Truthful Living

by Napoleon Hill

  You will get out of this course just what you put into it. This in spite of all that your instructors can do. Inspect carefully the materials which you put into it.

  The big purpose back of the George Washington Institute is to teach men and women to think accurately. Toward this end we are constantly searching for material which will aid us in our work.

  Today I read an editorial in the Chicago Examiner that is full of food for thought. I will quote it, but first let me describe the picture which accompanied it. In the center was a great dinosaur (an extinct prehistoric animal, said to be the largest species that ever inhabited the earth). On one side of this great animal was a modern man, and on the other side was an ape-man. At the animal’s feet, so small it could hardly be seen, was a mouse. The editorial was headed:

  GREATER CHANGES WILL COME.

  This picture is to make men think. It shows the strange and powerful, huge and tiny, complicated ways in which nature’s force has worked at the great earth problem.

  That problem is to find and develop the right kind of living creature to develop and rule this earth, which is one of a great family of planets that travel through infinite space with our sun, brother in infinitude of all the distant stars.

  As this little planet is the brother planet to gigantic Jupiter, as our sun, a million times the size of this earth, is the little brother of another sun one billion times bigger than our sun, so the tiny mouse in this picture is the brother of the huge dinosaur. Both are children of the same creative force.

  And the ape-man at one end of the dinosaur has in his thick skull, back of his low forehead, a spark of planning intelligence that finds its brother in the brain of the more highly developed man at the other end of the dinosaur.

  Through millions and millions of years this development of life has gone on.

  At first, life took a form invisible to the naked eye. By the accumulation of endless billions of single cells through the process of evolution, the huge dinosaur, too big for survival was formed.

  Every kind of creature nature’s force made and tried. Let them pass before the eye of your mind.

  The huge whale, a hot-blooded animal dwelling in the cold ocean, the creatures that fly, at the first like serpents, now some with feathers, some with fur like the bat.

  The armadillo, covered, protected like the nut by a thick shell; sluggish sloths, living upside down; ants forming civilized nations; ant-eaters licking up entire ant nations at one meal; worms that live in the ground; turtles and serpents that crawl upon it; oysters fastened to the rock, unable to move; jellyfish that float where the tide takes them; sponges that are neither animal nor plant, and other creatures half-plant and half-mineral; moles that bore through the earth; eagles that go above the clouds; elephants with a trunk that is almost a hand, the most intelligent creature next to man; giraffes built to eat from treetops; swine built low to root in mud – strange, marvelous products of nature always struggling, always changing, always seeking that which is new and better, even as each of us creatures individually struggles and seeks for the new and the better.

  How strangely these creatures come from the nothing that bewilders us into passing life, then go out again to that which we do not understand.

  Some are created by the splitting in two of the parent creature. That is the simplest kind of new life – a piece breaks off and lives in its turn.

  Next comes the egg in which life mysteriously starts. Sometimes the egg is hatched within the mother and the creature born living.

  Sometimes the egg is laid in its shell, then hatched by the sun’s heat or the mother’s body.

  Some creatures, like the ornithorhynchus of Australia, are half bird and half animal – the head of a duck, body of a muskrat.

  Some mammals, like kangaroo, give birth to their young half-formed, then carry and nurse it inside of a pouch, a marsupial bag, sort of second womb, in which the half-formed creature is completed.

  Always, as we read animal history in traces left in rocks and in clay, we seem to see a great blind force struggling, striving, experimenting. Some creatures are made too tiny and weak to survive; others, like the dinosaur, too huge and ungainly to compete with; others so monstrously savage the earth cannot endure or support them.

  It is as though we saw a blind man modeling in clay, acting under blind impulse.

  Yet we know that a fixed plan beyond our feeble understanding goes through it all.

  For as we study the unborn child from the day of its conception to the day of its birth, we see repeated embryologically all the forms of life, all the processes through which living creatures on the earth have passed.

  Six weeks after its life starts, the human being unborn cannot be distinguished from very low forms of life. Later, before its full development, it has the feet, the body of an ape. Before its birth that which becomes a human being goes through the whole process of life on the planet.

  This picture may well inspire awe, wonder, reverence. The same force made all these things. The great and the tiny, the murderous brute savage, the so-called “civilized man,” great fern trees whose dropping pollen formed the coal beds that heat us and the oil that carries us in our automobiles.

  The thought as you look at this picture, dinosaur and tiny rodent, ape-man and civilized being, is this:

  The marvelous changes that have gone before during millions of years past are to be followed by changes more marvelous in the millions of years that are to come.

  We know that our planet, warmed by the sun and balanced by its power, will travel through endless space for hundreds of millions of years to come, and that there will be upward constant change, no going back, steady improvement. Then at some day, hundreds of millions of years distant, the sun’s heat and the earth’s heat will die away. Our planet and our solar system will die, as individuals die. The life of the planet and sun will move on to some future destiny, as does the life of the individual laid in the grave and apparently returning in the new-born infant.

