Going the Extra Mile
The next topic is going the extra mile. That means rendering more and better service than you’re paid to render, doing it all the time, and doing it with a pleasant mental attitude.
One reason there are so many failures in the world today is that the majority of people do not even go the first mile, let alone the second. Oftentimes, if they do go the first mile, they gripe as they go along and make themselves a nuisance to people around them.
I don’t know of any one quality or trait that can get a person an opportunity more quickly than to go out of his way or her way to do a favor or do something useful for somebody. It’s the one thing that you can do in life that you don’t have to ask anybody for the privilege of doing. You can always step your services up and go out of your way to do something kind, even when you belong to a labor union, and they don’t want you to lay a thousand or twelve hundred bricks when you can easily do it. There is a way of getting around that too. If you belong to a labor union and have to conform to the rules, there’s nothing to hinder you from making yourself pleasant and smiling when you work and attracting the attention of somebody who will give you a better job, where you won’t have to observe union rules. There’s nothing to hinder you from doing that.
As a matter of fact, you might just as well make up your mind that you can never be free, self-determining, and financially independent unless you form the habit of going the extra mile and making yourself as indispensable as you possibly can. I don’t know of any way that anybody can make himself or herself indispensable except by going the extra mile, rendering some service that’s you’re not expected to render, and rendering it with the right mental attitude.
Mental attitude is important. If you gripe about going the extra mile, the chances are that it won’t bring you very many returns.
The Example of Nature
Where do I get my authority for emphasizing this principle of going the extra mile? Experience. I get it by looking around and watching the way nature does things. Anytime you can follow the habits of nature, you’re not going to go wrong. Conversely, any time that you fail to recognize the way nature does things and fail to go along, you’re going to get into trouble sooner or later. There is an overall plan by which this universe operates; no matter what you call it, the first cause or the Creator, there’s just one plan. There’s just one set of natural laws. It’s up to every individual to discover those natural laws and adjust himself to them.
If there is one thing that stands out above all others in nature, it is that nature requires every living thing go the extra mile in order to eat, live, and survive. Man wouldn’t survive one season if it were not for this law of going the extra mile. For instance, when the farmer goes out and sows his seed in the ground, he puts out one grain of wheat, let us say, and then he does what? He times it.
That timing is important. Don’t render a million dollars’ worth of service in a day and expect to go and get a bank check for tomorrow. In other words, if you start off rendering a million dollars’ worth of service, you will perhaps have to wait a little bit of time, and you’ll have to get yourself recognized. While you’re going through that period of recognition, the chances are that you’ll not be compensated for going the extra mile. Chances are that you will have to go the extra mile for quite a little while before anybody takes notice of it.
But always be careful. If you go the extra mile too long without somebody taking notice of you, and if the right fellow doesn’t take notice, look around until you find the fellow who will. That’s equivalent to saying 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. Have a little competition as you go along.
The Law of Increasing Returns
Nobody ever accepts a rule or does anything without a motive, and I have outlined here a great variety of reasons for going the extra mile.
One of the most adequate reasons that I know of for going the extra mile is that it places the law of increasing returns behind you. The law of increasing returns means that you will get back more than you give out, whether it’s good or whether it’s bad, whether it’s positive or whether it’s 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. There is no exception to that whatsoever.
Again there is a question of timing. The process of coming back doesn’t always occur quickly. Sometimes it takes longer than you expect. But you may be sure that if you send out negative influences, they’re going to come back on you sooner or later. You may not recognize what caused them, but they’ll come back. They won’t overlook you. The law of increasing returns is eternal, it’s automatic, it’s working all the time, and it’s just as inexorable as the law of gravitation. Nobody in the world can circumvent or suspend it for one moment. It is operating all the time.
The law of increasing returns means that when you go out of your way to render more and better service then you are paid to render, it’s impossible for you not to get back more than you are paid for, because eventually the law of increasing returns takes care of that. If you’re working for a salary, for instance, the law takes care of it in additional wages, in greater responsibilities, in promotions, in opportunities, or in going into business for yourself. It’ll come back in 1,001 different ways.
Oftentimes your rewards won’t come back from the source for which you render the service. Don’t be too afraid to render service to a greedy buyer or greedy employer. It makes no difference to whom you render this service. If you render it in good faith and in good spirit and keep on doing it as a matter of habit, it’s impossible for you not to be compensated.
