You Become What You Think About™

Earl Nightingale & Nightingale-Conant
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Weekly insights into success, personal development, and the power of positive thinking from one of the most influential voices in the field of motivational broadcasting. You Become What You Think About™ is a trademark owned by Nightingale-Conant. These episodes are from the Our Changing World series by Earl Nightingale. © Nightingale-Conant.

  1. Sep 27

    Find a Need and Fill It: Earl Nightingale on Seeing Opportunity

    These days we hear a lot about big business and how big it's getting. There's nothing wrong with big business, and one of the most interesting things about it is that every business, no matter how big it might be today, started small. One of the largest corporations in the United States was started with about $30,000 of borrowed money, and after 10 years of operation only had $6,000 in its account. But a good thing to remember too is that every business, no matter how big or far-flung, no matter how many thousands of employees and skyscraper office buildings it might have, got its start in the mind of one human being. Committees are all right, and groups are all right when it comes to solving problems, but every good idea had to start in the mind of one human being, and usually came as a result of something he observed. You could start a business of your own this year, which in 20 or 30 years could be a big, far-flung business too. These people who tell you all the good businesses are taken, or that there aren't any opportunities anymore, are full of hot air, and I have to admit that there are quite a few of them running around. They make you want to come up with Shakespeare's classic line, he jests at scars that never felt a wound. There are six words that lie at the root of any business success: Find a need, and fill it. Now the extent of your success will be determined by your ability to fill that need, and by the need's importance. Anytime you see a business that's thriving and successful, you must realize that it is filling a need. If it weren't, it would just stop and close up shop. And the size of a business is controlled only by the number of people it serves. For example, a store that can accommodate 500 people must be larger than a business that can accommodate only 100. I know a man who made a really big business running a gas station. One day he was watching a customer, and he noticed that while the man's car was being serviced, he just had to stand around and wait. He had money to spend, and there were undoubtedly things he'd like to buy, things he needed, if he could only see them. So my friend started adding these things, and he kept right on adding them until now he's had to add a big sporting goods store alongside of the now large and modern gas station. While your car is being serviced at his station, you can buy anything from a package of chewing gum to a $200 shotgun, or a boat and trailer, outboard motor, a box of chocolates for your wife. You can also cash a check anytime you feel like it, and he extends credit on everything. On a Friday or Saturday, he'll cash forty to fifty thousand dollars worth of checks on each day, and hardly anyone leaves without buying something, or at least having his car serviced. Now, my friend's business was no different from any other gas station in the country, but he thought about his business, and one day there popped into his mind an idea. He saw a need, and he filled it. I guess he could sell out today for around a half million dollars, when you figure all the properties bought and paid for during the years, and added on to his original small business. The fact is, there's more opportunity today, far more than there ever was before. We're completely surrounded by it. There's just one catch to it: We've got to be able to see it. I'll be back in just 60 seconds. A lot of people would like to try something better, but they're security conscious and worried. You know, there's no way in the world to get to second base, unless you take your foot off first, is there? This is Earl Lantingale. Thank you. Thank you.

  2. Sep 20

    Tell Your Own Fortune: How Thought Shapes the Life You’ll Live

    Way back in history, from the earliest times, people have been making their living and securing for themselves a modicum of fame by proposing that they can tell other people's fortunes. History tells us that even kings used to regulate their lives by the so-called wisdom of these canny opportunists. In ancient Rome, so-called wizards used to inspect the livers of freshly killed chickens looking for good or bad omens before the great and important Roman senators could even meet on a subject. Fortune-telling is about as old as the Roman race, I guess, but as I see it, the mistake has always revolved around the misguided notion that either someone else has to tell our fortune or we have to tell someone else's fortune. Now, the wisest men of all times have understood something that I don't suppose more than one or two people in a hundred have ever figured out for themselves, and that is that while it's just about impossible for us to tell the fortune of someone else, it is possible for us to tell our own fortune. That's right. Any person in full possession of his faculties can, to an altogether unsuspected extent, tell his own fortune right to the letter. Of course, I know you realize that I'm talking about those things that are within the areas of human control. But this gives each of us a really exciting future and an enormous amount of power. For example, a man can decide on the income he wants to earn, the place in which he wants to live, the job he wants to earn, and all kinds of other things in advance, and then reach him right on schedule, one after another, just as he foretold. Now, if this isn't telling your own fortune, I'd like to know what it is. I spent years studying this subject, and it all boiled down to one sentence, and that's that men become what they think about. You'll find that most people believe their lives are shaped by circumstances over which they can exercise no control. Well, that's a lot of nonsense, or as Shakespeare put it, our doubts are traitors and make us lose the good we oft might win by fearing to attempt. The greatest thinkers and leaders from ancient Greece right to the present time have agreed on one point, and that is that we become what we think about. That's right. Our environment, if we're old enough to have any control over it, is really nothing more than a mirror of our minds. The old Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius said this way, he said, a man becomes what he thinks about all day long, and this has been repeated by all the wise men since. As William James of Harvard put it, if you would be rich, you will be rich. If you would be good, you will be good. If you would be learned, you will be learned. But wish for one thing exclusively, and don't at the same time wish for a hundred other incompatible things just as strongly. There's only one catch to this business of telling your own fortune. You have to want something very much. You have to want it enough to earn it. You have to want it enough to strive and suffer for it, to learn enough to be worthy of it. If you can qualify on these counts, you can tell your own fortune, just as the wise men and women of today are telling their own fortunes, and as the wise ones of every generation since the dawn of recorded history have told theirs. You will become what you think about anyway, whether you like it or not. So thinking becomes pretty important, doesn't it? I'll be back in just one minute. Philip Brooks once wrote, The ideal life is in our blood and never will be still. Sad will be the day for any man when he becomes contented with the thoughts he's thinking and the deeds he's doing, where there is not forever beating at the doors of his soul some great desire to do something larger which he knows he was meant and made to do. Thank you.

