Og Mandino
Former Executive Editor - Success Unlimited Magazine
Author 0f 19 Self-Development Books
National Keynote Speaker
Author 0f 19 Self-Development Books
National Keynote Speaker
The Wisdom of Og Mandino
A smile remains the most inexpensive gift I can bestow on anyone and yet its powers can vanquish kingdoms.
Action will destroy your procrastination.
Always do your best. What you plant now, you will harvest later.
Always render more and better service than is expected of you, no matter what your task may be.
Always reward your long hours of labor and toil in the very best way, surrounded by your family. Nurture their love carefully, remembering that your children need models, not critics, and your own progress will hasten when you constantly strive to present your best side to your children. And even if you have failed at all else in the eyes of the world, if you have a loving family, you are a success.
Always seek out the seed of triumph in every adversity.
Be a self starter. Let your first hour set the theme of success and positive action that is certain to echo through your entire day. Today will never happen again. Don't waste it with a false start of no start at all. You were not born to fail.
Beginning today, treat everyone you meet as if they were going to be dead by midnight. Extend to them all the care, kindness and understanding you can muster, and do it with no thought of any reward. Your life will never be the same again.
Build this day on a foundation of pleasant thoughts. Never fret at any imperfections that you fear may impede your progress. Remind yourself, as often as necessary, that you are a creature of God and have the power to achieve any dream by lifting up your thoughts. You can fly when you decide that you can. Never consider yourself defeated again. Let the vision in your heart be in your life's blueprint. Smile!
Consider a painting by Rembrandt or a bronze by Degas or a violin by Stradivarius or a play by Shakespeare. They have great value for two reasons: their creators were masters and they are few in number. Yet there are more than one of each of these.
Count your blessings. Once you realize how valuable you are and how much you have going for you, the smiles will return, the sun will break out, the music will play, and you will finally be able to move forward to the life that God intended for you to have with grace, strength, courage, and confidence.
Deliver more than you are getting paid to do. The victory of success will be half-won when you learn the secret of putting out more than is expected of you in all that you do.
Do all things with love.
Each day is a special gift from God, and while life may not always be fair, you must never allow the pains, hurdles, and handicaps of the moment to poison your attitude and plans for yourself and your future. You can never win when you wear the ugly cloak of self-pity, and the sour sound of whining will certainly frighten away any opportunity for success. Never again. There is a better way.
Each misfortune you encounter will carry in it the seed of tomorrow's good luck.
Every defeat, every heartbreak, every loss, contains its own seed, its own lesson on how to improve your performance the next time.
Every memorable act in the history of the world is a triumph of enthusiasm. Nothing great was ever achieved without it because it gives any challenge or any occupation, no matter how frightening or difficult, a new meaning. Without enthusiasm you are doomed to a life of mediocrity but with it you can accomplish miracles.
Everyone should be wealthy, if only for a day, so that each might realize that be being rich is not the ideal condition that most believe it is. And like the land, we should have little need for all that silver when we cease breathing. Let us enjoy the smiling faces of as many children of god as we can while we are able to see them.
Failure is man's inability to reach his goals in life, whatever they may be. Failure will never overtake me if my determination to succeed is strong enough.
Good habits are the key to all success.
He who worries about calamities suffers them twice over.
How do I change? If I feel depressed I will sing. If I feel sad I will laugh. If I feel ill I will double my labor. If I feel fear I will plunge ahead. If I feel inferior I will wear new garments. If I feel uncertain I will raise my voice. If I feel poverty I will think of wealth to come. If I feel incompetent I will think of past success. If I feel insignificant I will remember my goals. Today I will be the master of my emotions.
I am here for a purpose and that purpose is to grow into a mountain, not to shrink to a grain of sand. Henceforth will I apply ALL my efforts to become the highest mountain of all and I will strain my potential until it cries for mercy.
I can accomplish far more than I have, and I will, for why would the miracle which produced me end with my birth? Why can I not extend that miracle to my deeds of today?
I have never heard anything about the resolutions of the apostles, but a good deal about their actions.
I seek constantly to improve my manners and graces, for they are the sugar to which all are attracted.
I will act now. I will act now. I will act now. Henceforth, I will repeat these words each hour, each day, every day, until the words become as much a habit as my breathing, and the action which follows becomes as instinctive as the blinking of my eyelids. With these words I can condition my mind to perform every action necessary for my success. I will act now. I will repeat these words again and again and again. I will walk where failures fear to walk. I will work when failures seek rest. I will act now for now is all I have. Tomorrow is the day reserved for the labor of the lazy… I am not lazy. Tomorrow is the day when the failure will succeed. I am not a failure. I will act now. Success will not wait. If I delay, success will become wed to another and lost to me forever. This is the time. This is the place. I am the person.
