The Seven Laws of Positive Living

Famed French mathematician/philosopher Pascal once observed that living was so important an activity everybody must be studying it. However, he went on to note his surprise that more people knew the laws of geometry than were concerned with the laws of living.

The essential laws of success have proven their value for centuries. However, very few people study and apply them consistently. It is amazing that in our schools every subject is studied except the art of positive living. As a consequence, we have many experts in all sorts of sciences, but just as Pascal observed in the seventeenth century, we have few experts in life.

In order to succeed, a salesperson needs to concentrate every ounce of mental energy on his work. You can’t do that if your mind is occupied with a mass of unresolved problems, unclear goals or negative thoughts.

Personal Selling Power’s continuous research into the key factors of success and achievement indicates that, (1) positive living is more than the sum of your positive thoughts, (2) positive living is the basis without which any level of success is worthless and (3) positive living is not the quickest way to travel to success but it is the most dependable. In this first of a series of positive living articles, we bring you seven principles of positive living. When you follow them, they can serve as a steady source for growth, achievement and fulfillment in your professional life.

1) Expand your vision of yourself!

What I aspire to be comforts me.
Robert Browning

Orison Swett Marden, the founder of the classic Success Magazine, wrote in his book Success Fundamentals, “Human life seems to be a sort of tunnel.” We pass into the small end at birth, and the farther we go, the wider grows the tunnel.

The problem with many people is that they get so comfortable in the small end of the tunnel and so conditioned to travel in a straight line that they erroneously believe that life is like a continuous tube. Consequently, as they reach the wider opening, they simply continue at the same level and never realize that the world is wide open to them.

People chronically overestimate the magnitude of the obstacles and difficulties that stand in their way. Like a horse with blinders on, they go through life as if they were obligated to travel through a continuous tunnel – one which never widens or opens in front of them.

The solution to this dilemma is simple. Learn to flip-flop your mental perspective by reducing the external obstacles in your mind’s eye and, at the same time, magnifying your perception of your own inner possibilities.

Man, it is within yourself, says Pestalozzi, it is your inner sense of power that contains nature’s instrument for your development. Everyone who has ever succeeded in this world has done so by reaching deep down inside to find his own resources within.

The student of success must find two kinds of power: The power to overcome difficulties and the power to turn possibilities into realities. Your vision of yourself and your possibilities is a replica of what you will become. We carve our own statue of success in the same way that a sculptor chips away at a block of marble to create the finished form from his mental model.

The trouble with most people who fail is that they do not hold in their minds bigger models of themselves. They never dare to realize their highest ideal of themselves. They daydream their lives away. If you really want your dreams to come true, you must first wake up!

Wake up to your possibilities: dissolve the nightmare of imaginary obstacles; seize the opportunity for the greatness within you. If you want to become the person you long to be, break out of the tunnel and leap into the light.

2) Respect the law of opposite reactions!

No one is useless in this world who lightens the burdens of another.
Charles Dickens

A famous lecturer, motivator and writer, Dr. Frank Crane, once wrote, The ball rebounds from the wall with precisely the force with which it was thrown against the wall. There is a law in physics to the effect that action is equal to reaction. In selling, if I am self-confident, I awaken confidence in my prospects. If I cringe, I make others want to step on me. If I am cheerful, cheerfulness will be handed to me by others. Customers go at me about the way I go at them. And if I approach a prospect with politeness, I usually receive politeness. I get from this world a smile for a smile, a kick for a kick and love for love.

There are no victims of fate. The generous are helped, the considerate are considered. If I am bitter, it was I who skimped the sugar bowl. If I am grouchy, they will snap at me.

The real hero always rises above tragedy. The real success is always the product of positive action in the face of adversity.

3) Update your knowledge of what people like!

It’s what you learn after you know it all that counts.
John Wooden

When Charlie Chaplin was 29 years old, his income was $1,075.00 a year. Yet over the next seven years he achieved worldwide fame. How did he do it? Chaplin was an avid student of human nature. In a rare interview, he explained his relentless determination to serve his audience the funniest product.

