What You Need Truly to Succeed…

I first posted this in the spring of 2014, and a couple of times since. I wanted to publish it afresh at this Eastertime 2021, after the strangest of years for all of us. Because it’s timeless.

Many of you will have heard of Dale Carnegie – one of the greatest self-improvement authors of all time (you will for sure have heard of his book “How to Win Friends and Influence People).

He also wrote a book called “How to Stop Worrying and Start Living” and there is one short section in there that is utterly priceless. I commend it to you.

In the section I am going to give you a link to an an extract below, Carnegie talks about psychology and the spiritual aspect of our mind’s workings. There is a massively practical application of the kind of mindset he is talking about.

In fact, I would go so far as to say that…

…if you haven’t yet had the success or found the peace of mind you desire, this is why!

I interviewed Henry Ford a few years prior to his death. Before I met him, I had expected him to show the strains of the long years he had spent in building up and managing one of the world’s greatest businesses. So I was surprised to how calm and well and peaceful he looked at seventy-eight. When I asked him if he ever worried, he replied: “No. I believe God is managing affairs and that He doesn’t need any advice from me. With God in charge, I believe that every-thing will work out for the best in the end. So what is there to worry about?”

Today, even psychiatrists are becoming modern evangelists. They are not urging us to lead religious lives to avoid hell-fires in the next world, but they are urging us to lead religious lives to avoid the hell-fires of this world-the hell-fires of stomach ulcer, angina pectoris, nervous breakdowns, and insanity.

….

One of the most distinguished psychiatrists living, Dr. Carl Jung, says in his book Modern Man in Search of a Soul (*):
“During the past thirty years, people from all the civilised countries of the earth have consulted me. I have treated many hundreds of patients. Among all my patients in the second half of life-that is to say, over thirty-five-there has not been one whose problem in the last resort was not that of finding a religious outlook on life. It is safe to say that every one of them fell ill because he had lost that which the living religions of every age have given to their followers, and none of them has been really healed who did not regain his religious outlook.”

I don’t want to make this post too long, but there is one other excerpt from the same chapter I would like to give you. It touched my heart, and I hope it will touch yours:

“I am calling this woman Mary Cushman, although that is not her actual name. She has children and grandchildren who might be embarrassed to see her story in print, so I agreed to disguise her identity. However, the woman herself is real – very real. A few months ago, she sat in the armchair beside my desk and told me her story. Here is how it goes:

“During the depression,” she said, “my husband’s average salary was eighteen dollars a week. Many times we didn’t have even that because he didn’t get paid when he was ill-and that was often. He had a series of minor accidents; he also had mumps, scarlet fever, and repeated attacks of flu. We lost the little house that we had built with our own hands. We owed fifty dollars at the grocery store-and had five children to feed. I took in washing and ironing from the neighbours, and bought second-hand clothes from the Salvation Army store and made them over for my children to wear. I made myself ill with worry. One day the grocer to whom we owed fifty dollars accused my eleven-year-old boy of stealing a couple of pencils.

My son wept as he told me about it. I knew he was honest and sensitive – and I knew that he had been disgraced and humiliated in front of other people. That was the straw that broke my back. I thought of all the misery we had endured; and I couldn’t see any hope for the future. I must have become temporarily insane with worry, for I shut off my washing machine, took my little five-year-old daughter into the bedroom, and plugged up the windows and cracks with paper and rags. My little girl said to me: ‘Mommy, what are you doing?’ and I answered: There’s a little draught in here.’ Then I turned on the gas heater we had in the bedroom-and didn’t light it. As I lay down on the bed with my daughter beside me, she said: ‘Mommy, this is funny-we just got up a little while ago!’ But I said: ‘Never mind, we’ll take a little nap.’

Then I closed my eyes, listening to the gas escape from the heater. I shall never forget the smell of that gas. …

“Suddenly I thought I heard music. I listened. I had forgotten to turn the radio off in the kitchen. It didn’t matter now. But the music kept on, and presently I heard someone singing an old hymn:

What a Friend we have in Jesus,
All our sins and grief’s to bear!
What a privilege to carry
Everything to God in prayer.
Oh, what peace we often forfeit
Oh, what needless pain we bear
All because we do not carry
Everything to God in prayer!

As I listened to that hymn, I realised that I had made a tragic mistake. I had tried to fight all my terrible battles alone. I had not taken everything to God in prayer. … I jumped up, turned off the gas, opened the door, and raised the windows.

“I wept and prayed all the rest of that day. Only I didn’t pray for help-instead I poured out my soul in thanksgiving to God for the blessings He had given me: five splendid children- all of them healthy and fine, strong in body and mind. I promised God that never again would I prove so ungrateful. And I have kept that promise.

“Even after we lost our home, and had to move into a little country schoolhouse that we rented for five dollars a month, I thanked God for that schoolhouse; I thanked Him for the fact that I at least had a roof to keep us warm and dry. I thanked God honestly that things were not worse – and I believe that He heard me. For in time things improved – oh, not overnight; but as the depression lightened, we made a little more money. I got a job as a hat-check girl in a large country club, and sold stockings as a side line. To help put himself through college, one of my sons got a job on a farm, milked thirteen cows morning and night. Today my children are grown up and married; I have three fine grandchildren. And, as I look back on that terrible day when I turned on the gas, I thank God over and over that I ‘woke up’ in time. What joys I would have missed if I had carried out that act! How many wonderful years I would have forfeited for ever! Whenever I hear now of someone who wants to end his life, I feel like crying out: ‘Don’t do it! Don’t!’ The blackest moments we live through can only last a little time-and then comes the future. …”

The full pdf of Carnegie’s book can be found here. It’s life-changing.

My friends and subscribers, turn your hearts and minds to God, whoever you see as God. He can help you more than any IM system.

And if I can help you find Him, please let me know by replying to john at nationalhomebusinesscenter.com and I’d be delighted to help you.

All the best,

John