
I got to talking so loudly that the man in the apartment above me rapped on the floor, and I don’t blame him, because I guess he thought I was quarreling with my wife. I really gave the subconscious mind no doubt as to what I wanted. I didn’t tell the subconscious mind exactly what kind of a title it was. I just said it’s got to be a million-dollar title.
I went to bed after charging my subconscious mind until I reached that psychological moment where I knew it was going to produce what I wanted. If I hadn’t gotten to that point, I’d be up there still, sitting on the side of the bed talking to my subconscious. There is a psychological moment—and you can feel it—when the power of faith takes over whatever you’re trying to do and says, “All right, now you can relax; this is it.”
I went to bed, and at about two o’clock in the morning, I woke up as if somebody was shaking me hard. As I came out of my sleep, Think and Grow Rich was in my mind. Oh boy! I let out an Indian whoop. I jumped to my typewriter and wrote it down.
I grabbed the telephone, and I called the publisher. “What’s the matter?” he said. “Is the town on fire?” It was about 2:30 in the morning.
“Yes,” I said, “you bet it is—with a million-dollar title.”
“Let’s have it,” he said.
“Think and Grow Rich.”
“Boy, you’ve got it,” he said.
Yes, I’ll say we’ve got it. That book has grossed over $23 million already in the United States and probably will gross over $100 million before I pass on, and there’s no end to it. It’s a million-dollar—a multi-million-dollar title.
After the thrashing that I gave my subconscious, I’m not surprised that it came around and did a good job. Why didn’t I use that method in the first place? Isn’t that a funny thing? I know the law. Why did I fool around and temporize? Why didn’t I go to the source and get my subconscious mind heated up instead of sitting down there at my typewriter writing out five or six hundred titles?
I’ll tell you why. It’s for the same reason that you will oftentimes know what to do but won’t do it. There’s no explaining the indifference of man toward himself. Even after you know what the law is and what the score is, you fool around until the last minute before you do anything about it.
It’s just like in prayer: you fool around until the time of need comes, and then you’re scared to death. Of course you don’t get any results from prayer. If you want to have results from prayer, you condition your mind so that your life is a prayer day in and day out. Every minute of your life is a constant prayer because it’s based upon belief in your dignity, and tuning into infinite intelligence to have the things that you need in this world. If you wait until the hour of need, it’s just like having a death in the family and going over to the undertaker and the graveyard man. Believe you me, they’ll skin you alive, because you are in a state of grief and you haven’t got any resistance. And what happens to you is nobody’s business, because you didn’t prepare when there was not a need.
So it is with this human mind. You’ve got to condition the mind as you go along from day to day so that when any emergency arises, you will be right there ready to deal with it.
Definiteness of purpose also induces one to budget one’s time and to plan day-to-day endeavors which lead to the attainment of one’s major purpose. If you would sit down and write an hour-by-hour account of the actual work that you put in each day for one week, and then an hour-by-hour account of the time that you wasted, you’re going to get one of the shocks of your life.
Not long ago, somebody said, “Napoleon Hill, you are a terribly busy person. You’re on the plane going here, there, and the other place. You’re writing books, you’re making lectures, you’re helping Mr. Stone to run a business. You must be a hard worker.”
My face turned red. You know why? I waste at least half of my time. I could put in five hours every day doing something else if I want to do it badly enough. And if I’m that deficient, what do you think you are?
Don’t get mad at that; I just wanted to step on your toes a little bit. I wanted to call your attention to the fact, ladies and gentlemen, that we all are time wasters. We’re not efficient. We have about eight hours to sleep, about eight hours to earn a living, and eight hours of free time in which you can do anything you want. That eight hours of free time is the opportunity time. That’s the time when you can condition your mind to do anything you want to do.
Definiteness of purpose also makes one more alert in recognizing opportunities related to the object of one’s major purpose. It also inspires the courage to embrace and act upon those opportunities. We all see opportunities almost every day of our lives from which, if we embraced them and acted upon them, we could benefit. But there’s something called procrastination. We just don’t have the will, the alertness, the determination to embrace opportunities when they come along. But if you condition your mind with this philosophy, you’ll not only embrace opportunities, but you will do something better.
What could you do better than embrace the opportunity? Make the opportunity. One of Napoleon’s generals (the other Napoleon) came to him one day. They were fixing to attack next morning. This general said, “Sir, the circumstances are not right for the attack tomorrow.”
Napoleon said, “The circumstances are not right? Hell, I make circumstances. Attack.”
I have never seen a successful man yet in any business who, when somebody says it can’t be done, didn’t say, “Attack, attack.”
Start where you are. When you get around to that curve in the road, you’ll always find that the road goes on. Attack. Don’t procrastinate. Don’t stand still. Attack.
