You can never become a great dealer nor a person of influence in the cause of justice until you have developed great self-control.
Before you can be of great service to your fellow man in any capacity you must master the common human tendency of anger, intolerance, and cynicism.
When you permit another person to make you angry you are allowing that person to dominate you and drag you down to his level.
To develop self-control you must make liberal and systematic use of the Golden Rule philosophy; you must acquire the habit of forgiving those who annoy and arouse you to anger.
Intolerance and selfishness make very poor bed-fellows for self-control. These qualities always clash when you try to house them together. One or the other must get out.
The first thing the shrewd lawyer usually does when he starts to cross-examine a witness is to make the witness angry and thereby cause him to lose his self-control.
Anger is a state of insanity!
The well-balanced person is a person who is slow to anger and who always remains cool and calculating in his procedure. He remains calm and deliberate under all conditions.
Such a person can succeed in all legitimate undertakings! To master conditions you must first master self! A person who exercises great self-control never slanders his neighbor. His tendency is to build up and not to tear down. Are you a person of self-control? If not why do you not develop this great virtue?
Source: The Bemidji Daily Pioneer, February 26, 1920, Self-Control by Napoleon Hill
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SELF-DISCIPLINE IN FINANCE
We tend to think about money only in times of scarcity and abundance, but if we don’t think about it, we cannot prioritize appropriately. And if we aren’t actively aligning our financial habits with our priorities and values, then we are wasting the most precious resources of all: our time and life energy. Every month we should take time to manage our money, ensuring that it is working as hard for us as we worked for it.
There are only three things you can do with money: spend it, save it, or give it away. With every dollar we have, we should be engaging in each of these activities. A portion of every dollar we earn should be spent on the things we need to sustain us, a portion should be saved and invested for our future, and a portion of every dollar that comes into our hand should be given to people, organizations, and causes that make a difference in the world. These three behaviors are intricately intertwined, and they should be triangulated to achieve the peak of prosperity: your ultimate giving goal, and the peace of mind that results from experiencing your self-discipline, hard work, passion, and talents combine to produce a tangible outcome that betters humanity.
Spending
We all have a budget or spending plan—or a way to make our money go as long as our month does. How we assign purpose to our dollars reveals our priorities.
Most Americans fail to reach their financial goals, not because they don’t have enough money, but because they don’t effectively manage the money they have. There is immeasurable wisdom in the parable of the seed corn, which goes like this: The farmer who consumes his entire crop without saving his seed corn will quickly expend all his resources and will have nothing to generate new resources in the next planting season. On the other hand, the farmer who eats a portion of his crop and saves the seed corn to plant will create for himself a sustainable farming practice, where each year will bring new returns.
Saving
Saving gives you the peace of mind that comes from avoiding personal debts. But more than avoiding uncertainty and embarrassment, it helps you prioritize. It shows you the true value of money. Napoleon Hill explains how “the habit of saving does away with the habit of waste. As saving becomes a need, through habit, many a man finds he can live just as well as he did before, on the same salary, and this even if some prices have gone up. Why is this? Because he stops throwing away portions of his money on needless or frivolous items; he buys more carefully; he conserves his clothing and other possessions. He finds out how to make his money do its absolute most for him.”
Giving
The first two types of financial plans—spending and saving plans—are very common. The third type—the giving plan—is less frequently enacted. However, the giving plan might be the most important strategy of all, for it explains how you will direct your monetary resources not exclusively toward consumption or growth, but to adding value to others’ lives. It directs your money outward, rather than inward, creating the sort of returns that better humankind.
Unfortunately, so many people approach giving the wrong way. They say, “Once I’m wealthy, I’ll be a giver.” No, you won’t. If you’re not generous today, you never will be. People think they’ll get wealthy and then will have extra money with which they can be generous. Those people who are waiting to give are like the guy at the fireplace who says, “Give me some heat” before he gets the firewood. We don’t give from extra money; we give from every dollar we bring in.
Source: The Gift of Giving by Jim Stovall and Don Green
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Do you have a list of books that go well with each Principle of Success? Send your suggested list to Uriel at um17pma@gmail.com
Do you have a poem that goes well with one of the Principles of Success? Please share with me too.
Uriel Martinez
Director of Distance Learning
The Napoleon Hill Foundation
um17pma@gmail.com |
