I’ve always enjoyed the Nightingale-Conant personal development courses. I remember when you’d get the big binder with all the cassettes in it. This quote is from The Strangest Secret, written and narrated by Earl Nightingale himself in 1956.
Emerson probably beat him to it, though, when he wrote, “A man is what he thinks about all day long.” But I like the transformational optimism in Mr. Nightingale’s version best.
In Business:
Successful, thriving businesses got that way by a single-minded focus on serving the customer (the experience they provide), not how the customer was going to serve them (by giving them money).
Bottom-line thinkers are only concerned with what’s coming in. Visionary business owners are obsessed with what’s going out.
Your success is merely a by-product of how well you serve your market. You can’t attain it directly. But if you focus on serving all day long, it will miraculously appear.
In Life:
Create a mental picture of what you want for yourself, and then start living into that picture.
Again, you’re not passively trying to attract things to you. You’re actively altering who you are in order to be the person that’s congruent with your new mental picture.
I’m sure you’ve heard the old saying, “What got you here won’t get you there.” Well, it’s a cliché because it’s true (most are — if you’ve ever led a horse to water, you know I’m right).
Remember, it’s “We become what we think about,” not “We get what we think about…”
Become the person who gets the things you want, and you’ll get them.
So remember…
You become what you think about all day long.
— Earl Nightingale