Excusitis "the failure disease"You will study people very carefully to discover, and then apply, success-rewarding principles to your life. And you want to begin right away. Unsuccessful people suffer a mind deadening thought disease. We call this disease excusitis. Every failure has this disease in its advanced form. And most “average” people have at least a mild case of it.
You will discover that excusitis explains the difference between the person who is going places and the person who is barely holding his or her own. You will find that the more successful the individual, the less inclined he or she is to make excuses. But the person who has gone nowhere and has no plans for getting anywhere always has a book full of reasons to explain why. People with mediocre accomplishments are quick to explain why they haven’t, why they don’t, why they can’t, and why they aren’t. Study the lives of successful people and you’ll discover this: all the excuses made by the mediocre person could be, but aren’t made by the successful person. You have never met nor heard of a highly successful business executive, military officer, salesman, professional person or leader in any field who could not have found one or more major excuses to hide behind. Roosevelt could have hidden behind his lifeless legs; Truman could have used “no college education”; Kennedy could have said “I’m too young to be president”; Johnson and Eisenhower could have ducked behind heart attacks. |
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Like any disease, excusitis gets worse if it isn’t treated properly. A victim of this thought disease goes through this mental process: “I’m not doing as well as I should. What can I use as an alibi that will help me save face? Let’s see: poor health? Lack of education? I’m too old? I’m too young? Bad luck? Personal misfortune? My spouse? The way my family brought me up?”
And each time the victim of this failure disease has selected a “good” excuse, they stick with it. Then they rely on the excuse to explain to them self and others why they are not going forward.
And each time the victim makes the excuse, the excuse becomes imbedded deeper within their subconscious.
Thoughts, positive or negative, grow stronger when fertilized with constant repetition. At first, the victim of excusitis knows their alibi is more or less a lie. But the more frequently they repeat it, the more convinced they become that it is completely true, that the alibi is the real reason for them not being able to reach success.
The first thing you should do in your journey in this business is to vaccinate yourself against excusitis, the disease of the failure.
And each time the victim of this failure disease has selected a “good” excuse, they stick with it. Then they rely on the excuse to explain to them self and others why they are not going forward.
And each time the victim makes the excuse, the excuse becomes imbedded deeper within their subconscious.
Thoughts, positive or negative, grow stronger when fertilized with constant repetition. At first, the victim of excusitis knows their alibi is more or less a lie. But the more frequently they repeat it, the more convinced they become that it is completely true, that the alibi is the real reason for them not being able to reach success.
The first thing you should do in your journey in this business is to vaccinate yourself against excusitis, the disease of the failure.
Excusitis appears in a wide variety of forms, but the worst types of this disease are health excusitis, intelligence excusitis, age excusitis, and luck excusitis. Now let’s see just how we can protect ourselves from these four common ailments.
FOUR MOST COMMON FORMS OF EXCUSITIS
HEALTH EXCUSITIS
“But My Health Isn’t Good.” Health excusitis ranges all the way from the chronic “I don’t feel good,” to the more specific “I’ve got such-and-such wrong with me.”
“Bad” health, in a thousand different forms, is used as an excuse for failing to do what a person wants to do, failing to accept greater responsibilities, failing to make more money, failing to achieve success.
Millions and millions of people suffer from health excusitis. But is it, in most cases, a legitimate excuse? Think for a moment of all the highly successful people you know who could – but who don’t – use health as an excuse.
Most physicians and surgeons say the perfect specimen of adult life is non-existent. There is something physically wrong with everybody. Many surrender in whole or in part to health excusitis but people who think successfully do not.
The following stories illustrate the correct and incorrect attitude toward health. A 30 year old man visited a motivational convention and approached one of the speakers and said, “I’m afraid your ideas can’t do me much good.”
“You see,” he continued, “I’ve got a bad heart, and I’ve got to hold myself in check.” He went on to explain that he’d seen four doctors but they couldn’t find his trouble. He asked the speaker what he thought he should do.
“Well,” the speaker said, “I know nothing about the heart, but as one layman to another, here are three things I’d do. First, I’d visit the finest heart specialist I could find and accept his diagnosis as final. You’ve already checked with four doctors and none of them has found anything peculiar with your heart. Let the fifth doctor be your final check. It may well be you’ve got a perfectly sound heart. But if you keep on worrying about it, eventually you may have a very serious heart ailment. Looking and looking and looking for an illness often actually produce an illness.”
“The second thing I’d recommend is that you read Dr. Schindler’s great book, How to Live 365 Days a Year. Dr. Schindler shows in this book that three out of every hospital beds are occupied by people who have EII—Emotionally Induced Illness. Imagine, three out of four people who are sick right now would be well if they had learned how to handle their emotions. Read Dr. Schindler’s book and develop your program for ‘emotion’s management’.”
“Third, I’d resolve to live until I die.” Commit to saying this, “I’m going to live until I die and I’m going to live. Why only be half alive? Every minute a person spends worrying about dying is just one minute that person might as well have been dead.”
In contrast, imagine sitting on an airplane and after the noise of the take-off, hearing a ticking sound that sounds kinda unique. Rather startled, you glance at the person sitting beside you, for that is where the sound seemed to be coming from.
A man smiles at you and say, “Oh, it’s not a bomb. It’s just my heart.”
“Just 21 days before, he had undergone an operation which involved putting a plastic valve into his heart.
The ticking sound, he explained, would continue for several months until new tissue had grown over the artificial valve. He continues with...
“Oh, I’ve got big plans.” I’m going to study law when I get back to Minnesota. Someday, I hope to be in government work. The doctors tell me I must take it easy for a few months, but after that I’ll be like new.”
There you have two ways of meeting health problems. The first person, not even sure he had anything organically wrong with him, was worried, depressed, on the road to defeat, wanting somebody to second his motion that he couldn’t go forward. The second individual, after undergoing one of the most difficult of operations, was optimistic, eager to do something. The difference is found in how they think about their health!
