Our Changing World

Epizode

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  Television’s Two Sides: Miracle Medium or Living Room Monster? 13.09.2026 3min

  In the long history of amazing technological developments, I guess one of the most wonderful and truly amazing is a thing called television. There was a time when I made my living by this wondrous medium, but I don't pretend to understand it. How they can send a moving picture invisibly through the air and through brick walls and steel and have it come out in a box in your living room is something too complex for my limited gray matter. And now they're bouncing TV signals off the moon or artificial satellites so that we can have worldwide live TV. Truly, this will have to be listed as one of the most amazing inventions of the 20th century. Now, people can sit in the calm, uncrowded comfort of their living rooms and for pennies of electricity see the greatest stars in the world on new and constantly changing programs. Not only that, but being a new multimillion dollar industry with hundreds of offshoots, TV has created thousands of new jobs, new manufacturing, distribution, and sales channels. Entertainment and education for us and our children are now awaiting only the turn of a knob and the illumination of a screen. I've often thought that television's greatest contribution is probably to older people in shut-ins, the lonely ones who each night can look forward to their favorite programs and thereby escape their somewhat limited worlds in the excitement and sound of this new two-dimensional miracle. But, I'll bet you knew this was coming, as Benjamin Franklin said everything in moderation. I've got nothing against the really great shows like the ball games and the fights and an occasional Western, but if we're not careful, this electronic pet can turn into a stalking, implacable monster. The experts tell us that television has precipitated the greatest mass escape and pleasure binge since the days of the Roman circus. In fact, a geneticist has said that perhaps in some future time, humans will not have two eyes anymore, but just one big eye, shaped like a television screen right in the middle of our foreheads and up sort of high since we'll no longer have any use for brains. They say that today's average man comes home, wolfs down his dinner, and rushes into the living room to watch his favorite TV shows. He turns on the set and then to the sound of music, loud voices, and the steady reverberating sound of gunfire, loses himself in other worlds that he must think are better than his own. If you'll define it, you'll realize that when you're watching TV, all you're really doing is watching other people earn good incomes following their own careers while you don't make a nickel and wind up with nothing more intriguing than red eyes and a hollow head. I say the world is vastly improved because they've perfected television. I'm glad they invented cars too, but I don't spend five or six hours every night driving around the block. When I want to go someplace, my car is there for me in the garage. When there's a show I want to see, my TV sits there. But I'll be darned if I'll waste three or four hours every night watching the thin consomme that's supposed to pass for nourishment. And you shouldn't either, unless, as I said earlier, that you have too much free time on your hands or you're a shut-in. And even then, you'll get a lot more good on the whole lot of books. You'll still have red eyes, but there'll be more protein in your brain cells too. I'll be back in just one minute. Every great technological development is like a big coin. It has two sides. The combustion engine is one of the world's greatest developments. But each year, it kills many thousands who haven't learned how to handle it yet. Maybe before we turn on the television set, we should ask ourselves, is this the best thing I can do this evening? Thank you.
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  The Best Things Are Free: Earl Nightingale on Life’s True Wealth 06.09.2026 3min

  Some wise man once said that men don't always need educating as much as they need reminding, and every once in a while we're sharply brought up and reminded of a great truth, the truth being that the best things in life are free. I think each one of us, down deep inside, knows the truth of this. Naturally, we need money with which to live and to provide against emergencies and for our future, our retirement, and so on. But all too frequently we get to putting too much value on things you can see and buy, and too little on the things you can't. Not too long ago, an attractive 46-year-old woman with a husband and family was notified that she had inherited two million dollars. She had also been notified of the fact that she had only one year to live. What would you do with two million dollars and a year to live? Well, here's what she said. I'm going to leave it all to my husband. She said, as for me, I don't need anything. I don't want anything. All I want is peace and quiet. And then she said, I want to live. It makes me so sad to think that I'm going to die. Well, here's the old and always poignant story. The trouble comes not in knowing we're going to die. We all know that. It's knowing when. As Albert Einstein said, everything is relative. Two million dollars might seem like a lot of money to a lot of people, but I've never met a person who would take it if it meant that he'd know for sure he had only one year to live. I know a lot of people, on hearing about this, would say, well boy, I'd really go on a tear for a year. But you wouldn't. The knowledge that we're not long for this world is sobering. It makes us see things in their true light and place value where it really belongs, and on a lot of things you can't see and which came absolutely free. Suddenly, faith becomes more important than ever before, and so does the love for the ones near to us. We begin to see things as we have never seen them before. Sights, sounds, and smells take on their true proportions and importance, and a lot of the things we thought we had to have before fade into insignificance. Someone once wrote, every year I live, I am more convinced that the waste of life lies in the love we have not given, the powers we have not used, the selfish prudence that will risk nothing, and which, shirking pain, misses happiness as well. No one ever yet was the poor, in the long run, for having once in a lifetime let out all the length of all the reins. We're all under the same sentence. The only difference being that we don't know when. Wouldn't it be a shame to wait until the time actually came to suddenly see things in their true light? Well, it would be morbid to dwell on thoughts like these all the time. But reading that article about the woman who inherited two million dollars and had only one year to live made me, and I suppose a lot of people, pause for a minute or so and try to get the world back into focus, if only for a short while. Something like that makes you want to be a little more gentle, a little more thoughtful, a little more loving and less critical, and above all, realize the truth of that song title, the best things in life are free. I'll be back in one minute. The value of money lies in the shelter and protection it will afford our families, the things that will help us learn, the opportunity to see more, do more, and so grow as individuals, nothing more. It should be saved for what it will do, not for what it is. This is Earl Nightingale. Thank you.
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  The King Who Pumped Too Much Money: Earl Nightingale on Inflation 30.08.2026 3min

