Our Changing World

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.

Episodes

  1. 17H AGO

    Before You Buy the Dream: The First Rule of Business Success

    Many years ago, when I was on the air in Chicago, I got a letter from a woman with a problem that must come to someone every day in a week in every town in the country. She wrote that she and her husband were thinking of going into the motel business in Florida, and she wanted my opinion on whether or not I thought the motel business was a good business to go into. She went on to say that her husband was retired and that they'd saved quite a bit of money through the years in addition to their home, which they'd completely paid for, and which would be worth quite a bundle in itself. Well, I thought about that letter for some time, and then I practically dictated a book to my secretary, and when I got through, I put it on my program, and then I mailed it to the lady who'd written to me. She and her husband had never been in business for themselves, so they didn't understand the first rule, and this is that there are no good or bad businesses, so to speak. They're only good and bad managers. One person will do just fine in a particular business, finally sell it and retire to his cabin cruiser in the Bahamas, and the man who bought it, even though it was a real moneymaker with nothing changed but the management, would fall flat on his face and wind up selling in desperation before bankruptcy. A lot of people seem to think that just because you're in business for yourself, you can sit back and spend your time counting and bailing all the money that comes flooding in. Such is not now, never was, and never will be the case. Running your own business takes thorough knowledge and experience and harder work than most would believe possible, particularly during the first five years or so. Good managers can make a success out of just about any business. Bad managers can wreck just about any business. The next thing I told this couple was to leave their savings right where they were and not to touch them with a 10-foot pole. They'd worked too hard and too long accumulating a pile to toss it away in a business they knew nothing about, and then I told them that if they were interested in the motel business in Florida, to go down there, pick the town they liked and would like to live in, and get a job running a motel for a year or so, even if they had to work for nothing. In a year, they'd know the motel business pretty well. They'd know its headaches and pitfalls and profits, and during that time, they could really study the motel business and know about such things as location, the size to build, the cost of building or buying, what kind of profits to expect on your investment. At the end of that time, if they still wanted to go into the business, fine. They'd know what they were in for. They'd know what was a good buy and what wasn't, and they'd still have their money and their nice home in case they decided their dream wasn't all it was cracked up to be. This is the way to go into business for yourself, and don't let some fast-talking Jasper with a fast line and a million cubic miles of blue sky talk you into anything until you've checked him, his proposal, and have the know-how to succeed. Running your own business can be a way to all of your dreams, if you go about it scientifically, but it can give you ulcers and make you a prime candidate for the Laughing Academy, if you don't. I'll be back with a word about this in just one minute. Don't ever believe the old wives' tale that opportunity knocks but once. Opportunity's knuckles are bleeding and raw to the bone from knocking every day of your life. You just have to be able to see it. And don't get excited about every little opportunity that comes along. Save your money and wait for the big one. As long as you're watching and waiting, you can just bet it'll come along, and then you'll be ready for it.

    4 min

  2. MAY 3

    What Is Charm? Earl Nightingale on Beauty, Posture, and the Inner Self

    Well, how are you feeling today? Are you what they call a charming person? I used to wonder what they meant exactly when they referred to someone as being charming. And the other day I had a long talk with, and you can be sure of this, a very charming woman. Her name is Bess Rothman. She's an expert on this business of charm. She's taught it at colleges and traveled all over the country telling men and women how to be charming. She lives in Chicago now and devotes her time to helping people find the type of work they're best fitted for and at the same time improving them as individuals. She told me that any woman can be beautiful and, as a matter of fact, should be beautiful. She also told me that every man could look a whole lot better than he does and make a very striking appearance wherever he goes. So I asked Miss Rothman, actually she's a wife and mother but keeps her professional name, I asked her, what is charm? And she smiled, which gave me the feeling I wasn't the brightest person she'd ever talked to, and said, Mr. Nightingale, charm is an inner thing. An inner thing. I then verified her first impression by asking, what do you mean by that? And in essence, this is what she told me. She said, as far as a woman is concerned, charm has nothing to do with individual features. A woman can have a big nose or a long skinny neck or practically no neck at all or too many teeth or be a mite too wide across what a woman calls her hips or not have a movie star's legs and still be a very attractive and charming person. It seems, according to Miss Rothman, that every woman on earth has some beautiful features. It might be her eyes or skin or hands or what have you. So what she should do is dress and make up as a composite, complete woman, making the best use of her good features and minimizing and not worrying about the features she's not too proud of. But this is only the beginning. It's what she is inside that she shows on the outside. If she's calm, cheerful and loving on the inside, she radiates this terrific inner self like a hot stove on a cold morning. And this is something everyone can control, although it takes practice if it doesn't come naturally. When she told me this, I remembered reading something by the great American educator, William Lyon Phelps of Yale. He said, the most interesting people are those with the most interesting pictures in their minds. Realizing that we can only reflect on the outside what we've got on the inside, Dr. Phelps liked to point out that the inside of a person's mind was sort of like a picture gallery, each mind with a certain kind of pictures. If they're happy, interesting pictures on many subjects, well, you get the idea. Ms. Rothman then told me that the third most important point for a man or woman to be charming is, and this is just as important as the first two, is this business of posture, the way we walk, stand and sit down. You'd be surprised how quickly you can form the habit of walking straight and erect. It makes you feel better, as she pointed out, you look better, and the world suddenly begins to think you are better. And when this happens, you are. I'll be back in one minute. To be charming then takes at least three things. Accentuate your good features and don't worry about the ones that aren't so good. Remember that you have to be charming inside before you can be charming on the outside, and posture, the way you look to the world. It's really amazing, and of course the experts go along with this completely, how what you act like on the outside has a way of affecting how you feel on the inside. As Dorothea Brand put it in her fine book, Wake Up and Live, act as though it were impossible to fail.

