GROW RICH WITH PEACE OF MIND
CHAPTER 2
Close the Doors on Your Past
Whenever you meet a misfortune, put it into your past. Keep your mind upon future achievement, and you will find that mistakes of the past often work to fill the future with good fortune. Your wealth and your peace of mind are strongly connected with each other. Even at the lowest-level jobs, your success waits within your own mind. Add value to your work and you set in motion the forces that make the concepts of your mind turn into the realities of living.
WHEN I was still a poor youth in Wise County, Virginia, I invested twenty-five cents in a raffle ticket. The prize was a horse-and I won! A horse was of considerable value to a farming family in those days, and this one, all agreed, was a good horse. Filled with pride, I led him home. How fortunate I was! Or was I? Having installed my horse carefully in the stable, I treated him to oats, com and hay-all he could eat. That same night he broke out of the stable, went down to the river and drank his fill of water. As anyone who knows horses could have predicted, the poor bloated animal foundered and died. invested twenty-five cents in a raffle ticket. The prize was a horse-and I won! A horse was of considerable value to a farming family in those days, and this one, all agreed, was a good horse. Filled with pride, I led him home. How fortunate I was!
Or was I? Having installed my horse carefully in the stable, I treated him to oats, com and hay-all he could eat. That same night he broke out of the stable, went down to the river and drank his fill of water. As anyone who knows horses could have predicted, the poor bloated animal foundered and died. It cost me five dollars to have him hauled away and buried. So much for my good luck!
Yet who can tell the uses of the past? I was able in later years to look back upon that incident and see I had been fortunate. You see, I never again have been tempted to risk money in any kind of gambling. Surely I have saved the cost of many horses, let alone saved my peace of mind. Now let me tell you of a more serious incident which cost a in any kind of gambling. Surely I have saved the cost of many horses, let alone saved my peace of mind. Now let me tell you of a more serious incident which cost a man's life, threatened my own life, prevented me from taking advantage of a great opportunity, seemed like an unmitigated disaster-and yet turned out to be for my boundless good and the good of others as well.
At that time I had completed the first draft of The Science of Personal Achievement, in eight volumes, and I needed a publisher. Mr. Don R. Mellett, publisher of the Canton, Ohio Daily News, became my partner and business manager. We induced Judge Elbert H. Gary, Chairman of the Board of the United States Steel Corporation, to supply the money necessary to print the first edition. Furthermore, Judge Gary agreed to purchase a complete set of the books for every key man employed in that vast corporation. The contract had not yet been signed, but I was on top of the world.
Now, Mr. Mellett had been using his newspaper as a means to expose a very unholy alliance between the bootleggers and the police force of his city. Three days before we were to meet Judge Gary, a member of the police force and a gangster shot and killed Don Mellett. Because I had been associated with him, the gang believed I too had had something to do with their exposure. I missed assassination by only a few hours.
For a year I had to hide. At length the murderers were caught, convicted and given lifetime sentences in prison. Meanwhile Judge Gary had died. All my plans were upset, I had had to waste much precious time while in hiding, and I had no publisher. I was right back where I had started-or rather, I was behind where I had been.
I made a new start and found a publisher for my writings. That is a story in itself, but it is not the point of this story.
I found out later that if Judge Gary had become my financial backer, and if The Science of Personal Achievement had been distributed within the United States Steel Corporation as had been planned, I would forever after have been looked upon as a tool of Big Business. The Science of Personal Achievement would have been greeted with suspicion, would have been turned down cold by many of those whom it now serves. Furthermore, I might have been inhibited against making statements I have made from time to time against Big Business when it for gets its real purpose, which is to be build a better world for mankind.
Every adversity has within it the seed of an equivalent or a greater benefit. Can you remember that? Write it on a card. Carry the card in your pocket and read it daily! In that phrase. lies the key to many a man's peace of mind. It is not the Supreme Secret to which I have referred but it lives on the same street. Set it firmly into your consciousness: Every adversity has within it the seed of an equivalent or a greater benefit.