Definiteness of purpose inspires confidence in one’s integrity and character, and it attracts the favorable attention of other people. Had you ever thought about that? I think the whole world loves to see a person walking with his chest sticking out. He doesn’t need to be too chesty, but we have this guy that tells the whole doggone world that he knows what he’s doing and he’s right on the way to doing it. If you are determined to get by, people on the sidewalk will get out of the way, and you don’t have to whistle at them or holler at them. You just have to send your thoughts ahead with determination, and they’ll stand aside and let you go through.
The world’s like that. Many people are so indifferent that they let people push them around. The man who knows what he wants does a lot of pushing around, believe me, especially with anybody that gets in his way. The man who knows where he is going and is determined to get there will always find willing helpers to cooperate with.
Here is the greatest of all benefits of definiteness of purpose: it opens the way for the full exercise of that state of mind known as faith by making the mind positive and freeing it from the limitations of fear and doubt and discouragement and indecision and procrastination.
The very minute that you decide upon something and you know that’s what you want, you know you’re going to do it. All of the negatives that have been bothering you pick up their baggage and get out. They just move out. They can’t live in a positive mind.
Can you imagine a negative frame of mind and a positive frame of mind occupying the same space at the same time? No, you can’t, because it can’t be done. And did you know that the slightest bit of a negative mental attitude is sufficient to destroy the power of prayer? Did you know that the slightest bit of a negative mental attitude is sufficient to destroy your plan? You have to move with courage, with faith, with determination, in carrying out your definiteness of purpose.
Next, definiteness of purpose makes one success-conscious. Do you know what I mean by success-conscious? If I said that it makes one health-conscious, would you know what I meant by that? It means your thoughts are predominantly about health. With reference to success consciousness, your thoughts are predominantly about success—the can-do part of life, and not to think no can do. Did you know that 98 percent of the people who never get anywhere in life are no-can-do people? In any circumstances that are placed before them, they immediately fashion their attention upon the no can do part, the negative part.
I’ll never forget as long as I live what happened to me when Mr. Carnegie surprised me with a chance to organize this philosophy. I tried to give him all the reasons I could think of why I couldn’t do it, and every one popped into my mind immediately. I didn’t have a sufficient education. I didn’t have the money. I didn’t have the influence. I didn’t know what the word philosophy meant. I was trying to get my mouth open to tell Mr. Carnegie that I thanked him for the compliment he paid me, but I doubted that Mr. Carnegie was such a good judge of human nature in picking me to do a job like that. Although that’s what went on in my mind, there was a silent person looking over my shoulder who said, “Go ahead, tell him you can do it. Spit it out.”
I said, “Yes, Mr. Carnegie, I’ll accept the commission, and you can depend upon it, sir, that I will complete it.”
He reached over and grabbed me by the hand. He said, “I not only like what you said, but I like the way you said it. That’s what I was waiting for.”
He saw that my mind was on fire with the belief that I could do it, even though I hadn’t the slightest asset to give me a beginning other than my determination to create this philosophy.
If I had wavered in the slightest, if I had said, “Yes, Mr. Carnegie, I’ll do my best,” I am sure that he would have taken the opportunity away from me instantly. He would have indicated that I wasn’t determined enough to do it.
But I said, “Yes, Mr. Carnegie, you can depend upon me, sir, to complete it,” and you are living this here. You’re living with the fact that Mr. Carnegie didn’t pick wrongly.
He knew what he was about. He had found something in the human mind, in my mind, that he’d been searching for over years. He found it. I didn’t know its value, but I found out its value later. I want you to recognize its value, because you have that same thing in your mind—the same capacity to know what you want and to be determined that you’ll get it, even though you don’t know where to make the first start.
Think of Mme. Marie Curie starting out to find radium. All she knew was that theoretically there should be radium somewhere out there in the universe. Talk about looking for a needle in a haystack—that’s looking for a needle in the universe, searching for radium—and all she had was a theory. She put so much faith back of that theory that she developed, refined, and brought forth the first radium ever produced in the world. Isn’t it marvelous that the human mind could do a thing like that?
Next to that achievement, your petty oppositions and problems are as nothing, nothing at all. These problems that we worry about day in and day out are nothing in comparison with the problems that faced Marie Curie or Thomas A. Edison when he was working on the incandescent electric lamp, or Henry Ford when he was building his first automobile. It took a tremendous amount of faith. It took continuous faith, definiteness of purpose, before those great men of achievement could achieve.
What makes a great man or a great woman? Greatness is the ability to recognize the power of your own mind, to embrace it and use it. That’s what makes greatness. In my book of rules, every man and every woman can become truly great by the simple process of recognizing his or her own mind, embracing it, and using it.