How’s the World Treating You? by Earl Nightingale
We live in a world of words. We have a word for everything, and some of these names and labels mean a great deal to us. Words such as “love,” “happiness,” “success,” “achievement,” “joy,” and “ability” describe conditions all of us want, but there is one word that controls them all. That is, there is one word that describes a condition that will bring us all of these things or keep us from getting any one of them.
If your youngster asked what this word is, could you tell him? If, from all of the many thousands of words in the language, you were asked to select the one that would influence your life more than any other, could you pick the right word? I call it the “magic word,” and it is “ATTITUDE!” Once we are grown and on our own, this word actually controls our environment, our entire world.
If you are curious about what kind of an attitude you have, a simple test will tell you what it has been up to this point in your life. Just answer this question with a “yes” or “no”: “Do you feel the world is treating you well?” If your attitude toward the world is good, you will obtain good results. If your attitude is excellent, excellent will be your results. If your attitude is negative, little that is positive awaits you. And if your attitude is just so-so, you will live in a world that is not particularly bad, nor particularly good, just so-so.
Our environment, which is another way of saying how the world treats us, is nothing more than a reflection—a mirror, actually—of our own attitude.
One of the most pitiful aspects of society is the really large percentage of people who lead dismal, narrow, darkened lives, crying out against what appears to be a cruel world, which they believe has singled them out for a lifetime of trouble, misery, and bad luck. Those who find themselves in such a prison of discontent should face the fact that they have very probably built their prison with their own hands. And unless they change, their cell will continue to grow smaller and darker.
The world doesn’t care whether we change or not. Adopting a good, healthy attitude toward life doesn’t affect life and the people with whom we come in contact nearly as much as it affects us. As it says in the Bible: “As ye sow, so shall ye reap.”
It would be impossible even to estimate the number of jobs that have been lost, the number of promotions missed, the number of sales not made, the number of marriages ruined by poor attitudes. But you can number in the millions the jobs that are held but hated, the marriages that are tolerated but unhappy, all because of people who are waiting for others, or the world, to change toward them, instead of being big enough and wise enough to realize that we only get back what we put out.
In 30 days, you can change your world and your environment by taking this simple test. For 30 days, treat every person you meet, without a single exception, as the most important person on earth. You will find that they will begin treating you the same way. You see, every person, as far as he or she is concerned, is the most important person on earth. How does the world look at you? Exactly as you look at the world.
his is an excerpt from Earl Nightingale’s Successful Living in a Changing World, an official Nightingale-Conant publication. Known as the “Dean of Personal Development,” Earl Nightingale grew up in California during the Great Depression. Because his family was very poor, Nightingale educated himself in his local library. His main focus: what makes people turn out the way they do in terms of their wealth, their career achievements, and their happiness. After beginning his career in the US Marines during World War II, he was hired as a radio announcer. He eventually became a popular daily broadcaster for CBS. Through his interest in both personal development and audio, he partnered with Lloyd Conant to form the Nightingale-Conant Corporation, the world’s largest producer of audio programs. Sign up to receive free samples from Sound Wisdom’s Nightingale-Conant Collection here.