That was one thing that puzzled me back in the early years. When I commenced to experiment with these laws, I observed that I would render a lot of service to people who didn’t even thank me. I used to let a lot of people into my classes without paying, and I found out that practically every one of them caused me trouble in one way or another and that hardly any of them got any benefit out of the classes. You see, people who are expecting something for nothing have a hard time of getting away with it. That’s the law of increasing returns.
When you start applying this principle, you don’t have to be too careful about the person to whom you render it. As a matter of fact, you should apply this principle with everybody you come into contact, no matter who it is: strangers, acquaintances, business associates, and relatives alike. Make it your business to render useful service wherever you touch human relations in any shape, form, or fashion.
Quality and Quantity of Service
The only way to increase the space that you occupy in the world will be by the quality and the quantity of the service that you render. (By the space that you occupy, I don’t necessarily mean your physical space, but your mental and spiritual space.) The quality and the quantity of the service, plus the mental attitude in which you render it, will determine how far you will go in life, how much you will get out of life, how much you will enjoy life, and how much peace of mind you will have.
Rendering service also brings one to the favorable attention of those who can and do provide opportunities for promotion. Go into any organization, and if you are alert and take notice, you will quickly find out which people are going the extra mile. You’ll also find out that they’re the ones that get the promotions. They don’t have to ask for them; it’s not necessary at all, because employers are naturally looking around for people who will go the extra mile. Doing extra tends makes one indispensable in many different human relationships, and therefore enables one to command more than the average compensation.
The Pleasure of Doing Good
Going the extra mile also does something to your soul inside. It makes you feel better. If there were not another reason in the world for going the extra mile, I’d say that would be adequate. A lot of things in life cause us to have negative feelings and unpleasant experiences. This is one thing that you can do for yourself that will always give you a pleasant feeling. If you go back in your own experiences, I’m sure that you will remember that you never did a kind thing without getting a great deal of joy of it. Maybe the other fellow didn’t appreciate it—that’s unimportant. It’s just like love; to have loved alone is a great privilege. It doesn’t make any difference whatsoever whether your love is returned by the other person. You’ve had the benefit from the emotion of love itself.
So it is with the principle of going the extra mile. It will give you greater courage. Just stepping out and making yourself useful to somebody will enable you to overcome inhibitions and inferiority complexes that you’ve been storing up through the years.
Don’t be too surprised when you do something courteous or useful for somebody who is not expecting it, and they look at you in a quizzical way, as if to say, “I 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 also leads to mental growth and physical perfection, thereby developing greater ability and skill in one’s chosen vocation. Whatever you do in life, whether it is teaching this course, delivering a lecture, making up your notebook, or filling your job, make up your mind that every time you do it, you will excel all previous efforts on your part. In other words, you’re a constant challenge to yourself. You will find how quickly and rapidly you will grow if you’ll go at it 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. 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 develop. Out of effort, out of struggle, out of use of your faculties comes growth.
Profit from the Law of Contrast
The habit of going the extra mile also enables one to profit from the law of contrast. Have you ever thought about that? You won’t have to advertise that one very much; it’ll advertise itself, because the majority of people around you are not going the extra mile. If everybody did, this would be a grand world to live in, but you couldn’t cash in on this principle as definitely you can now, because you’d have a tremendous amount of competition. Don’t worry: you’re not going have this competition. I can assure you, you will practically be in a class by yourself.
In some cases, people with whom you’re working or with whom you’re associated may be shown up for not going the first mile, let alone the second one, and they won’t like it. Are you going to cry about that, 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 in this world to succeed. That’s your sole responsibility, and you can’t afford to let anybody’s ideas, idiosyncrasies, or notions get in the way of your success. You should be fair and just with other people. Beyond that, you’re under no obligation to let anybody’s opinion stop you from going out and being successful. I’d like to see the person that could stop me from being successful, 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.
Developing a Positive Attitude
Going the extra mile also leads to the development of a positive, pleasing mental attitude, which is the most important trait of a pleasing personality. As a matter of fact, it’s the first trait of a pleasing personality.
You can easily change the chemistry of your brain so that you’re positive instead of negative. How? By getting in that frame of mind where you want to do something useful for the other fellow without rendering service with one hand and picking his pocket with the other. Doing it just because of the goodness of doing it, knowing that if you render more and better service than you’re paid to render, eventually you will be paid for more than you do, and paid willingly. That’s the way the law works. That’s the law of compensation, and it’s an eternal law. It never forgets. It has a marvelous bookkeeping system. You may be sure that when you’re giving out the right kind of service with the right mental attitude, you’re piling up credits for yourself somewhere that sooner or later will come back to you multiplied.
