Napoleon Hill - Self-Discipline

Thank you. The keynote to this lesson is the person who has learned to discipline himself cannot be disciplined by others. And stated conversely, the person who has not learned to discipline himself is sure to be disciplined by others. And I’m going to give you some of the must in connection with which one should and must discipline himself if he’s going to reach the top level of success. And the first is follow the habit of taking possession of your own mind and of keeping it busy in connection with the things you desire and off of the things you do not desire. One could preach a wonderful sermon on that subject alone. When you stop to consider that the Creator gave you control over but one thing.

That thing being your right of choice as to how you would use your mind.

You must recognize that the Creator considered And it probably is because it is the only thing you need with which to determine your earthly destiny. Next, repeat the written statement of your major purpose in life at least twice daily in the form of a prayer. Now, what do you suppose is the reason for repeating it daily?

The object is to fix the idea upon the subconscious mind so that indelibly that the subconscious mind goes to work immediately on what you want it to do. And repetition has a powerful way of keeping yourself - the subconscious mind going in the direction that you want it to go. Incidentally if you don’t feed this subconscious mind with a clear picture of what you want it will wander off into undesirable fields and attract to you things you do not want. And next, engage in at least one act of going the extra mile each day. You’ll not only will make friends that way, and eventually have a regular army of friends, but every time you go the extra mile you do something beneficial for yourself. And next.

Discipline yourself to write out your list of all of the blessings you enjoy and express a prayer of gratitude for these blessings at least once daily. I could say that that’s one of the most important things in connection with which you should discipline yourself. Because prayers of gratitude for the blessings that you already have are the ones that bring the quickest and the best results. In my early days, I used to go to prayer only when I was in trouble and I needed somebody to bail me out. And often I went to prayer without any results except negative results. And later on, I learned the best thing to do is to express prayers of gratitude for the blessings that I already had. And when I reached that stage of self-discipline I want to tell you that my entire destiny began to change. I began to make new friends, my financial status began to change and everything in my life was different.

When I expressed prayers of gratitude for the blessings I already have. And if you should be so unfortunate as to hate another person, discipline yourself to transmute this into the emotion of pity for that person. And see how much better you feel. I know in the nature of things people sometimes express emotions of hate and hatred for other people. 

You don’t have to love other people necessarily but you certainly can express for them pity. Pity that they don’t conduct themselves so that you can love them. You can do that. You’d be surprised what a change in life that will make when you get into that mental attitude. And next. Discipline yourself to follow the habit of closing the door on all of your past failures and unpleasant experiences.

In brooding over their past failures and mistakes and unpleasant circumstances. I’ve had my share of those. But if you ask me to stand up and tell about that I don’t think I could because I have closed the door so tightly. And not only I’ve closed it but I’ve nailed it tight so it can’t be open. I don’t want to live in the past. I’m living in the present and the yet unborn future. It took discipline for me to learn to close the doors on my past. But I did muster up that discipline. And next.

Discipline yourself to develop a success consciousness by seeing yourself already in possession of everything you need to make you a success.

In other words, a success consciousness presupposes that you dress yourself in the way you want to. That you will conduct yourself in the sort of company that you want. That you drive a sort of an automobile that you desire. That you live in the sort of home that you desire and that you will outwardly and inwardly express a spirit of prosperity. And next. 

Discipline yourself to select the person whom you would like most to emulate. And begin at once, to think and to act as nearly like him as possible. Back in the early days when I first took over the job of disciplining Napoleon Hill, I had a whale of a job on my hands. I had to beat him over from the ground up and I formed my invisible counselors as described in Think and Grow Rich. Made up of all the great men whom I admired most.

And I started holding evening councils with those men as described in Think and Grow Rich. And I want to tell it that these meetings, imaginary as they were, became so real after a while that these characters whom I had chosen to become mastermind allies with me became so real that I could see them walking in and seat themselves at the table. And I carried this on until finally it became so realistic that I discontinued it because I got to the point where I didn’t know whether I was seeing the actual people or not. But it did a wonderful thing.

It enabled me to transfer to myself the qualities of this great men whom I have most admired. I had started out as a hero worshiper. I still am a hero worshiper but I’m very particular about the kind of heroes I worship. And next. Remember the person who becomes master of himself cannot be mastered by others. And if you are overtaken by a temporary defeat or any unpleasant experience begin at once to search for that seed of an equivalent benefit because it certainly is there. Though if wounded defeat is still fresh, it may be difficult for you to find that seed.