    4 min

  3. APR 30

    The 5 Percent: Why Independent Thinkers Rise Above Conformity

    Thank you and hello again. Here's an interesting question for you. Do you think you're just like 95 percent of the people? Well, you'll probably answer no. Maybe you're not. One of the strangest things about human nature is that every person likes to feel he's an individual, different from every other human being on earth, and it's true. There are literally no two human beings who are exactly alike, but the paradox comes into the picture when you realize that while most people like to think they're different, they then try as hard as they can to be just alike. In the last few years, you've probably read and heard a lot about a word that's pronounced conformity. People are always yelling at us to be different, to think for ourselves, to be individuals, but do you know why? Well, let me tell you why I think it's a good idea to take a good long look before you start acting and thinking like everybody else. It seems that from the earliest beginnings of the human race, there have been two main groups of people. One of the groups is large and is estimated to be about 95 percent of the human race. The other group is small, about five percent, and it seems almost uncanny how no matter which way you look at the population, it seems uninsisting in breaking into these two groups. The big group, the 95 percent, might be called the followers, and the little group of five percent of the people seem to be always the leaders. Now, it seems that this 95 percent bunch is the group that historically has never gotten the word. This group seems to make pretty much of the same mistakes over and over again and wind up with the short end of the stick. For example, I mentioned in one of my earlier broadcasts, out of all the young men who start even at age 25, 40 years later, by the time they're 65, only five percent is financially independent, and the rest miss the boat. And while money isn't everything, it is an indication of how people operate their lives. Any man, barring a rare catastrophe, can save enough money in a working career that lasts 40 years to be financially independent by the time he's 65, but only five percent knows enough at the beginning to do it before it's too late. The others don't seem to do it, and then they say, I wish I had. Now, the big question is, why didn't they know about it in the beginning? And look at this business of education. In this country of ours, anyone can get a good education for himself, even if he hasn't enough money to go to college. Every town has a public library bursting at the seams with knowledge, all perfectly free if you get the books back on time. But you know how many continue to learn and develop their minds after they get out of school? That's right, about five percent. In fact, a well-known educator once said that as far as 95 percent of the people are concerned, all the great books with their priceless store of knowledge, which is freedom, could be taken out in the field and burned, and they'd never be missed, except by the five percent. Now, what all this boils down to is the fact that you can't even give knowledge away as far as the great mass of people are concerned. A high school and college diploma are fine, but they're only meant to prepare us for a life of learning and developing so that we can continue to improve and move to new and better successes. Most folks just go along, acting alike, thinking alike, and doing the same things, and while there's nothing wrong with that, the trouble is they're following the wrong crowd, the crowd that just never seems to get anyplace. I'll be back in one minute with an idea that might be of use to you. If you want to follow in somebody's footsteps, that's fine. Just make sure you know he or she is worthy of emulation. Your friend down the block might not know where he's going. Make sure the person you're following arrived at a destination you'd be happy to settle for. Thank you.

