It was quite a surprise for me to discover that Lesson 9 in Napoleon Hill‘s Laws of Success in 16 Lessons is entirely dedicated to the subject of The Law of Increasing Returns. You may remember that this is one of the 4 principles of success I wrote about here.
What is particularly interesting about this lesson is that Hill discusses how to activate this law and his philosophy ties in very nicely with our discussion about what Wallace D Wattles describes as the certain way. In particular, it concerns the principle of over-delivering.
Here’s how Hill introduces the lesson:
This entire lesson is devoted to the offering of evidence that it really pays to render more service and better service than one is paid to render.
The evidence he presents concerns a good deal of his own personal experience relating to the course itself i.e. The Laws of Success in 16 Lessons. He says that he compiled the course without any thoughts about how he would be subsequently paid for his efforts and he goes on to describe how what I would describe as ‘karma’ ultimately rewarded his efforts.
Hill never uses the word ‘karma’ anywhere in his course, preferring to describe the principle as the Law of Compensation after the essay by Emerson. Hill indeed refers to Emerson’s essay on quite a number of occasions throughout the course. In any case, The Law of Compensation is the Law of Karma by another name.
Here’s his view on why we should develop a habit of doing more than that for which we are paid:
First: By establishing a reputation as being a person who always renders more service and better service than that for which you are paid, you will benefit by comparison with those around you who do not render such service, and the contrast will be so noticeable that there will be keen competition for your services, no matter what your life-work may be.
Second: By far the most important reason why you should render more service than that for which you are paid. By [so doing] you not only exercise your service-rendering qualities, and thereby develop skill and ability of an extraordinary sort, but you build reputation that is valuable.
In this lesson, he suggests you might try the following experiment as a means of proving to yourself that the Law of Increasing Returns actually is a real law and that it is activated by selfless giving:
During the next six months make it your business to render useful service to at least one person every day, for which you neither expect nor accept monetary pay. Go at this experiment with faith that it will uncover for your use one of the most powerful laws that enter into the achievement of enduring success, and you will not be disappointed.
What Hill is getting at is that by rendering useful service you will activate the Law of Karma (Compensation if you prefer). In the words of Emerson himself, “Cause and effect, means and ends, seed and fruit, cannot be severed, for the effect already blooms in the cause, the end pre-exists in the means, the fruit in the seed.”
Do you think you could try this experiment for six months? My first reaction was that it might take quite a bit of doing, but on reflection, it needn’t. It need not take a great deal of time to render some kind of service. Why not give it a try and see for yourself if this law really works for you.
