The Greatest Secret in the World

by Og Mandino

  I’m going to assume, although assuming anything is a good way to get into trouble, that you do believe in a Power or force which does have some control over your life and although you might have done very little to maintain “lines of communication” in recent years you still believe that there is “something there.” That’s all I ask.

  I will not dare hope that I can touch you as much as a famous surgeon once was affected by a little girl on whom he was about to operate. As he was about to place her on the operating table he said, “Before we can make you well we must put you to sleep.”

  She smiled up at him and said, “If you are going to put me to sleep I must say my prayers first.” And with that she jumped from the table, knelt on the marble floor and prayed, “Now I lay me down to sleep …”

  Later, the surgeon said that he prayed that night for the first time since he was a child.

  During the next five weeks (and hopefully forever after) you are not going to pray for help or personal gain of any sort … only for guidance. Did you know that in Washington, D.C., hundreds of our lawmakers meet each week in private prayer breakfasts which end with these powerful individuals on their knees seeking divine guidance?

  Can you picture generals, admirals, cabinet members, senators, representatives, White House staff members, individuals with the most powerful positions in the most powerful country in the world … on their knees … in a spirit of helpless humility … praying?

  Can you picture that two-hundred pound, six feet three, rugged and handsome Senator Harold Hughes of Iowa, wearing a wrist watch containing the twelve letters JUST FOR TODAY instead of numbers, fall to his knees after conducting a seminar for visiting foreign dignitaries and educators … and leading them in prayer?

  Do they know something we don’t know?

  Perhaps. And what they know is that they can’t “hack it” alone. But they never ask for favors or petty victories … only for the guidance which will enable them to make their own choice to resolve their problems and challenges of the day.

  It is my belief that prayers uttered for personal gain or to resolve some crisis in your life fall on deaf ears like the man and his son who were plowing their field in Georgia when a terrible lightning storm erupted. The man ran for the farmhouse, looked back and saw his son staring skyward.

  “Hey,” he yelled, “what in tarnation you doin’?”

  “I’m prayin’, Dad.”

  “Prayin’! A scared prayer ain’t worth a damn, Son—run!”

  The Salesman’s Prayer, in the final scroll, is an ideal finale for all the weeks you have labored so long to keep your Success Recorder. In its text you will find a review of all the success principles which you have concentrated on, individually, to improve your life.

  And through it, you, I know, will find the strength and the inspiration to continue moving forward no matter what fate has in store for you.

  Remember, “Failure will never overtake you if your determination to succeed is strong enough.”

  Have a happy and beautiful five weeks with:

  The Scroll Marked X

  Who is of so little faith that in a moment of great disaster or heartbreak has not called on his God? Who has not cried out when confronted with danger, death, or mystery beyond his normal experience or comprehension? From where has this deep instinct come which escapes from the mouth of all living creatures in moments of peril?

  Move your hand in haste before another’s eyes and his eyelids will blink. Tap another on his knee and his leg will jump. Confront another with dark horror and his mouth will say “My God” from the same deep impulse.

  My life need not be filled with religion in order for me to recognize this greatest mystery of nature. All creatures that walk the earth, including man, possess the instinct to cry for help. Why do we possess this instinct, this gift?

  Are not our cries a form of prayer? Is it not incomprehensible in a world governed by nature’s law to give a lamb, or a mule, or a bird, or man the instinct to cry out for help lest some great mind has also provided that the cry should be heard by some superior power having the ability to hear and to answer our cry? Henceforth I will pray, but my cries for help will only be cries for guidance.

  Never will I pray for the material things of the world.

  I am not calling to a servant to bring me food. I am not ordering an innkeeper to provide me with room. Never will I seek delivery of gold, love, good health, petty victories, fame, success, or happiness. Only for guidance will I pray, that I may be shown the way to acquire these things, and my prayer will always be answered.

  The guidance I seek may come, or the guidance I seek may not come, but are not both of these an answer? If a child seeks bread from his father and it is not forthcoming has not the father answered?

  I will pray for guidance, and I will pray as a salesman, in this manner—

  Oh creator of all things, help me. For this day I go out into the world naked and alone, and without your hand to guide me I will wander far from the path which leads to success and happiness.