    4 min

  4. APR 30

    Why Rewards Follow Contribution: Earl Nightingale’s Law of Value

    I close my last show by saying our rewards in life will always be in direct proportion to our contribution. This is the law that stands as the supporting structure of all economics and our personal well-being as well. The paradox is that most people either don't know about this wonderful rule or think that somehow it's for the other guy. Most people believe we ought to have speed limit signs too, but that they're for other people who don't know how to drive as well as we do. Well, the one nice thing about people is that they're very seriously wrong when they make this generalization. Let's take this law of our rewards being equal to our contribution, for example. Like most great laws, it's really nothing more than the paraphrasing of the golden rule of the Bible. But for a moment, look at it this way. Laws are good or bad depending on how we use them. The law of gravity keeps us from flying off into space, and that's good, but it'll also kill us if we step off the top of a tall building, and that's bad. There's nothing wrong with the law of gravity. If we misuse it, there's something wrong with us. Either we're ignorant of the law, or we're just plain ignorant. Now let's get back to the law of rewards equaling our contribution. The law is in operation all the time, and it doesn't give two hoops and you know where whether we go along with it or not. It's like an apothecary scale, you know, the kind with a cross arm on top from which hang two bowls on chains. A delicate and honest mechanism. Now let's label one of the bowls rewards, and the other one contributions. And right here we come to the paradox. Most people concentrate on the bowl marked rewards. That is, they want things, more money, a better home, education for the kids, travel, retirement, and so forth. All rewards. But since they're staring at the rewards and wondering why they're not developing, they're forgetting the bowl marked contributions. In other words, they're concentrating on the wrong bowl. They're like the man who sat in front of the stove and said, give me heat, and then I'll give you wood. He could sit there frozen to death. Stoves don't work that way, and neither does life. We can actually forget all about the bowl marked rewards. All we have to do is concentrate on the bowl marked contribution. Life and basic economics will take care of the rewards automatically. Now it's a fact that most people have this law backwards. Well, what do we mean by contribution, and to whom do we contribute? Well, you can define contribution as the time and degree of excellence you devote to whatever it is you do. And your contribution is to mankind, and mankind can be defined as the people you happen to serve. So you can break it all down to a simple equation. Your rewards will be determined by the way you do your job, measured by the number of people you serve. In our exploding economy today, if a man isn't happy with his income, he should take a good long look at his contribution. This may seem like a cruel way of looking at things, but laws are good or bad only in the way you look at them. I'll be back in one minute. If you feel you're being held back in life, why don't you just let go of yourself? It's sort of like the story of the farmer who poked a sprouting pumpkin into a one-gallon jug. After it completely filled the jug, it couldn't grow anymore. Almost all of our limitations are self-imposed, and we have a tendency to poke ourselves into jugs that are too small. Thank you.

    4 min

  5. APR 30

    The Greener Pastures Myth: Finding Opportunity Where You Are

    I was reading the other day about our universe and what we know and don't know about it, about the billions and billions of stars and planets and of the millions of galaxies like our Milky Way, separated by distances so vast it takes light, which travels 186,000 miles per second, about two million years to cross these almost incomprehensible distances. We've got astronomers sitting in front of telescopes looking at stars not as they are now, but as they were 500 million years ago, because that's how long it took their light to reach us, give or take a few years. And I've got a hunch why astronomers and scientists are so curious, as we all are, about other worlds and other galaxies. It's partly because of what we call greener pastures, the hope that seems to spring eternal in all human beings that the living and opportunities are better and greater somewhere else. I suppose it has been this uniquely human attribute or frailty that's at the root of all discovery, but it's a fact that most people let this business of thinking the next pasture may be greener keep them from properly developing their own pasture. While we're looking at what the other guy is doing and wishing we were in his pasture, others are wishing they were in ours, and it's a proven fact that there's more opportunity hidden in our daily work than we could develop in a lifetime, if we'll only look for it long enough to find it. I don't know if you've ever thought much about this, but there's no such thing as a job that can't lead to greatness, if we'll take the time and thought to become great at what we do, at what we now do, where we are now. Unless we take the time, thought, and study to become outstanding at what we're now doing, why in the world should we think we could become great at something else? But somehow it always looks easier to succeed in the other fellow's line of work. It looked so good to me one time that I climbed the fence out of my pasture, and by the time I'd scrambled back in again, my little excursion cost me $30,000. I'd gone into a business where I was short on experience, and as it usually happens in such a case, I got burned on the wallet. If I devoted the same time and work to my own line of work, I'd have been much better off. Now I'm not saying you can't go into another line or into a different business, but I am saying don't go into something unless you know everything it's possible to know about it, or most everything, and more important still, look long and carefully at the pasture you're now in. Chances are it's loaded with opportunities that someone else is going to come along and profit by if you don't. You see, if you merely compete with everybody else in your line of work, you've got to be satisfied with the same returns, the same rewards they're getting, and everyone else in the same field. But if you create, the sky's the limit, and people will then have to follow along in your tracks. So the idea seems to be to take the experience you already have in what you're now doing, and you can build a stairway to just about anything you and your family could possibly want, and in a surprisingly short time. I'll be back in one minute. The law of economics tells us that our rewards in life will always be in exact proportion to our contributions. How can you increase your contribution to man in what you're now doing? Your rewards will take care of themselves.