The habit of going the extra mile also tends to develop a keen alert imagination, because it keeps one continuously seeking new and more efficient ways of rendering useful service. You begin to look around and see how many places, how many ways and means, there are of helping other people to find themselves. In helping the other fellow to find himself, you find yourself.
The Benefits of Helpfulness
When you have a problem or an unpleasant situation and you don’t know how to solve it, even though you’ve tried everything you know, there is always one thing that you can do. If you will do that one thing, the chances are that you not only will solve your problem, but you will learn a great lesson.
What is the one thing that you can do? Find somebody who has an equal or a greater problem, and start then and there to help that other person. Lo and behold, it unlocks something in you that permits infinite intelligence to come into your brain and give you the answer to your problem.
I don’t know why that works, but I know that it does work. Do you know why I can make that statement so positively? From trying it out hundreds and hundreds of times myself and seeing my students try it hundreds and hundreds of times. What a simple thing that is!
I don’t know what it does to you. I don’t know why it works. There are lot of things in life that you don’t know. Then there are some things that you do know but don’t do much about. This is one 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 open up to receive opportunities, the best way is to see how many other people I can help. I never deviate from that rule; I never have, ever since I assimilated this philosophy. (Previous to that time I did deviate, and I didn’t get very far.) Look around, find out somebody who needs your service and start rendering it.
Mr. Stone and I were up at the School of the Ozarks last week. While I was up there, I found a marvelous outlet for some of my energies in going the extra mile. I decided, “I’m going to put on this philosophy up there for those mountain boys and girls. We’re going to donate the course to that school, and I’m going to go up there and teach it myself. At least the first class.”
The school was elated when they found out that I was going to do that, because they expected it would cost them a lot of money they didn’t have. “Well,” I thought, “there isn’t the money enough in the world to pay me for what I’m going to get from rendering that kind of service for those poor boys and girls up there—Napoleon Hill as he was back in the days when he was even worse off than they are. I know what this philosophy can do for them, and I am going to see that they get it.”
It was a joint decision between Mr. Stone and myself, and no one knew that we made that decision. Then a major donor to that school, who supplied many hundreds of thousands of dollars for buildings, came and opened negotiations with Napoleon Hill Associates to have his eight hundred employees take our home study course.
Almost instantaneously my bread cast on the water came back, and it had a lot of butter and jam on it. It paid off handsomely. And that’s not the only thing. This man is the majority stockholder in the great J. C. Penney stores. Before we are through, not only will we have this man’s eight hundred employees, but we’ll have many times that many employees of the J. C. Penney stores.
We didn’t go up there looking for contacts; we didn’t go up there looking for anything except a chance to deliver a message to those boys and girls. We delivered it with the right mental attitude, and things began to happen immediately. That’s how quickly you can change your life when you get into this business of going the extra mile and doing it in the spirit of being helpful to other people.
This practice also develops the important factor of personal initiative. It gets you into the habit of looking around for something useful to do and doing it without somebody telling you to do it. Old man procrastination is a sour old bird, and he causes a lot of trouble in this world. People put off until the day after tomorrow things they should have done the day before yesterday. We’re all guilty of it, every one of us. I’m not free of it, but I’m freer than I was a few years back.
I can find a lot of things to do now. Why do 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 be going the extra mile.
Fostering Definiteness of Purpose
The habit of going the extra mile builds the confidence of others in one’s integrity and general ability. It also 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 you don’t go round and round in circles like a goldfish in a bowl, always coming back to where you started with nothing that you didn’t start out with. Definiteness of purpose comes out of going the extra mile.
This habit also enables you to make your work a joy instead of a burden. You get to the point where you love it. And if you’re not engaged in a labor of love in life, you’re wasting a lot of your time. I think one of the greatest joys in the world is being permitted to engage in the thing that one would rather do than all other things.
Joy
And surely, when you’re going the extra mile, you’re doing it exactly because you don’t have to do it. Nobody expects you to do it. Nobody asked you to do it. Certainly no employer would ask his employees to go the extra mile. He might ask them to help out once in a while, but he wouldn’t do it as a regular thing. So 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. The dignity attached to that takes the fatigue and unpleasantness out of the labor.
Believe me, I’ve spent a lot of time burning midnight oil and later, and I didn’t consider it hard work at all. It was my own idea. I only used my initiative, but I got a lot of joy out of doing it, and I made it pay off.