A widely-known college educator came home from Europe in 1945 minus one arm. Despite his handicap, this person is always smiling, always helping others. He’s about as optimistic as anyone. He says, “It’s just an arm. Sure two arms are better than one. But they just cut off my arm; my spirit is 100 percent intact. I’m really grateful for that.”
This guy mentioned that he loved to play golf. He said most golfers with two arms can’t do nearly as well as he can. His reply says a lot, “Well, it’s my experience,” he said, “that the right attitude and one arm will beat the wrong attitude and two arms every time.” Think about that for a while. It holds true not only on the golf course but in every facet of life.
FIVE THINGS YOU CAN DO TO CURE HEALTH EXCUSITIS
The best vaccine against health excusitis consists of these four doses:
INTELLEGENCE EXCUSITIS
“But you’ve got to have Brains to Succeed.” Intelligence excusitis or “I lack brains” is common. In fact, it’s so common that perhaps as many as 95% of the people around us have it in varying degrees. Unlike most other types of excusitis, people suffer in silence. Not many people will admit openly that they think they lack adequate intelligence. Rather, they feel it deep down inside. Most of us make two basic errors with respect to intelligence.
1. We underestimate our own brain power, and
2. We overestimate the other person’s brain power.
Because of these errors, many people sell themselves short. They fail to tackle challenging situations because it “takes a brain.” But along comes the person who isn’t concerned about intelligence, and he gets the opportunity you didn’t.
What really matters is not how much intelligence you have but how you use what you do have. The thinking that guides your intelligence is much more important than the quantity of your brain power.
Let’s repeat that, for this is vitally important: the thinking that guides your intelligence is much more important than how much intelligence you may have.
In answering the question, “Should your child be a scientist?” Dr Edward Teller, one of the nation’s foremost physicists, said, “A child does not need a lightning fast mind to be a scientist, nor does he need a miraculous memory, nor is it necessary that he get very high grades in school. The only point that counts is that the child has a high degree of interest in science.”
Interest, enthusiasm, is the critical factor even is science!
With a positive, optimistic, and cooperative attitude, a person with an IQ of 100 will earn more money, win more respect, and achieve more success than a negative, pessimistic, uncooperative individual with an IQ of 120.
Just enough sense to stick with something—a chore, task, project – until it’s completed, pays off much better than idle intelligence, even if the idle intelligence be of genius caliber.
For stickability is 95% of ability.
Mr. Chris Myser, a consultant to top CEO’s at several major corporations, recently shared a story. At a homecoming celebration last year, I met a college friend whom I had not seen in 10 years. Chuck was a very bright student and graduated with honors. His goal when I last saw him was to own his own business in western Nebraska.
“I asked Chuck what kind of business he finally established. “Well,” he confessed, “I didn’t go into business for myself. I wouldn’t have said this to anyone five years ago or even one year, ago, but now I’m ready to talk about it.”
“As I look back at my college education now, I see that I became an expert in why a business idea won’t work out. I learned every conceivable pitfall, every reason why a small business will fail; “You’ve got to have ample capital;’ ‘Be sure the business cycle is right;’ ‘Is there a big demand for what you will offer?’ ‘Is local industry stabilized?’ – a thousand and one things to check out.
“The thing that hurts the most is that several of my old high school friends who never seemed to have much on the ball and didn’t even go to college, now are very well established in their own businesses. But me, I’m just plodding along, auditing freight shipments. Had I been drilled a little more in why a small business can succeed, I’d be better off in every way today.”
The thinking that guided Chuck’s intelligence was a lot more important than the amount of Chuck’s intelligence.
Why some brilliant people are failures.
Tom is a genius, who has high abstract intelligence, and is Phi Beta Kappa. Despite this very high native intelligence, Tom is one of the most unsuccessful people around. He has a very mediocre job (he’s afraid of responsibility). He has few friends (people bore him). He’s never invested in property of any kind (he might lose his money). This man uses his great brain power to prove why things won’t work rather than directing his mental power to searching for ways to succeed.
Because of his negative thinking that guides his great reservoir of brains, this person contributes little and creates nothing. With a changed attitude, he could do great things indeed. He has the brains to be a tremendous success, but not the thought power.
Another person, John, was inducted into the army shortly after earning a Ph.D. degree from a leading New York University. How did John spend his three years in the Army? Not as an officer. Not as a staff specialist. Instead for three years he drove a truck. Why? Because he was filled with negative attitudes toward other soldiers (“I’m superior to them”), toward army methods and procedures (“They are stupid”), toward discipline (“It’s for others, not me”), toward everything, including himself (I’m a fool for not figuring a way to escape this rap”).
John earned no respect from anyone. All his vast store of knowledge lay buried. His negative attitudes turned him into a flunky.
Remember, the thinking that guides your intelligence is much more important than how much intelligence you have. Not even a Ph.D. degree can override this basic success principle!
Richard, one of the senior officers of a major advertising agency, was director of marketing research for the agency, was doing a bang-up job.
Was Richard a “brain”? Far from it. Richard knew next to nothing about research techniques. He knew next to nothing about statistics. He was not a college graduate (though all the people working for him were). Richard did not pretend to know the technical side of research. What then, enabled him to earn greater pay then his co-workers?
This: Richard was a “human” engineer. He was 100% positive. He could inspire others when they felt low. He was enthusiastic. He generated enthusiasm; Richard understood people, and because he could really see what made them tick, he liked them.
Not his brains, but how he managed to use those brains, made him three times more valuable to his company than men who rated higher on the IQ scale.
Out of every 100 persons who enroll in college, less than 50 will graduate. A Director of Admissions at a large university offered this explanation.
“It’s not insufficient intelligence,” he said. “We don’t admit them if they don’t have sufficient ability. And it’s not money. Anyone who wants to support himself in college today can do so. The real reason is attitudes. You would be surprised,” he said, “how many young people leave because they don’t like their professors and the subjects they must take.”
