kestrel

On Earl Nightingale

Personal entry follows.

I think I just re-discovered Earl Nightingale.

The guy was born in 1920, and was most well-known as a radio personality and the author of "The Strangest Secret," a short book - and later, a recording - of his inspiration for personal and financial success. After, and while, listening to the recording, I became intensely inspired to simply do stuff. I work very hard as a teacher, and I want to see the clients at my day job do well and succeed for themselves. There are folks who want CDLs. There are folks who want a first job. There are folks who just want money in their pocket.

One of the more remarkable things for me personally was his appreciation of numbers, probability, and the odds for something occurring, positive or negative. Here are a few things that he mentions more than once:
98% of people are generally not successful. Only 5% of people are financially-independent by age 65.
Most people go with the herd, pursuing conformity with their peers, and "do what everyone else does."
Waking up one hour early five days a week provides a person with about 6.5 extra 40-hour weeks a year.
Spending that hour each day conjuring 5 ideas a day provides you with over 1800 ideas a year.
Most of those ideas will be shit. A small amount are okay. Fewer than that are pretty good. A small number of them are great. A very few of them will be brilliant.
The measure of our success is directly proportionate to their energy expended in service to others.
Intelligent risk-takers are likely the most successful people of them all. Very often the safest course of action prevents success and promotes obscurity.
Waiting for opportunity has an almost 0% chance of success. Putting energy into the world is what encourages energy to react and then return to oneself. "Waiting for opportunity to come to you is like sitting in front of to cold stove, saying: 'warm me up, -then- I'll put in the wood.' "
When a person changes, very often their environment changes.
Attitude reinforces itself. Positive attitude, positive results. Poor attitude, poor results.

Of course, this guy was writing and performing in the '50s. Some of the ideas and principles are antiquated. However, many of them are still useful. His foundational ideas - particularly one's Attitude and Expectancy - are timeless, understated, and underrated. He discusses Cause and Effect, as well as Action and proportionate Reaction.

It's worth inspecting this guy's works more often. I ended up scribbling quotes and sayings, and guidelines in next month's planner book and on some papers I've since attached to the wall. I think today has somehow been a positive game changer.