One time I heard Grove Patterson, the great late editor-in-chief of The Toledo Blade, make a speech, and as he concluded his speech he said something I’ve never forgotten. He said, “My years in the newspaper business have convinced me of several things, among them that people are basically good and that we came from someplace and we’re going someplace, so we should make our time here an exciting adventure. The architect of the universe didn’t build a stairway leading nowhere.
American motivational speaker (1921-1989)
Earl Nightingale V (March 12, 1921 – March 25, 1989) was an American radio speaker and author, dealing mostly with the subjects of human character development, motivation, and meaningful existence. He was the voice during the early 1950s of Sky King, the hero of a radio adventure series, and was a WGN radio program host from 1950 to 1956. Nightingale was the author of The Strangest Secret, which economist Terry Savage has termed "…one of the great motivational books of all time."
From: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)
There are millions of human beings who live narrow, darkened, frustrated lives — who live defensively — simply because they take a defensive, doubtful attitude toward themselves and, as a result, toward life in general. A person with a poor attitude becomes a magnet for unpleasant experiences. When those experiences come — as they must, because of his attitude — they tend to reinforce his poor attitude, thereby bringing more problems, and so on.
You know, for any problem, no matter how big or complex it may be, there is a solution. All you have to do is find it. And, you can find it by organizing your approach, by attacking the problem emphatically with determination, by working long and hard, by applying your full brain power and by using wisely all the help you can get. You CAN solve it!
achieve the success they truly desire because they get impatient. They want easy success or none at all. They see the path to success as a frustration, an impediment. Each day spent short of the ultimate goal is viewed as a time of failure and as an annoyance. As such, they get distracted by hundreds of little things that each day try to get us off our course. Yet the successful among us know the truth:
gratitude and expectant. First, I’m grateful for the opportunity to live on this beautiful and astonishing planet Earth. In the morning, I wake up with a sense of gratitude. Second, I expect the best; I expect to reach the goals I establish for myself (we’ll talk a good deal more about this concept later in the book). I find the idea of fulfilling those goals agreeable; hence, the attitude of expectancy. I know the world will give me back what I put out in the way of attitude, so it’s up to me. I’m responsible.
See that during these crucial first 30 days your own inspiration is kept at a peak. Above all, don’t worry. Worry brings fear and fear is crippling. The only thing that can cause you to worry during your test is trying to do it all yourself. Know that all you have to do is hold your goal before you. Everything else will take care of itself.