  There's no doubt that advertising has done a lot of good for all of us, even though we grumble about it now and then. The other day I was flying into Chicago from Omaha and read a very interesting ad which appeared in the Chicago Tribune. It was written as a fable or fairy tale, but it packed a great message, and I'm sure a lot of people benefited from it. Let me read it to you. The title is, The King Who Pumped Too Much Money Into His People. It seems that once there was a king named Joseph the fourth. He loved his people so much that he was always trying to do things for them. Everybody called him good old Joe. One day the royal privy council appeared before him and said, good old King Joe, our ears have been to the ground and we've heard rumblings of hard times. Well, beamed the king, we can't have that, and he went into his pump room and pumped a new supply of money into the economy. Whereupon the royal privy councillors marveled and shouted hooray, all except a skinny little sub-councillor named Sadly, who was kept around to balance the books and do other menial chores. Go easy on that pump, King, said Sadly, for it's written there is such a thing as too much of a good thing, but nobody heard him. And soon it was harvest time, and again the royal privy councillors appeared, and this time with grave news that the farmers had produced more food than the people could eat and had no market for it. So good old Joe went out to his royal balcony and proclaimed a royal subsidy, saying he'd pump out more money and buy all the crops the farmers couldn't sell, and many farmers shouted bravo. Well, the chief royal councillor shouted, pump out a little more this time, King, and prices climbed sharply during the third quarter, and Sadly, the skinny little sub-councillor moaned, well, you've done it again, but they didn't hear him. Soon the councillors were back again with the news that the guilds were insisting on the hiring of two men for one man's job, but the king liked to have his people have it soft, and he thought that was fine. But this time our friend Sadly stood up and looked the king in the eye, and he said, King, when you force the manufacturers to pay through their nose, they have to raise prices, and when prices go up, wages have to go up, which makes prices go up, which makes wages go up. But the king stopped him and said, I won't have that, that's inflation. That's right, said Sadly. Inflation is started when excess money is pumped into the people, when crops that have no demand are bought with government funds, when two men are allowed to be paid for the work of one. Sad to relate, our friend Sadly went on, you can't create wealth simply by creating dollars. Our real wealth stems from our production of goods and services. Dollars are only a common denominator for trading them. And he went on to explain to the king that if dollars are increased without increasing production proportionately, there's excess money and prices go up. Well, the king saw the wisdom of Sadly's counsel, and he kicked all of his other so-called councillors out of the castle, and he promoted Sadly to the job of new chief royal privy councillor. Well, after I read the ad and enjoyed it, I sat there on the airplane for a while and wondered, how many people would have read it if it had been written as a learned treatise on economics? I wonder. Well, I'll be back in just one minute. The moral of our little story is, to do your part in curbing inflation, know the facts and speak up loud enough to be heard in high places. I like this story, and I'm sure you liked it too. This is Earl Nightingale. Thank you.
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  Earl Nightingale on Books, Knowledge, and the Idea That Frees You 23.08.2026 3min

  When I was about 12 years old, I made a discovery that has saved my neck and has turned what could have been a fairly boring existence into a pretty exciting affair. It may sound as though I stumbled onto a goldmine, and in a way I suppose I did, but what really happened was that I discovered books. That's right. It suddenly dawned upon me that reading a book could be the most exciting and interesting thing in the world, and at the same time that, by reading books, I could learn all the many wonderful things that the great and wise men who have lived before me had learned at such a tremendous cost in brains and time. Ever since the printing press was discovered and developed by Johann Gutenberg in Germany back in the year 1450, books have been the world's greatest investment. The right kind of books, that is. Like everything else, there are a lot of books that aren't worth the paper they're printed on. A good sign is that we're reading a lot more than we used to as a nation, despite all the distractions. We'll buy about 630 million books this year, not counting textbooks, and that's about twice as many books as we were buying ten years ago. Good books are crammed with good ideas, and one idea can change your life. As a great educator has said, a mind stretched by a new idea can never again go back to its original proportions. But here's a sobering thought. It has also been said that as far as about 95% of the people are concerned, all the really great books, with their treasure of golden knowledge, could be burned. That's right. Probably 95% of the people would never miss them, and all because they haven't discovered the thrill and excitement of learning new things in good books. Take a man who works for a living, for example. If he would study the books that pertain to his job, his industry, and his place in our economy, he could really move ahead and do a much better job. Just this one thing would make an exception of him, and it's the exceptions who can write their own ticket in the world. And he could pretty well figure that he was one of the very few, if not the only one, where he works who realizes an education doesn't stop with a diploma. One fine day he could be reading and run across the idea that could bring him and his family everything they want. But there's another important factor here, too. The more we learn about what it is we do, the more enthusiastic about it we become. And it begins to rub off on the people with whom we associate and the people to whom we want to sell our ideas. As Socrates pointed out, ignorance is the cause of evil. And probably the greatest pity of it all is that knowledge is free. We're surrounded by it on every side, in our public libraries, our schools, and the books we already have in our homes but don't read. Books like the Bible. And what about that set of encyclopedia you bought? I may be wrong, in which case it probably won't be the first time, but I'll bet that if most people would just read the books they've already got in the house, they'd be started on the most exciting journey a man or woman can make. The lifetime search for knowledge. With it, we can be free. Without it, we can't be much of anything. I'll be back in one minute. A fine lady by the name of Annie Besant once wrote, Knowledge is essential to conquest. Only according to our ignorance are we helpless. Thought creates character. Character can dominate conditions. Will creates circumstances and environment. This is Earl Nightingale. Thank you.
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  Attitude Is Everything: Earl Nightingale on Winning at Life and Work 18.08.2026 3min

  Of all the words in all the languages of the world, what would you say is the most important word when it comes to this business of living successfully? Well, according to the experts, the word is attitude, and it's a fact that it is this word, or rather what we mean by this word, that will determine more than any other single thing what happens to us. My dictionary defines the word attitude as a noun meaning position, disposition, or manner with regard to a person or thing. And it is our attitude that determines what happens to us in life. As William James of Harvard once put it, it is our attitude at the beginning of a difficult task which, more than anything else, will affect its successful outcome. I may not have that word for word, but that's about it. And what he meant was that the kind of an attitude we have when we start some particular job will determine to a tremendous extent whether or not we'll enjoy it and whether or not we'll be successful doing it. One of the best stories I ever read about this was about a couple of young women who worked in a telegraph office. They were just about ready to quit because the people who came into their office were so miserable, complaining, officious, and downright insulting. Just before quitting, though, these two young ladies did a very wise thing. Just for the fun of it, they decided on their last day to bend over backwards being sweet to people. They agreed that no matter what the person looked like or acted like when he came into their office, they'd just overwhelm him with courtesy and efficiency. Well, before the day was over, the girls got the idea. They didn't have a single miserable or complaining customer all day. They enjoyed the experience tremendously, and it was wonderful having people smiling and being polite to them. For the first time, they realized that the customers who had seemed so terrible before had simply been reacting to the poor attitude the girls had been assuming. The number one cause for people losing jobs is their inability to get along with other people. This has long been known. And the strangest thing is that these people never catch on to the fact that we get back, measure for measure, just exactly what we put out. And if you've found people reacting unfavorably, or if you've gotten the idea the world is picking on you, it might be worth your time to study the front you've been presenting to the world. You should check your attitude. I had an office high in a skyscraper one time, and the first day I was taken up by an elevator operator who was the surliest, unhappiest, most unfriendly character I'd ever seen. Everything he did was just barely on the safe side of being an insult. And just for the fun of it, I made up my mind to really work on this guy, and from that time on, every time I got on his elevator, I'd give him a cheery greeting and ask about his health and his family and so on. Wouldn't do any good for both of us to be miserable. For a while, he didn't even answer me, but gradually he thawed, and in a couple of months, he was a fairly nice guy. In a year, he was the friendliest operator in the building and was always doing favors for the people in my office and me. The way I look at it, each of us has a choice, no matter what his circumstances may be, to be either cheerful or not. There's absolutely nothing to be gained by not being cheerful, so why even consider it? If we develop the right attitude, it's amazing how quickly the world changes, how things start to go our way and how lucky we seem to become. And like the two girls in the telegraph office, we might even make an amazing and interesting discovery. I'll be back in a minute. An enthusiastic attitude is nothing more than faith in action, and as Henry Chester said, faith and initiative rightly combined remove mountainous barriers and achieve the unheard of and miraculous. This is Earl Nightingale. Thank you.
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  Krakatoa and Mount Pelée: Volcanoes That Shook the World Forever 09.08.2026 3min