The same reason; negative thinking, explains why the door to top-flight executive positions is closed to many young junior executives. Sour, negative, pessimistic, depreciating attitudes, rather than insufficient intelligence hold back thousands of young executives. As one executive said, “It’s a rare case when we pass up a young person because he lacks brains. Nearly always it’s attitude.”
We can’t do much to change the amount of native ability, but we can certainly change the way we use what we have.
Knowledge is power—when you use it constructively. Closely allied to intelligence excusitis is some incorrect thinking about knowledge. We often hear that knowledge is power.
But, this statement is only a half-truth. Knowledge is only potential power. Knowledge is power only when the use made of it is constructive.
The story is told that the great scientist Einstein was once asked how many feet are in a mile. Einstein’s reply was, “I don’t know. Why should I fill my brain with facts I can find in two minutes in any standard reference book?”
Einstein taught us a big lesson. He felt it was more important to use your mind to think than to use it as a warehouse for facts.
One time Henry Ford was involved in a libel suit with the Chicago Tribune. The Tribune had called Ford and ignoramus, and Ford, a man of great respect, said in effect, “Prove it.”
The Tribune asked him scores of simple questions such as “Who was Benedict Arnold?” “When was the Revolutionary War fought?” and others, most of which Ford, who had little formal education, could not answer.
Finally he became exasperated and said, “I don’t know the answers to those questions, but I could find a man in five minutes who does.”
Henry Ford was never interested in miscellaneous information. He knew what every major executive knows: the ability to know how to get information is more important than using the mind as a garage for facts.
How much is a fact-man worth? Scott is president of a young but rapidly growing manufacturing company. He and one of his employees were watching the TV set one night and happened to have the channel set on one of the popular quiz programs. The person being quizzed had been on the show for several weeks. He could answer questions on all sorts of subjects, many of which seemed nonsensical.
Scott, turned to his employee and asked, “How much do you think I’d pay that guy to work for me?”
“How much?” he asked. “Not a cent over $300—not per week, not per month, but for life. I’ve sized him up. That ‘expert’ can’t think. He can only memorize. He’s just a human encyclopedia, and I figure for $300, I can buy a pretty good set of encyclopedias.
In fact, maybe that’s too much. Ninety percent of what that guy knows, I can find in a $2 almanac.”
“What I want around me,” he continued, “are people who can solve problems, who can think up ideas. People who can dream and then develop the dream into a practical application; an idea man can make money with me, a fact man can’t.”
THREE WAYS TO CURE INTELLIGENCE EXCUSITIS
Three easy ways to cure intelligence excusitis are:
AGE EXCUSITIS
’It’s No Use. I’m Too Old (Or Too Young).” Age excusitis, the failure disease of never being the right age, comes in two easily identifiable forms: the “I’m too old” variety and the “I’m too young” brand.
You’ve heard hundreds of people of all ages explain their mediocre performance in life something like this: “I’m too old (or too young) to break in now. I can’t do what to do or am capable of doing because of my age handicap.”
Really, it’s surprising how few people feel they are “just right” age-wise. And it’s unfortunate.
This excuse has closed the door of real opportunity to thousands of individuals. They think their age is wrong, so they don’t even bother to try.
The “I’m too old” variety is the most common form of age excusitis. This disease is spread in subtle ways. TV fiction is produced about the big executive who lost his job because of a merger and can’t find another job because he’s too old. Mr. Executive looks for months to find another job, but he can’t, and in the end, after contemplating suicide for a while, he decides to rationalize that it’s nice to be on the shelf. Several magazine articles have focused on the topic, “Why You Are Washed Up at 40.” They are popular, not because they represent true facts, but because they appeal to many worried minds looking for an excuse.
HOW TO HANDLE AGE EXCUSITIS
Age excusitis can be cured. There was a gentleman named Cecil, who was 40 years of age. Cecil was laid off from a company he had been with for 20 years and was looking at change careers, to a manufacturer’s representative, but he thought he was too old. “After all he explained, “I’d have to start from scratch. And I’m too old for that now. I’m 40.”
The new employer responded; “You’re only as old as you feel,” Cecil responded with “But I do feel old.” The new employer said, “Cecil, when does a man’s productive life begin?”
He thought a couple of seconds and answered, “Oh, when he’s about 20, I guess.”
“Okay,” he continued, “now when does a man’s productive life end?”
Cecil answered, “Well, if he stays in good shape and likes his work, I guess a man is still pretty useful when he’s 70 or so.”
“All right,” the employer said, “a lot of folks are highly productive after they reach 70, but let’s agree with what you’ve just said, a man’s productive years stretch from 20 to 70. That’s 50 years in between, or half a century. Cecil, you’re 40. How many years of productive life have you spent?”
”Twenty,” He answered. “And how many do you have left:”
“Thirty”, he replied. “In other words, Cecil, you haven’t even reached the half-way point; you’ve used up only 40 percent of your productive years.”
Cecil saw he still had many opportunity-filled years left. He switched from thinking, “I’m already old,” to “I’m still young.” Cecil now realized that how old we are is not important. It’s one’s attitude toward age that makes it a blessing or a barricade.
Curing yourself of age excusitis often opens doors to opportunities that you thought were locked tight.
Jonathan Harper spent years doing many different things—selling, operating his own business, working in a bank—but he never quite found what he really wanted to do most. Finally, he concluded that the one thing he wanted more than anything else was to be a minister. But when he thought about it, he found he was too old. After all, he was 45, had three young children, and little money.
But fortunately, he mustered all of his strength and told himself, “Forty-five or not, I’m going to be a minister.”
With tons of faith but little else, he enrolled in a 5 year ministerial training program. Five years later he was ordained as a minister and settled down with a fine congregation.
