The Strangest Secret

The Strangest Secret was a 1957 spoken word record by Earl Nightingale (an American radio speaker and author) which sold over one million copies and received the first Gold Record for the spoken word, making it one of the bestselling voice recordings in history.

It’s a 30 minutes piece so make sure you have time to listen to it (Download the .mp3). It’s well worth it and very well done. During his lifetime, Nightingale wrote and recorded more than 7,000 radio programs, 250 audio programs as well as television programs and videos. This man had practice!

Here is his message in a nutshell: We become what we think about most of the time, and that’s the strangest secret.

Success is the progressive realization of a worthy ideal;
Think positive and you will achieve positive results. Think negative and you will achieve negative results. Understand this emotionally and success cannot fail you.

The Strangest Secret Video With Subtitles

Further below in this article you will also find the best Earl Nightingale quotes as well as his famous 30 day challenge.

The Strangest Secret Full Transcript (Click on arrow to open)

Introduction

Some years ago, the late Nobel prize-winning Dr. Albert Schweitzer was asked by a reporter, “Doctor, what’s wrong with men today?” The great doctor was silent a moment, and then he said, “Men simply don’t think!”

It’s about this that I want to talk with you. We live today in a golden age. This is an era that humanity has looked forward to, dreamed of, and worked toward for thousands of years. We live in the richest era that ever existed on the face of the earth … a land of abundant opportunity for everyone.

However, if you take 100 individuals who start even at the age of 25, do you have any idea what will happen to those men and women by the time they’re 65? These 100 people believe they’re going to be successful. They are eager toward life, there is a certain sparkle in their eye, an erectness to their carriage, and life seems like a pretty interesting adventure to them.

But by the time they’re 65, only one will be rich, four will be financially independent, five will still be working, and 54 will be broke — depending on others for life’s necessities.

Only five out of 100 make the grade! Why do so many fail? What has happened to the sparkle that was there when they were 25? What has become of the dreams, the hopes, the plans … and why is there such a large disparity between what these people intended to do and what they actually accomplished?

The definition of success

First, we have to define success and here is the best definition I’ve ever been able to find: “Success is the progressive realization of a worthy ideal.”

A success is the school teacher who is teaching because that’s what he or she wants to do. A success is the entrepreneur who start his own company because that was his dream — that’s what he wanted to do. A success is the salesperson who wants to become the best salesperson in his or her company and sets forth on the pursuit of that goal.

A success is anyone who is realizing a worthy predetermined ideal, because that’s what he or she decided to do … deliberately. But only one out of 20 does that! The rest are “failures.”

Rollo May, the distinguished psychiatrist, wrote a wonderful book called Man’s Search for Himself, and in this book he says: “The opposite of courage in our society is not cowardice … it is conformity.” And there you have the reason for so many failures. Conformity — people acting like everyone else, without knowing why or where they are going.

We learn to read by the time we’re seven. We learn to make a living by the time we’re 30. Often by that time we’re not only making a living, we’re supporting a family. And yet by the time we’re 65, we haven’t learned how to become financially independent in the richest land that has ever been known. Why? We conform! Most of us are acting like the wrong percentage group — the 95 who don’t succeed.

Goals

Have you ever wondered why so many people work so hard and honestly without ever achieving anything in particular, and why others don’t seem to work hard, yet seem to get everything? They seem to have the “magic touch.” You’ve heard people say, “Everything he touches turns to gold.” Have you ever noticed that a person who becomes successful tends to continue to become more successful? And, on the other hand, have you noticed how someone who’s a failure tends to continue to fail?

The difference is goals. People with goals succeed because they know where they’re going. It’s that simple. Failures, on the other hand, believe that their lives are shaped by circumstances … by things that happen to them … by exterior forces.

Think of a ship with the complete voyage mapped out and planned. The captain and crew know exactly where the ship is going and how long it will take — it has a definite goal. And 9,999 times out of 10,000, it will get there.

Now let’s take another ship — just like the first — only let’s not put a crew on it, or a captain at the helm. Let’s give it no aiming point, no goal, and no destination. We just start the engines and let it go. I think you’ll agree that if it gets out of the harbor at all, it will either sink or wind up on some deserted beach — a derelict. It can’t go anyplace because it has no destination and no guidance.