For example, when my mother died at the age of nine it could have been very difficult for me to have found the seed of an equivalent benefit in that circumstance. But the years which followed proved beyond any question of a doubt that that seed was there because the person who came to take my mother’s place, my stepmother, came into my life, changed my whole destiny, and it made it possible for me to extend myself in this space throughout the civilized world. So there was that seed of an equivalent advantage in the death of my mother. Take care of eating and sex and drinking habits in stride but be sure they do not take you in stride. And last.

If you feel you must speak ill of another do not speak it, but write it. Write it in the sand near the water’s edge. I had to exercise discipline after I had completed the Science of Success Philosophy. When I began to look around and found that no publisher wanted to have anything to do with publishing it. I was turned down time after time after time. 

And I would have had a very good alibi for quitting at that time. But I had learned the advantage of self-discipline. I knew that sometime, somewhere, somehow, some publisher would have enough imagination to recognize that any man who would put in 20 years of examining the causes of success in 500 successful men would come to the rescue of that author. I want to tell you it took a lot of self-discipline knowing that were getting there after I’d been turned down about 20 times. 

And in conditioning through coordination of my mind and body. To endure the strain of four and five lectures a day as I am getting here, you have no idea how much discipline that takes. And you will be surprised when I tell you that when I finished at the end of each day I am very much stronger than I was when I started. And by next Monday when I finish these lectures, I want to tell, I can start right in and deliver them over again with a lot of more enthusiasm than I’m doing now. 

Because I have learned how to discipline my mind and my body to do a job. Some five or six years ago I was invited down to Jackson, Mississippi to deliver the entire philosophy in a five day seminar for the Deaf Association. Two days before I was supposed to go I was stricken with a mild case of influenza and the doctor who was called in to look me over said, Well, I’m going to send you to the hospital.

I said, Doctor I have an engagement in Mississippi. It’s been standing for a long time. I have to go down and fulfill it. He said, If you do go down, fulfill it, you may have an engagement with the undertaker also. I went down to Mississippi. I not only delivered those lectures in five afternoons and evenings, but in the morning I wrote and produced a radio program. 

And immediately after lunch at three o’clock in the afternoon I interviewed these dentists one at a time at about a half an hour each. And when I came late from there, there’s no sign of influenza. I had been so busy tending to my job that I had no time to fool around with influenza. Surprisingly what you can do through self-discipline. In some years ago when I was training salesmen in New York, my secretary received a telephone call one day from the president of the New York Laundry in Newark New Jersey.

And he told her that he understood I was an expert trainer of salesmen he had sales problems and he wanted me to come over and talk to him about training his salesmen. I had never heard of that time that Laundry’s had salesmen but I learned later that all of his drivers were on their own. They had to find their own customers and they had to keep them. And something had gone wrong in his organization. Whereby, drivers were losing one customer after another to their opposition. Now that was a new outlet for my services. And I wanted to make sure that when I went over to Newark I would get that contract. And I’m sure you will be interested in knowing how I went about it. I went into my private office, instructed the telephone operator I sat out at my desk and put my elbows on my desk and my head in my hands like this.

And I started talking to Napoleon Hill. I said Napoleon Hill; you’re going over to Newark. you’re going to talk to the president of the New York Laundry. And you’re not coming back until you make a sale. And I repeated that at least  thousand times until I felt, I got that urge that I had made a sale. To who? To Napoleon Hill. Then I called my sales manager, Jack Sharpe who had been helping me to train men. And I said, Jack, you’ve been hearing me talking about this business of conditioning the mind not to accept no, not to accept defeat. I’m going to take you over to Newark and demonstrate just exactly how it’s done. We’re going over to see the president of New York Laundry. And were not coming back until we make a sale. And now he said, Just a minute, Napoleon Hill I have a family, I have to come back.

I said, I have a family and I am coming back but I’m not coming back until we make a sale. We went over and it was one of the hottest August days I’ve ever seen in my life. We arrived there about a quarter of noon. I expected to see a man come out from the laundry wiping his hands on a dirty towel maybe and wearing a pair of overalls, a man I had to interview. But instead of that I was ushered into one of the most finally appointed offices I have ever been in. And the president of the New York Laundry was a graduate of Harvard university. And he said, Gentlemen, come right in. It’s a very warm day. And well go over to the athletic club and have lunch in a nice air conditioned room. And when the lunch is over well go out into the library and well talk all we please.

And Jack looked at me and winked his eyes as much he said, Boss it’s in the bag. That’s what he thought. I thought too. We went over there and all through the lunch time this man was telling me what his problems were how they came about. And so forth...