  3. Sep 13

    Television’s Two Sides: Miracle Medium or Living Room Monster?

    In the long history of amazing technological developments, I guess one of the most wonderful and truly amazing is a thing called television. There was a time when I made my living by this wondrous medium, but I don't pretend to understand it. How they can send a moving picture invisibly through the air and through brick walls and steel and have it come out in a box in your living room is something too complex for my limited gray matter. And now they're bouncing TV signals off the moon or artificial satellites so that we can have worldwide live TV. Truly, this will have to be listed as one of the most amazing inventions of the 20th century. Now, people can sit in the calm, uncrowded comfort of their living rooms and for pennies of electricity see the greatest stars in the world on new and constantly changing programs. Not only that, but being a new multimillion dollar industry with hundreds of offshoots, TV has created thousands of new jobs, new manufacturing, distribution, and sales channels. Entertainment and education for us and our children are now awaiting only the turn of a knob and the illumination of a screen. I've often thought that television's greatest contribution is probably to older people in shut-ins, the lonely ones who each night can look forward to their favorite programs and thereby escape their somewhat limited worlds in the excitement and sound of this new two-dimensional miracle. But, I'll bet you knew this was coming, as Benjamin Franklin said everything in moderation. I've got nothing against the really great shows like the ball games and the fights and an occasional Western, but if we're not careful, this electronic pet can turn into a stalking, implacable monster. The experts tell us that television has precipitated the greatest mass escape and pleasure binge since the days of the Roman circus. In fact, a geneticist has said that perhaps in some future time, humans will not have two eyes anymore, but just one big eye, shaped like a television screen right in the middle of our foreheads and up sort of high since we'll no longer have any use for brains. They say that today's average man comes home, wolfs down his dinner, and rushes into the living room to watch his favorite TV shows. He turns on the set and then to the sound of music, loud voices, and the steady reverberating sound of gunfire, loses himself in other worlds that he must think are better than his own. If you'll define it, you'll realize that when you're watching TV, all you're really doing is watching other people earn good incomes following their own careers while you don't make a nickel and wind up with nothing more intriguing than red eyes and a hollow head. I say the world is vastly improved because they've perfected television. I'm glad they invented cars too, but I don't spend five or six hours every night driving around the block. When I want to go someplace, my car is there for me in the garage. When there's a show I want to see, my TV sits there. But I'll be darned if I'll waste three or four hours every night watching the thin consomme that's supposed to pass for nourishment. And you shouldn't either, unless, as I said earlier, that you have too much free time on your hands or you're a shut-in. And even then, you'll get a lot more good on the whole lot of books. You'll still have red eyes, but there'll be more protein in your brain cells too. I'll be back in just one minute. Every great technological development is like a big coin. It has two sides. The combustion engine is one of the world's greatest developments. But each year, it kills many thousands who haven't learned how to handle it yet. Maybe before we turn on the television set, we should ask ourselves, is this the best thing I can do this evening? Thank you.