  What will the changes of the future be? Some slight but not important changes in bodily form. There will be no more dinosaurs, no winged serpents flying through the air. All the monster forms have come and are disappearing. Nature ends her animal experimenting with man’s supremacy.

  Man will rule on the planet alone, ever changing, but with the change INSIDE, not outside. His skull will become bigger and rounder, more symmetrical, his jaw smaller as he gets away from his biting custom, his body lighter, thinner, more powerful and active. The great change will go on in the millions of brain cells in THE REAL MAN within the skull.

  A great English naturalist said, “The difference between a highly developed civilized man and a low savage is greater than the difference between that savage and the blade of grass,” and he told the truth.

  The greatest differences in nature’s building are not those that you see in this picture. The difference between a mouse and a dinosaur is not so great as that between an ordinary human being and Shakespeare.

  And the difference between Shakespeare or Michelangelo and the blade of grass is not so great as will be the difference between those “great men” of our savage period and the really great men that will come in the millions of years that lie ahead of us.

  This earth will be inhabited by men that will make of it one beautiful garden, a magnificent park in which they will live, devoting their brains to the study of the outside universe, of the power that controls all things.

  The new-born infant cannot talk to or learn from those that bend over its cradle. This new-born planet cannot talk to the other worlds or learn from them.

  But it will not be so always. The coming race that will live here will talk to the older planets and learn from them. Individual minds unborn will have power to grasp and understand the purpose and construction of a solar system as easily as we understand the wheelbarrow.

  Man will control heat, climate, and weather on this earth as easily as he controls the heat and the ventilati
on in a modern apartment house. The power of the tides and of the sun will be the only servant.

  There is a day coming in which our descendants, happy men, will look back upon us, our selfishness and cruelty in peace, our bloodthirsty wars, as we look upon this ape-man that killed his neighbor, cracked open his thigh bone and ate the marrow.

  It hath not been shown what we shall be!

  If you doubt, ask yourself what this ape-man would have said had you predicted to him the flying machine, submarine, or public school.

  A truly splendid editorial that you have just read. One that will cause any man to think, and anything that will do this is worth reading.

  However, there is something lacking about this remarkable editorial. When I have read it I want to ask:

  “What solution do you recommend? What can I do to hasten this happy day of greater enlightenment of which you write?” It makes me feel as if I had read almost to the climax of a fascinating story and then closed my book without knowing how the story ended.

  Now I shall not presume to improve the work of the great writer who wrote this editorial, nor do I wish my suggestions to be construed as a criticism of his splendid, thought-inspiring work, but I shall write a short climax such as I would have given this editorial had I written it. In doing this it is my aim not only to give you something additional to think about, but also something to do that will speed the day when “man will control heat, climate, and weather on this earth as easily as he controls the heat and ventilation in a modern apartment house.”

  Man is superior to all other animals only in one particular, and that is in the power to think. He is not the strongest animal physically, by a great deal, yet is master of all other animals because of this superior power of thought!

  This, within itself, ought to suggest the nature of the climax that I shall write for this editorial. But, if it does not, let me suggest that if thought is the quality which distinguishes man-power from brute-power, is it not likely that man can achieve still greater power by learning to think more accurately?

  Go back and read lesson three again, particularly that portion of it which tells how to think. Get the simple principles therein stated clearly fixed in your own mind, then explain them to at least a dozen other people, particularly your own children if you have any.

  Get fixed in your mind the scientific fact that every thought reproduces bodily action and has a strong tendency to crystallize into physical reality if kept in the mind long enough.

  Acquaint yourself with the scientific fact that thoughts which dwell upon fear of other men actually place you in the ape-man classification and give the more powerful and courageous man who thinks complete power to drive you as though you were an ape.

  Get clearly fixed in your mind the feeling of joy and happiness which comes to the man who has supplanted hatred, doubt, and skepticism with love, faith, and belief in humanity. Understand the scientific fact that you cannot fully enjoy the peace and quietude of the man who loves humanity until you have learned to love all humanity!

  If you wish to master your enemy, learn the power of forgiveness and deal him a crushing blow by extending him the hearty handshake the next time you meet.

  And when your enemy looks startled and surprised at your sudden change of heart, notice how he, too, will supplant his hatred with forgiveness. You will be master of the situation and the more powerful because you have learned to think and make use of Nature’s laws.

  Finally, the definite thing that you can do right now to contribute your part toward hastening the day of greater enlightenment is this. . .

  “Understand the scientifically proved fact that your thoughts reproduce themselves after their kind, then create a clear mental picture of yourself as being a person who fears no power on earth; a person who laughs at adversity because he knows he will turn it into a blessing; a man who forgives and forgets injuries; a man who lives to serve instead of to be served; a man who looks upon every failure as a great lesson from which he can learn that which will guide him right the next time; a man who is constantly striving to wring Nature’s secrets from her; do this and lo! You will find that you have been rebuilt after this pattern you have created, as if by magic.”