Thus it is possible, and strongly advisable, to CLOSE THE DOORS TO YOUR PAST insofar as any regrets or bitterness or post-mortems are concerned. You are searching for wealth and peace of mind. Neither the way to wealth nor the way to peace of mind leads through the graveyard of unpleasant experiences long past.
When you have attained peace of mind, your mind will automatically reject every thought and every mental reaction which is not beneficial to your welfare. Meanwhile, help yourself attain this great command-of-mind and all it can do for you. Avoid all negative mental influences and especially avoid that shadow of mournful regret which can keep all the sunshine out of your life-and keep out other gold as well.
Time is the great magician. Close the door on ugly experiences, disappointments and frustrations! Then the great magician, Time, can transmute past sorrows and mistakes into present rewards, success and happiness.
Knut Hamsun, a Norwegian immigrant, failed at everything he tried in this country. In desperation he decided to write the story of his struggles. His book, which he called Hunger, won the Nobel Prize for literature. Hamsun's terrible experiences at length had made him a rich and famous man.
Harry S. Truman failed as a haberdasher. If, from then on, he had considered himself a failure, he certainly could not have entered upon the road to the presidency.
We have also the example of another man who took up storekeeping; but the store failed. He took up engineering and also failed. The sheriff sold his surveying instruments to pay his debts.
He joined a group of soldiers in an Indian war and had the rank of captain. His record as a soldier was so poor that he was reduced to the rank of private and sent home. He was passionately in love and engaged to be married. The girl died and left him in a terrible state of shock. He took up law. He won few cases.
He went into politics, ran for office and was defeated. Is it astonishing that Abraham Lincoln eventually became President? In a way it is and in a way it is not. He might have allowed his mind to drag failure and discouragement after him, as a prisoner drags his chains. After all, so many people do and they are indeed prisoners of the past, never able to break free of the image of failure which, to them, means me.
He did not do this, however. The way in which he determinedly left failure behind him was no miracle-it is a grand privilege available to every human being. The man who became President had been tempered in the fires of life, or he could not have been what he was nor have done what he did.
You cannot see all of the great Plan of your life. You can make it full and rewarding, however, if you treat each sorrow and setback as a tempering toward greater and richer experiences to come.
Let me suggest:
Keep yourself aware of life's endless combinations of circumstances.
Have you been disappointed in love? Your heart feels literally broken. You can see no joy in the world. You may wish to take an overdose of sleeping pills and end it all. Yet is it likely that nowhere in the world exists the woman (or man) who can take the place of the one you lost? A moment of thought within the citadel of your deepest mind will show you this is hardly possible.
So it happened with me, for after a dreadful disappointment of the heart I met a combination of circumstances which led at last to the perfect wife. There is a more poignant point to the story. When, after a violent lover's quarrel, my first sweetheart turned away from me, married another man, I thought the world had ended. Five years later the man she married committed suicide, unbalanced by the constant friction of living with the woman I had been so anxious to marry. Where would I have been with a terror of a woman who heckled me instead of helping me?
Every adversity has within it the seed of an equivalent or greater benefit.
Remember that even a condition which the world calls HANDICAP you can call BENEFIT-and make it truly so.
I have mentioned that Thomas A. Edison had little formal schooling. W. Clement Stone, the highly successful insurance man, was a high school dropout. So many men have succeeded despite the lack of "book learning" that, without in the least downgrading education, we may say the lack of it need not be a handicap. It depends on the man.
But what of Edison's deafness? Surely a very marginal ability to hear is a handicap. But again it depends on the man. Edison as a boy had been a "candy butcher" on trains. Once a man lifted him and his entire load of candy onto a train by his ears-and that was the beginning of the end of his hearing. He could have dwelt all his life on this cruel and damaging experience. Like many another, he could have put his major energies into bewailing his fate; but he didn't.
When I visited him, he was dependent upon a hearing aid a primitive thing by today's standards. When I was sure we understood each other's minds I asked him if he had not found
his deafness a great handicap. He replied:
his deafness a great handicap. He replied:
"To the contrary, deafness has been a great help to me. It has saved me from having to listen to a lot of worthless chatter and it has taught me to hear from within."