  4. Sep 6

    The Best Things Are Free: Earl Nightingale on Life’s True Wealth

    Some wise man once said that men don't always need educating as much as they need reminding, and every once in a while we're sharply brought up and reminded of a great truth, the truth being that the best things in life are free. I think each one of us, down deep inside, knows the truth of this. Naturally, we need money with which to live and to provide against emergencies and for our future, our retirement, and so on. But all too frequently we get to putting too much value on things you can see and buy, and too little on the things you can't. Not too long ago, an attractive 46-year-old woman with a husband and family was notified that she had inherited two million dollars. She had also been notified of the fact that she had only one year to live. What would you do with two million dollars and a year to live? Well, here's what she said. I'm going to leave it all to my husband. She said, as for me, I don't need anything. I don't want anything. All I want is peace and quiet. And then she said, I want to live. It makes me so sad to think that I'm going to die. Well, here's the old and always poignant story. The trouble comes not in knowing we're going to die. We all know that. It's knowing when. As Albert Einstein said, everything is relative. Two million dollars might seem like a lot of money to a lot of people, but I've never met a person who would take it if it meant that he'd know for sure he had only one year to live. I know a lot of people, on hearing about this, would say, well boy, I'd really go on a tear for a year. But you wouldn't. The knowledge that we're not long for this world is sobering. It makes us see things in their true light and place value where it really belongs, and on a lot of things you can't see and which came absolutely free. Suddenly, faith becomes more important than ever before, and so does the love for the ones near to us. We begin to see things as we have never seen them before. Sights, sounds, and smells take on their true proportions and importance, and a lot of the things we thought we had to have before fade into insignificance. Someone once wrote, every year I live, I am more convinced that the waste of life lies in the love we have not given, the powers we have not used, the selfish prudence that will risk nothing, and which, shirking pain, misses happiness as well. No one ever yet was the poor, in the long run, for having once in a lifetime let out all the length of all the reins. We're all under the same sentence. The only difference being that we don't know when. Wouldn't it be a shame to wait until the time actually came to suddenly see things in their true light? Well, it would be morbid to dwell on thoughts like these all the time. But reading that article about the woman who inherited two million dollars and had only one year to live made me, and I suppose a lot of people, pause for a minute or so and try to get the world back into focus, if only for a short while. Something like that makes you want to be a little more gentle, a little more thoughtful, a little more loving and less critical, and above all, realize the truth of that song title, the best things in life are free. I'll be back in one minute. The value of money lies in the shelter and protection it will afford our families, the things that will help us learn, the opportunity to see more, do more, and so grow as individuals, nothing more. It should be saved for what it will do, not for what it is. This is Earl Nightingale. Thank you.

  5. Aug 30

    The King Who Pumped Too Much Money: Earl Nightingale on Inflation

    There's no doubt that advertising has done a lot of good for all of us, even though we grumble about it now and then. The other day I was flying into Chicago from Omaha and read a very interesting ad which appeared in the Chicago Tribune. It was written as a fable or fairy tale, but it packed a great message, and I'm sure a lot of people benefited from it. Let me read it to you. The title is, The King Who Pumped Too Much Money Into His People. It seems that once there was a king named Joseph the fourth. He loved his people so much that he was always trying to do things for them. Everybody called him good old Joe. One day the royal privy council appeared before him and said, good old King Joe, our ears have been to the ground and we've heard rumblings of hard times. Well, beamed the king, we can't have that, and he went into his pump room and pumped a new supply of money into the economy. Whereupon the royal privy councillors marveled and shouted hooray, all except a skinny little sub-councillor named Sadly, who was kept around to balance the books and do other menial chores. Go easy on that pump, King, said Sadly, for it's written there is such a thing as too much of a good thing, but nobody heard him. And soon it was harvest time, and again the royal privy councillors appeared, and this time with grave news that the farmers had produced more food than the people could eat and had no market for it. So good old Joe went out to his royal balcony and proclaimed a royal subsidy, saying he'd pump out more money and buy all the crops the farmers couldn't sell, and many farmers shouted bravo. Well, the chief royal councillor shouted, pump out a little more this time, King, and prices climbed sharply during the third quarter, and Sadly, the skinny little sub-councillor moaned, well, you've done it again, but they didn't hear him. Soon the councillors were back again with the news that the guilds were insisting on the hiring of two men for one man's job, but the king liked to have his people have it soft, and he thought that was fine. But this time our friend Sadly stood up and looked the king in the eye, and he said, King, when you force the manufacturers to pay through their nose, they have to raise prices, and when prices go up, wages have to go up, which makes prices go up, which makes wages go up. But the king stopped him and said, I won't have that, that's inflation. That's right, said Sadly. Inflation is started when excess money is pumped into the people, when crops that have no demand are bought with government funds, when two men are allowed to be paid for the work of one. Sad to relate, our friend Sadly went on, you can't create wealth simply by creating dollars. Our real wealth stems from our production of goods and services. Dollars are only a common denominator for trading them. And he went on to explain to the king that if dollars are increased without increasing production proportionately, there's excess money and prices go up. Well, the king saw the wisdom of Sadly's counsel, and he kicked all of his other so-called councillors out of the castle, and he promoted Sadly to the job of new chief royal privy councillor. Well, after I read the ad and enjoyed it, I sat there on the airplane for a while and wondered, how many people would have read it if it had been written as a learned treatise on economics? I wonder. Well, I'll be back in just one minute. The moral of our little story is, to do your part in curbing inflation, know the facts and speak up loud enough to be heard in high places. I like this story, and I'm sure you liked it too. This is Earl Nightingale. Thank you.