What application have you ever made of this principle that gave you the greatest amount of joy? Someone might say, being married. 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. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if you could put the same attitude into your relations with people professionally or in business as you put into courtship?
We’re going to do just that. We’re going to start sparking again. It is going to start at home with our own mates. Believe me, I couldn’t begin to tell you the number of married couples that I have started in on a new sparking spree. They’ve gotten a lot of joy of it. It saves a lot of friction, a lot of argument, and it cuts down expenses.
I don’t mean to be facetious about this. I’m very serious when I say that this is one of the finest places in the world to start going the extra mile. Be careful about springing it on your wife too suddenly. One of my students started doing it right away, and his wife became so suspicious that she got the Pinkerton Detective Agency to watch him day and night. He finally caught on to the fact that she was watching him, and he came down to ask me what I could do about it. What happened? He went to the store and bought some nice lingerie—the kind that he hadn’t been buying her for years—a nice bottle of French perfume, and a big bouquet of flowers. He bought her too much all at once. She thought he’d been up to something and was trying to pay it off.
When you start going the extra mile with somebody, sit down and have a little sales talk with them. Tell them you’ve changed your attitude, and you want a mutual agreement for both partners to change their attitude from here on: “All of us are going the extra mile. We’re going to relate on a different basis, and out of it we’ll all get more joy, more peace of mind, and more happiness in living.” If you went home tonight and had that speech with your mate, it wouldn’t hurt, and it might help.
As for that person in business that you haven’t been getting along so well with—if you went in tomorrow morning with a smile and walked over to him, took his hand, shook it, and said, “Now, listen, pal, from here on I would like you and me to enjoy working together. What do you say?” It wouldn’t work? Oh, yes it will. Try it and see.
One thing that does more damage in this world than anything else is that little thing called pride. Don’t be afraid. Don’t be afraid to humiliate yourself if it’s going to make better relations with the people that you have to associate with all the time.
Earning Obligations from Others
Finally, going the extra mile is the only thing which gives one the right to ask for promotions or more pay. You don’t have a leg to stand on in going into the purchaser of your services and asking for more money or promotion unless for some time previously you have been going the extra mile, 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? So you have to first start going the extra mile and putting the other fellow under obligation to you before you can ask any favors from him. If you have enough people whom you have put under obligation to you by going the extra mile, when you need some favor, you can always turn in one direction or another and get it. I don’t need to borrow $1,000 or $5,000 or $10,000 or $25,000. But if I did, I know at least a half dozen places where a telephone call would get me the money without even having to ask for it. I would just say that I needed it. Why? Because I have established those contacts: people are under obligations to me for favors that I’ve done for them. I know at least a dozen multimillionaires who started out from scratch and who owe their fortunes to me. If I want to have $25,000 from them, they couldn’t very well refuse me. Of course, I’m not going do it, but if 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.
Nature Goes the Extra Mile
We get our cues to the soundness of the principle of going the extra mile by observing nature. As I’ve said, nature goes the extra mile by producing enough of everything for her needs together with a surplus for emergencies and waste. Blooms on the trees. Fish in the seas—you don’t just produce enough fish to perpetuate the species, you produce enough to feed the snakes and the alligators and to account for those that die of natural causes, with still enough to perpetuate the species. Nature is most bountiful in her business of going the extra mile. 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 have enough to eat. But if you observe wildlife at all, they don’t eat without performing some sort of service, without working, without doing something before they can eat. Pick a flock of common old cornfield crows, for instance. They have to organize. They’re traveling flocks. They have sentinels, and they have codes by which they warn one another. They have to do a lot of educating before they can even eat safely.
Nature requires man to go the extra mile. 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 provides. We have to plant our food in the ground. We have to clear the ground first. We have to plow it. We have to harrow it. We have to fence it. We have to protect it against predatory animals, and all of that costs labor and time and money. And all of it has to be done in advance, or you’re not going to eat.
I wouldn’t have any trouble at all in selling this idea, that nature makes everybody go the extra mile, to a farmer. He knows that beyond any 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. The farmer clears his ground; he plants his seed. He selects the seed with care to make sure that’s the right kind of seed and that it’s fertile. He plants it at the right depth in the ground, and then he times the entire transaction.
