The Strangest Secret

Want to know the strangest secret? Here it is: “We become what we think about.” That's it! Thank you, Earl Nightingale (and all other gret teachers who echo this wisdom!). In the Note we'll unpack Big Ideas from this uber-classic recording and learn how to optimize our thinking so we can actualize our potential.

Big Ideas

The Strangest Secret

= We become what we think about.
The Difference

Is goals.
Two Ships

Yours have a captain?
A Farmer’s Land

Is what your mind’s lke.
A Checklist

For successful living.
The Law of Laws

We reap what we sow.
Do Your Work

And feel the joy.
30 Day Test!

Challenge to rock it.

“I’d like to tell you about The Strangest Secret in the World. The late Nobel prize-winning, Dr. Albert Schweitzer was once asked, “Doctor, what is wrong with men today?” The great doctor was silent a moment, and then he said, “Men simply do not think!” It is about this that I want to talk with you.”

~ Earl Nightingale from The Strangest Secret

The Strangest Secret in the World.

That’s what we’ll be talking about today. :)

Earl Nightingale wrote and recorded this little piece in 1956. Millions of people listened to the recording. Earl later created Nightingale-Conant—revolutionizing the way people learned self-development material.

This is a tiny little book packed with a bunch of Big Ideas. (Get it here.)

Let’s jump in and explore some of my favorites—starting, of course, with The Strangest Secret in the World!

The Strangest Secret in the World

“Here is the key to success, and, the key to failure.

“We become what we think about.”

Let me say that again.

“We become what we think about.”

Throughout history, the great wise men and teachers, philosophers, and prophets have disagreed with one another on many different things. It is only on this one point that they are in complete and unanimous agreement—the key to success and the key to failure is this:

“We become what we think about.””

There ya go!

That, my friends, is The Strangest Secret in the World.

We become what we think about.

ALL the great teachers from EVERY tradition come back to this idea again and again and again. This is why “Optimism” is Principle #1 in our 10 Principles for Optimal Living.

We become what we think about.

Nightingale proceeds to quote everyone from Marcus Aurelius and Ralph Waldo Emerson to Shakespeare and William James.

Let’s have fun soaking ourselves in some universal wisdom goodness.

Marcus Aurelius: “A man’s life is what his thoughts make of it.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson: “A man is what he thinks about all day long.”

William James: “The greatest discovery of my generation is that human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind.”

The Bible (Mark 9-23): “If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth.”

William Shakespeare: “Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win by fearing to attempt.”

George Bernard Shaw: “People are always blaming circumstances for what they are. I don’t believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and if they can’t find them, make them.”

In sum, we become what we think about.

All that begs the question: What are YOU thinking about? :)

(Nightingale gives us a clear sense of what we should be thinking about: GOALS!)

The difference is goals

“Have you ever wondered why so many people work so hard and honestly without ever achieving anything in particular? And why others don’t seem to work hard, yet, seem to get everything? They seem to have the “magic touch.” You’ve heard people say about someone, “Everything he touches turns to gold.”

Have you ever noticed that a person who becomes successful tends to continue to become more successful? On the other hand, have you noticed how someone who is a failure tends to continue to fail?

The difference is goals. Some of us have goals, some don’t. People with goals succeed because they know where they are going.

It’s that simple.”

Goals. Goals. Goals.

That’s the difference.

Aristotle would agree. Here’s how Tom Morris puts it in The Art of Achievement (see Notes): “Aristotle has taught me we all need a target to shoot at. We must have goals to guide our actions and energies. The Greek word for target was telos. Human beings are teleological creatures. We are hard-wired to live purposively, to have direction. Without a target to shoot at, our lives are literally aimless. Without something productive to do, without positive goals and a purpose, a human being languishes. And then one of two things happens. Aimlessness begins to shut a person down in spiritual lethargy and emptiness, or the individual lashes out and turns to destructive goals just to make something happen.”

Aristotle taught us that, like archers, we need a target!

