I recently read a great article in the April/May issue of Success magazine entitled “Personal Development in America.” It highlighted the beginning of what we now refer to as the “self-help movement” with a book appropriately titled Self-Help written by the Scottish reformer Samuel Smiles in 1859.
That’s right…1859…almost a hundred years before the release of Norman Vincent Peale’s brilliant best-seller The Power of Positive Thinking (1952). I love that book! And I love the back story. Peale was so displeased with the final draft of his manuscript that he trashed it and forbade his wife from removing from the trash can. Mrs. Peale did as she was told; however, she did take the trash can to the publisher.
Whoever said: “Behind every great man is a woman” was positively right once again.
The Power of Positive Thinking was one of the first books I read that gave validity to my belief that a positive attitude was a prerequisite to future success. Most people thought I had some rare mental affliction that I would eventually outgrow. I remember when I first entered the NBA as president of the Philadelphia 76ers; several NBA team executives told me that the cynical nature of professional sports and the daily pressure of the win-loss standings would eventually wipe away my smile and positive attitude.
Ha! Just the opposite occurred. My smiling, positive approach to everything we did toward our dream of winning a world championship became contagious, and eventually generated a city of smiles.
Speaking of smiles, I had never heard of Samuel Smiles – perfect name for a preacher of personal power – but I was familiar with a student of his writings, Orson Swett Marden. Marden was the American author who is now recognized via his Horatio Alger-like stories as the “godfather of the success movement.” In fact, his book, Pushing to the Front (1894), formed the basic philosophy of his entrepreneurial venture, Success magazine.
I’ve attached the Personal Development Timeline as displayed in the current Success article to provide you with a list of authors and their wonderful works that should be on the shelves of every person pursuing a dream. Two of my favorites of the listed classics are Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People (1937) and Og Mandino’s The Greatest Salesman in the World (1969). Simple, soul-searching, motivating messages that survive the test of time.
One final reference to the timeline is the last book listed. The Seven Habits of Highly Successful People (1989) is a personal development masterpiece by my friend Stephen Covey. If you haven’t read it, you should. I had the pleasure of meeting Dr. Covey at the Entrepreneur of the Year awards about six years ago in Palm Springs, California. Since we were both keynote speakers we had an opportunity to spend considerable time together and have an extensive conversation - where I did almost all of the questioning and listening.
Subsequent to our meeting I asked Dr. Covey to read my manuscript Lead or Get Off the Pot! in hopes of recruiting him to write the Forward. And if you’ve read my book (2004) then you know the power of his words…
“You will feel, as you read this material, an affirmation of the space between stimulus and response in yourself – that you are not primarily the product of your nature (genes) or your nurture (upbringing and present environment), but the product of your choices. Of course, both nature and nurture influence tremendously, but they do not determine us. Choices do.”
I guess that’s the perfect ending (answer) to the history (future) of success.
This entry was posted
on Tuesday, April 1st, 2008 at 7:50 am by Pat Croce
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