I want to emphasize the importance of timing. Can a new employee going into a new job come right in, start going the extra mile, and then immediately demand top wages or the best job in the place? It just doesn’t work that way. You have to establish a record, a reputation. You have to get yourself recognized in this business of going the extra mile before you can put pressure on to get compensation back. As a matter of fact, if you go the extra mile with the right mental attitude, the chances are a thousand to one you’ll never have to ask for compensation according to the service you rendered, because it’ll be given to you automatically in the way of promotions and increased salary.
The Law of Compensation
Throughout the whole universe, everything has been so arranged through the law of compensation, so adequately described by Emerson, that nature’s budget is balanced, so to speak. 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, we see the law of action and reaction in operation. Every act causes a reaction of some sort. Everything you do, everything you think, every thought that you release causes a reaction, if not on somebody else, then on the person releasing the thought. As a matter of fact, 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 enough negative thoughts in that subconscious mind, you’ll be predominantly negative. If you follow the habit of releasing only the positive thoughts, your subconscious pattern will be predominantly positive, and you will attract to you the things you want. If you’re negative, you 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 also one of the finest ways that I know of for educating your subconscious mind to attract to you the things you want and to repel the things you don’t want. You can put it down as 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’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, and I have had the privilege of finding out what happened to those who did and to those who didn’t. I know beyond any question of a doubt that nobody ever rises above mediocrity or the ordinary station in life without the habit of going the extra mile; it just doesn’t happen. If I had discovered just one case where somebody went on to the top without going the extra mile, I would say there are exceptions. But I am in a position to say there are no exceptions, because I have never found that one case. And 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 a result of going the extra mile.
When I started with Carnegie, he gave me three hours and then requested that I stay three days and nights in addition. I didn’t have to do that; my magazine didn’t pay me for those three days and nights. During those three hours, I had all that I went after, which was a story about Mr. Carnegie.
Not only did I stay three days and nights when I was not sure that I would have enough money, but I made myself pleasant. I made myself pleasant enough that I impressed Mr. Carnegie as the one that should give the world his philosophy. I would say that paid off pretty handsomely.
I’m giving you a great variety of illustrations of this principle, but please get up ones of your own. They don’t all have to be Andrew Carnegies or Thomas A. Edisons or Henry Fords or even Napoleon Hills. Take the shoeshine boy or anybody that’s making himself successful by going the extra mile, and use him as an illustration.
It took me a long time to learn that if you talk too much about these men that I’ve been associated with, you scare off a lot of people, because they don’t aspire to become Henry Fords or Edisons. They just want to be ordinary people with enough to get along on to have independence, good health, and peace of mind. Don’t scare those people who don’t want to hit the top of the pile, so to speak, by using illustrations that they think they can never equal.
You take this fellow Napoleon Hill. I don’t know whether you’ve heard it or not, but he’s the guy that put in twenty years of useful labor working for the richest man in the world without compensation. At least that’s what his brothers and his father said. That’s what all of his acquaintances said (except his stepmother): he was making a fool of himself to work for the richest man in the world for twenty years without any compensation. The guy had little enough sense to stick by it. He must have been a weak-minded fellow.
The time came finally when this fellow Hill didn’t even ask Andrew Carnegie for traveling expenses. He was able to pay his own. He didn’t need Mr. Carnegie. That’s something, isn’t it?
When this fellow first started up, he needed letters of introduction to get him into see these other men, and then came a time when he didn’t need Mr. Carnegie for that. He could make his own introductions.
Now that’s what I want you to do. I want you to become self-determining, so you can do these things without the help of anybody. That’s the time when the payoff will come: when you can go out and do anything in this world that you want to do. 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. Whatever I want to do, I can do it. I don’t have to ask anybody, not even my wife. (But I would, because I’m on good terms with her.) Now there are ways and means of putting yourself in that position.
A Potent Opportunity
As far as I am able to determine, there has never been an author in my field of endeavor who has worked up as definite and as large a following and one in which the relationship is as fine as it is between myself and my followers.
My relationship with my students is out of this world. It does something to them, and it does something to me. That’s why I like to see people come into my classes. Even if they’ve read every book that I have ever written, even if they’ve memorized the books, I still want them to come in and get a little hunk of Napoleon Hill’s sincerity of preparation, his enthusiasm, and his faith, because that takes root and begins to grow, and then it becomes your personality and not mine.
First of all, I have a friendly following of many millions of people who have benefited by the philosophy. I don’t honestly know exactly how many millions, but I do know that between thirteen and fourteen million copies of Think and Grow Rich have been sold outside of the United States, and we estimate that for every copy that has sold, at least five people read it. That’s around seventy million people outside of the United States, and goodness knows how many inside the United States. Out in California, they made a survey and determined that one out of every three people in that state is a follower of Napoleon Hill, has his books, or has read them in the libraries. We made a survey of all the major libraries in the United States, and the consensus was from all of them that Think and Grow Rich led all books of all kinds initially, and it’s still doing it.