I will form good habits and become their slaves.
I will greet this day with love in my heart. For this is the greatest secret of success in all ventures. Muscles can split a shield and even destroy life itself but only the unseen power of love can open the hearts of man. And until I master this act I will remain no more than a peddler in the marketplace.
I will make love my greatest weapon and none on who I call can defend upon its force... my love will melt all hearts liken to the sun whose rays soften the coldest day.
I will live this day as if it is my last. …I will waste not a moment mourning yesterday’s misfortunes, Yesterday’s defeats, yesterday’s aches of the heart, for why should I throw good after bad? I will live this day as if it is my last. This day is all I have and these hours are now my eternity. I greet this sunrise with cries of joy as a prisoner who is reprieved from death. I lift mine arms with thanks for this priceless gift of a new day. So too, I will beat upon my heart with gratitude as I consider all who greeted yesterday’s sunrise who are no longer with the living today. I am indeed a fortunate man and today’s hours are but a bonus, undeserved. Why have I been allowed to live this extra day when others, far better than I, have departed? Is it that they have accomplished their purpose while mine is yet to be achieved? Is this another opportunity for me to become the man I know I can be?
I will love the light for it shows me the way, yet I will endure the darkness because it shows me the stars.
I will persist until I succeed. Always will I take another step. If that is of no avail I will take another, and yet another. In truth, one step at a time is not too difficult... I know that small steps, repeated, over and over again, will take me anywhere I want to go.
I will smile at friend and foe alike and make every effort to find, in him or her, a quality to praise, now that I realize the deepest yearning of human nature is the craving to be appreciated.
If I feel depressed I will sing. If I feel sad I will laugh. If I feel ill I will double my labor. If I feel fear I will plunge ahead. If I feel inferior I will wear new garments. If I feel uncertain I will raise my voice. If I feel poverty I will think of wealth to come. If I feel incompetent I will think of past success. If I feel insignificant I will remember my goals. Today I will be the master of my emotions.
If I must be a slave to habit let me be a slave to good habits. In truth, the only difference between those who have failed and those who have succeeded lies in the difference of their habits. Good habits are the key to all success. Bad habits are the unlocked door to failure.
It is those who concentrate on but one thing at a time who advance in this world. The great man or woman is the one who never steps outside his or her specialty or foolishly dissipates his or her individuality.
Laugh at yourself and at life. Not in the spirit of derision or whining self-pity, but as a remedy, a miracle drug, that will ease your pain, cure your depression, and help you to put in perspective that seemingly terrible defeat and worry with laughter at your predicaments, thus freeing your mind to think clearly toward the solution that is certain to come. Never take yourself too seriously.
Let your actions always speak for you, but be forever on guard against the terrible traps of false pride and conceit that can halt your progress. The next time you are tempted to boast, just place your fist in a full pail of water, and when you remove it, the hole remaining will give you a correct measure of your importance.
Live this day as if it will be your last. Remember that you will only find ''tomorrow'' on the calendars of fools. Forget yesterday's defeats and ignore the problems of tomorrow. This is it. Doomsday. All you have. Make it the best day of your year. The saddest words you can ever utter are, ''If I had my life to live over again. ''Take the baton, now. Run with it! This is your day!
Love doesn't sit there like a stone, it has to be made, like bread: remade all the time, made new.
Many succumb to despair and fail without realizing that they already possess all the tools needed to acquire great wealth.
Never again clutter your days or nights with so many menial and unimportant things that you have no time to accept a real challenge when it comes along. This applies to play as well as work. A day merely survived is no cause for celebration. You are not here to fritter away your precious hours when you have the ability to accomplish so much by making a slight change in your routine. No more busy work. No more hiding from success. Leave time, leave space, to grow. Now. Now! Not tomorrow! Now!
Never allow anyone to rain on your parade and thus cast a pall of gloom and defeat on the entire day. Remember that no talent, no self-denial, no brains, no character, are required to set up in the fault-finding business. Nothing external can have any power over you unless you permit it. Your time is too precious to be sacrificed in wasted days combating the menial forces of hate, jealously, and envy. Guard your fragile life carefully. Only God can shape a flower, but any foolish child can pull it to pieces. Never feel shame for trying and failing, for he who never failed is he who never tried.