  Every century some kind of major and totally unexpected disaster seems to hit in some area of the world. One of the most terrible disasters the world has ever known struck in August of 1883. At that time there was a large island, a volcanic island I might add, in the Strait of Sunda, about halfway between Sumatra and Java. When the volcano on this island decided to erupt it blew the whole island off the map of the world and formed a new one. Instead of erupting the way volcanoes are supposed to, which is to act like a kind of safety valve letting out the steam and lava a little bit at a time, it seems that a deep layer of hardened lava had closed up this volcano, or at least too much of it, and when the explosion finally came it was the loudest explosion according to estimates at the time the world had ever known. It is said that the shock waves alone destroyed ships many miles away and that was only the beginning. Every bit of life on the island was extinguished in a fraction of a second, but the explosion created a giant tidal wave that started moving off in all directions. Conservative estimates claim that the tidal wave, as it rushed into the surrounding islands, killed at least 30,000 people and eventually touched every shore clear around the world, and as a small wave finally broke on the shores of France. A years later, a year later rather, volcanic dust was still floating around the world and the reflection of the Sun on this dust that eventually reached the upper atmosphere was seen as far away as London. What was left of the original island, which wasn't much, erupted again in 1939 and shot earth fragments 30,000 feet into the air. I don't imagine this would be the best spot in the world to go into the real estate business. Freeling Foster, in his book Keep Up with the World, tells about the fastest disaster ever caused by a volcano. It was the total obliteration of the city of Saint Pierre on Martinique in the West Indies. It was caused by the eruption of Mount Pelée on a bright morning in May in the year 1902. Although the volcano had been smoking, muttering, and rumbling for days, the cataclysmic eruption finally came without warning and started with a terrific explosion which blew out the side of the crater that faced the city of Saint Pierre five miles away. Instantly, immense clouds of flaming poisonous gas raced down the mountainside, set fire to the city, and killed 30,000 inhabitants and an additional 10,000 holiday visitors in less than three minutes. After a four-day search for survivors among the blackened and pathetic ruins, one man was found alive. He had escaped because, ironically, he was a criminal and happened to be locked up in a deep underground dungeon of the Saint Pierre prison. I'll be back in one minute. The one thing in the world on which you can count absolutely is change. We are passengers riding a strange and complex world on a long arc toward destiny. It is inevitable that we'll see some strange and wondrous sights. This is Earl Nightingale. Thank you.
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  America’s Hidden Crisis: Illiteracy, Poverty, and Lost Opportunity 02.08.2026 3min

  When we read of poverty and unemployment, we often wonder how these ugly statistics can persist to mar an otherwise healthy and affluent society. One of the causes can be found in an area that has received far too little publicity. Did you know that there are 10 million adults in this country over the age of 25 who are completely or functionally illiterate? Adult men and women who can neither read nor write constitute a severe economic, social, and moral problem, and 7 million of the 10 million non-readers are native-born Americans. The problem of illiteracy that plagues this country became apparent during the Second World War, when 600,000 men were rejected for military service because of their inability to read and write. During the Korean conflict, 300,000 were rejected for the same reason. Current national statistics show that about 11% of American adults are functionally illiterate. Think of that. And that comes to about 11% of our adults who are not qualified to even look for work. Men and women who can't read street signs, the signs on buses or subways, who can't read the help-wanted columns of the daily papers, who can't read a job description or an application for employment or a tax form or get a driver's license. A high national level of illiteracy reduces national wealth and weakens technological progress. It's been estimated that in the next four or five years, there will be 15 million of our people who will be technologically unemployable because of their inability to read and write. And while this is a serious national problem, think of how serious a handicap this is to the person. Even in cases of unskilled labor, large companies generally do not employ personnel who are functionally illiterate. And while we have modern medicine, foods and equipment to prevent disease, these are not being used by 11% of the adult population because they can't read. The person who cannot read newspapers, magazines or books is completely cut off from written communication in society. He can't read a menu in a restaurant. He's completely lost in a strange town or city. An illiterate wife and mother has a very difficult time because she can't read price signs, can labels, cookbooks or baby formulas. This is, of course, not a new problem. At one time, illiteracy was the rule rather than the exception. Since 1870, census takers have asked each person interviewed if he could read or write or both. To be classified as literate, he had only to answer yes. At one time, particularly when our society was largely agricultural in nature, it didn't make too much difference whether a person could read or write or not. But today, this is certainly no longer true. And these figures relating to illiteracy give us real insight to the unemployment and poverty problems that still plague us. Recent surveys have shown that low educational level is the single most widespread cause of poverty. It is a characteristic of 67% of the nation's low-income families. In 1954, the United States Congress chartered the Board for Fundamental Education to operate through the states to combat illiteracy. If you're interested in this problem, contact the Department of Education of your state or your local Board of Education. I'll be back in a moment. There's an old Latin proverb which goes, the life of an illiterate man is death. The problem of illiteracy in our country demands attention and lots of it right now. This is Earl Nightingale, and thank you.
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  Your Next Port of Call: Earl Nightingale on Goals and Direction 26.07.2026 3min

  I had the good fortune to be raised near a harbor. As a kid, I used to spend hours down in the docks watching the ships loading and unloading. They'd bring in cargoes from all the distant and romantic ports all over the world. I used to stand there with a faraway look in my eyes, envying those sailors who were so fortunate. They traveled over the distant horizon to places I could only imagine or read about in my geography books. I hung around so much that some of the mates and skippers finally recognized me and actually invite me aboard once in a while. I guess you can imagine the heaven that was for me. And they'd take me from the engine room to the fo'c'sle and finally to the place I liked best, the navigation bridge. The bridge had the best view, but much more than that. It was here that the ship was controlled and steered into all those distant places I'd dreamed of. Once I was even invited to lunch, and I didn't get over that for months. It's strange how something like that can have such an overwhelming fascination for a youngster and exert such an influence over his life. As soon as I was old enough, I was on a ship, and I sailed to quite a few of those distant deep-water ports. But no matter how long the trip, I never got tired of sailing and watching the sea in all its different moods. Entering a distant port, even if I'd been there before, was always a brand-new thrill. As the years have gone by, and trying to figure out why I like ships so much, I think I've come up with the answer. Ships operate during their entire lives the way men should, but so few do. Maybe you've never thought much about it, but at any given moment a ship is 100% successful. That is, it's either sailing to a predetermined port of call, or it's in port getting ready to sail to another one. A ship is smart. It knows it can only reach one port of call at a time. You never see any doubt or confusion, or trying to do more than one thing at a time. You can climb up to the navigation bridge of a big, far-sailing ship and ask the captain where he's going, and he'll tell you instantly and in one sentence. How many people do you know who can do the same thing? It seems that most people want so many different things, most of which they're not really sure of, that they're like the guy who jumped on a horse and rode off in all directions at once. What they ought to do is recognize the truth and success of a ship. Pick one port that's important, sail to it, then rest and refit for a little while, and then sail to another important port. In this way, in not too many years, a man can set and reach his goals one by one, until finally he's got a tremendous pile of accomplishments in which he can take pride, he's got all the things he wants, just because he had sense enough to realize he could do well one thing at a time. There's one other point that fits in here, and maybe it's the most important of all. If a ship tied up to a dock for some reason had no place to go, it'd stay there until it fell apart from rust and disuse. Ships don't start their engines till they have some place to go, and here again it's the same with men. This is why it's so important that each of us should have a port of call he wants to reach, a goal, a place to get to that we feel will be better than the place in which we now find ourselves. If we don't, we might never cast off. We might never know the thrill of sailing a pre-charted course to a place we can't see for fully 99% of the journey. But we know it's there, and we know that if we keep sailing toward it, we'll reach it. I'll be back in one minute. If someone came up to you today and asked you what your next port of call is, that is, where you're going, could you answer him in one sentence, like the captain could on the bridge of his ship? If not, maybe you'd better give it some thought. This is Earl Nightingale. Thank you.
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  Remove the Friction: Earl Nightingale on Serenity and Inner Strength 19.07.2026 3min