It’s the same with a human being. However, the human race is fixed, not to prevent the strong from winning, but to prevent the weak from losing. Society today can be likened to a convoy in time of war. The entire society is slowed down to protect its weakest link, just as the naval convoy has to go at the speed that will permit its slowest vessel to remain in formation.

That’s why it’s so easy to make a living today. It takes no particular brains or talent to make a living and support a family today. We have a plateau of so-called “security.” So, to succeed, all we must do is decide how high above this plateau we want to aim.

Throughout history, the great wise men and teachers, philosophers, and prophets have disagreed with one another on many different things. It is only on this one point that they are in complete and unanimous agreement — the key to success and the key to failure is this:

We become what we think

This is The Strangest Secret! Now, why do I say it’s strange, and why do I call it a secret? Actually, it isn’t a secret at all. It was first promulgated by some of the earliest wise men, and it appears again and again throughout the Bible. But very few people have learned it or understand it. That’s why it’s strange, and why for some equally strange reason it virtually remains a secret.

Marcus Aurelius, the great Roman Emperor, said: “A man’s life is what his thoughts make of it.”

Disraeli said this: “Everything comes if a man will only wait … a human being with a settled purpose must accomplish it, and nothing can resist a will that will stake even existence for its fulfillment.”

William James said: “We need only in cold blood act as if the thing in question were real, and it will become infallibly real by growing into such a connection with our life that it will become real. It will become so knit with habit and emotion that our interests in it will be those which characterize belief.” He continues, ” … only you must, then, really wish these things, and wish them exclusively, and not wish at the same time a hundred other incompatible things just as strongly.”

My old friend Dr. Norman Vincent Peale put it this way: “If you think in negative terms, you will get negative results. If you think in positive terms, you will achieve positive results.” George Bernard Shaw said: “People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don’t believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and if they can’t find them, make them.”

Well, it’s pretty apparent, isn’t it? We become what we think about. A person who is thinking about a concrete and worthwhile goal is going to reach it, because that’s what he’s thinking about. Conversely, the person who has no goal, who doesn’t know where he’s going, and whose thoughts must therefore be thoughts of confusion, anxiety, fear, and worry will thereby create a life of frustration, fear, anxiety and worry. And if he thinks about nothing … he becomes nothing.

As ye sow so shall ye reap

The human mind is much like a farmer’s land. The land gives the farmer a choice. He may plant in that land whatever he chooses. The land doesn’t care what is planted. It’s up to the farmer to make the decision. The mind, like the land, will return what you plant, but it doesn’t care what you plant. If the farmer plants too seeds — one a seed of corn, the other nightshade, a deadly poison, waters and takes care of the land, what will happen?

Remember, the land doesn’t care. It will return poison in just as wonderful abundance as it will corn. So up come the two plants — one corn, one poison as it’s written in the Bible, “As ye sow, so shall ye reap.”

The human mind is far more fertile, far more incredible and mysterious than the land, but it works the same way. It doesn’t care what we plant … success … or failure. A concrete, worthwhile goal … or confusion, misunderstanding, fear, anxiety, and so on. But what we plant it must return to us.

The problem is that our mind comes as standard equipment at birth. It’s free. And things that are given to us for nothing, we place little value on. Things that we pay money for, we value.

The paradox is that exactly the reverse is true. Everything that’s really worthwhile in life came to us free — our minds, our souls, our bodies, our hopes, our dreams, our ambitions, our intelligence, our love of family and children and friends and country. All these priceless possessions are free.

But the things that cost us money are actually very cheap and can be replaced at any time. A good man can be completely wiped out and make another fortune. He can do that several times. Even if our home burns down, we can rebuild it. But the things we got for nothing, we can never replace.

Our mind can do any kind of job we assign to it, but generally speaking, we use it for little jobs instead of big ones. So decide now. What is it you want? Plant your goal in your mind. It’s the most important decision you’ll ever make in your entire life.

Do you want to excel at your particular job? Do you want to go places in your company … in your community? Do you want to get rich? All you have got to do is plant that seed in your mind, care for it, work steadily toward your goal, and it will become a reality.

It not only will, there’s no way that it cannot. You see, that’s a law — like the laws of Sir Isaac Newton, the laws of gravity. If you get on top of a building and jump off, you’ll always go down — you’ll never go up.

And it’s the same with all the other laws of nature. They always work. They’re inflexible. Think about your goal in a relaxed, positive way. Picture yourself in your mind’s eye as having already achieved this goal. See yourself doing the things you will be doing when you have reached your goal.