Anyone who wants peace of mind should remember those last three words. By transmuting his affliction into a benefit, Mr. Edison learned how to tune in on all the subtle power which waits within every mind. He felt, too, that he heard, from within, the voice of an Infinite Intelligence and received guidance from an infallible Source.
Every adversity has within it the seed of an equivalent or greater benefit. When you speak of failure, you attract failure.
When you speak of success, you attract success. I once made a survey of more than 30,000 men and women to ascertain their staying qualities in the face of failure and defeat.
For the majority of those people it took one-only one setback to wed them to defeat.
Of those who kept on aspiring, another large percentage got started in various projects but quit even before meeting with defeat. The defeat came not from circumstances but from the built-in attitude of defeat which they carried from the past. Instead of closing the door on the past, they ran back through that door at every opportunity. Needless to say there were no
Fords or Edisons in this group.
On the other hand, I am reminded of a man named Arthur Decio who built his career out of a family failure that had cost all of his father's savings. It was a business in mobile homes which never got going. Now the father handed it to the son, hopelessly. What could Decio, then in his twenties, do with the business? Most men would have liquidated it on the spot.
Starting in his garage next to the railroad tracks in Elkhart, Indiana, Mr. Decio first designed a small, easily transportable mobile home which research had shown him was needed. Later he applied General Motors methods in a business which never had known them before. He introduced frequent model changes. He built a network of dealers. He brought out four lines of mobile homes, each competing with the others. His company's sales in four years have increased 500 per cent, and Mr. Decio has made five million dollars out of the business that was about to fail.
Today's population includes a large proportion of young marrieds and retired couples, both groups being prime customers for mobile homes. Of course Mr. Decio realizes this, for every age has its special ways.
The many failures who turned up in my survey of some years ago displayed a failure-quality which belongs to any age. Not only had these people failed, but they kept on living with their failure. They spoke of it in preference to other topics. They lived in the past tense, reliving the pain of what had been. Those who had succeeded, however, spoke in the future tense. Their eyes were not upon their past-which often contained a good share of mistakes-but ever upon the future, their great objectives. This too was the invariable case with those five hundred and more vastly successful men whom I interviewed at the behest of Andrew Carnegie. On their way
up they talked "the way up." Where failure had been laid behind, failure stayed behind-and notably it stayed out of their conversation.
Concerning success and failure, I have observed another trait which has much to do with peace of mind.
It is obvious that those who are filled with malice and envy do not have peace of mind; their malice and envy sour their lives. Failure so often hates the very sight of success. Speaking with successful men, I have noticed they speak in complimentary terms of other men who are succeeding. Their attitude is not one of envy, but of willingness to learn from others. The failure, on the other hand, goes out of his way to find some adverse criticism of the successful person. If he can't find anything doubtful about the way that person does business, then he will pick at some other area. His malice is evident, and so is the sad fact that he not only cannot command what money can buy, but also he cannot attain peace of mind.
Is there a definite connection between being wealthy and having peace of mind? There is a connection, but it is not absolute. There certainly are poor people who have peace of mind; but they are far more rare than folklore would have us believe. You need not be a millionaire, but without sufficient money you are cut off from much in life that sustains the spirit. If you are continually worrying about where your next meal is to come from-when you'll be able to get your shoes repaired-how you are going to pay your dentist bill-how many more years your house can go without paint-you have no peace of mind. If your lack of funds forces you to live in a shabby neighborhood so that you constantly worry about the influence upon your children, you have no peace of mind. If you cannot occasionally buy and cherish something that is beautiful-if you cannot afford a vacation you really enjoy-if you cannot partake of a motion picture or a stage show which you know is very much worthwhile-your mind does not have the chance to satisfy itself. Money brings much good into your life and much that nobody should have to do without.
It is no surprise that there are many rich people who enjoy peace of mind. But there are many who do not. If the main purpose of a fortune is to make its possessor worry about keeping his fortune, peace of mind goes out the window.
One of the failures which have illuminated my knowledge and strengthened my soul came when I was quite wealthy. I simply became poor-quite poor. The circumstances are revealing. Perhaps as a compensation for the dirt-poor days of my youth, I became enamored of big houses, big cars, lush acreage and similar symbols of wealth.