I don’t need to apologize for what I’m saying. I don’t even need to tell you that I’m not boasting, because whatever I am, you will become. I’m only introducing you to the very potent opportunity that you’ve got in this philosophy. It will not only be a big help in this world, but it will be of help to yourself too, because when you go out into the world occupying more space in the minds and hearts of people, you’re occupying more space in your own mind and your own heart.
My books are in demand. I could contract with any publisher that I choose in my field of publishing for any book that I might write today, even before it’s written. Once I was not in an enviable position. When Carnegie gave me this opportunity, I didn’t have sense enough to turn it down, as my brother said I should have done. I’ve always suspected he had a selfish motive in wanting me to turn it down because I had contracted to pay our way through Georgetown University Law School, and that left him on his own. It was two years before he could go ahead with his education, but he did go ahead and earned it. I think it’s one of the finest things could have happened to him: that he earned his education instead of depending on me to pay for it. He’s never told me, but I’ve always suspected that it was a good thing for him.
Then there’s my radio program. Think about taking a radio program and pitching it onto one of the big stations of the country and having it click from the very first time without a buildup. It just never has been done. Anybody in the radio field will tell you it’s an impossibility. And I would have too in the beginning, if I hadn’t cut that word impossibility out of my dictionary a long time ago. The program went on KFWB, one of the large stations of Los Angeles in 1947 through 1950, three years, summer and winter, with no vacations, as is customary in the radio field, and it led all other programs combined on that station. I had some pretty keen competition, believe you me.
How do I know that happened? You can’t tell just from a survey, because they telephone a lot of people and they make averages. We didn’t guess at anything, because the mail was the determining factor. There were, I believe, 657 replies on average to every broadcast. They told me at KFWB—and I’ve since corroborated that in other radio circles—that for everyone who wrote in there were probably a thousand listening who did not write in. This meant that I had over 650,000 people listening every Sunday afternoon.
Why do you suppose that program led all others without a buildup? What were the factors that entered into it?
Number one, I had been building up a tremendous credit account down through life that entitled me to commence getting that kind of results. Number two, my books had been distributed widely in California before I went out there. Number three—and this is probably the most important one—this program was not in competition with any other program. There was nothing else like it, and it was dealing with the listeners’ personal success. Anytime you start talking to anybody about increasing his personal success, you don’t have to be brilliant, you don’t have to be too effective, because he will keep on listening as long as you’re giving any information he may be able to use.
That’s why that program clicked the way it did. That’s why this philosophy is going to click for you when you get out, because it’s potent and people want it. There isn’t anybody so successful who doesn’t want more success.
There’s your chance to go the extra mile. I started with a little group of people. Even if it’s only two or three in your home or in the place where you work, every time I release a lesson to you, go right back and try it out on somebody else to see how you get along. You’ll be surprised at what will happen. Never mind about how much you’re going to get out of it. Start by doing it. If you can’t find anybody else to try it out on, try it on your wife, your husband, or your children. You may have to reduce it to terms that younger people can understand. But whenever you’re interpreting this philosophy for other people, you’re doing something for yourself. You’ll find that you’ll never do a good job of learning and applying this philosophy until you start teaching it to other people. Then you’re really going to grow. I’ve been at it now actively since 1928, and I’ve been growing all the time and having a grand time doing it. And I should continue to grow as long as I live because of the joy that I get out of growing and seeing other people grow under my influence.
Peace of Mind
Then there’s a little item that’s not to be sniffed at—the 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 in the world are willing to do anything for twenty years in succession without getting something back from it? For that matter, do you have any idea how many people there are who are willing to do something three days in succession without being sure they’re going to get something out of it?
You’d be surprised to find out how few there are. It’s overlooking one of the grandest opportunities that a human being could possibly have, especially here in this country of ours, where we really can create our own destiny and express ourselves in any way we want. Speeches are free, activities are free, education is free—it’s a wonderful opportunity to get right in and go the extra mile in any direction you want to travel. Yet most people are not doing it. That’s all to the good for you, because if all people were successful, they wouldn’t need you as a teacher.