Every one of us is the sum total of our own thoughts. We are where we are because that’s exactly where we really want or feel we deserve to be — whether we’ll admit that or not. Each of us must live off the fruit of our thoughts in the future, because what you think today and tomorrow — next month and next year — will mold your life and determine your future. You’re guided by your mind.

I remember one time I was driving through e a s t e r n Arizona and I saw one of those giant earthmoving machines roaring along the road with what looked like 30 tons of dirt in it — a tremendous, incredible machine — and there was a little man perched way up on top with the wheel in his hands, guiding it. As I drove along I was struck by the similarity of that machine to the human mind. Just suppose you’re sitting at the controls of such a vast source of energy. Are you going to sit back and fold your arms and let it run itself into a ditch? Or are you going to keep both hands firmly on the wheel and control and direct this power to a specific, worthwhile purpose? It’s up to you. You’re in the driver’s seat. You see, the very law that gives us success is a double-edged sword. We must control our thinking. The same rule that can lead people to lives of success, wealth, happiness, and all the things they ever dreamed of — that very same law can lead them into the gutter. It’s all in how they use it … for good or for bad. That is The Strangest Secret!

Do what the experts since the dawn of recorded history have told us to do: pay the price, by becoming the person you want to become. It’s not nearly as difficult as living unsuccessfully.

The moment you decide on a goal to work toward, you’re immediately a successful person — you are then in that rare group of people who know where they’re going. Out of every hundred people, you belong to the top five. Don’t concern yourself too much with how you are going to achieve your goal — leave that completely to a power greater than yourself. All you have to do is know where you’re going. The answers will come to you of their own accord, and at the right time.

Start today. You have nothing to lose — but you have your whole life to win.