When I am watching one of my pictures presented to an audience, I always pay close attention to what they don’t laugh at. If, for example, several audiences do not laugh at a stunt I meant to be funny, I at once begin to tear that trick to pieces and try to discover what was wrong in the idea or in the execution of it. If I hear a slight ripple at something I had not expected to be funny, I ask myself why that particular thing got a laugh.

In a way, my research is really the same as a merchant observing what people are buying or doing. Anyone who caters to the public has got to keep his knowledge of `what people like’ fresh and up-to-date.

Charlie Chaplin’s success cannot be attributed to talent alone. He worked harder than anybody in the business of selling laughs. On one occasion he filmed one short scene 435 times before he was satisfied with his final product. Like Thomas Edison with his inventions, Chaplin shrugged off the 434 stunts people didn’t like.

In the business of selling, like the business of comedy, we’re challenged everyday by the ever changing tastes and preferences of our audience. A top selling feature or a top closing technique that worked today may not work as well tomorrow. We can never perfect our knowledge of what our customers want. We can only work harder at updating our knowledge of what people like.

4) Become a go-getter.

Parking meters should remind us that we lose money standing still.
Bert Kruse

Recently I found a magazine article written in 1927 by G.M. Adams who described in great detail an experience that was very similar to an experience I had in 1987.

Adams wrote, “A friend sent me a little book the other day and asked me to read it. I promised to do so. I laid it aside. In about three days, my friend called me. `Have you read that little book?’ `No,’ I replied. `Well read it tonight. It will only take a half hour.’ Again I promised that I would try to get to it. I took up the book that evening before retiring and started to read it. I read it from cover to cover for fear I would lose some of its precious, scintillating thoughts. Next morning I went to my library and reread the story before going to work. And even now as I think of that go-getter tale I feel a thrill of new, 100 percent red blood, shooting its go-getting spirit through my veins.

G.M. Adams was writing about Peter B. Kyne’s small book, The Go-Getter. One of our subscribers, Herbert Ledbetter, sent it to me last year. He urged me to read it. He told me that this book had changed his life. Like Adams, I kept the book for a few days on my desk and Herbert called back to see if I had read the book. So I did that evening and I was spellbound by Peter B. Kyne’s tale of a go-getter. The hero is a retired soldier who had returned from the war with only one leg and one arm. But he had plenty of courage, persistence and a positive living attitude. His motto was It shall be done! And he went and did the thing he was told to do. He got and delivered a blue vase. I won’t tell the story for that would spoil its magic for those who will yet read it. The publisher of the book has not stopped reprinting The Go- Getter since 1922! It is still being sold to hundreds of sales managers today who buy it in bulk for their entire sales staff. Many companies have kept this little known book a secret from their competitors. In some companies, the Blue Vase has become the highest award a salesperson can ever achieve. Herbert Ledbetter won his Blue Vase award last year. If you want to be a go-getter yourself, go get this book and read it. You’ll agree that it is one of the best motivation books ever written!

5) Don’t fail after success!

Show me a thoroughly satisfied man and I will show you a failure.
Thomas A. Edison

More men are failures on account of success than on account of failures, explained Henry Ford 61 years ago to a reporter from American Magazine. They beat their way over a dozen obstacles, overcame a host of difficulties, sacrifice and sweat.

They made the impossible the possible. Then along comes a little success and it tumbles them from their perch. They let up, they slip and over they go. Nobody can count the number of people who have been halted and beaten by recognition and reward!

Henry Ford, who became at one time the richest man in the world, had this secret for continuous success:

Make your future plans so long and so hard that the people who praise you will always seem to you to be talking about something very trivial in comparison with what you are really trying to do. It is better to have a job too big for popular praise, so big that you can get a good start on it before the cheer squad can get its first intelligent glimmering of your plans. Then you will be free to work and continue your journey towards even greater success.

6) Develop Persistence

Hold on with a bulldog grip, and chew and choke as much as possible.
Abraham Lincoln (in a telegram to General Grant)

Robert Orben, the nationally known comedy writer and publisher of a highly successful comedy newsletter, recently quipped, “If you’re ever tempted to give up, just think of Brahms who took seven years to compose his famous lullaby. He kept falling asleep at the piano.”