Incidentally, during my entire career, I have never seen the time when the whole world was so ready and so right for this philosophy as it is today. People all over the world are suffering with fear, frustrations, disappointments, and inferiority complexes. It’s due to the unsettled political situation as much as anything else. I’ve never seen politicians sink so low in attacking one another as they’re doing today. I have never seen such a sight in my whole life, which means that there are a lot of sick people in this world. Therefore you, the doctors, will have plenty of patients to look at.
As far as I’m concerned, there’s nothing wrong with these times. They’re just made to order for this philosophy. I have seen the time when not so many people were interested in their flaws because they were prosperous, they were doing all right, they had no troubles to speak of. Today everybody almost has troubles, or thinks he has. If he reads the Hearst papers, he has one kind of troubles; if he reads the Daily News, he has another kind; if he reads the Tribune, he has all kinds. If you read the newspapers, you find a lot of things wrong with the world.
Instead of finding out what’s wrong with the rest of the world, I try to find out what I can do to correct this guy here. I have to eat with him, I have to sleep with him, I have to wash and shave his face every morning, I have to give him a bath now and then. You have no idea how many things I have to do for him. And I have to live with this guy twenty-four hours a day. So I put in my time trying to improve myself and, through myself, trying to improve my friends and my students by writing books, delivering lectures, teaching, and in other ways. It pays off very much better than if I took any of the papers and read all of the murder stories, the divorce squabbles, and everything else that’s blazoned across the pages every day.
For this fellow on the podium, who didn’t have sense enough not 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 had. I’d make all the mistakes I had made. I’d make them at the time in life when I made them, early, so I would have time enough to correct some of them. And the period during which I would come into peace of mind and understanding would be in the afternoon of life, not in the forenoon, because when you’re young, you can stand trouble; you can take it. But when you pass the noon hour and go into the afternoon, when your energies and mental capacity oftentimes are not as great as they were before, you can’t take as much trouble as you used to. You haven’t got so many years left to correct the mistakes that you made.
To have the tranquility, the peace of mind that I have today, in the afternoon of life, is one of the great joys that have come out of this philosophy. If you asked me what my greatest compensation has been, I would say that’s it, because so many people at my age, and even much younger, haven’t found peace of mind. 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. But peace of mind is something that you’ve got to get for yourself; you’ve got to earn it.
I think my greatest book has not yet been published. It has been written for three or four years, and I’ll release it sooner or later. It tells how to get peace of mind. As a matter of fact, its title is How to Get Peace of Mind. Actually I didn’t write the book; I lived it; I lived it for forty years. I couldn’t have written it until I found myself and I found the clue, the formula, to how anybody can get peace of mind.
You have to start looking for it, not where the average person looks—out there in the joys of what money will buy, in the joys of recognition and fame and fortune—but in the humility of your own heart.
I get peace of mind mostly behind that inner wall that is as high as eternity, where I go in for meditation many times each day. There is where I get my real peace of mind, and I can always withdraw into that inner wall, cut out every earthly influence, and commune with the higher forces of the universe. What a grand thing that is, and anybody can do that: you can do that. When you get through this philosophy, you’ll be able to do anything you want to do just as well or better than me.
I’m hoping, incidentally, that every student that I turn out will eventually excel me in every way possible. Maybe you will take up where I left off and write better books than I’ve written. Why not? I haven’t said the last word in my books, in my lectures, or in anything else. As a matter of fact, I’m just a student. I think I am a fairly intelligent student, but I’m just a student on the path, and the only state of perfection I have is that I have actually found peace of mind and how to get it.
Now when you start teaching people this philosophy and you get on to this subject, you need a lot of illustrations, and these things I’ve been saying about myself for the last few minutes will come in handy. Because you know me and my background, you know that I’ve been telling you the truth. If anybody questions it, there’s always plenty of evidence that I have been telling the truth.
These personal illustrations are very potent from the viewpoint of pedagogy. When you tell a person that a thing works in such and such a way, and you know it works that way because you did it or the other fellow did it, that’s impressive. But if you tell a fellow that a thing works and don’t give him any illustrations of how it has worked, he’s not sure you’re right. He’s accepting what you say as an opinion, but not necessarily as a fact.
Now the illustrations that I’ve given you here all are based upon absolute cases that I have observed, and you are at liberty to use as many of them as you choose.