  Modern medical research has found that the old adage, "sticks and stones may break my bones but names can never hurt me," is all wrong. Psychosomatic studies have found that man is hurt far more by names than he is by all the sticks and stones of life. Today, scientists are in agreement that the old biblical admonition is correct when it says, "He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty, and he that keepeth his spirit is greater than he that taketh a city." Man feels in competition with people and in conflict with the world about him. His fears, resentments, angers, and so forth come because he feels that the instability of life around him is threatening his very existence. But if he can catch the vision that life is lived from within out, that it's not so much what happens around or to him as what happens in him that counts, then he can set his own pace, live his own life, meet things and people objectively without fear or resistance. He can become as healthy, as prosperous, as happy as he wants to be. Anybody who knows anything at all about mechanics knows that friction is the enemy. Railroads use steel wheels on steel rails simply because this reduces friction to the minimum. An engine works best when it's properly lubricated, when a film of oil prevents metal from wearing against metal. Airplanes go faster than earth or sea-bound carriers because there's less friction in the air than on the ground or in the sea. And the same idea will work for you and me. The better job we can do to remove friction from our lives, the more serenely and smoothly we'll move through our days, and the more quickly and effortlessly will we achieve our goals in life. I read where, on December 9th, 1914, the great Edison Industries in New Jersey were destroyed by fire. Edison lost two million dollars and much of a life's work. And though many tried to comfort him, he said, "There is great value in disaster. All our mistakes are burned up. Thank God we can start anew." And just three weeks later, his company delivered the first phonograph. He knew that life is lived from within out. The fire was on the outside. Why take it inside? Some men of medical research even go so far as to say that man has within him a health-maintaining force sufficient to keep him alive and healthy almost indefinitely if it were not for the destructive effect of uncontrolled emotions. Each of us would do well to try to develop more serenity in our lives, to see ourselves and our work and our world objectively, calmly. As James Allen put it, "The calm man, having learned how to govern himself, knows how to adapt himself to others, and they in turn reverence his spiritual strength and feel that they can learn of him and rely upon him. The more tranquil a man becomes, the greater is his success, his influence, his power for good. He's like a shade-giving tree in a thirsty land or a sheltering rock in a storm." I'll be back in a moment. Yes, the strong, calm man is always loved and revered. He is like a shade-giving tree in a thirsty land or a sheltering rock in a storm. And we will be serene to the extent that we remove the friction from our lives. This is Earl Nightingale, and thank you.
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  Earl Nightingale’s Four Steps to Remembering How to Succeed 12.07.2026 3min

  You know, everything in nature has two sides, a good and a bad, depending upon the point of view. The rain that waters and fertilizes the crops also brings devastating floods. The fire that warms our homes and cooks our meals can cause widespread havoc when out of control. Think for a moment about the good and the bad sides of memory. It's believed that our subconscious minds remember everything that ever happened to us, every sight, taste, touch, sound, and smell, every emotional experience. But our conscious memories are short. It's good that our memories are short. We forget the bad, and that's good. We forget our failures, our mistakes, our foolishness, the pain we've caused, the opportunities we've missed, the love we failed to give or receive when it was needed. These pass from our conscious memories as from a filter to which they cling for a while, only to be cleansed away by the flow of time. But we also forget, to our pain, the good, and that's bad. We forget the principles, the systems, which, if we but lived by them, result in our achieving the things we want to achieve. So then, just as we forget the bad, we also forget the good. We can literally forget how to live successfully. If through some diabolical condition we were constantly reminded of all our past failures and mistakes, we'd live in a constant state of gloomy despair, a hell on earth. Our conveniently forgetful minds, however, save us from this. But if through some marvelous agency we could be constantly reminded so that we never forget the principles and systems which work to our benefit and the benefit of society, we would live in a constant state of purposeful enthusiasm, expectation, and hope. We'd go from one success to another all the years of our lives. Our world would be filled with the rewarding side of living, of accomplishment and good cheer. Well, the world's most successful men and women manage to do just this. They manage to arrange their minds and materials so that they are regularly reminded of the vital principles they need to remember in order to live successfully. They make certain that they never forget how to live well, and they do this through four vital steps. One, information, knowledge. They never stop learning. They never stop studying the kind of information calculated to make them more effective at what they've chosen to do with their lives. Two, a plan, a plan for putting this knowledge to use and a plan for their lives, a definite goal toward which they're always working. Three, reminding, a program to regularly remind them of the information they've learned. They realize how easy it is to forget unless they are constantly reminded. And four, inspiration, the motivation to put the knowledge and the plan into action and thereby produce results. And with this four-point program, they move steadily ahead month after month, year after year. I'll be back in a minute. Four steps to greatness. One, information, knowledge. Two, a plan for putting this information to constructive use. Three, constant reminding of what they know and where they're going. And four, the inspiration and motivation to keep them on the track. This is Earl Nightingale, and thank you.
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  Why Happiness Follows Achievement: The Joy of Doing Work Well 05.07.2026 3min