Old? Of course not. He still has 20 years of productive life ahead of him. When you beat down your fears of age limitations, you add years to your life as well as success.
A former university professor provides an interesting angle on how age excusitis was defeated. Bill was graduated from Harvard in the ‘twenties’. After 24 years in the stock brokerage business, during which time he made a modest fortune, Bill decided he wanted to become a college professor. Bill’s friends warned him that he would overtax himself in the rugged learning program ahead. But Bill was determined to reach his goal, and enrolled in the University of Illinois –at the age of 51. At 55 he had earned his degree. Today, Bill is Chairman of the Department of Economics at a fine liberal arts college. He’s happy, too. He smiles when he says, “I’ve got almost a third of my good years left.”
Old age is a failure disease. Defeat it by refusing to let it hold you back.
When is a person too young? The “I’m too young” variety of age excusitis does much damage, too. A 23-year-old person named Jerry had been a paratrooper in the service and then had gone to college. While going to college, Jerry supported his wife and son by selling for a large transfer-and-storage company. He had done a terrific job, both in college and for his company.
But today Jerry was worried. “Dr. Schwartz,” he said, “I’ve got a problem. My company has offered me the job of sales manager. This would make me supervisor over eight salesmen.”
“Congratulations, that’s wonderful news!” I said, “But you seem worried.”
“Well,” he continued,” all eight men I’m to supervise are from 7 to 21 years older than I. What do you think I should do? Can I handle it?”
“Jerry,” I said, “the general manager of your company obviously thinks you’re old enough or he wouldn’t have offered you this job. Just remember these three points and everything will work out just fine:
Today Jerry’s doing fine. He loves the transportation business and now he’s planning to organize his own company in a few years.
Youth is a liability only when the youth think it is. You often hear that certain jobs require “considerable” physical maturity, jobs like selling securities and insurance.
That you’ve either got to have gray hair or not any hair at all in order to gain an investor’s confidence is plain nonsense. What really matters is how well you know your job. If you know your job and understand people, you’re sufficiently mature to handle it. Age has no real relation to ability, unless you convince yourself that years alone will give you the stuff you need to make your mark.
Many young people feel that they are being held back because of their youth. Now, it is true that another person in an organization who is insecure and job-scared may try to block your way forward, using age or some other reason.
But the people who really count in the company will not. They will give you as much responsibility as they feel you can handle well. Demonstrate that you have ability and positive attitudes and your youthfulness will be considered an advantage.
In quick recap, the cure for age excusitis is:
LUCK EXCUSITIS
“But My Case Is Different; I Attract Bad Luck.” A traffic engineer discussing highway safety pointed out that upwards of 40,000 people are killed each year in so-called traffic accidents. The main point of his talk was that there is no such thing as a true accident. What we call an accident is the result of human or mechanical failure, or a combination of both.
What this traffic expert was saying substantiates what wise men throughout the ages have said: there is a cause for everything. Nothing happens without a cause.
There is nothing accidental about the weather outside today. It is the result of specific causes. And there is no reason to believe that human affairs are an exception.
Yet hardly a day passes that you do not hear someone blame his problems on “bad” luck. And it’s a rare day that you do not hear someone attribute another person’s success to “good” luck.
There were three young junior executives applying for a major promotion. George C., had just been picked from among their group for a major promotion.
Why did George get the position? These three persons dug up all sorts of reasons: luck, pull, bootlicking, George’s wife and how she flattered the boss, everything but the truth. The facts were that George was simply better qualified. He had been doing a better job. He was working harder. He had a more effective personality.
I also knew that the senior officers in the company had spent much time considering which one of the four would be promoted. My three disillusioned friends should have realized that top executives don’t select major executives by drawing names from a hat.
A sales executive of a machine tool manufacturing company became excited about the problem and began to talk about his own experience with it.
“I’ve never heard it called that before,” he said, “but it is one of the most difficult problems every sales executive has to wrestle with. Just yesterday a perfect example of what you’re talking about just happened in my company.”
“One of the salesmen walked in about 4pm with a $112,000 order for machine tools. Another salesman, whose volume is so low, he’s a problem, was in the office at the same time. Hearing John tell the good news, he rather enviously congratulated him and then said, “Well, John, you’re lucky again!”
“Now, what the weak salesman won’t accept is that luck had nothing to do with John’s big order. John had been working on that customer for months. He had talked repeatedly to a half-dozen people out there. John had stayed up nights figuring out exactly what was best for them.
Then he got our engineers to make preliminary designs of the equipment. John wasn’t lucky, unless you call carefully planned work and patiently executed plans luck.”
Suppose luck were used to reorganize General Motors. If luck determined who does what and who goes where, every business in the nation would fall apart. Assume for a moment that General Motors were to be completely reorganized on the basis of luck. To carry the re-organization, names of all employees would be placed in a barrel. The first name drawn would be the president; the second name, the executive vice-president, and so on down the line.
Sounds stupid, doesn’t it? Well that’s how luck would work.
People who rise to the top in any occupation—business management, sales position, law, engineering, acting, or whatever—get there because they have superior attitudes and use their good sense in applied hard work.
CONQUER LUCK EXCUSITIS IN TWO WAYS
FOUR MOST COMMON FORMS OF EXCUSITIS
- Health Excusitis
- Intelligence Excusitis
- Age Excusitis
- Luck Excusitis
HEALTH EXCUSITIS
“But My Health Isn’t Good.” Health excusitis ranges all the way from the chronic “I don’t feel good,” to the more specific “I’ve got such-and-such wrong with me.”
“Bad” health, in a thousand different forms, is used as an excuse for failing to do what a person wants to do, failing to accept greater responsibilities, failing to make more money, failing to achieve success.
Millions and millions of people suffer from health excusitis. But is it, in most cases, a legitimate excuse? Think for a moment of all the highly successful people you know who could – but who don’t – use health as an excuse.