  6. Aug 23

    Earl Nightingale on Books, Knowledge, and the Idea That Frees You

    When I was about 12 years old, I made a discovery that has saved my neck and has turned what could have been a fairly boring existence into a pretty exciting affair. It may sound as though I stumbled onto a goldmine, and in a way I suppose I did, but what really happened was that I discovered books. That's right. It suddenly dawned upon me that reading a book could be the most exciting and interesting thing in the world, and at the same time that, by reading books, I could learn all the many wonderful things that the great and wise men who have lived before me had learned at such a tremendous cost in brains and time. Ever since the printing press was discovered and developed by Johann Gutenberg in Germany back in the year 1450, books have been the world's greatest investment. The right kind of books, that is. Like everything else, there are a lot of books that aren't worth the paper they're printed on. A good sign is that we're reading a lot more than we used to as a nation, despite all the distractions. We'll buy about 630 million books this year, not counting textbooks, and that's about twice as many books as we were buying ten years ago. Good books are crammed with good ideas, and one idea can change your life. As a great educator has said, a mind stretched by a new idea can never again go back to its original proportions. But here's a sobering thought. It has also been said that as far as about 95% of the people are concerned, all the really great books, with their treasure of golden knowledge, could be burned. That's right. Probably 95% of the people would never miss them, and all because they haven't discovered the thrill and excitement of learning new things in good books. Take a man who works for a living, for example. If he would study the books that pertain to his job, his industry, and his place in our economy, he could really move ahead and do a much better job. Just this one thing would make an exception of him, and it's the exceptions who can write their own ticket in the world. And he could pretty well figure that he was one of the very few, if not the only one, where he works who realizes an education doesn't stop with a diploma. One fine day he could be reading and run across the idea that could bring him and his family everything they want. But there's another important factor here, too. The more we learn about what it is we do, the more enthusiastic about it we become. And it begins to rub off on the people with whom we associate and the people to whom we want to sell our ideas. As Socrates pointed out, ignorance is the cause of evil. And probably the greatest pity of it all is that knowledge is free. We're surrounded by it on every side, in our public libraries, our schools, and the books we already have in our homes but don't read. Books like the Bible. And what about that set of encyclopedia you bought? I may be wrong, in which case it probably won't be the first time, but I'll bet that if most people would just read the books they've already got in the house, they'd be started on the most exciting journey a man or woman can make. The lifetime search for knowledge. With it, we can be free. Without it, we can't be much of anything. I'll be back in one minute. A fine lady by the name of Annie Besant once wrote, Knowledge is essential to conquest. Only according to our ignorance are we helpless. Thought creates character. Character can dominate conditions. Will creates circumstances and environment. This is Earl Nightingale. Thank you.