Never neglect the little things. Never skimp on that extra effort, that additional few minutes, that soft word of praise or thanks, that delivery of the very best that you can do. It does not matter what others think, it is of prime importance, however, what you think about you. You can never do your best, which should always be your trademark, if you are cutting corners and shirking responsibilities. You are special. Act it. Never neglect the little things.
Obstacles are necessary for success because in selling, as in all careers of importance, victory comes only after many struggles and count defeats. Yet each struggle, each defeat, sharpens your skills and strengths.On that reasoning you are the most valuable treasure on the face of the earth, for you know who created you and there is only one of you.
Never, in all of the seventy billion humans who have walked this planet since the beginning of time has there been anyone exactly like you. Never, until the end of time, will there be another such as you. You have shown no knowledge or appreciation of your uniqueness. Yet, you are the rarest thing in the world. One of the great undiscovered joys of life comes from doing everything one attempts to the best of one's ability. There is a special sense of satisfaction, a pride in surveying such a work, a work which is rounded, full, exact, complete in its parts, which the superficial person who leaves his or her work in a slovenly, slipshod, half-finished condition, can never know. It is this conscientious completeness which turns any work into art. The smallest task, well done, becomes a miracle of achievement.
Opportunities, many times, are so small that we glimpse them not and yet they are often the seeds of great enterprises. Opportunities are also everywhere and so you must always let your hook be hanging. When you least expect it, a great fish will swim by.
Pay less attention to what you HEAR about someone, and more to what you LEARN about them...as you make the EFFORT.
Realize that true happiness lies within you. Waste no time and effort searching for peace and contentment and joy in the world outside. Remember that there is no happiness in having or in getting, but only in giving. Reach out. Share. Smile. Hug. Happiness is a perfume you cannot pour on others without getting a few drops on yourself.
Remind thyself, in the darkest moments, that every failure is only a step toward success, every detection of what is false directs you toward what is true, every trial exhausts some tempting form of error, and every adversity will only hide, for a time, your path to peace and fulfillment.
Search for the seed of good in every adversity. Master that principle and you will own a precious shield that will guard you well through all the darkest valleys you must traverse. Stars may be seen from the bottom of a deep well, when they cannot be discerned from the mountaintop. So will you learn things in adversity that you would never have discovered without trouble. There is always a seed of good. Find it and prosper.
So long as there is breath in me, that long I will persist. For now I know one of the greatest principles on success; if I persist long enough I will win.
Sooner or later all mankind will realize that the greatest cure for all the ills and wrongs, the cares, the sorrow and crimes of humanity rests solely in acts of love. Love is the greatest gift from God. It is the divine spark that everywhere produces and restores life. To each and every one of us, love gives us the power to work miracles with your own life and those we touch.
Sound character provides the power with which a person may ride the emergencies of life instead of being overwhelmed by them. Failure is... the highway to success.
Take the attitude of a student, never be too big to ask questions, never know too much to learn something new.
The great difference between those who succeed and those who fail does not consist in the amount of work done by each but in the amount of intelligent work. Many of those who fail most ignominiously do enough to achieve grand success but they labor haphazardly at whatever they are assigned, building up with one hand to tear down with the other. They do not grasp circumstances and change them into opportunities. They have no faculty for turning honest defeats into telling victories. With ability enough and ample time, the major ingredients of success, they are forever throwing back and forth an empty shuttle and the real web of their life is never woven.
The master of a single trade can support a family. The master of seven trades cannot support himself. The wind is never for the sailor who knows not to what port he is bound. The only certain means of guaranteeing your own success is to render more and better service than is expected of you, no matter what your task may be.
The person who knows one thing and does it better than anyone else, even if it only be the art of raising lentils, receives the crown he merits. If he raises all his energy to that end, he is a benefactor of mankind and its rewarded as such. The secret of success is to triple your rate of failure.
The victory of success is half won when one gains the habit of setting goals and achieving them. Even the most tedious chore will become endurable as you parade through each day convinced that every task, no matter how menial or boring, brings you closer to fulfilling your dreams.
The weakest living creature, by concentrating his powers on a single object, can accomplish good results while the strongest, by dispersing his effort over many chores, may fail to accomplish anything. Drops of water, by continually falling, hone their passage through the hardest of rocks but the hasty torrent rushes over it with hideous uproar and leaves no trace behind. There is an immeasurable distance between late and too late.
There is no better teacher than adversity. Every defeat, every heartbreak, every loss, contains its own seed, its own lesson on how to improve your performance the next time.
To be always intending to make a new and better life but never to find time to set about it is as to put off eating and drinking and sleeping from one day to the next until you're dead.