Most physicians and surgeons say the perfect specimen of adult life is non-existent. There is something physically wrong with everybody. Many surrender in whole or in part to health excusitis but people who think successfully do not.
The following stories illustrate the correct and incorrect attitude toward health. A 30 year old man visited a motivational convention and approached one of the speakers and said, “I’m afraid your ideas can’t do me much good.”
“You see,” he continued, “I’ve got a bad heart, and I’ve got to hold myself in check.” He went on to explain that he’d seen four doctors but they couldn’t find his trouble. He asked the speaker what he thought he should do.
“Well,” the speaker said, “I know nothing about the heart, but as one layman to another, here are three things I’d do. First, I’d visit the finest heart specialist I could find and accept his diagnosis as final. You’ve already checked with four doctors and none of them has found anything peculiar with your heart. Let the fifth doctor be your final check. It may well be you’ve got a perfectly sound heart. But if you keep on worrying about it, eventually you may have a very serious heart ailment. Looking and looking and looking for an illness often actually produce an illness.”
“The second thing I’d recommend is that you read Dr. Schindler’s great book, How to Live 365 Days a Year. Dr. Schindler shows in this book that three out of every hospital beds are occupied by people who have EII—Emotionally Induced Illness. Imagine, three out of four people who are sick right now would be well if they had learned how to handle their emotions. Read Dr. Schindler’s book and develop your program for ‘emotion’s management’.”
“Third, I’d resolve to live until I die.” Commit to saying this, “I’m going to live until I die and I’m going to live. Why only be half alive? Every minute a person spends worrying about dying is just one minute that person might as well have been dead.”
In contrast, imagine sitting on an airplane and after the noise of the take-off, hearing a ticking sound that sounds kinda unique. Rather startled, you glance at the person sitting beside you, for that is where the sound seemed to be coming from.
A man smiles at you and say, “Oh, it’s not a bomb. It’s just my heart.”
“Just 21 days before, he had undergone an operation which involved putting a plastic valve into his heart.
The ticking sound, he explained, would continue for several months until new tissue had grown over the artificial valve. He continues with...
“Oh, I’ve got big plans.” I’m going to study law when I get back to Minnesota. Someday, I hope to be in government work. The doctors tell me I must take it easy for a few months, but after that I’ll be like new.”
There you have two ways of meeting health problems. The first person, not even sure he had anything organically wrong with him, was worried, depressed, on the road to defeat, wanting somebody to second his motion that he couldn’t go forward. The second individual, after undergoing one of the most difficult of operations, was optimistic, eager to do something. The difference is found in how they think about their health!
A widely-known college educator came home from Europe in 1945 minus one arm. Despite his handicap, this person is always smiling, always helping others. He’s about as optimistic as anyone. He says, “It’s just an arm. Sure two arms are better than one. But they just cut off my arm; my spirit is 100 percent intact. I’m really grateful for that.”
This guy mentioned that he loved to play golf. He said most golfers with two arms can’t do nearly as well as he can. His reply says a lot, “Well, it’s my experience,” he said, “that the right attitude and one arm will beat the wrong attitude and two arms every time.” Think about that for a while. It holds true not only on the golf course but in every facet of life.
FIVE THINGS YOU CAN DO TO CURE HEALTH EXCUSITIS
The best vaccine against health excusitis consists of these four doses:
- Refuse to talk about your health. The more you talk about an ailment, even the common cold, the worse it seems to get. Talking about bad health is like putting fertilizer on weeds. Besides, talking about your health is a bad habit. It bores people. It makes one appear self-centered and old. Success-minded people defeat the natural tendency to talk about their “bad” health. One may (and lets emphasize the word may) get a little sympathy but one doesn’t get respect and loyalty by being a chronic complainer.
- Refuse to worry about your health. Dr. Walter Alvarez, Emeritus consultant to the world famous Mayo Clinic, wrote recently, “I always beg worriers to exercise some self-control. For instance, when I saw this man (a person who was convinced he had a diseased gallbladder although eight separate X-ray examinations showed that the organ was perfectly normal) I begged him to quit getting his gall bladder X-rayed. I have begged hundreds of heart-conscious men to quit getting electro-cardiograms made.”
- Be genuinely grateful that your health is as good as it is. There’s an old saying worth repeating often: “I felt sorry for myself because I had ragged shoes until I met a man who had no feet.”
- Instead of complaining about “not feeling good,” it’s far better to be glad you are as healthy as you are. Just being grateful for the health you have is a powerful vaccination against developing new aches, pains, and real illness.
- Remind yourself often, “It’s better to wear out than rust out.” Life is yours to enjoy. Don’t waste it. Don’t pass up living by thinking yourself into a hospital bed.
INTELLEGENCE EXCUSITIS
“But you’ve got to have Brains to Succeed.” Intelligence excusitis or “I lack brains” is common. In fact, it’s so common that perhaps as many as 95% of the people around us have it in varying degrees. Unlike most other types of excusitis, people suffer in silence. Not many people will admit openly that they think they lack adequate intelligence. Rather, they feel it deep down inside. Most of us make two basic errors with respect to intelligence.
1. We underestimate our own brain power, and
2. We overestimate the other person’s brain power.
Because of these errors, many people sell themselves short. They fail to tackle challenging situations because it “takes a brain.” But along comes the person who isn’t concerned about intelligence, and he gets the opportunity you didn’t.
What really matters is not how much intelligence you have but how you use what you do have. The thinking that guides your intelligence is much more important than the quantity of your brain power.
Let’s repeat that, for this is vitally important: the thinking that guides your intelligence is much more important than how much intelligence you may have.
In answering the question, “Should your child be a scientist?” Dr Edward Teller, one of the nation’s foremost physicists, said, “A child does not need a lightning fast mind to be a scientist, nor does he need a miraculous memory, nor is it necessary that he get very high grades in school. The only point that counts is that the child has a high degree of interest in science.”
