Thirty days on a card

"We become what we think about." Six words. Earl Nightingale called them the strangest secret, and he said the reason it was a secret was not that it was hidden but that nobody acted on it.

Nightingale was a Marine who survived Pearl Harbor aboard the Arizona, became a radio voice in Chicago, and in 1956 recorded a thirty-minute talk for his sales team because he was going on vacation and wanted them to have something while he was gone. The recording was passed hand to hand until it became the first spoken-word record to sell a million copies. He said he had found the idea in every teacher from the Bible to Emerson to William James. You have met most of them this month. Nightingale is where they all point.

His picture is a field. The mind grows whatever is planted, and it does not care whether the seed is corn or nightshade. Plant nothing on purpose and the wind plants for you.

His test is the one the whole recording was built around, and it starts today. Write your goal on a card. Read it morning and night. For thirty days, every time a doubtful thought about it shows up, replace it with the picture of the goal reached. If you skip a day, start the thirty over. He said most people stumble in the first week, begin again, and the second or third attempt holds. He expected that. So do I.

His other idea is the one I'd put on the wall. "Success is the progressive realization of a worthy ideal." Read it slowly. It means anyone moving steadily toward something they chose is already succeeding, whatever the bank says this month. That is a definition you can use on a Tuesday.