Target = good. No target = (literally) aimlessness = not so good.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi also agrees. Here’s how he puts it in his classic book, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (see Notes): “The optimal state of inner experience is one in which there is order in consciousness. This happens when psychic energy—or attention—is invested in realistic goals, and when skills match the opportunities for action. The pursuit of a goal brings order in awareness because a person must concentrate attention on the task at hand and momentarily forget everything else. These periods of struggling to overcome challenges are what people find to be the most enjoyable of their lives. A person who has achieved control over psychic energy and has invested it in consciously chosen goals cannot help but grow into a more complex being. By stretching skills, by reaching toward higher challenges, such a person becomes an increasingly extraordinary individual.”

OK.

So, successful + happy people have goals. Failures + unhappy people don’t.

Important question: Do you have goals?

A ship without a captain

“Think of a ship leaving harbor.

Think of it with the complete voyage mapped out and planned. The captain and crew know exactly where the ship is going and how long it will take—it has a definite goal. And 9,999 times out of 10,000 it will get to where it started out to get.

Now let’s take another ship, just like the first, only let’s not put a crew on it, or a captain at the helm. Let’s give it no aiming point, no goal, and no destination. We just start the engines and let it go. I think you’ll all agree with me that if it gets out of the harbor at all, it will either sink or wind up on some deserted beach—a derelict. It can’t go any place because it has no destination and no guidance.

It’s the same with a human being.”

What a great image.

One ship: Captain + crew + clear sense of direction and destination. Bam. Success!
Other ship: No captain, no crew, no sense of direction or destination. Just turn on the engines and let ‘er go! Uh… Yah. Shipwreck! D’oh.

Which ship are you more like?

Here’s to being the Captain of your Soul Ship!

The mind is like a farmer’s land

“The human mind is much like a farmer’s land.

Suppose a farmer has some land. And it is good, fertile land. The land gives the farmer a choice, He may plant in that land whatever he chooses. The land doesn’t care what is planted. It’s up to the farmer to make the decision…

The human mind is far more fertile, far more incredible and mysterious than the land, but it works the same way. It does not care what we plant… success… or failure. A concrete, worthwhile goal… or confusion, misunderstanding, fear, anxiety, and so on. But what we plant it must return to us…

So decide now.

What it is you want?
Plant your goal in mind.
It’s the most important decision you’ll ever make in your life.
What is it you want?

… All you have got to do is plant that seed in your mind, care for it, work steadily towards your goal, and it will become a reality.”

There’s another great metaphor: Our minds are like fertile land.

What seeds are you planting?!

Success seeds—goals that inspire you and thoughts that help you reach those goals? Or failure seeds—aimlessness and thoughts of fear, anxiety and confusion?!

Our minds will return a bountiful harvest of whatever seeds we plant. In fact, you could say we become what we think about. :)

So, WHAT DO YOU WANT?!

Plant that goal in your mind. Tend that seed with love and care. Work steadily towards that goal. And it will become a reality.

A Checklist for successful living

“What is needed, I think, is a checklist like an airplane pilot uses. I think that living successfully is at least as important as flying an airplane. Here are some things that, I think, should be on that checklist…

The first thing that he ought to have is the word: “Goal.” A man without a goal is like a ship without a rudder. He doesn’t know where he is going. He then belongs to that 95% that are just living day by day, week after week, month after month like a starfish or an amoeba. He needs to know where he is going…

A second word on our checklist might be the word: “Attitude.” It has been called the most important word in any language in the world, because it is our attitude toward our world and toward all the people in it that will determine the world’s attitude and all the people’s attitude toward us.

Third would be the word: “Think.” To think, the highest function of which a human being is capable. It was put pretty well by the great Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Archibald McLeish in his great play “The Secret of Freedom” in which he has one of his characters saying, “The only thing about a man that is a man… is his mind. Everything else you can find in a pig or a horse.” It’s true!”

A pilot has a checklist for flying his airplane.

We should have a checklist for successful living, eh?!

Reminds me of Pete Carroll’s story from his great book Win Forever (see Notes). He’d been fired from the New England Patriots and was reading John Wooden’s book when he slammed the book down. He had a huge epiphany.

Wooden had been coaching at UCLA for 16 years (!!!) before he won his first national championship. But… Once he figured it out he FIGURED IT OUT. He won 10 championships in the next 12 years. It was, as Carroll said, like he could win forever.

Carroll realized that what he needed was a winning philosophy. THAT would catalyze him into the next level of success. He created it and went on to extraordinary success at USC + Seattle.