Interest, enthusiasm, is the critical factor even is science!
With a positive, optimistic, and cooperative attitude, a person with an IQ of 100 will earn more money, win more respect, and achieve more success than a negative, pessimistic, uncooperative individual with an IQ of 120.
Just enough sense to stick with something—a chore, task, project – until it’s completed, pays off much better than idle intelligence, even if the idle intelligence be of genius caliber.
For stickability is 95% of ability.
Mr. Chris Myser, a consultant to top CEO’s at several major corporations, recently shared a story. At a homecoming celebration last year, I met a college friend whom I had not seen in 10 years. Chuck was a very bright student and graduated with honors. His goal when I last saw him was to own his own business in western Nebraska.
“I asked Chuck what kind of business he finally established. “Well,” he confessed, “I didn’t go into business for myself. I wouldn’t have said this to anyone five years ago or even one year, ago, but now I’m ready to talk about it.”
“As I look back at my college education now, I see that I became an expert in why a business idea won’t work out. I learned every conceivable pitfall, every reason why a small business will fail; “You’ve got to have ample capital;’ ‘Be sure the business cycle is right;’ ‘Is there a big demand for what you will offer?’ ‘Is local industry stabilized?’ – a thousand and one things to check out.
“The thing that hurts the most is that several of my old high school friends who never seemed to have much on the ball and didn’t even go to college, now are very well established in their own businesses. But me, I’m just plodding along, auditing freight shipments. Had I been drilled a little more in why a small business can succeed, I’d be better off in every way today.”
The thinking that guided Chuck’s intelligence was a lot more important than the amount of Chuck’s intelligence.
Why some brilliant people are failures.
Tom is a genius, who has high abstract intelligence, and is Phi Beta Kappa. Despite this very high native intelligence, Tom is one of the most unsuccessful people around. He has a very mediocre job (he’s afraid of responsibility). He has few friends (people bore him). He’s never invested in property of any kind (he might lose his money). This man uses his great brain power to prove why things won’t work rather than directing his mental power to searching for ways to succeed.
Because of his negative thinking that guides his great reservoir of brains, this person contributes little and creates nothing. With a changed attitude, he could do great things indeed. He has the brains to be a tremendous success, but not the thought power.
Another person, John, was inducted into the army shortly after earning a Ph.D. degree from a leading New York University. How did John spend his three years in the Army? Not as an officer. Not as a staff specialist. Instead for three years he drove a truck. Why? Because he was filled with negative attitudes toward other soldiers (“I’m superior to them”), toward army methods and procedures (“They are stupid”), toward discipline (“It’s for others, not me”), toward everything, including himself (I’m a fool for not figuring a way to escape this rap”).
John earned no respect from anyone. All his vast store of knowledge lay buried. His negative attitudes turned him into a flunky.
Remember, the thinking that guides your intelligence is much more important than how much intelligence you have. Not even a Ph.D. degree can override this basic success principle!
Richard, one of the senior officers of a major advertising agency, was director of marketing research for the agency, was doing a bang-up job.
Was Richard a “brain”? Far from it. Richard knew next to nothing about research techniques. He knew next to nothing about statistics. He was not a college graduate (though all the people working for him were). Richard did not pretend to know the technical side of research. What then, enabled him to earn greater pay then his co-workers?
This: Richard was a “human” engineer. He was 100% positive. He could inspire others when they felt low. He was enthusiastic. He generated enthusiasm; Richard understood people, and because he could really see what made them tick, he liked them.
Not his brains, but how he managed to use those brains, made him three times more valuable to his company than men who rated higher on the IQ scale.
Out of every 100 persons who enroll in college, less than 50 will graduate. A Director of Admissions at a large university offered this explanation.
“It’s not insufficient intelligence,” he said. “We don’t admit them if they don’t have sufficient ability. And it’s not money. Anyone who wants to support himself in college today can do so. The real reason is attitudes. You would be surprised,” he said, “how many young people leave because they don’t like their professors and the subjects they must take.”
The same reason; negative thinking, explains why the door to top-flight executive positions is closed to many young junior executives. Sour, negative, pessimistic, depreciating attitudes, rather than insufficient intelligence hold back thousands of young executives. As one executive said, “It’s a rare case when we pass up a young person because he lacks brains. Nearly always it’s attitude.”
We can’t do much to change the amount of native ability, but we can certainly change the way we use what we have.
Knowledge is power—when you use it constructively. Closely allied to intelligence excusitis is some incorrect thinking about knowledge. We often hear that knowledge is power.
But, this statement is only a half-truth. Knowledge is only potential power. Knowledge is power only when the use made of it is constructive.
The story is told that the great scientist Einstein was once asked how many feet are in a mile. Einstein’s reply was, “I don’t know. Why should I fill my brain with facts I can find in two minutes in any standard reference book?”
Einstein taught us a big lesson. He felt it was more important to use your mind to think than to use it as a warehouse for facts.
One time Henry Ford was involved in a libel suit with the Chicago Tribune. The Tribune had called Ford and ignoramus, and Ford, a man of great respect, said in effect, “Prove it.”
The Tribune asked him scores of simple questions such as “Who was Benedict Arnold?” “When was the Revolutionary War fought?” and others, most of which Ford, who had little formal education, could not answer.
Finally he became exasperated and said, “I don’t know the answers to those questions, but I could find a man in five minutes who does.”
Henry Ford was never interested in miscellaneous information. He knew what every major executive knows: the ability to know how to get information is more important than using the mind as a garage for facts.
How much is a fact-man worth? Scott is president of a young but rapidly growing manufacturing company. He and one of his employees were watching the TV set one night and happened to have the channel set on one of the popular quiz programs. The person being quizzed had been on the show for several weeks. He could answer questions on all sorts of subjects, many of which seemed nonsensical.
Scott, turned to his employee and asked, “How much do you think I’d pay that guy to work for me?”