  7. Aug 18

    Attitude Is Everything: Earl Nightingale on Winning at Life and Work

    Of all the words in all the languages of the world, what would you say is the most important word when it comes to this business of living successfully? Well, according to the experts, the word is attitude, and it's a fact that it is this word, or rather what we mean by this word, that will determine more than any other single thing what happens to us. My dictionary defines the word attitude as a noun meaning position, disposition, or manner with regard to a person or thing. And it is our attitude that determines what happens to us in life. As William James of Harvard once put it, it is our attitude at the beginning of a difficult task which, more than anything else, will affect its successful outcome. I may not have that word for word, but that's about it. And what he meant was that the kind of an attitude we have when we start some particular job will determine to a tremendous extent whether or not we'll enjoy it and whether or not we'll be successful doing it. One of the best stories I ever read about this was about a couple of young women who worked in a telegraph office. They were just about ready to quit because the people who came into their office were so miserable, complaining, officious, and downright insulting. Just before quitting, though, these two young ladies did a very wise thing. Just for the fun of it, they decided on their last day to bend over backwards being sweet to people. They agreed that no matter what the person looked like or acted like when he came into their office, they'd just overwhelm him with courtesy and efficiency. Well, before the day was over, the girls got the idea. They didn't have a single miserable or complaining customer all day. They enjoyed the experience tremendously, and it was wonderful having people smiling and being polite to them. For the first time, they realized that the customers who had seemed so terrible before had simply been reacting to the poor attitude the girls had been assuming. The number one cause for people losing jobs is their inability to get along with other people. This has long been known. And the strangest thing is that these people never catch on to the fact that we get back, measure for measure, just exactly what we put out. And if you've found people reacting unfavorably, or if you've gotten the idea the world is picking on you, it might be worth your time to study the front you've been presenting to the world. You should check your attitude. I had an office high in a skyscraper one time, and the first day I was taken up by an elevator operator who was the surliest, unhappiest, most unfriendly character I'd ever seen. Everything he did was just barely on the safe side of being an insult. And just for the fun of it, I made up my mind to really work on this guy, and from that time on, every time I got on his elevator, I'd give him a cheery greeting and ask about his health and his family and so on. Wouldn't do any good for both of us to be miserable. For a while, he didn't even answer me, but gradually he thawed, and in a couple of months, he was a fairly nice guy. In a year, he was the friendliest operator in the building and was always doing favors for the people in my office and me. The way I look at it, each of us has a choice, no matter what his circumstances may be, to be either cheerful or not. There's absolutely nothing to be gained by not being cheerful, so why even consider it? If we develop the right attitude, it's amazing how quickly the world changes, how things start to go our way and how lucky we seem to become. And like the two girls in the telegraph office, we might even make an amazing and interesting discovery. I'll be back in a minute. An enthusiastic attitude is nothing more than faith in action, and as Henry Chester said, faith and initiative rightly combined remove mountainous barriers and achieve the unheard of and miraculous. This is Earl Nightingale. Thank you.

  8. Aug 9

    Krakatoa and Mount Pelée: Volcanoes That Shook the World Forever

    Every century some kind of major and totally unexpected disaster seems to hit in some area of the world. One of the most terrible disasters the world has ever known struck in August of 1883. At that time there was a large island, a volcanic island I might add, in the Strait of Sunda, about halfway between Sumatra and Java. When the volcano on this island decided to erupt it blew the whole island off the map of the world and formed a new one. Instead of erupting the way volcanoes are supposed to, which is to act like a kind of safety valve letting out the steam and lava a little bit at a time, it seems that a deep layer of hardened lava had closed up this volcano, or at least too much of it, and when the explosion finally came it was the loudest explosion according to estimates at the time the world had ever known. It is said that the shock waves alone destroyed ships many miles away and that was only the beginning. Every bit of life on the island was extinguished in a fraction of a second, but the explosion created a giant tidal wave that started moving off in all directions. Conservative estimates claim that the tidal wave, as it rushed into the surrounding islands, killed at least 30,000 people and eventually touched every shore clear around the world, and as a small wave finally broke on the shores of France. A years later, a year later rather, volcanic dust was still floating around the world and the reflection of the Sun on this dust that eventually reached the upper atmosphere was seen as far away as London. What was left of the original island, which wasn't much, erupted again in 1939 and shot earth fragments 30,000 feet into the air. I don't imagine this would be the best spot in the world to go into the real estate business. Freeling Foster, in his book Keep Up with the World, tells about the fastest disaster ever caused by a volcano. It was the total obliteration of the city of Saint Pierre on Martinique in the West Indies. It was caused by the eruption of Mount Pelée on a bright morning in May in the year 1902. Although the volcano had been smoking, muttering, and rumbling for days, the cataclysmic eruption finally came without warning and started with a terrific explosion which blew out the side of the crater that faced the city of Saint Pierre five miles away. Instantly, immense clouds of flaming poisonous gas raced down the mountainside, set fire to the city, and killed 30,000 inhabitants and an additional 10,000 holiday visitors in less than three minutes. After a four-day search for survivors among the blackened and pathetic ruins, one man was found alive. He had escaped because, ironically, he was a criminal and happened to be locked up in a deep underground dungeon of the Saint Pierre prison. I'll be back in one minute. The one thing in the world on which you can count absolutely is change. We are passengers riding a strange and complex world on a long arc toward destiny. It is inevitable that we'll see some strange and wondrous sights. This is Earl Nightingale. Thank you.

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Weekly insights into success, personal development, and the power of positive thinking from one of the most influential voices in the field of motivational broadcasting. You Become What You Think About™ is a trademark owned by Nightingale-Conant. These episodes are from the Our Changing World series by Earl Nightingale. © Nightingale-Conant.

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