    4 min

  6. APR 30

    Your Mind Is a Gold Mine: Find the One Idea That Makes You Rich

    From time to time you hear somebody say, you know, those people who got in on the ground floor of the opening of the West with its gold and silver really were fortunate. All that gold laying around waiting to be bailed and carried to market. Or you'll hear them say, and what about the early discoverers of our vast oil fields? All those derricks pumping millions of dollars worth of black gold and the folks who discovered it just sitting back and trying to keep their fortunes figured to the nearest million. When I was a youngster back during the Depression of the 30s, we used to sit around and dream of things like that. Maybe you've done the same thing. Well, today I want to tell you about a place that's virtually unexplored, where you can find all the wealth you'll ever need. Maybe you never thought much about it. But each of us has this private gold mine all staked out with a clear title just waiting to be developed. I want you to try to get a mental picture of a gold mine or an oil field before it was discovered. No busy, noisy machinery, no crowds of men moving around, no trucks and heavy equipment. Just land covered with prairie grass and stretching as far as the eye can see to the distant horizon. Now under that peaceful and innocent-looking piece of prairie is a wide, deep lake of oil or a motherlode of gold worth millions. But you'd never know it was there, would you? Before these discoveries were made, thousands of people must have rode and walked right over them without realizing that right under their feet was a king's ransom in riches beyond their wildest dreams. Somebody had to come along looking for it and who was willing to risk digging for it, right? Somebody had to suspect it was there and start looking. And his chances of hitting pay dirt with his first shovel full were pretty slim, but he knew if he kept looking and kept digging, he'd find it. Well, you and I and everybody have free title to the richest continent on earth. It's called the human mind and it's produced just about everything you see and hear around you. It comes as standard equipment at birth and maybe that's why most of us never use it. It came free and we've come to the point where we don't value things that are free anymore. Your mind has 12 billions of cells, give or take a dozen or so, and fully 90 to 95% of it has never been explored. The greatest thing on earth is a good idea. Take the man who got the idea to dig under that prairie grass. Discovering a fortune was only the effect. His idea to dig was the cause and it was his idea that resulted in millions for him. Now, how many ideas do you think you could get in a single day? 20? 30? Let's say you got 20 ideas a day. That'd be 100 a week if you didn't think on weekends. That would be 5,200 ideas a year. 5,200 holes you'd be drilling on the world's richest continent, your own mind. Remember, one idea can make you rich. All you need is one great idea which can be your gold mine, your oil well. If you know anything about the law of averages, you'll realize that before long you'll have the idea you've been looking for. Just because the first 10 or 100 aren't any good, don't give up. The more dry holes, the closer you are to what you're looking for, your big idea, the one that will change your life. I'll be back in one minute with a plan for putting this into action. The best way to prospect your mind is to get up an hour earlier in the morning and write down 20 ideas for improving what you now do for a living. The chances are that right now, as Russell Conwell used to say, right now you're standing right in the middle of your own acre of diamonds. What you're looking for is the idea that's bigger than you are and that will keep you challenged and interested for a long time to come.