We all need our own vision, philosophy, and belief system that constitute our own detailed plan for winning. A checklist of sorts. A guidebook. A philosophy for life.

What’s on your checklist? What’s your winning philosophy look like?! Let’s get clear and rock it.

The law of laws

“Our checklist should include what you might call the law of laws. That’s what Emerson called it. The great old law of cause and effect. That our rewards in life will always be in exact proportion to our contribution or service. We all know this really. We tell our children in Sunday School, “As Ye Sow So Shall Ye Reap,” but we forget that that is true. If a man is unhappy with his rewards, all he has to do is find ways of increasing his contribution, his service.

It reminds me of the story of the preacher who was driving down a country road when he came upon the most magnificent farm he had ever seen in his life. It was beautiful. He saw the farmer approaching the road on his tractor, so he hailed him. “My good man, God has certainly blessed you with a magnificent farm.” The farmer thought for a moment and replied, “Yes, you are right, he certainly has. But you should have seen this place when he had it all to himself.” The preacher had his sermon for the next Sunday. He realized that all the farmers up and down that road had been given the same land, yet one man had made something great out of it.”

Hah.

“You should have seen this place when he had it all to himself.”

What a great story.

The law of laws. Cause and effect. We reap what we sow.

Here’s how Emerson puts it (see Notes): “Cause and effect, means and ends, seed and fruit, cannot be severed; for the effect already blooms in the cause, the end preexists in the means, the fruit in the seed.”

As Nightingale tells us, if you are unhappy with what you have in your life, all you have to do is find ways to increase your contribution—find ways to serve even more profoundly. Create a ton of value in people’s lives!

Quit asking, “What is the least I can do to get what I want?” and start asking, “What is the MOST I can do today to astonish people with profound service?!”

We reap what we sow. If we want a bountiful harvest of goodness, we MUST crush it.

So let’s! :)

Do your work

“If you find yourself getting depressed and down at the mouth, as we all get once in a while, you might want to remember this quotation by Dean Briggs. He said, “Do your work. Not just your work and no more, but a little more for the lavishing sake, that little more which is worth all the rest. And if you suffer as you must and you doubt as you must, do your work. Put your heart into it and the sky will clear. And then out of your very doubt and suffering will be born the supreme joy of life. Believe it or not, in an age where we’ve come to nearly deify leisure time, we have virtually lost sight of the fact that nearly all our satisfactions and rewards will come, not from our leisure, but from our work.”

Feeling depressed?

GET. TO. WORK.

Dale Carnegie puts it perfectly in his classic, How to Stop Worrying and Start Living (see Notes): “George Bernard Shaw was right. He summed it all up when he said: ‘The secret of being miserable is to have the leisure to bother about whether you are happy or not.’ So don’t bother to think about it! Spit on your hands and get busy. Your blood will start circulating; your mind will start ticking—and pretty soon this whole positive upsurge of life in your body will drive worry from your mind. Get busy. Keep busy. It’s the cheapest kind of medicine there is on this earth—and one of the best.”

We have this weird misunderstanding of what makes us happy.

We think it’s leisure time. It’s not. We need to challenge ourselves with goals + work that inspire us. And then go out and rock it.

Let’s do that.

30 day test!

“For the next 30 days, follow each of these steps every day until you have achieved your first goal.

First, write on a card what it is you want more than anything else… Write down on a card specifically what it is you want. Make sure it’s a single goal and clearly defined…

Carry the card with you so that you can look at it several times a day. Think about your goals in a cheerful, relaxed, positive way each morning when you get up, and immediately you have something to work for—something to get out of bed for, something to live for…

Second, stop thinking about what it is you fear. Each time a fearful or negative thought comes into your conscious mind, replace it with a mental picture of your positive and worthwhile goal…

In addition to maintaining a cheerful, positive outlook, give of yourself more than you have ever done before. Do this knowing that your returns in life must be in direct proportion to what you give.

The moment you decide on a goal to work toward, you immediately are a successful person. You are then in that rare and successful category of people who know where they are going.”

Want to have fun with a little 30 day test?

Identify a goal that fires you up. Write it down on a card. Review that card often. Replace fear thoughts with your enthusiasm for your goal. Then DO YOUR BEST. Serve more profoundly than you’ve ever served.

And have fun while remembering The Strangest Secret… We become what we think about! :)

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