And I was building plans. We went out into the library he said, Now Mr. Hill, Guardian, I’m ready to listen. I went over the plan that I proposed offer. What I expected to do for him, how I expected to do it how long it would take me to do it, and how much it would cost him. And all of the time he was shaking his head and smiling and is buying every word I said. I was absolutely sure of myself. When I came up for air for a few moments he said, Mr. Hill, I like your plan. I like your personality. I like your sales managers personality, but when I telephoned your office, I telephone two other men who were engaged in the same business, and we made the engagements with all three of you.

You happen to get here first the other two are coming tomorrow. I want you to know Mr. Hill that I think you’ve got it in the bag, but I’ve got to see the other two men. Well, I looked over at Jack and he started to get up out of his chair. He got halfway up and I gave such a cold look that he just filled back in his chair. If he had gotten on his feet at that point I’d have fired him the moment we got out of the house. Cause I had already put him on notice we were going over there to make a sale we weren’t coming back until we made it. What I did was to ignore what this man said and went right into the second phase of my talk. I had I had a sales talk up my sleeve that I hadn’t used in my first round with him.

I’ve been going about three or four maybe five minutes when I slowed down a little bit. And he said well, Mr. Hill, I’m still with you. understand I’m still with you. And I still think you’ve got the job. But if you were in my place now and you would make an engagement with two other men what would you do?

And I said, That’s just exactly what I was waiting for you to ask. What I would do would be to go back and have my secretary you’ve already employed Napoleon Hill. He said, By God, that’s what I want. And that’s where I got the job.

We got out of his office and started back to New York and we hadn’t gone more than a block. See, Id kept myself up on that hot day to where I wasn’t perspiring any more than I am now. And this man to whom we were talking he was so hot that his collar had sweated down until it was just a rag around his neck And the same thing as to my sales manager Jack. But I had keyed up physically, mentally, and spiritually not to hear anything but a yes. But as soon as I got away and began to relax, beads of perspiration almost as big as the end of your finger broke out all over me and I just flopped right down on that sidewalk and begin to fan myself with my hat.

And my sales manager said, You almost knocked yourself out, didn’t you Napoleon?

I said, Listen Jack, if you’d have gotten up on your feet all the way you’d have been knocked out by this time cause you’d a been out of a job. Now that’s an extreme illustration. You couldn’t always be as severe as that but it gives you an idea of what you can do when you discipline yourself to do a job and make up your mind before you start it. No matter what gets in your way, nor who gets in your way, you are going to go around over or under but you are going to go by.

Now, where do we begin self-discipline?

 

First of all, number one in our failure to adopt and live by a definite purpose and a definite plan for its attained. Accepting from life that which we do not want. There is where we need to begin disciplining ourselves first.  in neglect of taking possession of the mind, the one thing that the creator intended that we should do. We neglect that because of self-discipline, lack of self-discipline. And in the habit of allowing one’s self to drift from his surroundings and being influenced by close associates who are negative. We need to discipline ourselves there. I want to tell you that my most difficult job in the beginning part of those 20 years of research that I put into organizing the science of personal achievement was to fight off my relatives who were determined that I had made a fool of myself. And one of them suggested that I would go to a psychopathic ward and have my head examined.

I’d like to tell you who that one was, but his relationship to me was too close. And next, lack of any sort of plan or program for self-improvement. Education is a lifetime job and it calls for constant study, reading and self-examination such as you who belong to this organization undoubtly indulged in. and in the habit of limiting oneself through insufficient self-confidence you need self-discipline there. Build yourself up build yourself up to where you are in the position already that you want to be in. Give yourself a title If you want to call yourself general, major, anything, call yourself a success at the top of the heap in whatever it is that you want to  follow in life. Keep on telling that little white lie to yourself

and your subconscious mind.

Oh, eventually it will pick it up and put you up there right where you want to be. When Andrew Carnegie gave me that famous formula it seemed to me a ridiculous thing to do. You remember how I gave it to you?

He said, I want you to go before a mirror at night just before you go to bed and in the morning just have you get up. Look yourself straight in the base and say Andrew Carnegie. but I’m going to challenge you at the post and pass you at the grandstand.

First time I said that for the first three or four times I said that I felt like a fool, but you know eventually I commenced to believe it. And after I started to believe it And modestly I’ve stated that I reached the place in life where my achievements far excelled those of Andrew Carnegies. I don’t have as much money in this bank as he had. I don’t need that much. I have all I need and that’s enough, isn’t it?

Next, the habit of allowing the mind to think more often of failure than it does of success. Thus developing a failure consciousness. What you want in life is success consciousness. Think in terms of success, expect success because the things that you expect nature has a way of accommodating.

And next in the habit of limiting oneself by the seven basic fears or some minor fears due to the lack of self-discipline. I can think to say to you cause I don’t fear anything upon the face of this earth. There were times when I feared just about everything. I have no worries. Why? Because I disciplined my mind to keep my mind swept clear of both the causes and the effects of fear and worry. It didn’t happen overnight it accidentally happened because I had a system.

