Monday, June 9, 2014

Psychology of Winning


When I was a kid I listened to 45 and 78 RPM vinyl records on a small stereo. During college, I progressed to 8-track tapes. In the 1980’s when cassette tapes became popular, I recorded my favorite albums and listened on my Walkman tape player.

I also enjoyed motivational cassette tapes. One was a 6-pack set of Denis Waitley’s Psychology of Winning—Ten qualities of a total winner. His words encouraged me with stories about what separates winners from losers and how to win at the game of life.

Earl Nightingale started the era of motivational recordings in the 1950’s. He grew up in Long Beach, California. His parents had little money, and his father disappeared when he was 12. But even as a boy, Earl was always asking questions, always reading in his local public library and trying to understand the way life works.

On December 7, 1941, Earl was at Pearl Harbor in a lookout tower on the Battleship Arizona where a thousand men died. Earl was one of only a hundred who survived. He was literally blown off the ship, unconscious, and another sailor pulled him to safety.

Earl said that he felt that he had been spared for some reason. After the war Earl became obsessed with why everyone in his neighborhood was poor and confused. He wondered why one person was able to create wealth and happiness for his family, while another with a similar background stayed ignorant and penniless. Answering these questions became Earl’s life work.

In 1956, he was about to take a trip but wanted to leave a message for the sales force of his insurance company. In the middle of the night he wrote a message that he recorded the next morning. That message became one of the most important and famous motivational recordings ever made. The Strangest Secret sold over a million copies and is the first gold record ever achieved for the spoken word. Its message is simple, yet powerful. “You become what you think about.”

In 1978, Nightingale-Conant added a new author, Denis Waitley. His recording, The Psychology of Winning reached gold status by selling 1.5 million copies, making it the bestselling audio self-improvement program in history.
Today’s gift was to take my once-prized motivational audiotapes to the local library so that others can listen and learn about the psychology of winning, just like I did.

In Giving,

Robin

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