  I ask not for gold or garments or even opportunities equal to my ability; instead, guide me so that I may acquire ability equal to my opportunities.

  You have taught the lion and the eagle how to hunt and prosper with teeth and claw. Teach me how to hunt with words and prosper with love so that I may be a lion among men and an eagle in the market place.

  Help me to remain humble through obstacles and failures; yet hide not from mine eyes the prize that will come with victory.

  Assign me tasks to which others have failed; yet guide me to pluck the seeds of success from their failures. Confront me with fears that will temper my spirits; yet endow me with courage to laugh at my misgivings.

  Spare me sufficient days to reach my goals; yet help me to live this day as though it be my last.

  Guide me in my words that they may bear fruit; yet silence me from gossip that none be maligned.

  Discipline me in the habit of trying and trying again; yet show me the way to make use of the law of averages. Favor me with alertness to recognize opportunity; yet endow me with patience which will concentrate my strength.

  Bathe me in good habits that the bad ones may drown; yet grant me compassion for weaknesses in others. Suffer me to know that all things shall pass; yet help me to count my blessings of today.

  Expose me to hate so it not be a stranger; yet fill my cup with love to turn strangers into friends.

  But all these things be only if thy will. I am a small and a lonely grape clutching the vine yet thou hast made me different from all others. Verily, there must be a special place for me. Guide me. Help me. Show me the way.

  Let me become all you planned for me when my seed was planted and selected by you to sprout in the vineyard of the world.

  Help this humble salesman.

  Guide me, God.

  The End … or the Beginning

  Commencement days are always fun … until the keynote speaker arises to remind you that commencement is “the time of beginning” and so far as duties and responsibilities are concerned you haven’t really lived at all, yet, and all the marvelous challenges and opportunities are still before you.

  After working so hard and so long, for that diploma, the last thing in the world you want to hear anybody tell you is that the road is going to get rougher, up ahead!

  And after working and persisting with your Success Recorder all these weeks the last thing you want to hear from me is that I’ve got you scheduled for more work, more reading, more self-examination.

  But that’s exactly what I’m telling you!

  Now that you have completed your Success Recorder the first thing I want you to do is dig up that memo you sent yourself before you began this program. On that memo you had indicated what you wanted to be earning in weekly income and what you wanted your title to be when you completed this program.

  Like those push-ups, I’ll wager you did a lot better than you thought you’d do. Now, do i
t again. Send yourself a similar memo spelling out specifically what you want to be earning in income and what you want your title to be one year from the date of your memo. If you like, also include some other 12-month objectives as material rewards for your courage and hard work … a vacation in Acapulco, a new Datsun 240-Z, that mink coat you’ve been telling “Mama” she was going to get, some day.

  But what force will continue to motivate and spur you onward for another year now that you have completed The Greatest Secret in the World? What have I got up my sleeve for you, now?

  In the next twelve months I want you to read as many as you can of the twelve greatest self-help, self-knowledge, and self-inspirational books over written. Admittedly, naming any twelve books as the “greatest” in any category is an exercise in impudence on my part and my judgment is purely subjective. However, in nearly a decade of editing self-help material it is reasonably safe to say that nearly every so-called self-help “classic” has crossed my desk. From Franklin’s, “Autobiography,” Great Britain’s Samuel Smiles and his “Self-Help,” Marden’s “Pushing to the Front” down through the Shermans, Bristols, Carnegies, Hills, Peales, and Stones to some of the present and unfortunately different group of “motivators” who write books with exotic titles like, “How to Invigorate the Psychic Power of Your Liver to Dynamically Master Others” … hundreds of books have been read by me and considered for possible excerption in Success Unlimited Magazine. What I hope to do for you, with the list I am about to suggest, is to save you many hours of non-profitable reading by helping you avoid the considerable amount of tripe that is being hustled today under the guise of “self-help literature.” Just remember that every book which begins with “How to …” won’t make you a millionaire or a saint.

  Although some of this list may be out of print I’m sure you will find many of them at your local library. Regular visits to your library is a habit you should develop, anyway, if you’re not already doing it.