To do anything truly worth doing, I must not stand back shivering and thinking of the cold and danger, but jump in with gusto and scramble through as well as I can.
Today, and every day, deliver more than you are getting paid to do. The victory of success will be half won when you learn the secret of putting out more than is expected in all that you do. Make yourself so valuable in your work that eventually you will become indispensable. Exercise your privilege to go the extra mile, and enjoy all the rewards you receive. You deserve them! Today.....I begin a new life.
Today will never happen again. Don't waste it with a false start or no start at all. Tomorrow is only found in the calendar of fools.
Treasure the love you receive above all. It will survive long after your good health has vanished. Weak is he who permits his thoughts to control his actions; strong is he who forces his actions to control his thoughts.
Welcome every morning with a smile. Look on the new day as another special gift from your Creator, another golden opportunity to complete what you were unable to finish yesterday. Be a self-starter. Let your first hour set the theme of success and positive action that is certain to echo through your entire day. Today will never happen again. Don't waste it with a false start or no start at all. You were not born to fail.
Whenever you make a mistake or get knocked down by life, don't look back at it too long. Mistakes are life's way of teaching you. Your capacity for occasional blunders is inseparable from your capacity to reach your goals. No one wins them all, and your failures, when they happen, are just part of your growth. Shake off your blunders. How will you know your limits without an occasional failure? Never quit. Your turn will come.
Women have their roots in the ground, and often those roots are starved and ravaged, yet there is not a human alive who cannot reach and touch, with... her fingers, the very top of God's rainbow.
Work as though you would live forever, and live as though you would die today. Go another mile!
Yet I will not fail, as the others, for in my hands I now hold the charts which will guide me through perilous waters to shores which only yesterday seemed but a dream.
You never know what events are going to transpire to get you home.
You will achieve your grand dream, a day at a time, so set goals for each day, not long and difficult projects, but chores that will take you, step by step, toward your rainbow. Write them down, if you must, but limit your list so that you won't have to drag today's undone matters into tomorrow. Remember that you cannot build your pyramid in twenty-four hours. Be patient. Never allow your day to become so cluttered that you neglect your most important goal: to do the best you can, enjoy this day, and the rest, be satisfied with what you have accomplished.
Your only limitations are those you set up in your mind, or permit others to set up for you.
Books by Master Teacher Og Mandino
U.S.A. in a Nutshell
Cycles
The Greatest Salesman In The World
The Greatest Secret In The World
The Greatest Miracle In The World
The Gift Of Acabar (with Buddy Kaye)
The Choice
The Christ Commission
Mission: Success!
The God Memorandum
The Greatest Salesman In The World Part II: The End Of The Story
The Ten Ancient Scrolls For Success: From The Greatest Salesman In The World
He Is Tough
University of Success (Compilation from other works)
A Better Way To Live
The Return Of The Ragpicker
The Twelfth Angel
Spellbinder's Gift
The Greatest Mystery In The World
Secrets For Success And Happiness
The Greatest Success In The World
U.S.A. in a Nutshell
Cycles
The Greatest Salesman In The World
The Greatest Secret In The World
The Greatest Miracle In The World
The Gift Of Acabar (with Buddy Kaye)
The Choice
The Christ Commission
Mission: Success!
The God Memorandum
The Greatest Salesman In The World Part II: The End Of The Story
The Ten Ancient Scrolls For Success: From The Greatest Salesman In The World
He Is Tough
University of Success (Compilation from other works)
A Better Way To Live
The Return Of The Ragpicker
The Twelfth Angel
Spellbinder's Gift
The Greatest Mystery In The World
Secrets For Success And Happiness
The Greatest Success In The World
Attitude of Gratitude
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There is so much more valuable information "in the pipeline" headed your way. Money makes all worthwhile projects possible. Lack of money stops anything good from happening. If you would be kind enough to "show your attitude of gratitude" for what you are finding on these pages by making a (you-choose-the-amount) donation, we will be forever grateful.
One of the primary projects we need funding for is the production of a (FREE) 70-minute CD (or) (FREE) mp3 download for every high school and college age student in America. CD content that teaches the "real world basics" of how-to's: a healthy mind and body; time management skills; relationships skills; and money management skills. Essentially, we'd like to teach young people how to think better, make better decisions and take the kinds of actions that lead to a productive and rewarding future.
Your kindness and donation will help to turn this "wonderful idea into a serious reality" for every student in America!
Thank You.
Jim Vaughan, Editor
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we will cheerfully comply with your request.
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All original content on this site is (c) 2010-2011 by James Edward Vaughan - All other content owned by the respective copyright holders.
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