Life of
the Unsuccessful
What separates the unsuccessful from the
successful?
by
Earl Nightingale
When I think
about unsuccessful people, I think of those men and women who
seem to be at the mercy of forces over which
they seem helpless or uninterested in influencing. I was raised
as a boy in such circumstances and came to know them well. I
watched people who seemed helpless to do anything about their
problems. Their most serious shortcoming was of course lack of
education. They took their cues from those about them, which is
the self-defeating cycle of the poor — they're always following
the wrong group.
More than any
other factor, perhaps, the unsuccessful person can usually be
identified with a group that is at the mercy of events. The
unsuccessful person has things done to him or her. The
successful person seeks autonomy and makes his or her own plans
and has the self-esteem and inner excitement and knowledge to
know that those plans can be followed, barring a calamity over
which he or she can exercise no control. The unsuccessful person
tends to focus on the calamity or ride with the punches. The
successful person gives; the unsuccessful person takes. But
since we cannot reap more than we sow, the unsuccessful person,
sowing little, reaps little.
Have you ever
heard someone say, "I do no more than I'm paid to do." Sure, we
all have. And that person has stuck himself in a no-win fix.
Doing no more than he's paid to do, that man can never earn more
than he's receiving, other than just cost-of-living raises. He
is an unsuccessful man. His attitude has got him stuck in a
corner, and until or unless something changes it, in that
corner, he's going to remain. There's nothing at all that
unsuccessful people have or do that successful people do not
have more of and do better
Unsuccessful
people are not stronger or in better physical condition than
successful people. They're not better parents, wives, or
husbands. About the only thing you can say about the
unsuccessful is, as the well-known saying has it, God must have
loved them. He made so many of them.
The word
poor still applies to far too many human beings in the
United States. I keep hearing politicians say that we still have
not reached the proper distribution of income. But income is not
a factor of distribution; income is earned by someone.
If it is given to the poor, as it should be, it's because it was
earned by someone else. A country as rich as the United States
should have a level of subsystems below which no one should be
permitted to fall. But what is needed most is the kind of
education calculated to help people help themselves. And for
those who cannot help themselves, the old, the sick,
the incompetent, subsistence and clean, healthful surroundings
should be one of our most important national goals.
But the
unsuccessful serve in one important way. We need the millions of
unsuccessful people from whose ranks we can recruit the
successful people of the future. Where do you think successful
people come from? That's right, they come from unsuccessful
people. They are each an original, never before seen upon planet
earth, with deep abilities and talents just lying dormant,
waiting for the fertilization, the irrigation of good ideas and
enthusiasm to get them started growing.
Even her Royal Highness,
the Queen of England, had unsuccessful ancestors, if you go back
far enough. As human creatures, we all started even somewhere in
time. And for every successful family, there was someone who had
the drive, ambition, and determination to break from the crowd
and start the ball rolling ... to free himself from the ranks of
the unsuccessful and venture into the camp of the successful.
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