  Hello again. I'm going to ask you a very tricky question; however, it's important that you try to answer it the moment I ask it. I'm going to ask you a question that everyone should have given a lot of thought to and can answer immediately and in one sentence, but I might add that it's a question only a few people out of a thousand can answer. At any rate, get ready, and let's see how well you do. Here comes the question: What do you want more than anything else in the world? Time's up. Now, the chances are you answered one of three things: health, wealth, or happiness. Of course, if you happen to have a particular problem at the moment, you may have thought of that, but let's take the three that statistics prove most people want: health, wealth, and happiness. Now about health. Well, that's a tricky one. It can depend on a lot of factors such as the parents you pick, the state of your emotions, and so forth. We leave that one where it belongs, in the your doctor. Number two, wealth. This can be earned through knowledge, a lot of thinking, a lot of hard work, and yes, anyone can solve this one if he makes it his major goal in life and is willing to spend from 12 to 18 hours a day for a number of years in earning it. All he has to do is make up his mind that that's what he wants and then be willing to sacrifice just about anything for its achievement. As William James of Harvard put it, if you would be rich, you will be rich. If you would be learned, you will be learned. If you would be good, you will be good. But wish then for one thing exclusively, and don't at the same time wish for a hundred other incompatible things just as strongly. But now let's talk about number three, happiness. Here's where most people get fooled. Happiness cannot be sought directly as an end in itself, or it will forever elude you. You see, happiness is not a cause; it's an effect. It always comes as a result of doing something well, and the experts say that it's not really happiness that we're after at all. It's joy, and joy only comes from achievement. Let me give you an example. If you make a perfect golf shot to the green, it makes you happy. But the happiness came as a result of the perfect golf shot. So, if you want to be happier on a golf course, give it a lot of practice so that you'll become a better golfer. Theoretically, happiness on the course should follow. And it's the same with life. If you want to be happy or experience maximum joy from life, you've got to become better at this business of living. And joy never comes from pure receiving; it only comes from contributing or giving. If you think back, of course you're probably already way ahead of me, you'll remember that you've been happiest-that is, you've experienced the greatest joy-right after you've accomplished something really worthwhile. People frequently find they experience an emotional letdown, a feeling of uneasiness on a Sunday evening or Monday morning. It's because frequently on weekends we don't do very much. This hits men more than it does women because women are usually just as busy on weekends as they are during the week. Crazy as it may sound, kids are usually happier during the school term than they are during summer vacation, although they'll never admit it. Human beings need something worthwhile to do constantly, or they start losing out in the happiness department. I'll be back in just one minute. The next time you start feeling uneasy or depressed, dig into your work. If you're a housewife, clean out that closet or tear into the kitchen and start to work on an exotic recipe. You'll be surprised how many problems work can solve.
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  Stop Killing Time: Seeing Life’s Beauty Before It’s Too Late 28.06.2026 3min

  Hello. Some time ago I read a story that had a very profound effect on me. With my customary brilliant memory, I can recall neither the name of the book nor the author. Maybe you'll recognize it. Anyway, it was about a young man who was to be hanged for committing some crime. This was way back, the early days. The young man didn't sleep at all during his last night on earth, and dawn found him standing at his cell window from where he could see over the prison walls to the countryside beyond. At the first sign of the beautiful rosy-fingered dawn, as Homer used to call it, a change began in the young man. Suddenly he became tremendously interested in seeing the first faint rays of the sun touch the leaves of the trees. He noticed the rich brown earth and the bright green of the fields, and as he gripped the bars of his cell and stared intently at the scene which had been played every morning for countless centuries, tears started down his cheeks. He realized that he was seeing the glory and the magnificence of the world and all it meant for the first time in his life, and as the muffled footsteps of the jailers could be heard on their way to take him to the gallows, he was still at his cell window, transfixed by the unspeakable beauty of the sunrise. The beauty and the wonder of life had been there all along. He had simply waited until it was too late to enjoy it, and I doubt if he's been the only one. All of us have a tendency to waste time. Maybe it's because we don't realize that it's one of the few really precious things we'll ever own until we're in danger of losing it. Let's take the average, if there is such a thing, the average working man, for instance. He works 40 hours a week. Now this leaves him 72 hours a week when he's neither working nor sleeping. This is supposing he sleeps a full eight hours every night. 72 hours of time every week. This is almost twice the time he spends on a job that supports his whole family. Think what he could do with just a part of this time. But what does our average man do with it? Well, as a general rule, he doesn't do anything at all with it. You've heard the expression, I'm just killing time. Well, that's what he does with it. Home on a typical evening, he eats dinner and then goes into the living room and turns on his escape box. The screen lights up and people and horses begin moving around on it, and from then on he's through for the next four or five hours. He spends all this time in front of a TV set watching other people earn excellent incomes in the pursuit of their careers while he makes not a nickel and only gets red eyes and a hollow head for his efforts. Now I'm not saying there's anything wrong with it. Nothing wrong, that is, if you're so bored and discouraged with your own world that you have to devote all of your free time escaping to other worlds you must feel are superior to your own. I think television stands as one of the world's greatest developments. But as Ben Franklin used to say, everything in moderation. A part of that free time should be devoted to becoming great where you are, studying ourselves, our job, our industry, and above all to the job of becoming a fairly rational intelligent human being. A good way to spend the next dull evening might be to catalog all the books in your house and find out how many you still have to read. As for me, I only watch the great shows on TV, the ballgames and the fights. I'll be back in a minute. If you find you can hardly wait to lose yourself in some route of escape every time you don't have something to do, it might be time to sit down and have a long talk with yourself and ask yourself such questions as, where am I going? What is it I really want? And who am I?
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  Your Most Valuable Tool: Building Vocabulary for Success in Life 21.06.2026 3min

  Hello. Do you know what your most valuable tool is when it comes to getting along with other people and getting what you want from life? Well, it's the most obvious thing in the world, and I suppose one of the most overlooked. It's your ability to use your language. It's a strange and unfortunate thing, but the great majority of folks have just about the same vocabulary as adults as they had in the 8th or 9th grade. They unnecessarily cripple themselves in this most vital aspect of successful living. Words are the tools with which we express our thoughts and desires to others, and the more tools we have in this toolbox, the more jobs we can handle. And it's no news to anyone, I suppose, but the way you use the English language is an immediate tip-off to just about anyone as to how well you're educated. In the old days, and not so old at that, people used to go around poo-pooing what they called book learning. I guess this is a hangover from the dark ages when people were suspicious of anything they didn't understand. I can remember as a kid hearing older folks complain about the younger generation spending too much time in book learning instead of going out and getting a job, any job, the way they had to do. All knowledge is stored in books. The more you read, the more knowledge you acquire, and knowledge still is, and always has been, power to the person who has it. And the use of the language, more than any other single thing, is a barometer of a person's knowledge. One time at a leading Eastern university, they gave a vocabulary examination to the graduating class. Then they kept track of them. And after 5, 10, 15 years and so on, checked to see how these surviving grads were doing. Without a single exception, the ones who scored highest in vocabulary were doing best out in the world. That is, they had better jobs and were making more money and so on. And here again is a subject anyone can learn, but very few do. There are lots of wonderful books on English and vocabulary in every bookstore and library, but again it smacks of work so most folks just slip along using a horse-and-buggy vocabulary and wondering why they're traveling at a horse-and-buggy pace. One of the really funny aspects of our society is the number of people who will poke fun at those who speak with a foreign accent. Whenever you hear a foreign accent, it means the person can speak at least two languages. The ones who laugh as a rule can't even speak their own, and have a vocabulary you could toss into the ear of a gnat. If you'd like to improve your vocabulary, simply get a good book on English, a good dictionary, and make sure you know the pronunciation key and what the little symbols mean, and then study the language an hour a day and read a lot. Whenever you come to a word you're not sure of, look it up and then write it down along with its meaning. Usually this will help you remember it. And then start working your new words into your vocabulary, but only when you're sure they fit. For an American to not know his language is just like a plumber who doesn't know what his tools are for. He's not going to be trusted with very important jobs, is he? This is an interesting and vital aspect if we'll just spend a little bit of time every day or every week for a few months to learn it. I'll be back in just one minute. If a person would just set aside one hour a day for study, six days a week, it would come to 312 hours a year. You know, it wouldn't take long to be an expert at just about anything with that kind of a program, would it? And the time will pass anyway, whether we use it or not. Thank you.
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  Four Pages a Day: The Hard Work and Rejections That Make a Writer 14.06.2026 3min

