Truthful Living

by Napoleon Hill

  And you say to yourself casually, “Oh, I see the lights are on!”

  – Bruce Barton, Editor.

  GITOMER NOTE: The author is saying that if things are taken for granted, and assumed to be there for us to indulge in, then imagination and its sister creativity will be stifled. Take a close look at the examples of heat and electricity – they were NEW! Obviously society and technology have taken several quantum leaps – BUT this is an individual challenge to YOU – where is YOUR imagination and creativity? How are you discovering it and using it for personal and universal benefit? Or are you still (100 years later) just turning on the lights?

  The following letter, written by Mr. Hill, presents another concrete example of the use of imagination:

  DEAR FRIEND,

  I went back for a visit to the old farm this past summer. It was the first time I had been there in twenty years.

  You’d be surprised to know how things had changed. The old swimming hole that used to be so deep that it was supposed not to have any bottom was filled up with sand. Trees have grown up around the banks and the old river didn’t look as it did twenty years ago when I was learning to swim on a rail.

  The old farm showed signs of better days, and the old home was weather beaten and dilapidated. No one knew me. The chums of my boyhood days had grown up and moved away. New faces and strange people looked at me askance. The dogs barked at me.

  For the first time in my life I felt like Rip Van Winkle. What a forlorn feeling that is! I can’t describe it to you. You would have to feel that way yourself to understand it.

  The little cedar tree, which I planted twenty-five years ago, had grown to be the largest tree on the place. It was a little sprig of branches not more than a foot high when I planted it.

  I met a boy bringing the cows home from the pasture. He had a fishing pole on his shoulder. His face was berry-stained. His trousers struck him at the ankles and were two sizes too big. There was a big patch on the seat and one on each knee. One suspender held them up. The front end of that suspender was fastened to a wooden peg instead of a button. He was barefooted. He grinned at me sheepishly. I knew where he got that berry-stained face for I had slipped into Sid Well’s berry patch many a time myself. But I loved the looks of that sunburned boy. He looked just as I did some twenty years ago. We stopped and looked each other over. We didn’t say anything, but we understood. He could tell by the expression on my face that I was his kind.

  The only person I met who recognized me was my old sweetheart. We used to go to school together when I wore knickerbockers and she wore knee dresses and sunbonnets. She was married. Four little dirty faces peeped out from behind her skirt and eyed me suspiciously. I took out my watch and showed her the picture of my wife and two boys. We had a pleasant little chat. Her husband came in from the harvest fields. He was a sturdy young chap, but he didn’t seem to take to me very well. I had my suspicions why.

  I stopped at the old sulphur spring for a drink of water. As I lifted the gourd cup to my parched lips, I thought of those good old days of long ago, when I carried water from that same old spring in a tin bucket. I sat down on the rock wall that protects the spring from surface water and had a half hour’s pleasant visit in the realms of the past. It was like a dream. Everything came back to me so vividly, so real. The strong smell of sulphur water, the pine needles drifting down from the spring, the smell of the new-mown hay from the nearby meadow carried me back to the days of my childhood.

  Step by step I retraced my past. In that short half hour I lived it all over again. My first thought was of my mother, who died when I was nine years old. Then all the memories of things that were unpleasant – of a battle for existence that has been contested at every stop – a battle that began the day I was deprived of my home.

  Then came the unpleasant and ghost-like memories of those long days and nights that followed which I spent in the wilderness, with no roof over my head, no home, no friends.

  Then came the memories of my first job, chopping Spanish needles with a goose-neck hoe in return for my board. Then my new job in a coal mine at a dollar a day. My! That was a lot of money – a whole dollar for a day’s work!

  Then more pleasant memories led me over my later experiences, from the day I got my first position as a stenographer to the day that I graduated in law. Then came still more pleasant memories of the day I became Assistant to the Chief Counsel for one of the largest companies in the world at a salary of $2,500 a year – the same company that owned the coal mine where I had worked at a dollar a day. Another shift in the memories of the past brought me back to the day I became advertising manager for one of the largest institutions of its kind in the world, at a salary of $5,000 a year.

  I was startled as if coming out of a trance. It was just like living over the past twenty years. A cold perspiration stood on my forehead. The joys and sorrows of the past had all swept over me again, as realistic as they were when I first experienced them.

  I visited the little white schoolhouse on the top of the hill, two miles away, where I first went to school. The same old schoolhouse, with the same old benches, was right there, all carved up and marked with initials just like they were twenty years ago. I played with the school children during the noon hour. We played a game of baseball and also had a turn at “bull pen.” Then the school bell rang. The teacher was a young girl who wasn’t born when I was down in that country last. She let me “teach” for half an hour. I had the time of my life, and so did the boys and girls.

  We mixed mirth with melody. I told them some funny stories, and then I wound up by telling them about the day I left that country, and about some of my experiences since that day. I saw a good many dampened eyelids in the room. I’m not so sure that my own eyes were exactly dry.

  I wrote a few lines of “shorthand” on the blackboard. Not one of them had ever heard of shorthand. Not one of them had so much as thought about what he or she was going to do to earn a living. Some of them were old enough to begin thinking seriously about this, too.

