Excerpt from Earl Nightingales "The Strangest Secret" from 1957- 1st Gold Record...

In 1957, Earl Nightingale, speaker, author and co founder of the Nightingale-Conant Corporation, recorded his classic motivational record "The Strangest Secret." "The Strangest Secret" sold over one million copies and made history in the recording industry by being honored as the first Gold Record for the spoken word. Nightingale, known as the "dean of personal development," concluded that life's "strangest secret" is that we become what we think about all day long.

Your belief system, like your computer, doesn't judge or even question what you input; it merely accepts your thoughts as the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Think thoughts of defeat or failure and you're bound to feel discouraged. Continuous thoughts of worry, anxiety and fear are unhealthy and often manifest in the body as stress, panic attacks and depression.

At the core of Earl's message, he reveals the incredible power of positive self-talk, belief and expectation. What you vividly imagine and hold in your subconscious mind begins to out picture as your reality. Your belief system not only defines your reality, but it also shapes your character and determines your potential.

Earl Nightingale's radio recording that he called The Strangest Secret electrified his listeners all over the country. The stations that carried his syndicated show were deluged with requests for copies of it.

As a result, the audio version of Nightingale's message was recorded, and sold over 1 million copies. In fact, Earl Nightingale's recording of The Strangest Secret was the first non-music record to exceed the one million mark!

An excerpt from
The Strangest Secret
by Earl Nightingale

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, they make them."

Well, it's pretty apparent, isn't it? And every person who discovered this believed (for a while) that he was the first one to work it out. 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 and worry - his life becomes one of frustration, fear, anxiety and worry. And if he thinks about nothing... he becomes nothing.

How does it work? Why do we become what we think about? Well, I'll tell you how it works, as far as we know. To do this, I want to tell you about a situation that parallels the human mind.

Suppose a farmer has some land, and it's good, fertile land. The land gives the farmer a choice; he may plant in that land whatever he chooses. The land doesn't care. It's up to the farmer to make the decision.

We're comparing the human mind with the land because the mind, like the land, doesn't care what you plant in it. It will return what you plant, but it doesn't care what you plant.

Now, let's say that the farmer has two seeds in his hand- one is a seed of corn, the other is nightshade, a deadly poison. He digs two little holes in the earth and he plants both seeds-one corn, the other nightshade. He covers up the holes, waters and takes care of the land...and what will happen? Invariably, the land will return what was planted.

As it's written in the Bible, "As ye sow, so shall ye reap."

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.

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.

You see, the human mind is the last great unexplored continent on earth. It contains riches beyond our wildest dreams. It will return anything we want to plant.