“A quitter never wins – and a winner never quits!”
~ Napoleon Hill
What a pretty sunrise this morning, which took it’s sweet ol’ time to hurdle up over the peaks in the clouds. I sure hope this photo’s soft glow warms some hearts, as I hear another round of winter has descended for some of you (sorry!!) …
With this bit of extra time for my meditation, I was busy using that imagination of mine to envision a friend writing a musical comedy for Broadway.
Whatever the mind can conceive, it can achieve !!
So yesterday, I began reading the 6th Principle to Success: Organized Planning.
What’s interesting to me is that this is the chapter where I have stopped reading “Think and Grow Rich” on my previous readings. Yes, me of all people. The planner !!!
Here’s the thing: “Think and Grow Rich” nearly jumped off a display at me, while I was walking through Office Max, four or so years ago, as did a copy of “The Secret”. Over the past 4 years, as many of you know, I’ve actually been working at downsizing my life, and dismantling businesses instead of building them. I suppose I had no reason to take this chapter to heart. And instead “The Secret” has become like this guiding beacon to my life point of view up until now.
Didn’t Hill say in his introduction “Unless you are intentionally seeking for the secret, you cannot have it at any price … In order for us to gain the secret to success, there is something we must have.”
I’m not quite certain I have that next “burning idea”, but I do have a few things floating around in my mind, and I did arrive at a fixed amount of money that I will demand by May of next year. I didn’t sit down and budget out the exact number. Instead, the number just appeared, and felt right.
The chapter on Organized Planning is a fairly lengthy one. And what I find interesting is that Hill doesn’t really go about telling us HOW to plan here like we learn in Business School (eg. crafting mission statements, and vision statements and slogans, conducting demographic studies, ect).
Instead, “In this chapter you should find adequate descriptions of every principle essential in planning the sale of personal services. These include lists of the major attributes of leadership, the most common causes of failure in leadership, a description of the fields of opportunity for leadership, the main causes of failure in all walks of life, and the important questions that should be used in self-analysis.”
“Your achievement can only be as good as the plans you make. You are never whipped, until you quit – in your own mind.”
“If you give up before your goal has been reached, you are a “quitter”. A quitter never wins – and a winner never quits.”
If you are reading along with me, here’s my suggestion for this chapter. Read it through in it’s entirety, skipping the specifics on each of the lists. Just note that a list have been given. Do this so you can gain an understanding of why Hill’s given us listings of personality traits we wish to avoid and ones we should be working on developing.
Personally, I feel he did this, because for each of us, our plans will be different. “And if the first plan that we adopt does not work successfully, replace it with a new plan. If this plan fails to work, replace it with still another, and so on, until a plan is found that does work.”
So instead of telling us how to plan, he’s telling us what it will take to be a good planner, and what it takes to be a leader for our mastermind group.
Most people quit because they lack the persistence in creating new plans to take the place of those that fail. To a winner, temporary defeat should mean only one thing: the certain knowledge that there is something wrong with our plan.
Brings to mind for me the quote:
“If first you don’t succeed, try, try again!”
(And note that double use of try) !!
I’m now going to go back and re-read this chapter. I’m going to spend a day on each of the lists and think them through. In the end, I hope to make up a cheat sheet that can be printed off and added to my annual Purposeful Plan. Hill says reviewing our own personal QQS Rating (or our Quality plus Quantity plus Spirit of Co-operation Formula) is essential to our growth.
Let’s think about this today without getting into the specifics:
What is the Quality of Service that you’ve been providing? Is it the most efficient it can be?
What is the Quantity of Service being provided? Is it all that you are capable of giving? And are you giving it at all times?
Is the Service being offered in an agreeable & harmonious fashion, in the Spirit of Co-operation with employees and clients alike?
“The day of the ‘go-getter’ has been supplanted by the ‘go-giver’ “ ….
Let’s go give today! As much and as best as we can
<3