  Have you ever thought you might like to become a writer? Here's something a lot of people could do and very successfully, but not very many will and you know why? It's because becoming successful as a writer is just about the hardest work in the world. Outside of writing my own radio programs, I've never done too much of it. I tried to hire writers for my radio programs one time, but it just never worked out. They didn't write things I was interested in. But I guess I had one of the finest writing teachers who ever lived. He was Professor W.S. Campbell, who for so long headed up the writing department of the University of Oklahoma. I didn't go to that fine school except for the writing course, which has probably turned out more successful writers than any other in the country. Dr. Campbell is dead now, but he had a formula that was sure fire. The first thing you had to do, aside from getting a generally good education, was to pick the magazine you wanted to write for, if magazine writing was what you wanted. Then you'd have to read every issue of that magazine you could find. In this way, you could discover the kind of stories the editor of that particular magazine liked. Then you study the ads, because the ads and the stories were naturally slanted toward the same market. Then you just had to start writing stories similar to the ones you'd been reading and sending them in. Of course, they'd come bouncing right back time after time, but gradually you'd be getting better as a writer, and eventually you might get a note of encouragement from the editor along with your rejection slip. And finally, when you had enough rejection slips to paper the walls of a good-sized barn, you'd have a story accepted. From then on, usually you were in and could call yourself a professional writer. The big thing seemed to be to write about things in which you were intensely interested, things which moved you emotionally. You know, if you'll sit at your typewriter and pick out four double-spaced pages every day, just four pages a day, you'll finish a full-size book every 90 days. That's four complete books every year, or 40 books in the next 10 years. Of course, writing a book and having a book published are two indistinctly separate things, but of one thing you can be absolutely positive. The editors of magazines and the publishing houses will read your manuscripts, and if you show any promise, they'll tell you so. They're searching constantly for new writers because that's where their bread and butter comes from. Don't ever believe people who tell you it's who you know. It's nothing of the sort. Actually, writing can be a wonderful profession if you're qualified and willing to devote the same number of years to it that you'd have to devote to anything else in order to become successful. A good writer can work any place in the world. All he needs is a typewriter and a post office. He can sit out on the patio and have his coffee at 10 in the morning if he feels like it, and he can enjoy whatever fame he can earn. But at some time, he's got to go into that room, close the doors, put a piece of paper into the typewriter, and perform what the writers themselves call the hardest work on earth. Like having a baby, the joy comes after it's all over. A sort of humorous aspect of our society is the number of writing clubs where the members meet to talk about writing, but who, for the most part, never quite get around to doing the actual work. I'll be back in just one minute. If a writer waited around for a wisp of inspiration to come floating through the window, he'd eventually petrify in his chair. Inspiration comes from work. It has hardly ever been the other way around. Why don't you write a book? All you have to do is decide to spend three or four hours a day in front of a typewriter until it's finished.
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  The Confidence Man: Ponzi, Grand Deception, and the Lure of Easy Money 07.06.2026 3min

  I suppose criminal psychology is one of the world's most interesting subjects and, at times, certainly the most terrifying. There's hardly a day goes by when the paper doesn't report some strange, senseless, twisted crime. But the most interesting of all, because of its sheer waste of talent and time, is the story of the Confidence Man. For example, there's a really interesting book published in 1955 by J.P. Lippincott Company called Grand Deception, which is a collection of the world's most spectacular and successful hoaxes, impostures, ruses and frauds, collected and edited by Alexander Klein. And in reading the many dozens of cases, the so-called normal person must shake his head and ask with wonderment, why don't those characters go straight? A lot of them have everything in the world it takes to be a really large success at just about any legitimate business, but because of some mental or emotional quirk in their natures, it's just no fun for them unless they're parting someone from his wallet dishonestly. And the thing that keeps them going is another quirk of human nature that's never changed and was old in the days of ancient Egypt. I guess you'd have to call it the ubiquitous belief that it's possible to get something for nothing. Freeling Foster, in his book Keep Up with the World, tells about the most spectacular. Charles Ponzi, an ignorant Italian, came to this country in 1899 and settled in Boston. For a while he worked at odd jobs such as dishwashing, but in 1919 he opened an investment business and offered to pay interest of 50% on any sum invested with him for just 90 days. Well, to the few who asked how this was possible, Ponzi claimed he was making a fortune in international postal coupons, buying them in countries where their price was low and selling them in countries where they brought higher prices. But, of course, he was lying. He was simply meeting the few demands on him for interest with money from his constantly growing capital. And, my golly, how it grew. After kind of a slow start, the money started coming in so fast it became impossible to keep books on it, and his 16 clerks had to work so rapidly that they tossed the money into wastebaskets under the counter. By public demand, Ponzi opened branch offices in four states and shortly was taking in such staggering sums each day. Now, on one day, he took in more than $2 million. Not bad, you'll admit, for one day. That he was naturally investigated and exposed. This started a run in all the people who thought they were getting something for nothing panicked and, of course, lost their shirts. When he was arrested a few days later, it was learned that during his operations of less than eight months, he had taken from some 50,000 investors about $18 million, half of which was never found or restored. Ponzi served a couple of prison terms and was deported to Italy in 1934, later went to South America where he eventually died in a hospital charity ward, 1949. But what a terrible waste of everybody's time. He could have founded a legitimate company and, while it would have taken longer, could have eventually left behind him a sound business, friends instead of enemies, and a good name instead of a prison record. Put your money where you know it's safe, where it's guaranteed, and where you earn a good but honest return. In this way, you'll get something for something. I'll be back in one minute. If a person would just put the same time and energy into being legitimate, he could keep what he earns, after taxes that is, and sleep like a baby. But as Plato said more than 300 years before Christ, everything that deceives may be said to enchant.
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  Talent Isn’t Enough: Earl Nightingale on Taking Your Gift to Market 31.05.2026 3min