And I’ve explained to you what that system is. Its explained in the text on this subject again. And in failure to form an acquaintance of successful people to emulate them through association. My 500 collaborators among the great and I still associate only with the great. I still associate only with the great.

That’s where you’re supposed to applaud. Thank you. Not applauding me, your applauding yourselves because you are truly great. The habit of taking on the mental attitude of those who are nearest you without carefully choosing your intimate associates. You know, Charlie Ward said to me after I had visited with him for a couple of days. He said Napoleon Hill, everything unpleasant that ever happened to me in my life was due to wrong association with people. And I want to tell you that I believe I can say the same thing. I think most of you would say the same thing. 

I’m very careful of my associates. I won’t have an associate that doesn’t have a good influence upon me. I won’t do it under any circumstance. Back in the early days I had a great number of different managers who were supposed to do something to help me take this philosophy to waiting. And all they did was to do me for something for themselves.

I have an orange juice squeezer which I call my $12,000 orange juice squeezer. And the reason it’s a $12,000 squeezer is it was given to me by a manager to whom I paid $12,000 for a year of services. And all I got was the orange juice squeezer. Every glass of orange juice that I squeeze out and I figured it cost me about five dollar a glass. 

And in the lack of an established routine for the maintenance of Hill, the failure to discipline self in connection with food and drink work and play, love and worship and habits of thinking and neglecting learning how to transmute sex into an emotion of an constructive nature and in failure to establish a budgeting system for the occupation of one’s time, such as eight hours for sleep, eight hours for work, four hours for self-improvement four hours for recreation.

And in failure to recognize that success is the result of definite planning. While failure is the automatic result of lack of planning purpose. You don’t have to plan failure it’ll come around of its own accord but you do have to plan success. And in drifting with whatever circumstances that may overtake one instead of creating circumstances as/that will benefit one and in not recognizing that one must plant the seed of service before one can reap the harvest of benefit. A lot of people expect the ship of plenty to come in when they haven’t set out any ship and in expecting something for nothing. That’s a very prevalent habit nowadays a lot of people, an ever increasing army of people, throwing themselves on the government of the United States to receive relief instead of going out and earning their own way.

This country was not built upon men of that type. This country and our economy and our great system of free enterprise was built upon the type of men who are willing to take the long risk who are willing to give a day’s work in return for a day’s pay. And now next, in blaming others for ones misfortunes instead of tracing the cause with correct source which is in the mirror. Isn’t it strange that when a person has an unpleasant experience or a defeat or makes a mistake he begins to look around immediately for somebody to pin it on. He looks everywhere else except in the mirror. And that generally is the place where you find it. And then quitting when the going gets hard. It was that quality of not quitting when the going was hard that enabled me to get from Andrew Carnegie a commission, the like of which has never been given to another author at any time in the history of mankind.

Nobody that I’ve ever learned about has ever had as much grit as I’ve had in building and organizing and testing the science of personal achievement and in taking it to the people in the world at a time when we are threatened by total destruction through that cancerous thing called communism. And in failure to recognize and adapt oneself through the laws of nature what a wonderful thing it is if you just look around and see how nature does things and then emulate her.

And the habit of criticizing things and people one does not understand. Criticism as I pointed out in the previous lesson can be a very constructive thing but it can be very destructive if we criticize people and things we do not understand. And a lot of people indulge in just that.

And in failure to properly interpret and apply the ten basic motives which are responsible for all human actions as I described them in a previous lesson. And failure in the habit of using the tongue too freely and eyes and ears insufficiently getting other people told instead of asking them useful questions. An astounding thing how much time is wasted by people who want to get somebody told instead of listening to what somebody might have to say that would be beneficial. And in neglect in the expression of gratitude for one’s blessing and in connection with intolerance with those who whom one does not like.

All of this by our very nature have some people who do not like. I could mention a few of my own quite a little list. but I’m not going to I would rather mention the list that I do like and that’s a whole lot better pastime. And in the habit of minding other people’s business while neglecting one’s own. We need some discipline there too. And in neglect and learning how to dramatize ones speech so as to make it impressive. Everyone should learn to read and speak forcefully and in failure to keep contact with friends and to cultivate them through continuous courtesy and in failure and neglect in creating a definite technique by which to discipline one’s self such as my kin invisible guides as I described them to you in a previous lesson.

Those guides are not patented. There’s no copyright on them and there’s nothing in the world to hinder any of my students from appropriating and using them. And I bid every one of you to do just that. And that’s the end of this lesson. And I thank you.

Thank you so much.

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