The Best Earl Nightingale Quotes

A good deal of frustration and unhappiness could be avoided if people would just do what they know they should do.
A great attitude does much more than turn on the lights in our worlds; it seems to magically connect us to all sorts of serendipitous opportunities that were somehow absent before the change.
A leader is any person who realizes the importance of becoming a bigger and better person with the passing of every day, week and month.
All you have to do is know where you’re going. The answers will come to you of their own accord.
All you need is the plan, the road map, and the courage to press on to your destination.
Ask yourself every morning, ‘how can I increase my service today?’
Become a sponge for information that will help you on your way. You don’t have to waste years making the mistakes others have made before.
Before you can achieve the kind of life you want you must think, act, talk, and conduct yourself in all of your affairs, as would the person you wish to become.
By being persistent, you’re demonstrating faith. Persistence is simply another word for faith. If you didn’t have faith, you’d never persist.
By setting specific, attainable, worthwhile goals you automatically place yourself in the top 5% of people, achievers.
Chance does not work. Only choice will work. Your choice!
Control your thoughts. Decide about that which you will think and concentrate upon. You are in charge of your life to the degree you take charge of your thoughts.
Creativity is a natural extension of our enthusiasm.
Do, each day all that can be done that day. You don’t need to overwork-or to rush blindly into your work, trying to do the greatest possible number of things in the shortest possible amount of time. Don’t try to do tomorrow’s-or next week’s-work today. It’s not so much the number of the things you do but the quality, the efficiency of each separate action that counts. You need only to succeed in the small tasks of each day. This makes a successful day. With enough of these, you have a successful week, month, year and lifetime.
Don’t concern yourself too much with how you are going to achieve your goal – leave that completely to a power greater than yourself. All you have to do is know where you’re going. The answers will come to you of their own accord, and at the right time.
Don’t concern yourself with the money. Be of service … build … work … dream … create! Do this and you’ll find there is no limit to the prosperity and abundance that will come to you.
Don’t let the fear of the time it will take to accomplish something stand in the way of your doing it. The time will pass anyway; we might just as well put that passing time to the best possible use.
Don’t take the attitude of waiting for people to be nice to you – be nice to them. Don’t sit in front of a cold stove waiting for the heat. Put in the fuel. Act first.
Don’t talk about your health unless it’s good.
Don’t wait for change. You change.
Dream what you dare to dream. Go where you want to go. Be what you want to be.
Each of us must live off the fruit of his thoughts in the future, because what you think today and tomorrow, next month and next year, you will mold your life and determine your future. You are guided by your mind.
Everything begins with an idea.
Everything you and I will ever have will come to us as the result of the way we use our minds, the one thing we possess that makes us different from all other creatures.
Expect more good out of life than bad. Expect to succeed more often than you fail, and you will.
Get into a line that you will find to be a deep personal interest, something you really enjoy spending twelve to fifteen hours a day working at, and the rest of the time thinking about.
Ideas are elusive, slippery things. Best to keep a pad of paper and a pencil at your bedside, so you can stab them during the night before they get away.
If a person is working toward a pre-determined goal and knows where they’re going, that individual is a success. If they’re not doing that, they’re a failure. Success is the progressive realization of a worthy ideal.
It’s never too late, for with a purpose, a worthy goal and a motivation to reach those upper layers on the pyramid. A person can travel further in a few years than he might otherwise travel in a lifetime.
Learn to enjoy every minute of your life. Be happy now. Don’t wait for something outside of yourself to make you happy in the future. Think how really precious is the time you have to spend, whether it’s at work or with your family. Every minute should be enjoyed and savored.
Life can only return to you that which you sow. What do you have to sow? You have great wealth; you can think, you have talent, and you have time.
Most people don’t know what they want. Do you?
Never compete, create.
No man can get rich himself unless he enriches others.
Now it stands to reason that a person who is thinking about a concrete and worthwhile goal is going to reach it, because that’s what he’s thinking about – and we become what we think about. Conversely, the person who has no goal, who doesn’t know where he’s going, and whose thoughts must therefore be thoughts of confusion, anxiety, fear, and worry will become what he thinks about.
One hour per day of study in your chosen field is all it takes. One hour per day of study will put you at the top of your field within three years. Within five years you’ll be a national authority. In seven years, you can be one of the best people in the world at what you do.
One thing a goal must do is fill us with positive emotion when we think about it. The more intensely we feel about a goal the more progressively we’ll move toward it.
Others treat us as we treat them. They react to us. They only give us back a reflection of our own attitude.
Our attitude towards others determines their attitude towards us.
Our environment, the world in which we live and work, is a mirror of our attitudes and expectations.
People are where they are because that is exactly where they really want to be – whether they will admit that or not.
People who have goals succeed because they know where they’re going. It’s that simple.
Picture yourself in your minds eye as having already achieved this goal. See yourself doing the things you’ll be doing when you’ve reached your goal.
Preparation for life is so important. Luck is what happens when preparedness meets opportunity. Opportunity is all around us. Are you prepared?
Problems are challenges to creative minds. Without problems, there would be little reason to think at all.
Real evils can be either cured or endured; it is only imaginary evils that make people anxiety-ridden for a lifetime.
Security isn’t what the wise person looks for – it’s opportunity.
Self-pity is an acid which eats holes in happiness.
Set worthy goals. Don’t drift along as a wandering generality. Be a meaningful specific.
Spend one hour every day thinking about your goal and how to get there.
Success is the progressive realization of a worthy goal or ideal.
Take action – ideas are worthless unless we act on them.
The biggest mistake that you can make is to believe that you are working for somebody else.
The more intensely we feel about an idea or a goal, the more assuredly the idea, buried deep in our subconscious, will direct us along the path to its fulfillment.
The opposite of courage in our society is not cowardice, it is conformity.
There is a time when one must decide either to risk everything to fulfill one’s dreams or sit for the rest of one’s life in the backyard.
These people get to the top because they have to, because inside them burns a dream too big, too ever present, too demanding to be denied.
Think of a ship with the complete voyage mapped out and planned. The captain and crew know exactly where the ship is going and how long it will take — it has a definite goal. And 9,999 times out of 10,000, it will get there.
Visualization is the human being’s vehicle to the future – good, bad, or indifferent. It’s strictly in our control.
We all walk in the dark and each of us must learn to turn on his or her own light.
We are all self-made, but only the successful will admit it.
We become what we think about most of the time, and that’s the strangest secret.
We can help others in the world more by making the most of yourself than in any other way.
We can let circumstances rule us, or we can take charge and rule our lives from within.
We will receive not what we idly wish for but what we justly earn. Our rewards will always be in exact proportion to our service.
What’s going on in the inside shows on the outside.
Whatever we plant in our subconscious mind and nourish with repetition and emotion will one day become a reality.
When you judge others, you do not define them, you define yourself.
Whenever we’re afraid, it’s because we don’t know enough. If we understood enough, we would never be afraid.
Wherever there is danger, there lurks opportunity; whenever there is opportunity, there lurks danger. The two are inseparable. They go together.
Work never killed anyone. It’s worry that does the damage. And the worry would disappear if we’d just settle down and do the work.
You do become, what you think about.
You’ll find boredom where there is the absence of a good idea.
Your problem is to bridge the gap that exists between where you are now and the goal you intend to reach.
Your world and everything in it is a reflection of your own mental attitude toward yourself.