  Some years ago, a man came into my office whom I've never forgotten, and for whom I've never stopped being sorry. I've often thought that there must be thousands of people in the same boat. My secretary had given him an appointment, and he started right off on the wrong foot by arriving 15 minutes late. He then told me a long, sad story. As I remembered, it went something like this. Mr. Nightingale, everyone tells me I have a beautiful singing voice. In fact, they tell me my voice is better than most of the male singers in this country including, and right here he tossed off the names of our highest paid male singing stars. Well, I asked him why he'd come to me, and he replied it was because I was in the radio and television business. And I then asked him what he had done to get his voice heard by people other than his family and friends, who all raved about what a great voice he had. And right here he got a sort of pained look on his face and said something to the effect that someone ought to do something about the fact that he had such a great voice. At first I thought he was kidding, but after studying him for a moment, I realized he was quite serious. So I overcame the urge to throw him out into the hall and then tried to explain as patiently as I could that when we have something we think is worthwhile, it's up to us to do something about it. I told him that in his case, his course was clear. Since he had the finest larynx since Caruso, he should do two things. One, he should study voice under a competent coach, and two, he should sing every chance he got. Sing in church, sing for service clubs, sing for nothing, but sing until he qualified for the big chance he felt someone ought to give him. I then went on to explain that the world didn't give two hoops in you-know-where whether he had a good voice or not. He could make Perry Como sound like the baritone in a Salvation Army quartet, but unless he brought his songs to the people, the world would keep turning, the sun would still come up, and he could just forget about the whole thing. Well then, thinking that maybe I was being a little rough on him, I told him how all the big stars got started, how they worked and kept going and kept picking themselves up every time something or someone knocked them down until they had earned the greatness and its corresponding rewards they sought. Well, I guess I made quite a little speech, but I couldn't reach him. He finally left the same way he came in, petulant and hurt because the world didn't stand at attention just because the good Lord had given him a great voice. He probably went back to his hometown where his mother would sit in pure rapture while he shook the kitchen walls with his booming basso or whatever he had. This was quite a number of years ago. I wonder whatever became of him. Probably the same thing thousands of other youngsters do, even though they've been awarded the precious gift of real talent. Nothing at all. While the great stars keep coming along, working their way up the hard way, and someday knowing the acclaim of the world that will pay any price for greatness except making it easy to get there. Something to think about, isn't it? Well, I'll be back in just one minute. Having an outstanding talent is like raising a great crop. Unless you take it to market and sell it, the world will never miss it because no one ever knew it existed. If you think you've got something the world should know about, make it your career to see that the world knows about it. Thank you.
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  How Great Service and Fair Prices Can Build a Million-Dollar Business 24.05.2026 3min

  I received a telephone call the other day that really set me to thinking. I was working in my study, and as usual, the phone interrupted my work. I think I was reading the sports page at the time. And a charming female voice asked, Is this Mr. Nightingale? And I said, Yes. And then she said, Mr. Nightingale, Mr. Spelvin can speak to you now. I thought, Well, isn't that nice. This Mr. Spelvin must be a pretty important man. I wonder what he wants to talk to me about. Well, there was a short and impressive delay at the other end of the line, and then a man's voice asked, Mr. Nightingale? Again, I said, Yes. And I don't mind admitting I was becoming pretty excited by this time. He said, Mr. Nightingale, this is Mr. Spelvin. I believe someone at your house called my office. Well, I started racking my brain why anyone at my house would call a Mr. Spelvin. You know the feeling you get when you should remember someone's name but can't? So I decided to take an embarrassing chance, and I asked, Mr. Spelvin, could you tell me what it is you do at your office? There was a pause while I began to sense that I'd really put my foot in it. And then he answered, Well, I'm the plumber. Well, I told him about the leak in the basement pipe, and he said that he'd put me on his schedule and be over in a few days. Now, I know men who head giant corporations who won't keep you waiting on the phone since they know it's bad manners, and I'm not trying to say that plumbers aren't important people because they are. If it weren't for plumbers, we'd all be up to our necks in trouble. But what I am saying is that, for the most part, the service business in this country is getting too big for its britches. Pride goeth before a fall, and when the service business gets straightened out, a lot of people in it are going to fall a long way, and they'll wind up having to put a tourniquet on their wallets. A big percentage of them are giving poor service and charging outlandish prices, and it can't last. In fact, if you're a plumber, electrician, carpenter, TV repairman, automotive mechanic, painter, or just about anywhere in the service industry, you could really build a fine and lasting business for yourself by giving old-fashioned, excellent service and charging fair prices. An auto mechanic went to Florida and started calling in person on all the businessmen in his town. He asked them if they were happy with the way their cars were being taken care of and with the prices they were having to pay. He then offered to take care of their cars on a year-round basis, do excellent work, and charge prices for parts and labor that would be honest and fair. Well, to make a long story short, he netted about $500 his first month in business and went on to make a million dollars. We've come to such a national acceptance of sloppy, half-hearted, mediocre service in this country that an honest, hard-working, conscientious man or woman stands out like an elephant in a herd of field mice. Maybe this is your big chance to start and build a really good business for yourself. All you have to do is start operating as though we had a normal economy where people could only be paid for their work, measured by its quality and promptness. You could almost go door to door and pick up enough business to get started. From then on, word of mouth would build you up in a hurry. Well, at least it's something to think about, isn't it? I'll be back in just one minute. Without a doubt, there are still a lot of very fine service people in the country, but they're in the minority. I think the others should keep in mind the fine old line from the Bible, As ye sow, so shall ye reap. You might sidestep this law for a while, but eventually it's going to catch up with you.
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  Acres of Diamonds: Russell Conwell on Finding Opportunity Underfoot 17.05.2026 3min

  Hello again. To my mind, one of the most interesting Americans who lived around the turn of the century was a man by the name of Russell Herman Conwell. He was born in 1843 and lived until 1925. He was a lawyer for about 15 years, then became a clergyman. But one day a young man came to him at the church and told him he wanted to get a college education but was in such a fix financially that he just couldn't swing it. Well, Dr. Conwell decided right then and there what his aim in life was. He decided to build a university for poor but deserving youngsters. But he had a problem. He'd need a few million dollars to swing the deal. But things like that don't seem to stand in the way of people with a real purpose in life. Several years before, as I remember it, Dr. Conwell had become tremendously intrigued by a true story which had an ageless moral to it. The story was about a farmer who lived in Africa and, through a visitor, became tremendously excited about looking for diamonds. Diamonds had already been discovered in some abundance on the African continent and this farmer got so excited about the idea of millions of dollars' worth of diamonds that he sold his farm and headed out to strike it rich by discovering a diamond mine. Well, he wandered all over the continent as the years slipped by, constantly searching for diamonds which he never found. He finally wound up completely broken by the whole thing and, as I remember the story, became despondent and tossed himself into a river and drowned. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, or rather the farm he'd sold, the new owner had picked up an unusual-looking rock about the size of a country egg and put it on his mantle as a sort of curiosity. And the same visitor came by again and, seeing this rock on the mantle, practically went into terminal convulsions. Pulling himself together, he told the new owner of the farm that the funny-looking rock on his mantle was just about the biggest diamond that had ever been found, whereupon the new owner of the farm said, well, heck, the whole farm's covered with these things, or words to that effect, and sure enough it was. And I'm reaching way back to remember the exact details, but if my memory serves me right, this farm turned out to be the Kimberley Diamond Mine, the richest the world has ever known. The farmer who'd sold the place had literally been standing on acres of diamonds and then sold his farm and wound up in the river because he never found any. In telling this story, Dr. Conwell likened each of us to the first farmer. Each of us really is right in the middle of his own acres of diamonds if only we have enough sense to realize it and develop the ground we're standing on before we go charging off looking for greener pastures. Well, Dr. Conwell told this story more than 6,000 times. He must have been a terrific speaker because he attracted enormous audiences and he raised enough money to start the college for poor but deserving kids that he had his heart set on. In fact, he raised about $6 million, and the university he founded is still going strong. It's Temple University in Philadelphia with 10 degree-granting colleges and six other schools. When Dr. Russell H. Conwell talked about each of us being right on his own acre of diamonds, he sure knew what he was talking about. I'll be back in a minute right after this educational advice. I believe you can still get the book, Acres of Diamonds. Why don't you check with your neighbor, and I guess it always will be. You know, opportunity doesn't come along, as most people think. It's laying there all the time. We just have to be able to see it.
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  Before You Buy the Dream: The First Rule of Business Success 10.05.2026 3min