The most important threat to inner persistence is outer resistance. People who learn how to deal with adversity, failure and disappointment early in life are best equipped to manage persistence problems later in life.

Don B. Owens, Jr., a passionate student of success, wrote, “Many people fail in life because they believe in the adage: If you don’t succeed, try something else. But success eludes those who follow such advice. Virtually everyone has had dreams at one time or another, especially in youth. The dreams that have come true did so because people stuck to their ambitions. They refused to get discouraged. They never let disappointment get the upper hand. Adversity only spurred them on to greater effort.”

Throughout history writers have encouraged people to persistently overcome adversity on the road to success. Ovid, the Greek philosopher wrote, “The road to valor is built by adversity.” William Shakespeare crafted these immortal words, “Sweet are the uses of adversity, which like the toad, ugly and venomous, wears yet a precious jewel in his head.

Henry Ford added to the list of life’s wisdom, “Never forget that the price of success in any time is persistent effort!”

There is no shortage of advice for success in this world, only a shortage of persistent application.

7) Pursue Meaning!

The ultimate value of life depends upon awareness and the power of contemplation.
Aristotle

Dr. Victor Frankl, the father of logotherapy, a major school of psychology, said in his international bestseller, Man’s Search For Meaning, that people who are unable to find meaning in their lives tend to suffer psychological stress and often become victims of psychosomatic illnesses.

Dr. Frankl asserts that we all can find meaning in even the most difficult life situations. His extensive research includes his own observations as a young psychiatrist held captive in a Nazi concentration camp.

Dr. Frankl’s work confirms that our psychological growth and our success ultimately depend on our ability to find meaning in life. Extensive historical evidence suggests that successful people habitually place meaning before money. For example, Thomas A. Edison once summed up the meaning of his life with, “My philosophy of life is work, bringing out the secrets of nature, and applying them for the happiness of man. I know of no better service to render during the short time we are in this world.”

Edison’s commitment to accepting meaning as the ultimate payoff helped him through the many frustrations and disappointments he suffered as an inventor.

In 1913, The Wall Street Journal described Edison’s litigations and poor financial rewards for his world famous invention of the incandescent lamp. “The incandescent lamp was brought out in 1879 and perhaps the costliest patent litigations in the history of electrical companies followed. When Edison began his experiments, lighting of homes by incandescence was said to be impossible. Yet after he brought out the incandescent lamp, a host of inventors came forward stating that they made a practical filament lamp before he did.

Years later a Saturday Evening Post interview featured Edison’s reflections on these litigations. “I fought in the courts for 14 years to establish my rights as an inventor, even after I had the patents. My associates and I had to spend more than $1 million to prove our rights to the incandescent light, even though our claims had been duly vouched by the U.S. Patent Office. Everywhere around the earth, the pirates kept picking on that little lamp, and they were able to keep me out of the profits of my patents until there were but three years left out of the 17 years. So, while the light was a boon to the world at large, to the inventor the patent was well-nigh useless.”

Thomas Edison did not grow bitter from these disappointments. He always pursued meaning first and, as a consequence, he always found a deep sense of satisfaction in his heart.

Even in old age, the pursuit of meaning helped brighten his life. He told one of his last visitors about the spine tingling sensation of seeing one of his ideas serving mankind. “I don’t get up to New York City often,” he said. “I am an old man now, but the few times I have been there in late years and witnessed the great spectacle of skyscrapers all aglow with millions of lightbulbs, there naturally comes to a man of my age a very fond memory of the first little lamp we turned on in our laboratory…”

Although the question of life’s meaning is universal, each individual must find his own, personal answer in order to find inner peace as well as outer success.

Albert Einstein was once asked by a reporter: “What would you answer if a child asked you, Why was I born?”

Einstein replied, The question `why’ in the sense of `to what purpose’ has, in my opinion, meaning only in the domain of human activities. In this sense the life of a person has meaning if it enriches the lives of other people materially, intellectually and (or) morally.

Einstein, like Edison, placed meaning before money. It appears that money is merely a reflection of our contributions in life, but meaning is the shining light without which there would be only more darkness in our human world.

There is plenty of room at the top without pushing anyone off.