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Life of the Unsuccessful by
Earl Nightingale 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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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