  Poor little fellows! I hardly knew whether to pity them or congratulate them at first, but after I got back to the city and began to think it over, I came to the conclusion that I ought to pity them for being placed in an environment like that.

  A little adversity is good for us! The man to be really pitied is the fellow who grows up with a “silver spoon” in his mouth, with a rich dad and no responsibilities! It’s a safe ten-to-one shot that such a man will never be a very strong competitor of the fellow who has had to fight hard for every foot of ground he has covered in his life’s progress.

  It is not wealth that makes a man – it is character, persistence, and a strong determination to be of service to the world! Don’t forget that word S-E-R-V-I-C-E! If you ever succeed in life, you may rest assured that your real success will be measured and determined by the QUANTITY and QUALITY of the SERVICE you render.

  You may be wealthy for all I know; that isn’t SUCCESS! You may have a splendid education for all I know, but that isn’t success either! You may have wealthy parents, but neither is that SUCCESS, for you must remember that wealth, as measured in dollars and cents, is an evasive thing which sometimes takes wings and flies away. The only real, permanent, and worthwhile SUCCESS is represented by the character you are building.

  GITOMER NOTE: Take a moment to think about your character and how important it is to your success. Do a realistic self-assessment and write areas for improvements as well as those elements you believe are excellent. Make a definite plan to improve and strengthen your character.

  And remember that whether you know it or not, you are building some sort of character all the time. The chances are ten to one that if you are devoting some of your time to self-improvement through the reading of the right sort of books, you are building a character that will be an asset to you in years to come. On the other hand, the odds are just as great that if you are squandering your time in idle amusement, and giving no thought to self-improve
ment, your character will not be improved, but may become an embarrassing liability in the years to come.

  Character is built slowly, step by step. Your every thought and every action go into it.

  James Allen truly said: “AS A MAN THINKETH SO IS HE!” If you think worthwhile things, you are pretty apt to be a worthwhile man. You can be pretty much whatever you want to be. If you want to be a Mechanical Engineer, or an Electrical Engineer, or an Expert Accountant, or a Stenographer or a Lawyer, or an Advertising Manager, or anything else, you CAN if you keep your mind on that one thing.

  We should never complain if success does not come easily. If it did, we might not recognize it when it arrived!

  My sympathies and my best wishes are with you, whether I hear from you or not, but I cannot be of much help to you unless you take me into your confidence and tell me frankly what you are up against. Is there anything you would like to ask the College to do for you?

  Whatever you may undertake in life, whatever your lot may be, whether you are successful or unsuccessful, rich or poor, just remember that I am ever ready to extend to you the hand of good fellowship. And also remember that if you ever happen to come to Chicago, there is a warm welcome awaiting you here at the College.

  With all good wishes for your success, believe me.

  Cordially and sincerely yours,

  Napoleon Hill

  “The only real, permanent and worthwhile SUCCESS is represented by the character you are building.”

  – Napoleon Hill

  IMPORTANT NOTES on IMAGINATION and WRITING

  By way of explanation we will add that Mr. Hill did not make the trip back to the old home place, which he describes in this letter. It is all his idea of what might have happened had he made this trip.

  This letter is presented not only as a concrete illustration of the practical use of Imagination, but also as an example of the effectiveness of short, terse sentences. Notice the simplicity of the words used and how easy it is to follow the writer of the letter. You find no involved, long, drawn-out sentences. This is the most effective style to use in writing sales literature of any kind, and you must aim constantly to develop this style if you are to write business-getting information.

  Then, too, there is another good lesson in this letter. It was written as part of a follow-up system for correspondence school in which Mr. Hill was interested. You may be interested to know that while this letter says very little about “selling a correspondence course,” it brought back over $50,000 in business. The evident sincerity back of the letter, the human interest of the entire story, the simplicity of the words employed, all formed a powerful selling influence.

  Mr. J. F. Stevens of our staff presents the following treatise on the subject of Imagination from a more practical viewpoint than that of Dr. Hess. He discusses the subject as follows:

  Although your textbook divides Imagination into six kinds of classes, you will find a two-fold division sufficient for practical use. This two-fold division is: First, Reproductive Imagination; second, Productive Imagination.

  By the power of Reproductive Imagination, you reproduce or reconstruct in your mind a picture or mental image of a previous experience. Can you imagine just how the dinner table looked yesterday? Try! What food was on the table? How did it taste? Was the odor of cooking savory? What was the conversation about? Do you recall the touch of your knife and fork, your napkin and the dishes, as you handled them?

  “Character is built slowly, step by step. Your every thought and every action go into it.”

  – Napoleon Hill

  The picture you get of the dinner table is an example of Reproductive Imagination. You have created nothing new. You have simply recalled, as it occurred, a previous experience.

  Productive Imagination, on the other hand, takes elements or parts of previous experiences and combines them in a new, novel, or fantastic way.