Perhaps I was merely in line with my times, which seemed to demand that when a man had money, he had to display it. Today's millionaires are much less ostentatious.
At any rate, my books were selling well, I had made a name as a trainer of salesmen, other enterprises prospered-and so it seemed imperative that I must drive a Rolls-Royce. Soon I had a pair of Rolls-Royces. Soon after this, I cradled my cars in a big garage on a large estate in the Catskill Mountains, north of New York City. I saw that estate as a monument to my achievements.
The estate called for servants, for a maintenance staff, for foremen over the maintenance men. It called for lavish dinner parties, the expense of which would have made John D. Rockefeller groan. Once I gave out a general invitation to a barbecue dinner, expecting that perhaps a hundred people would show up. Over three thousand attended! The highway was tied up with a traffic jam for two miles each way, and the traffic patrolmen never did forgive me.
The clubhouse on the estate could sleep forty guests in comfort and was seldom without a full load. Once the overflow swept into my private quarters. I arrived home-hoping for some peace of mind-and found a stranger asleep in my bed. Moreover, he had appropriated the only pair of pajamas I had available.
Let us draw the curtain on the Hill estate. It went for a song shortly after the crash of '29. When I got over the initial shock, how relieved I felt! How peaceful, how newly powerful was the mind which had been overlaid with worry!
Three of my friends, whose combined assets were less than the amount I lost when I lost my estate, did not have faith in the great principle that every adversity has within it the seed of an equivalent benefit. One jumped off a high building on Wall Street; one fired a bullet into his brain; and the third man was hauled out of the Hudson River six weeks after he had jumped in.
I made money again. Of course I did. The principles of the Science of Achievement saw to that. My lost estate had not lost with it my knowledge that any goal set up by a human mind can be achieved by that mind's possessor. Ever since, I have lived comfortably but without show. What good is money when it becomes a millstone?
Make sure your work and your money benefit someone besides yourself. One of the positive results that came after I had firmly closed the door on my experiences in the Catskill Mountains was this: I found time in which to write more books. These books have benefited me and they have benefited mankind-and so they have benefited me with more than money.
When Andrew Carnegie decided to use his great wealth to found free libraries, he greatly increased his peace of mind. Henry Ford was pretty tough about giving away his money. When at length he learned it was possible to find people who deserved it and would use it well, I am sure he felt the same quiet satisfaction.
There is another important principle which insures that as your wealth grows, so will your peace of mind.
Do not hurt any other person in order that you may succeed. I am thankful I learned this early in life. When a man discovers himself and with it the ways in which he can earn big money, now and then he will see a way to put some extra weight on his side of the scales. Like the butcher's hand which is weighed along with the hamburger, it wouldn't be noticed. I could have added to my wealth by dishonest means on many an occasion, but I would have lost my peace of mind.
Among the men I interviewed after I accepted my commission from Andrew Carnegie were several who were little better than pirates of the business world. (In most cases I did not know this at the time.) Later events often showed how much they had given up when, in effect, they stole from others or ruthlessly ruined others in order to aggrandize themselves. Some went to prison. Some stayed out of prison on legal technicalities, but who has peace of mind when no honest man will look him in the face?
Today is the day of the large service corporation, often with a tremendous office staff. A man in a factory is likely to be judged by the kind of work he puts out, but a man in an office can push himself upward with various tricks of personality, tricks of paperwork, tricks of getting the other fellow to assume responsibility for mistakes, and so forth. To step up the ladder by stepping on another man's face is to make a mockery of the money you earn. There is no peace of mind in this and often there is no health, no ability to be happy, no harmony at home. You can be left with the ability to buy what money can buy-and a degree of unhappiness rather more acute than a beggar's.
I have spoken to several men in my classes who confessed they had cut many comers of honesty and business morality. Now they wished to make a new start-but was it possible? When they attained the only true wealth, honestly earned wealth, would they not still be made miserable by the tensions of guilt?
I assured them they would not if only they closed the door on the past. Let them consider dishonesty a mistake, even a disaster-but a past disaster.
This is an important point with many ramifications. Not necessarily dishonesty, but also any other negative state of mind held in the past can be left in the past just as one leaves physical circumstances.