    4 min

  7. APR 30

    Panophobia and Purpose: How Throwing Yourself Into Work Eases Fear

    You know, the experts are forever coming up with long words meant to describe the problems that we humans are complex enough to develop. And not too long ago they came up with a dandy. They use it to describe the feeling us poor men get, particularly the man who finds a lump like a watermelon with thorns right in the pit of his stomach. The word is panophobia, and it means fear. This is the word that fits the man or woman who seems to have vague, undefined fears. Fears that he can't quite put his finger on. Like the hard-working man who suddenly begins to fear that the company is sharpening the axe for his neck. Or the wife who, for no reason she can articulate, begins to fear her husband is slowly drifting away. Now there's no medicine known that can cure this emotional malady that daily puts its icy clamp on the insides of millions of commuters. Although the tremendous sales of tranquilizers is a tip-off to the emotional teeter-totter most people seem to be on the wrong end of. It wouldn't surprise me if before long they started selling bags of hot buttered tranquilizers in theaters. But there is a way out. It seems that the majority of people do just barely enough to get by at whatever they do for a living. And this is possibly because of our unusually high standard of living where earning a living wage is about as tough as eating a piece of pie a la mode. Maybe it's because of our play palaces that pass along disguised as colleges. But the facts are hard to argue with. It seems that every good and upright human being gets emotionally frightened when he begins to realize that he's getting paid for more than he's doing. Of course he'd die on the rack before he'd admit it. But you can't kid yourself no matter how hard you try. So if you're suffering from a lump of faceless unrecognized fear that has a habit of forming just behind your belt buckle, particularly on Monday mornings or late Sunday afternoons, you can cure yourself by throwing yourself headlong not out of a window but into your work. Start working as though we had a normal economy where people were paid only for the work they performed measured by its depth of excellence. Become an expert at what you do for a living and as you take more and more pride in your work you'll find you'll like it better. You'll probably see your income inching up, you'll be happier, and one day you'll sit straight up and realize that this emotional panophobia tumor has disappeared. You'll probably smile, look around, and see the guy sitting next to you has that strained, tight-lipped, scared look that means he's caught it. I'll be back with a closing message in just one minute. A good way to get started is to sit down and decide on something you've wanted very much for a long time. Make up your mind you're going to have it and then go to work to get it. You'll be too busy to worry about anything. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the great German philosopher, once came up with a great truth that all of us ought to paste on a mirror of our medicine cabinets. He said, before you can do something you've got to be something.

    4 min

  8. APR 29

    How The Strangest Secret Became Earl Nightingale's Breakthrough Hit

    In March of 1956, an amazing thing happened to me. I was retiring from a very busy schedule and had decided to take it easy for a while, and I decided to spend some time in Arizona. Since I'd be away, the manager of one of my little businesses asked me if I would record on tape a message he could play at the next sales meeting. Well, this made sense to me, so I decided to put into a 30-minute talk in capsule form the important things I'd learned during the more than 20 years of research on why men and women succeeded or failed in life that I'd done. Well, I spent quite a bit of time putting the thing together, and then I recorded the message, and I called it The Strangest Secret. Well, it wasn't long before people started asking for copies of the talk, and finally we had to have it pressed into a record. At first, hoping that I might get back the cost of producing it, the masters, pressings, the record jacket, the artwork, the plates, and all that, I just arbitrarily set a price of $15 on the record. I figured that if it would help a person, it would be worth $15, and if it didn't help, he could certainly get his money back by returning it. Well, to my amazement, The Strangest Secret started selling faster than ever. I soon had back my original investment, and so immediately dropped the price on the record from $15 to $4.95, and then things really began to happen. My office had trouble just keeping an adequate inventory. The record began to sell in the tens of thousands, and in a couple of years, we'd sold more than 100,000 copies to companies and individuals and countries all over the world. I don't know whether you've ever had a bestseller on your hands or not, but I want to tell you it's just about the most interesting and exciting thing that can happen to a person. The thing that pleased me most, of course, has been the letters that have come to me telling me that the record's been of help in some way. I spent so many years wallowing in confusion myself that I know what it is to get your life straightened out and on the right track for the first time. It's an interesting thing about this business of living successfully. Once you know how, it's a whole lot easier than living unsuccessfully. All the confusion, the running around in circles, the doubt and frustration disappear, and you can chart yourself a clear straight course to the things you want in life and achieve them with amazing regularity one after another. I know one thing for sure. Ninety-five percent of the people who feel they're hemmed in and held down by circumstances can find that they can achieve their goals one after another, right on schedule, and get the things they want out of life if they'll just learn what I call the strangest secret. And anyone can learn it. Any child can learn it. Incidentally, if you'd like to get some information about the strangest secret record that I made, I'll be glad to send it to you. All you have to do is drop a card or letter to me, Earl Nightingale, 469 East Ohio Street, Chicago 11, Illinois, and I'll send you this free information on the record. Just say that you want information about the strangest secret on the card or letter. That's a card or letter to me, Earl Nightingale, 469 East Ohio Street, Chicago 11, Illinois, and I'll send you the facts about the strangest secret. I'll be glad to. I'll be back in just 60 seconds. It has been said that men don't need educating as much as they need reminding. I think most people really know what they should do to achieve the things they want, but it's easy to forget what's important and to keep them in their proper order. This is Earl Nightingale. Thank you.

    4 min
  • 8 Episodes

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About

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.

Information

  • Creator
    Earl Nightingale & Nightingale-Conant
  • Years Active
    2K
  • Episodes
    8
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Show Website
    Our Changing World