  – Napoleon Hill

  Then, after you have performed this miracle on yourself, teach others how to do the same. The principle is simple and results sure –

  Merely focus the mind upon the mental picture of the condition you wish to create, of the person you wish to be, and Mother Nature does the rest, in time.

  – Napoleon Hill

  By practice you can become so adept at transforming thought into physical reality that you can do it almost instantly.

  Man never has and never will build anything in physical or mechanical form that was not first created in thought form. Get that clearly fixed in your mind and prove it to your own satisfaction by trying to think of something that man created which was not first created in thought.

  Remember that the information out of which you create thought reaches your mind through the five senses of seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and feeling.

  Remember that information may be true or untrue, and that the accuracy of your thought will depend upon the accuracy of the information which reaches your mind.

  Remember, also, that prejudice is the arch enemy that stands guard over your five senses and often “colors” information so it is untrue when it gets to your mind.

  Become an accurate thinker, then follow your thoughts with action and you will place yourself a thousand years ahead of ninety percent of the world’s population, in the evolution of man.

  Cordially your friend,

  Napoleon Hill

  80 E. Randolph Street

  Chicago, U.S.A.

  GITOMER’S THOUGHTFUL ACTIONS

  HOW TO IMPLEMENT THIS LESSON

  I love this lesson the best so far. It’s so inspirational and at the same time, it’s as informative as one can possibly absorb. To convert these strategies into today’s world, you have to think about “what was” and FOCUS on “what is.” For example, Hill’s take on “CONCENTRATION/FOCUS” is much harder now than when Hill wrote about it 100 years ago – we have phones pinging us with people, information, texts, and multiple forms of communication. And at the same time, TV and advertisements are all over trying to grab your attention. Hill challenges you about SELF-CONFIDENCE AND CONCENTRATION and then talks about how focusing the mind will affect your actions and success. Use a timer to see how much time a day you’re focused on sales and success activities. All five of these elements are equally significant: imagination, desire, enthusiasm, self-confidence, and concentration. Please look at each one personally and introspectively. How can you take these five words and positively put them into your thinking and your life? The key to implementation is writing down your thoughts about each word, then defining the present situation in your life, and finally making a plan to improve (with a deadline to measure against).

  Lesson Number

  16

  Who is BEHIND your success?

  (An after-the-lesson visit with Mr. Hill)

  GITOMER INSIGHT: The word “advertising” used in this lesson is both real-world and metaphoric. And please do not be offended by the slight political correctness imperfection – that’s what life was like 100 years ago (and it was totally acceptable to all back in 1917). It has certainly been proven over the past few decades that women are not the “weaker” sex. In fact, especially in my home of four daughters, four granddaughters, and a girlfriend, quite the opposite is true. The brilliance of this lesson is that often others see qualities in you that you cannot see about yourself.

  If this lesson pushes the limit of what you would consider today as “politically correct,” get over it and seek the lesson beyond Hill’s words. It’s all about who is supporting you and speaking up for you as you seek success.

  If you are a married man, this little after-the-lesson talk is for your wife. If you are a sin
gle man, it is for the woman whenever you find her. If you are a married woman, it is for you for his benefit. If you are a single woman it is for you for his benefit after you get him.

  “We all need a source of inspiration. We need someone to gently urge us to achievement, and when we find the person who is interested in us enough to do this, we ought to stick to that person as a drowning man would cling to a floating straw.”

  – Napoleon Hill

  A few weeks ago, a little thin 110-pound woman ushered a big, strong, healthy 275-pound husband into my office. I could tell from the sheepish grin on his face that he was being brought against his will. He looked “hen-pecked,” poor fellow. Furthermore, I could see that he wanted my sympathy.

  The little woman did the talking. She was keen, alert, and business-like in her manner.

  She said, “I’ve brought my husband in to see if you’ll accept him in your class. He has been working as a street car conductor, but I’ve decided he can do something better than that.”

  The big stiff looked at me and winked.

  The little woman went on with her story. She told of her ambitions to raise and educate their four children. Of her longing for life’s necessities for her little brood.

  The heavy-weight sat there and grinned. For the ambitious little woman’s sake, I put him through the usual psychological tests. He showed about as much ability for advertising work as a Jackrabbit.

  The first thing we do in analyzing an applicant who suspects that he is afflicted with the latent “Advertisingitis” ability is to get at the motive which prompted him to turn his attention toward his field. We do this because we have found it quite easy to develop advertising ability in a person who has first set his or her heart on becoming an Advertising Manager, while the task is much harder where the student wants to take up the work just because of the belief that it will provide an “easy berth.”

  Well, in the case of our heavy-weight friend I thought it best, for obvious reasons, to remove him from the influence of the “menacing wife,” so I conducted the examination in private. As soon as we were alone, he told me frankly why he came to see me (I listened just as though I didn’t already know).