“How much?” he asked. “Not a cent over $300—not per week, not per month, but for life. I’ve sized him up. That ‘expert’ can’t think. He can only memorize. He’s just a human encyclopedia, and I figure for $300, I can buy a pretty good set of encyclopedias.
In fact, maybe that’s too much. Ninety percent of what that guy knows, I can find in a $2 almanac.”
“What I want around me,” he continued, “are people who can solve problems, who can think up ideas. People who can dream and then develop the dream into a practical application; an idea man can make money with me, a fact man can’t.”
THREE WAYS TO CURE INTELLIGENCE EXCUSITIS
Three easy ways to cure intelligence excusitis are:
- Never underestimate your own intelligence and never overestimate the intelligence of others. Don’t sell yourself short. Concentrate on your assets. Discover your superior talents. Remember, it’s not how much facts you know. Manage your brains instead of worrying about how much IQ you’ve got.
- Remind yourself several times daily, “My attitudes are more important than my intelligence.” At work and at home, practice positive attitudes. See the reasons why you can do it, not the reasons why you can’t. Develop an “I’m winning” attitude. Put your intelligence to create positive use. Use it to find ways to win, not to prove you will lose.
- Remember that the ability to think is of much greater value than the ability to memorize facts. Use your mind to create and develop ideas, to find new and better ways to do things. Ask yourself, “Am I using my mental ability to make history or am I merely using it merely to record history made by others?”
AGE EXCUSITIS
’It’s No Use. I’m Too Old (Or Too Young).” Age excusitis, the failure disease of never being the right age, comes in two easily identifiable forms: the “I’m too old” variety and the “I’m too young” brand.
You’ve heard hundreds of people of all ages explain their mediocre performance in life something like this: “I’m too old (or too young) to break in now. I can’t do what to do or am capable of doing because of my age handicap.”
Really, it’s surprising how few people feel they are “just right” age-wise. And it’s unfortunate.
This excuse has closed the door of real opportunity to thousands of individuals. They think their age is wrong, so they don’t even bother to try.
The “I’m too old” variety is the most common form of age excusitis. This disease is spread in subtle ways. TV fiction is produced about the big executive who lost his job because of a merger and can’t find another job because he’s too old. Mr. Executive looks for months to find another job, but he can’t, and in the end, after contemplating suicide for a while, he decides to rationalize that it’s nice to be on the shelf. Several magazine articles have focused on the topic, “Why You Are Washed Up at 40.” They are popular, not because they represent true facts, but because they appeal to many worried minds looking for an excuse.
HOW TO HANDLE AGE EXCUSITIS
Age excusitis can be cured. There was a gentleman named Cecil, who was 40 years of age. Cecil was laid off from a company he had been with for 20 years and was looking at change careers, to a manufacturer’s representative, but he thought he was too old. “After all he explained, “I’d have to start from scratch. And I’m too old for that now. I’m 40.”
The new employer responded; “You’re only as old as you feel,” Cecil responded with “But I do feel old.” The new employer said, “Cecil, when does a man’s productive life begin?”
He thought a couple of seconds and answered, “Oh, when he’s about 20, I guess.”
“Okay,” he continued, “now when does a man’s productive life end?”
Cecil answered, “Well, if he stays in good shape and likes his work, I guess a man is still pretty useful when he’s 70 or so.”
“All right,” the employer said, “a lot of folks are highly productive after they reach 70, but let’s agree with what you’ve just said, a man’s productive years stretch from 20 to 70. That’s 50 years in between, or half a century. Cecil, you’re 40. How many years of productive life have you spent?”
”Twenty,” He answered. “And how many do you have left:”
“Thirty”, he replied. “In other words, Cecil, you haven’t even reached the half-way point; you’ve used up only 40 percent of your productive years.”
Cecil saw he still had many opportunity-filled years left. He switched from thinking, “I’m already old,” to “I’m still young.” Cecil now realized that how old we are is not important. It’s one’s attitude toward age that makes it a blessing or a barricade.
Curing yourself of age excusitis often opens doors to opportunities that you thought were locked tight.
Jonathan Harper spent years doing many different things—selling, operating his own business, working in a bank—but he never quite found what he really wanted to do most. Finally, he concluded that the one thing he wanted more than anything else was to be a minister. But when he thought about it, he found he was too old. After all, he was 45, had three young children, and little money.
But fortunately, he mustered all of his strength and told himself, “Forty-five or not, I’m going to be a minister.”
With tons of faith but little else, he enrolled in a 5 year ministerial training program. Five years later he was ordained as a minister and settled down with a fine congregation.
Old? Of course not. He still has 20 years of productive life ahead of him. When you beat down your fears of age limitations, you add years to your life as well as success.
A former university professor provides an interesting angle on how age excusitis was defeated. Bill was graduated from Harvard in the ‘twenties’. After 24 years in the stock brokerage business, during which time he made a modest fortune, Bill decided he wanted to become a college professor. Bill’s friends warned him that he would overtax himself in the rugged learning program ahead. But Bill was determined to reach his goal, and enrolled in the University of Illinois –at the age of 51. At 55 he had earned his degree. Today, Bill is Chairman of the Department of Economics at a fine liberal arts college. He’s happy, too. He smiles when he says, “I’ve got almost a third of my good years left.”
Old age is a failure disease. Defeat it by refusing to let it hold you back.
When is a person too young? The “I’m too young” variety of age excusitis does much damage, too. A 23-year-old person named Jerry had been a paratrooper in the service and then had gone to college. While going to college, Jerry supported his wife and son by selling for a large transfer-and-storage company. He had done a terrific job, both in college and for his company.
But today Jerry was worried. “Dr. Schwartz,” he said, “I’ve got a problem. My company has offered me the job of sales manager. This would make me supervisor over eight salesmen.”
“Congratulations, that’s wonderful news!” I said, “But you seem worried.”