  Let us see how! Picture an instrument that permits you to look through buildings and mountains as though they were thin air; that enables you to glimpse at will the sandy stretches of the Sahara Desert, or the battlefields of Europe; that brings everything everywhere within the range of your eye. Your mental image of this instrument is an example of Productive Imagination. Have you, however, created anything new?

  We will dissolve this product of the imagination into its elements and see if it is not a combination of parts of previous experiences. First, there is the idea of transparency. That is nothing new. We have all explained the transparency of glass. We have all heard of the X-ray which makes hidden things visible. Second, there is the idea of drawing distant places near so that we can see them clearly. That is not a new idea. We are familiar with the telescope or opera glass. Consequently, you see that our fantastic example of Productive Imagination is, in truth, merely a putting-together of fragments of previous experiences in a new combination.

  You will find that you are unable, even with the help of the wonderful instrument we have imagined, to picture any place, landscape, or thing that you have not seen either in person or in pictures.

  You can re-create in your mind only those impressions or experiences which have come to you through your senses. A blind person cannot imagine an aeroplane in flight because he has never seen one flying, not even a picture of one. He can tell how it feels if he has gone over it with his fingers. A deaf person cannot imagine the sound of church bells because he has never heard them. If he has seen them, he can picture their appearance.

  In Imagination, therefore, you can only picture, in whole or in part, those things which you have seen, heard, felt, smelt, or tasted.

  You will find ample opportunities to employ both Reproductive and Productive Imagination.

  Fix this firmly – there can be nothing in the mind that has not come in through the senses. Therefore, keep your appeal to the imagination in terms of your past experiences.

  If you reflect, you will note that there is a distinct type of Imagination for each sense. We will classify these as follows:

  SENSE: TYPE OF IMAGERY:

  Hearing . . . . . . Auditory imagery

  Seeing . . . . . . Visual imagery

  Feeling . . . . . . Muscular imagery

  Tasting . . . . . . Gustatory imagery

  Smelling . . . . . . Olfactory imagery

  Sometimes an image is a blending of several types. Thus, your mental picture of a cup of coffee may be a composite of its appearance, its taste, and its aroma.

  There are then five important things to remember about Imagination:

  First: That for practical purposes it is of two kinds:

  (a) Reproductive Imagination

  (b) Productive Imagination

  Second: That imagination can only reproduce or combine sense experiences.

  Third: That the appeal to the imagination is limited by the extent of past experiences.

  Fourth: That there should be an appropriate relation between the image and the type of imagery appealed to.

  Fifth: The question is often asked in connection with this lesson: How can I develop my Imagination for practical use?”

  It can be done, and is being done all around us every day:

  First, by reading, observation, and study of men and things;

  Second, by the use of memory, storing the results of our study in our minds, and recalling them when needed;

  Third, by fitting our previous experiences and knowledge to the conditions of others.

  It is well for you to strengthen your Imagination from both Literature and Life. Certain reading is very beneficial to the development of Imagination.

  There are certain characters in literature that become as real and impressive to us as the members of our own family, and we see the results of the Imagination of the author. Take the characters of Dickens, for example – Mr. Pickwick, Nicholas Nickleby, Oliver Twist, the Parish Beadle, Old Fagin, the Artful Dodger, Nancy, and Bill Sikes. Or those of Robert Louis Stevenson; or of Kipling; Sherlock Holmes, as imagined by
Conan Doyle; or the Chicago street boy, Artie, by George Ade; and the ball player, depicted by Ring Lardner’s You Know Me, Al. All are splendid works of the Imagination and well worthy of study, because they truly depict human life under varying conditions and will increase one’s knowledge of the world.

  In the realm of science, Imagination plays its part. Jules Verne saw the submarine in Imagination, though Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea seemed impossible of realization, if not ridiculous, to the readers of his day. So with the airplane, which Langley, Chanute, and the Wright brothers not only saw first in Imagination, but lived to realize.

  Akin to these imaginary characters of Literature are the imaginary characters in Advertising, products of the same mental faculty. Take the faces of “Before and After” ads, and you see the images clearly.

  Art lives and thrives on the Imagination of the true artist, and artists are lending themselves more and more to the aid of commerce, so that there is real art in much of the advertising today. Men and women should at least keep up with the artist in the matter of fruitful Imagination.

  While Imagination is not always to be given free rein, it will be found highly desirable from time to time. So, cultivate your Imagination and make it work for you! Like all other faculties, you will find it a poor master, but a good servant.

  “Never complain if success does not come easily. If it did, you might not recognize it when it arrived!”

  – Napoleon Hill

  GITOMER’S THOUGHTFUL ACTIONS

  HOW TO IMPLEMENT THIS LESSON

  Think about the most successful ideas you have ever had. Then put together the scenario that created the idea. The place, the people, the surroundings, the time, and your situation in life at that moment. Those same elements will help you understand how to create new ideas. When you get an idea, you might want to run it by your trusted advisors or mentors first. People who will give you honest feedback. Then run it by a few friends – if they say, “You’re nuts,” I promise you are on the right path. Just ask the people who thought Steve Jobs or Bill Gates or Jeff Bezos were nuts.