Earl Nightingale 30 day challenge

Here is how the 30 day challenge works: For the next 30-days follow each of these steps every day until you have achieved your goal.

1. Write on a card what it is you want more that anything else. It may be more money. Perhaps you’d like to double your income or make a specific amount of money. It may be a beautiful home. It may be success at your job. It may be a particular position in life. It could be a more harmonious family.

Write down on your card specifically what it is you want. Make sure it’s a single goal and clearly defined. You needn’t show it to anyone, but carry it with you so that you can look at it several times a day. Think about it in a cheerful, relaxed, positive way each morning when you get up, and immediately you have something to work for — something to get out of bed for, something to live for.

Look at it every chance you get during the day and just before going to bed at night. As you look at it, remember that you must become what you think about, and since you’re thinking about your goal, you realize that soon it will be yours. In fact, it’s really yours the moment you write it down and begin to think about it.

2. Stop thinking about what it is you fear. Each time a fearful or negative thought comes into your mind, replace it with a mental picture of your positive and worthwhile goal. And there will come a time when you’ll feel like giving up. It’s easier for a human being to think negatively than positively. That’s why only five percent are successful! You must begin now to place yourself in that group.

“Act as though it were impossible to fail,” as Dorothea Brande said. No matter what your goal — if you’ve kept your goal before you every day — you’ll wonder and marvel at this new life you’ve found.

3. Your success will always be measured by the quality and quantity of service you render. Most people will tell you that they want to make money, without understanding this law. The only people who make money work in a mint. The rest of us must earn money. This is what causes those who keep looking for something for nothing, or a free ride, to fail in life. Success is not the result of making money; earning money is the result of success — and success is in direct proportion to our service.

Most people have this law backwards. It’s like the man who stands in front of the stove and says to it: “Give me heat and then I’ll add the wood.” How many men and women do you know, or do you suppose there are today, who take the same attitude toward life? There are millions.

We’ve got to put the fuel in before we can expect heat. Likewise, we’ve got to be of service first before we can expect money. Don’t concern yourself with the money. Be of service … build … work … dream … create! Do this and you’ll find there is no limit to the prosperity and abundance that will come to you.

Don’t start your test until you’ve made up your mind to stick with it. If you should fail during your first 30 days — by that I mean suddenly find yourself overwhelmed by negative thoughts — simply start over again from that point and go 30 more days. Gradually, your new habit will form, until you find yourself one of that wonderful minority to whom virtually nothing is impossible.

Above all … don’t worry! Worry brings fear, and fear is crippling. The only thing that can cause you to worry during your test is trying to do it all yourself. Know that all you have to do is hold your goal before you; everything else will take care of itself.

Take this 30-day test, then repeat it … then repeat it again. Each time it will become more a part of you until you’ll wonder how you could have ever have lived any other way. Live this new way and the floodgates of abundance will open and pour over you more riches than you may have dreamed existed. Money? Yes, lots of it. But what’s more important, you’ll have peace … you’ll be in that wonderful minority who lead calm, cheerful, successful lives.

Below is a similar and further enriching way to do the 30 day challenge, from Abraham-Hicks:

Stop beating up on yourself (and others)
Turn off media and TV for 30 days (as well as radio, internet news, and social media)
Cancel meetings and minimize contact with other people (to the extent you can)
Withdraw from what other people call “reality” as much as possible, beam inwardly focused for 30 days
Explore your imagination, fire-up your passion, and make a study of delving into your vortex; write about any personal discoveries you find with as much feeling detail as possible
Get a notebook and make lists of positive aspects (the good qualities) about your environment, your relationships, and the people or situations around you
Tune yourself in small efforts to the vibration of who you really are; meditate on the love, beauty, kindness, magnificence, and peace that IS the core of who you really are
As inspiration occurs, follow-through with it as soon as possible
Make note of and document any evidence you can find of your desire becoming more vivid and getting closer, such as seeing other people who already have what you want, hearing about in conversations, dreams, or pieces of the bigger picture starting to manifest.