  Here are my selections, not in any preferential order, for they’re all great:

  The Twelve Greatest Self-Help

  Books

  The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin by Benjamin Franklin

  Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill

  Success Through a Positive Mental Attitude by W. Clement Stone and Napoleon Hill

  The Power of Faith by Louis Binstock

  Your Greatest Power by J. Martin Kohe

  I Dare You by William Danforth

  Acres of Diamonds by Russell H. Conwell

  The Ability to Love by Dr. Allan Fromme

  How I Raised Myself from Failure to Success in Selling by Frank Bettger

  The Magic Power of Emotional Appeal by Roy Garn

  As a Man Thinketh by James E. Allen

  But that’s only eleven, you say. Well … the odds are excellent that you already have the twelfth one in your home. Perhaps you haven’t opened it for years but it’s there, waiting patiently to serve you … and it is the unlimited reservoir which has been used, and will be used, for nearly every self-help book … the Holy Bible.

  I would also hope, if you haven’t already, that somewhere along the way you manage to read the book, The Greatest Salesman in the World, for a deeper insight into the ten scrolls with which you have lived for so long.

  Before our final parting let me give you a word of warning so that you will be armed to defend yourself against those who put down all self-help literature as the destroyer of moral values and voice of the materialistic “establishment.” Every few years some writer, usually an associate professor with a foundation grant, puts together a volume which rips into every self-help author and inspirational book ever written. The private life of Horatio Alger is gleefully exposed, Benjamin Franklin is painted as a snob with a phony “homespun” exterior, Andrew Carnegie with a schizo-type personality, Norman Vincent Peale as a materialistic businessman masquerading as a preacher, Orison Swett Marden as a bumbling editor, and Dale Carnegie as a seducer of man’s ego.

  These anti-self-help books follow a common course whose logic is as follows: America is not, and never was, a great country except in the materialistic sense and since the self-help writings of the past hundred years have been credited with creating much of the motivation which produced our tremendous materialistic success then the self-help writings must accept a considerable portion of the blame for the “terrible” condition our country is in, today.

  To supply you with a biographical sketch of every American whose success story and contributions to mankind are a rebuttal to this warped logic would fill your living room with books.

  But what is most interesting to me is that this small group of “anti” writers have been blinded by their own prejudices so that they fail to realize that in order to complete their own book they needed to apply nearly all the virtues such as persistence, hard work, faith, courage, industry, resolution, order, sincerity, concentration, and action which they condemn others for suggesting we use.

  The “anti” writers, in the final reckoning, are perfect examples that what they say won’t work does work! Oh, ye of little faith …

  I must leave you, now, and I can think of no better way than with the words of Dr. Reinhold Niebuhr at another commencement exercise, many years ago:

  “Nothing that is worth doing can be accomplished in your lifetime; therefore you will have to be saved by hope. Nothing that is beautiful will make sense in the immediate instance; therefore, you must be saved by faith. Nothing that is worth doing can be done alone, but has to be done with others; therefore you must be saved by love.”

  Peace!

  To the greatest “success recorder”

  in my life, with love …

  … my wife, Bette

  Bantam Books by Og Mandino

  A BETTER WAY TO LIVE

  THE CHOICE

  THE CHRIST COMMISSION

  THE GIFT OF ACABAR (with Buddy Kaye)

  THE GREATEST MIRACLE IN THE WORLD

  THE GREATEST SALESMAN IN THE WORLD

  THE GREATEST SALESMAN IN THE WORLD,

  PART II: The End of the Story

  THE GREATEST SECRET IN THE WORLD

  THE GREATEST SUCCESS IN THE WORLD

  MISSION: SUCCESS!

  OG MANDINO’S UNIVERSITY OF SUCCESS

  THE RETURN OF THE RAGPICKER

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  OG MANDINO is the most widely read inspirational and self-help author in the world today. His fourteen books have sold more than twenty-five million copies in eighteen languages. Thousands of people from all walks of life have openly credited Og Mandino with turning their lives around and for the miracle they have found in his words. His books of wisdom, inspiration, and love include A Better Way to Live; The Choice; The Christ Commission; The Gift of Acabar; The Greatest Miracle in the World; The Greatest Salesman in the World; The Greatest Salesman in the World, Part II: The End of the Story; The Greatest Secret in the World; The Greatest Success in the World; Mission: Success!; Og Mandino’s University of Success; and The Return of the Ragpicker.