I showed these men that now they were finding a new self. The past could not matter.
The world is full of examples of men who learned from their own bad consciences, or even in prison, that no dishonesty ever pays. The lesson learned is the lesson learned, and for most men there is time enough and world enough to start again and build a glorious future.
For an exception, I give you Al Capone. During the Great Depression, this notorious gangster set up free soup kitchens at which he fed numbers of the unemployed. He was fond of calling attention to these soup kitchens as proof of the good he was doing his fellow man. Of course I speak of no such mockeries.
Rather let us think of men like O. Henry, who served a jail sentence for a crime. Surely it helped him at last to find himself, for it was afterward that he became known for his wonderful stories with all their deep understanding of human nature.
Close the door on your past and keep it closed. I have heard it said that you never really get over the death of a loved one. This is so in the sense that every circumstance of your life, every joy and every sorrow, has an effect in shaping you into what you are. But you have great control over the way it shapes you-never forget that!
I am not one of those who believe in doing away with the natural emotion of sorrow when death occurs. Tears and sorrow are provided by nature as a safety valve for the overflowing emotions. Yet most people wait too long to close the door on mourning; or they never close it. We say: "There is no use in worrying over something you can't control." Yet we worry over death for unconscionable periods of time, knowing all the while we cannot control it.
The physical body comes from the air and the soil and goes back to the sources from which it came. Perhaps the mental and spiritual portions and some mysterious essence of life also go back to sources we can sense but cannot discover. So be it! Carry along with you not the pain you knew when a loved one died, but rather the positive and sustaining memories. As life is
a natural process, so death is also.
Do you think it is possible to have only one great love in your life, especially if that love was sealed in marriage? Human experience proves this is not so. While I believe firmly in marriage, I know that the word "marriage" is not always synonymous with the word "happiness." You have a right to happiness, and this is your life. When a marriage turns out to have been a mistake, when it can be broken but it is not broken, then the mistake is perpetuated and shadows all the rest of life. Sometimes the door of the past must be closed upon a marriage before either party to that marriage, or both, can find any kind of life-success.
A job that is past opens a new door to the future. Suppose you have lost your job through no fault of your own. Suppose, then, you nurse a great resentment and a festering hatred of your former employer who was so unjust to you. Meanwhile you are going around looking for another job-and something is saying No to any prospective future employer. What says No? The negative qualities of hatred and resentment which beam from your mind to his. He cannot tell just what it is, but he feels something disturbing about you and he doesn't want you in his office or his shop.
Put the temporary setback firmly behind you, however-go out with a determined will to get a better job than the one you lose-and anyone who interviews you will feel the positive qualities that mean good man. What if you are questioned about your former employer? Say nothing bad about him! What was bad must always stay in the past and never be allowed to hinder the future.
Jobs also seem to be favorite spots in which to grow grudges. Of course you have rights and it is no part of success or peace of mind to allow yourself to be stepped upon. Many little scratches in human relations, however, are nothing but that, just little scratches, and need not be reacted to as though they were deep wounds.
How BIG are you? It takes a big person to succeed. To begin with, it takes a big person to see what is big, and worth one's attention, rather than waste emotional energy on trifling matters. When you see how you damage yourself by bearing resentment and grudges, you can put small annoyances in the past as soon as they occur. At times it is advisable to talk things over, point out how another person wounds others, and start afresh with the air cleared. But a nursed grudge is a viper in the bosom. It is a treasured negative. and you not only let it take away your peace of mind, you also encourage the formation of ulcers and many other ailments which the mind can inflict upon the body. Close that door!
It is wonderful and gratifying to see how the habit of closing the door upon the past becomes one of the greatest of sustaining habits. It helps you take possession of your own mind and condition it for the attainment of any purpose you desire.
Go the extra mile. I have often been asked to give a man something to do that helps him leave resentment behind him; especially where his job and his career are concerned. The best possible action is this: go the extra mile. Give more service and better service than you are paid for. Find out more about your job and the job above it than you absolutely have to know. Work in a way that makes your job do more than it is expected to do for the organization that employs you.