“Well,” he continued,” all eight men I’m to supervise are from 7 to 21 years older than I. What do you think I should do? Can I handle it?”
“Jerry,” I said, “the general manager of your company obviously thinks you’re old enough or he wouldn’t have offered you this job. Just remember these three points and everything will work out just fine:
- First, don’t be age-conscious. Back on the farm a boy became a man when he proved he could do the work of a man. His number of birthdays had nothing to do with it. And this applies to you. When you prove you are able to handle the job of sales manager, you’re automatically old enough.
- “Second, don’t take advantage of your new ‘gold bars’. Show respect for the salesmen. Ask them for their suggestions. Make them feel they are working for a team captain, not a dictator. Do this and the men will work with you, not against you.
- “Third, get used to having older people working for you. Leaders in all fields soon find they are younger than many of the people they supervise. So get used to having older men working for you. It will help you a lot in the coming years when even bigger opportunities develop. “And remember, Jerry, your age won’t be a handicap unless you make it one.”
Today Jerry’s doing fine. He loves the transportation business and now he’s planning to organize his own company in a few years.
Youth is a liability only when the youth think it is. You often hear that certain jobs require “considerable” physical maturity, jobs like selling securities and insurance.
That you’ve either got to have gray hair or not any hair at all in order to gain an investor’s confidence is plain nonsense. What really matters is how well you know your job. If you know your job and understand people, you’re sufficiently mature to handle it. Age has no real relation to ability, unless you convince yourself that years alone will give you the stuff you need to make your mark.
Many young people feel that they are being held back because of their youth. Now, it is true that another person in an organization who is insecure and job-scared may try to block your way forward, using age or some other reason.
But the people who really count in the company will not. They will give you as much responsibility as they feel you can handle well. Demonstrate that you have ability and positive attitudes and your youthfulness will be considered an advantage.
In quick recap, the cure for age excusitis is:
- Look at your present age positively. Think “I’m still young,” not “I’m already old.” Practice looking forward to new horizons and gain the enthusiasm and the feel of youth.
- Compute how much productive time you have left. Remember, a person age 30 still has 80% of his productive life ahead of him. And the 50 year old still has a big 40%- the best 40% of his opportunity years left. Life is actually longer than most people think!
- Invest future time in doing what you really want to do. It’s only too late when you let your mind go negative and think it’s too late. Stop thinking; “I should have started years ago.” That’s failure thinking. Instead, think, I’m going to start now; my best years are ahead of me.” That’s the way successful people think.
LUCK EXCUSITIS
“But My Case Is Different; I Attract Bad Luck.” A traffic engineer discussing highway safety pointed out that upwards of 40,000 people are killed each year in so-called traffic accidents. The main point of his talk was that there is no such thing as a true accident. What we call an accident is the result of human or mechanical failure, or a combination of both.
What this traffic expert was saying substantiates what wise men throughout the ages have said: there is a cause for everything. Nothing happens without a cause.
There is nothing accidental about the weather outside today. It is the result of specific causes. And there is no reason to believe that human affairs are an exception.
Yet hardly a day passes that you do not hear someone blame his problems on “bad” luck. And it’s a rare day that you do not hear someone attribute another person’s success to “good” luck.
There were three young junior executives applying for a major promotion. George C., had just been picked from among their group for a major promotion.
Why did George get the position? These three persons dug up all sorts of reasons: luck, pull, bootlicking, George’s wife and how she flattered the boss, everything but the truth. The facts were that George was simply better qualified. He had been doing a better job. He was working harder. He had a more effective personality.
I also knew that the senior officers in the company had spent much time considering which one of the four would be promoted. My three disillusioned friends should have realized that top executives don’t select major executives by drawing names from a hat.
A sales executive of a machine tool manufacturing company became excited about the problem and began to talk about his own experience with it.
“I’ve never heard it called that before,” he said, “but it is one of the most difficult problems every sales executive has to wrestle with. Just yesterday a perfect example of what you’re talking about just happened in my company.”
“One of the salesmen walked in about 4pm with a $112,000 order for machine tools. Another salesman, whose volume is so low, he’s a problem, was in the office at the same time. Hearing John tell the good news, he rather enviously congratulated him and then said, “Well, John, you’re lucky again!”
“Now, what the weak salesman won’t accept is that luck had nothing to do with John’s big order. John had been working on that customer for months. He had talked repeatedly to a half-dozen people out there. John had stayed up nights figuring out exactly what was best for them.
Then he got our engineers to make preliminary designs of the equipment. John wasn’t lucky, unless you call carefully planned work and patiently executed plans luck.”
Suppose luck were used to reorganize General Motors. If luck determined who does what and who goes where, every business in the nation would fall apart. Assume for a moment that General Motors were to be completely reorganized on the basis of luck. To carry the re-organization, names of all employees would be placed in a barrel. The first name drawn would be the president; the second name, the executive vice-president, and so on down the line.
Sounds stupid, doesn’t it? Well that’s how luck would work.
People who rise to the top in any occupation—business management, sales position, law, engineering, acting, or whatever—get there because they have superior attitudes and use their good sense in applied hard work.
CONQUER LUCK EXCUSITIS IN TWO WAYS
- Accept the law of cause and effect. Take a second look at what appears to be someone’s “good luck”. You’ll find not luck but preparation, planning, and success-producing thinking preceded his good fortune. Take a second look at what appears to be someone’s “bad luck.” Look and you’ll discover certain specific reasons. Mr. Success receives a setback; he learns and profits. But when Mr. Mediocre, loses, he fails to learn.
- Don’t be a wishful thinker. Don’t waste your mental muscles dreaming of an effortless way to win success. We don’t become successful simply through luck. Success comes from doing those things and mastering those principles that produce success. Don’t count on luck for promotions, victories, the good things in life. Luck simply isn’t designed to deliver these good things. Instead, just concentrate on developing those qualities in yourself that will make you a winner.