  Many years ago, when I was on the air in Chicago, I got a letter from a woman with a problem that must come to someone every day in a week in every town in the country. She wrote that she and her husband were thinking of going into the motel business in Florida, and she wanted my opinion on whether or not I thought the motel business was a good business to go into. She went on to say that her husband was retired and that they'd saved quite a bit of money through the years in addition to their home, which they'd completely paid for, and which would be worth quite a bundle in itself. Well, I thought about that letter for some time, and then I practically dictated a book to my secretary, and when I got through, I put it on my program, and then I mailed it to the lady who'd written to me. She and her husband had never been in business for themselves, so they didn't understand the first rule, and this is that there are no good or bad businesses, so to speak. They're only good and bad managers. One person will do just fine in a particular business, finally sell it and retire to his cabin cruiser in the Bahamas, and the man who bought it, even though it was a real moneymaker with nothing changed but the management, would fall flat on his face and wind up selling in desperation before bankruptcy. A lot of people seem to think that just because you're in business for yourself, you can sit back and spend your time counting and bailing all the money that comes flooding in. Such is not now, never was, and never will be the case. Running your own business takes thorough knowledge and experience and harder work than most would believe possible, particularly during the first five years or so. Good managers can make a success out of just about any business. Bad managers can wreck just about any business. The next thing I told this couple was to leave their savings right where they were and not to touch them with a 10-foot pole. They'd worked too hard and too long accumulating a pile to toss it away in a business they knew nothing about, and then I told them that if they were interested in the motel business in Florida, to go down there, pick the town they liked and would like to live in, and get a job running a motel for a year or so, even if they had to work for nothing. In a year, they'd know the motel business pretty well. They'd know its headaches and pitfalls and profits, and during that time, they could really study the motel business and know about such things as location, the size to build, the cost of building or buying, what kind of profits to expect on your investment. At the end of that time, if they still wanted to go into the business, fine. They'd know what they were in for. They'd know what was a good buy and what wasn't, and they'd still have their money and their nice home in case they decided their dream wasn't all it was cracked up to be. This is the way to go into business for yourself, and don't let some fast-talking Jasper with a fast line and a million cubic miles of blue sky talk you into anything until you've checked him, his proposal, and have the know-how to succeed. Running your own business can be a way to all of your dreams, if you go about it scientifically, but it can give you ulcers and make you a prime candidate for the Laughing Academy, if you don't. I'll be back with a word about this in just one minute. Don't ever believe the old wives' tale that opportunity knocks but once. Opportunity's knuckles are bleeding and raw to the bone from knocking every day of your life. You just have to be able to see it. And don't get excited about every little opportunity that comes along. Save your money and wait for the big one. As long as you're watching and waiting, you can just bet it'll come along, and then you'll be ready for it.
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  What Is Charm? Earl Nightingale on Beauty, Posture, and the Inner Self 03.05.2026 3min

  Well, how are you feeling today? Are you what they call a charming person? I used to wonder what they meant exactly when they referred to someone as being charming. And the other day I had a long talk with, and you can be sure of this, a very charming woman. Her name is Bess Rothman. She's an expert on this business of charm. She's taught it at colleges and traveled all over the country telling men and women how to be charming. She lives in Chicago now and devotes her time to helping people find the type of work they're best fitted for and at the same time improving them as individuals. She told me that any woman can be beautiful and, as a matter of fact, should be beautiful. She also told me that every man could look a whole lot better than he does and make a very striking appearance wherever he goes. So I asked Miss Rothman, actually she's a wife and mother but keeps her professional name, I asked her, what is charm? And she smiled, which gave me the feeling I wasn't the brightest person she'd ever talked to, and said, Mr. Nightingale, charm is an inner thing. An inner thing. I then verified her first impression by asking, what do you mean by that? And in essence, this is what she told me. She said, as far as a woman is concerned, charm has nothing to do with individual features. A woman can have a big nose or a long skinny neck or practically no neck at all or too many teeth or be a mite too wide across what a woman calls her hips or not have a movie star's legs and still be a very attractive and charming person. It seems, according to Miss Rothman, that every woman on earth has some beautiful features. It might be her eyes or skin or hands or what have you. So what she should do is dress and make up as a composite, complete woman, making the best use of her good features and minimizing and not worrying about the features she's not too proud of. But this is only the beginning. It's what she is inside that she shows on the outside. If she's calm, cheerful and loving on the inside, she radiates this terrific inner self like a hot stove on a cold morning. And this is something everyone can control, although it takes practice if it doesn't come naturally. When she told me this, I remembered reading something by the great American educator, William Lyon Phelps of Yale. He said, the most interesting people are those with the most interesting pictures in their minds. Realizing that we can only reflect on the outside what we've got on the inside, Dr. Phelps liked to point out that the inside of a person's mind was sort of like a picture gallery, each mind with a certain kind of pictures. If they're happy, interesting pictures on many subjects, well, you get the idea. Ms. Rothman then told me that the third most important point for a man or woman to be charming is, and this is just as important as the first two, is this business of posture, the way we walk, stand and sit down. You'd be surprised how quickly you can form the habit of walking straight and erect. It makes you feel better, as she pointed out, you look better, and the world suddenly begins to think you are better. And when this happens, you are. I'll be back in one minute. To be charming then takes at least three things. Accentuate your good features and don't worry about the ones that aren't so good. Remember that you have to be charming inside before you can be charming on the outside, and posture, the way you look to the world. It's really amazing, and of course the experts go along with this completely, how what you act like on the outside has a way of affecting how you feel on the inside. As Dorothea Brand put it in her fine book, Wake Up and Live, act as though it were impossible to fail.