A young man was an estimator for a large printing firm. He didn't pay much attention to type faces, being content to let the customers go on using the type faces to which they were accustomed. This made his job easier-but, as I pointed out to him. it did nothing to qualify him as a man who really knows his job.
He studied type faces, arrangements of type on a page and other matters which lend effect and even artistry to broadsides and brochures. When his boss received compliments on "the beautiful jobs you tum out," the boss realized what this young man was doing for his firm's reputation. The young man is now an executive of the firm, where before he was scarcely noticed. The young man also has relieved himself of a feeling of bitterness which might, in the end, have resulted in making him an old man with a mean little salary and a mean little soul.
A saleswoman at a dry goods counter had decided that her salary and her small commissions paid her for going through the routine motions of selling what she found on the shelves, and that was that. One day a woman asked her so pleasantly and so positively to look for an item in the depths of the stockroom that she found herself looking; and when she discovered the item, she felt "bigger inside." Thereafter she made a point of suggesting items which were not visible and of putting through special orders even when they resulted in little benefit to herself.
Soon she had a regular clientele. Customers were willing to wait in order to have her serve them. Moreover, her knowledge of her business caused the buyer to rely upon her judgment. She is a buyer now, with a grand career opening before her. She says: ''There are two factors that can make you successful; your job and yourself. You are always the most important factor."
Of course you don't have to feel mean and small and imposed upon before you go the extra mile! A tonic in itself, the willingness to do more than you absolutely must is the hallmark of the big earner, the great leader, the happy and hearty person who day by day builds value into his life.
See yourself on the next step up the ladder, and the next step above that one, and many rewarding steps ahead, and the image takes hold firmly in your mind and gets you going. Should you meet a situation in which your extra efforts are not rewarded, your positive mind finds courage and resourcefulness and you leave the job that's wrong for you-push it back into your past-and find another in which the image becomes real. Where you start never matters so much as where you are going-and it is first within your own mind that you conceive greatly and begin to go.
Again the Supreme Secret has been mentioned in several ways. You may not yet be able to put it into words, but it works more and more strongly in your favor as you read successive chapters of this book.
CHECKING ON CHAPTER 2:
Every adversity has within it the seeds of an equivalent or a greater benefit
As you meet the circumstances of life they may seem adverse and damaging. Later you find that every so-called misfortune sows the seed of greater fortune to come. To help this mighty dynamic work its wonders in your life, close the door on your past. Carry along with you only what is pleasant and instructive. Leaving gloom and pain behind you, you can see the future and make it yours.
Keep yourself aware of life's endless combinations of circumstances
Do not believe that one experience of lost love or lost opportunity or other misfortune has ended your chances of winning what you thought you had lost. Some of the world's greatest men knew failure after failure as they grew toward their ultimate success. Even a handicap becomes a benefit when the man himself decides the way in which it will be a benefit to him.
When you speak of failure you attract failure, when you speak of success you attract success The failure typically dwells upon his failure and drags it through his life like a prisoner dragging his chains.
The failure also tends to be envious of those who succeed, and his envy and his malice rob him not only of wealth but also of peace of mind. Every age has its special advantages. An entire business may be labeled failure and yet come to life and make millions in the hands of a man who sees success and speaks only of success.
Is there a definite connection between wealth and peace of mind?
There is a strong connection, but it is not unbreakable. Sufficient money is necessary to almost everyone who wishes to attain peace of mind, but wealth can steal happiness away from those who make it dishonestly or do not use it correctly. Use your work and your wealth to help others. Above all, make sure that as you climb the ladder of success you do not step upon anyone else. Cutting the corners of dishonesty sets up a feeling of guilt which can destroy happiness. Even so, one who has erred can put his error firmly in the past, close the door and go on to great accomplishment.
Go the extra mile
In work situations especially, grudges and a feeling of resentment play havoc with the mind's ability to conceive and achieve. Going the extra mile has a tonic effect in relieving the mind of built-in obstacles. Add to your work more than you are paid for. Always qualify yourself for the next step upward and the steps beyond. People who succeed are not people who hold grudges or who withhold their best work, but those who in every act and thought pave their way toward greater things.