Most people, according to Hill, waste their thinking power in ‘spasmodic’ and ‘purposeless’ thought. The purpose of this lesson is to get people to understand where that ultimately leads and what needs to be done in order to avoid the destination to which most people are aimlessly drifting.
There have been many times that I have heard or read the statistic that 95% of people fail to achieve what they themselves would define as success. Much of the success literature I have read over the years has made the point that, to leave the 95% and join the 5% of people who succeed, it requires a different kind of thinking and the habit of taking actions that are congruent with the desire to succeed. I have often wondered where that 95% figure came from and I think it is probably from this lesson in Hill’s course.
By the way, he does also state that successful people also generally fail or get very close to failure on the route to success. But the difference is that they stay focussed on – what this lesson is really all about – their definite chief aim, they adjust their plans and persist until they succeed. So are you in the 95% or are you in the 5%?
Here’s what Hill says about the 95%:
- They have no definite chief aim in life
- They are engaged in work which they do not like
- They have not developed the habit of saving money
As you would expect, he says the 5% did exactly the reverse and these observations were drawn from an analysis of 16,000 people that he had studied over a period of 20 years. But there is more to it than meets the eye. This lesson is really all about the importance of developing a definite chief aim. The problem is that, again according to Hill, when asked to write down their definite chief aim, many of the 95% apparently wrote a statement like this one:
My definite purpose in life is to be of as much service to the world as possible and earn a good living.
What’s wrong with that statement? Nothing! Except that it is not a definite chief aim. The problem is that, whilst it is a commendable statement, it is just not specific enough. As he puts it, in the book, “that answer is about as definite as a frog’s conception of the size of the universe is accurate!”
It is a problem that I often come across in my own workshops when I ask people to write down their three of four most important goals. When I see people hesitate, begin to look skyward and spend time thinking before they begin writing, it is usually because they don’t have proper goals set at all or they are just not serious about them.
It may also come as a surprise to hear what he has to say about the subject of money, bearing in mind that he did subsequently write the book Think and Grow Rich.
In a vague sort of way nearly everyone has a definite purpose – namely, the desire for money! But this is not a definite purpose within the meaning of the term as it is used in this lesson.
In this lesson, Hill defines success and gives the formula for achieving it. Here’s how he defines success:
Success is the development of the power with which to get whatever one wants in life without interfering with the rights of others.
And he defines power as “organised effort.”
Whilst the lesson talks about what has become known as The Law of Attraction in terms with which the modern student of the subject would be very familiar – like attracts like – he is definitely not in the school of thought that suggests that the object of your desire can be attracted without the necessary effort on your part.
Nature cannot be tricked or cheated. She will give up to you the object of your struggles only after you have paid her price, which is CONTINUOUS, UNYIELDING, PERSISTENT EFFORT!
The upper-case lettering is exactly how the words appear in the book, so there is no question that he is a strong advocate of planning your way to success and not just attempting to think your way there. Nevertheless, here’s what he says about the Law of Attraction:
In this lesson we have learned a great principle – probably the most important major principle of psychology! We have learned that our thoughts and actions toward others resemble an electric magnet which attracts to us the same sort of thought and the same sort of action that we, ourselves, create. We have learned that ‘like attracts like’.
One final point I would like to extract is that the idea of having a definite chief aim is not only important on an individual level, but also at the level of the organisation. Thinking back to lesson 1, about the master mind concept, the power of the master mind when applied to the principle of having a definite chief aim cannot be overstated. It is the responsibility of leadership to get people united behind that definite chief aim.