An Assignment
Now I want to give you an assignment: engaging in at least one act of going the extra mile every day. You can choose your own circumstances; if it is nothing more than telephoning an acquaintance and wishing him good fortune, it’ll only cost you a dime. You’ll be surprised what will happen to you when you begin to call up your friends, whom you have been neglecting for some time, and just say, “Hello, you were on my mind. I was thinking about you and I just wanted to call up and say, how are you doing? I hope you are feeling as good as I am.”
You’d be surprised at what that will do to you and what it will do to the friend too. It doesn’t have to be a close personal friend. As a matter of fact, it doesn’t even have to be anybody you know. It can be somebody you don’t know, but want to know. I got a call at my office in Washington one rainy afternoon from one of the most pleasant, million-dollar female voices that I’ve ever heard. She said, “Mr. Hill, I want to make a date with you, sir, and would you be good enough to tell me yes?”
I said, “Well it just depends on where, when, and why.”
“I want you to come over to Woodward & Lothrop department store and come up to the men’s clothing department. I have something to show you that I think you will take pleasure in seeing. Would you do that for me?”
I said, “I’ll be right over.”
I was very curious. Of course, the place where she made the date seemed safe enough. I was quite sure that the other people in the store would protect me if anything happened. When I got over there, there was another man, and she was selling him a raincoat. It was a rainy day, and believe me, she was doing all this business. I not only bought a raincoat, but I bought a suit of clothes before I got out of there. She didn’t know me, and I didn’t know her, but there was something in her voice that made me want to know her.
Did you know that selling by telephone is becoming one of the most outstanding ways of selling today? In every case, you’re talking to somebody you don’t know. But you put that something in your voice, and then what you say to that person creates a personal contact.
You see, I wasn’t so far wrong after all in saying you could call up somebody you don’t even know. Of course, you have to have a motive, and you have to sell the other person the motive satisfactorily, or you won’t get very far calling up a stranger.
Another way of going the extra mile is to relieve some friend from duty for half an hour or so, or have some neighbor send over his children while he attends the movies. You might do a little babysitting for one of your neighbors. You’re going to be at home anyway. Maybe you’ve got some children of your own. Maybe you know some neighbor who would like to get off and go down the movies, but she can’t get away from her children. I know children are noisy, and they’ll probably fight with your children, but if you are a real diplomat, you’ll keep them apart. She’ll be under obligations to you, and you feel that you’ve really been kind by helping out somebody who otherwise wouldn’t have had a little freedom.
Most housewives don’t get any wages. They work twenty-four hours a day. They go through all kinds of trials and tribulations, and it seems to me they oftentimes don’t get too much out of life, especially when they’re rearing young children. It’d be a nice thing for some of you who don’t have any children to say, “Why don’t you and your husband go out to a movie or a show and let me come over and babysit for you?” Certainly most of you would have some neighbor that you could approach on some such basis.
It’s not so much what you do for the other fellow, it’s what you do for yourself by finding ways and means of going the extra mile. Did you know that both the successes and the failures in life are made up of very little things, so little, in fact, that oftentimes they’re overlooked? The real reasons for success are overlooked because the things that make success are so small and seemingly insignificant.
I know some people who are so popular that they couldn’t have an enemy. They just couldn’t have an enemy. One of them is my distinguished business associate, Mr. Stone. I don’t believe that Mr. Stone could have a permanent enemy; I just don’t think he could. He’s too considerate of other people. He goes out of his way. He not only goes the second mile, he goes to the third and the fourth, the fifth, the sixth, and the tenth. Look how prosperous he is. Look at 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, would pay him a salary to work for him. I heard one say just that, and he’s become immensely wealthy himself by 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. It’d be just for an association with him.”
Mr. Stone’s not different from you or me or anybody else, except in his mental attitude towards people and towards himself. He likes to go the extra mile. Sometimes people take advantage of that and don’t act fairly with him. I’ve seen that happen too. He doesn’t worry about that too much. Heck, he doesn’t worry about anything at all, because 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.
You may write a letter to some acquaintance offering him encouragement. In your job, you may do a little more than you’re paid to do—stay a little longer on the job, make some other personnel a little more happy. When you are prepared to teach this philosophy, you may establish a sound basis for yourselves by adding a new student to your complimentary training class each week until your class reaches capacity. That free service might well turn out to be the most profitable service you ever rendered.
Incidentally, this is a training school for teachers because I want to multiply myself by at least a thousand teachers before I stop. I’m not going to do all that training myself, but I hope to get a lot of people here in this class who will train the next class. There’s a great opportunity for you to attract and bring into this philosophy people to whom you can give an opportunity that’s not to be matched anywhere else in the world.