Ultimately, Earl Nightingale introduces a checklist by which to live your life. The main items on the list are shown below. Earl Nightingale’s Checklist for Success: 1. Where am I going? Why am I headed there? Why do I wake up in the morning? Man has an amazing ability to change himself and his environment.
Earl Nightingale’s 17-year quest for the secret of success ended one night in 1950, when he came across a sentence in a book. To Nightingale, it was more than a string of words on a page—it was the answer to the question that had haunted him since childhood. “What makes the difference?” Why are some people well-off financially and others poor?
According to Earl Nightingale, a personal development guru, 'Success is the progressive realization of a worthy ideal'. Having a checklist or formula in place will assist in ensuring you are headed in the right direction. Learn to enjoy every minute of your life. Don’t wait for something outside of yourself.
At 12, Nightingale’s father had left the family. Nightingale was living in a government-issued tent in Long Beach, Calif., with his mother and two brothers. It was during the Great Depression, and like many thousands of families, the Nightingales would have been homeless if not for the help of the government’s Works Progress Administration (WPA), which created 8 million jobs and redistributed food, clothing and housing to the poor.
The disparity between the lives of the haves and have-nots was vast, and it troubled Nightingale. “As a youngster, I didn’t know anything about a sense of achievement, but I was all too aware of being poor,” he says in his book Earl Nightingale’s Greatest Discovery. “It didn’t seem to bother the other kids, but it bothered me. What made it all the more exasperating to me, as a boy of 12, was to be poor in Southern California, where there seemed to be so many who were rich…. I decided to find out why some people were rich while so very many of us were poor.”
He asked, but no one seemed to know. “I made, what was to me, an astonishing discovery: The adults in our neighborhood didn’t know anything at all. They were pitifully uneducated—driven by instinct, other-directed.”
‘Knowledge Is Everything’
Fortunately, his mother, Gladys “Honey” Nightingale, loved books, and she actively encouraged the same trait in her sons. When she wasn’t working in a sewing factory or looking after them, she read. She told her sons, “Knowledge is everything; everything you want to know has been written down by someone.” Encouraged, Nightingale went to the public library to find the book he was sure would explain the secret of success. After being told there was no single book that contained the information he wanted, Nightingale began to read, certain it had to be written somewhere.
Through reading books on religion, philosophy, history and psychology, he learned about “the importance of honesty, personal integrity and courage, and of believing in what is right and being willing to fight for it.” But he still didn’t have the answer to his seemingly simple question: What is the secret of success?
Earl Nightingale Checklist Pdf Earl Nightingale (March 12, 1921 – March 25, 1989) was an American radio speaker and author, dealing mostly with the subjects of human character development, motivation, and meaningful existence. Earl Nightingale is one of the most inspirational people I’ve ever come across. When you read one of his books, or listen to one of his audio tapes, you discover that every other sentence is pure gold. The following 45 morsels of wisdom were taken from Earl Nightingale’s essay, “Lead the Field”. “If the grass is greener on the other side it’s probably getting better care.” 2.
He spent 17 long years seeking the answer. During that time, he joined the Marines, was posted to Hawaii aboard the U.S.S. Arizona, and was one of the few hundred men who survived the battleship’s bombing in Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941. Nightingale described the chaos and tragedy of the attack: scrambling to battle stations as bombs crippled the ship, seeing friends killed amid shrapnel and flames, getting blown into the water by the concussion of a blast and finally making it safely to shore with help from a Marine officer.
Great Expectations
His experience left him with a conviction that he was spared for a reason, says his widow, Diana Nightingale. “He was a great believer in paying the price for what you wanted—whether that was personal freedom or the freedom of your country,” she says. “He came home from the war with great expectations and went about the business of life.
“He was a man who really did live in the present. He felt the past served as an education and we should take what was valuable from it. He said the future wasn’t promised to anyone and that you should live each day fully and to the best of your ability.”
Toward the end of the war, Nightingale was posted back to the United States, working as an instructor at Camp Lejeune, N.C. While traveling near the base, he noticed a radio station under construction and volunteered to work weekends and evenings as an announcer, thinking it would be a useful skill to learn.
“I took to broadcasting like nothing before in my life,” he said. After the war, he moved to bigger radio stations in Phoenix and then Chicago where he worked for CBS, becoming the voice of the popular radio hero, Sky King. Around the same time, he made two decisions that were to guide the rest of his life: “The first was to discover the secret of success. The second was to become a writer. I loved books and wanted to write them myself.”
In 1950, at the age of 29, he found the secret of success in Napoleon Hill’s book Think and Grow Rich: “We become what we think about.”
“While reading, it suddenly dawned upon me that I had been reading the same truth over and over again for many years. And all of a sudden, there they were, the words, in the proper order that I had been looking for 17 years: the astonishing truth that we become what we think about. Those six simple words, in that order, revolutionized my life.”
‘The Strangest Secret’
Seizing new opportunities, Nightingale bought a small Franklin Life Insurance agency and gave pep talks to his salesmen every week. The talks proved so popular that his manager asked him to record something to be played while Nightingale was away for two weeks.
“In the spring of 1956, I was asked to put the essence of what I had learned during those many years of assiduous reading and research into a rather short essay. Because my working career involved both writing and broadcasting, I was to then record the essay for the possible benefit of others.
“I thought about it, turning the ideas over and over in my mind. Finally, I asked myself, ‘What would you tell your children if you found you had only a short time to live? What advice could you pass on to them that would assist them in living highly productive, very successful lives?’ I awakened at 4 the next morning with the answer to that question clearly in mind.” He got up and wrote down his ideas, and by noon the following day, had recorded the essay. “I called what I had written and recorded The Strangest Secret.” He chose the name because it seemed strange to him that such a simple truth could be secret to so many.
Word spread from insurance agents to their relatives and friends, and demand grew. “The Strangest Secret was the child that grew into the audio recording industry. With no effort on my part whatsoever, with no advertising of any kind, The Strangest Secret became a national best-seller. I was ill-prepared to handle the avalanche of orders for that recording. My good friend Lloyd Conant, then owner of Specialty Mail Services, stepped into the breach. He was happy and abundantly prepared to handle the business end of my sudden good fortune. The orders continued to pour in from every section of the country. It was astonishing how the word about that recorded message got around. And that was the beginning of what was to become—officially in 1960—the Nightingale-Conant Corporation.”
The recording sold more than 1 million copies, eventually becoming the first spoken-word recording to reach Gold Record status.
Mastermind Alliance
In 1959, Nightingale began a radio program called Our Changing World. The show, a five-minute uplifting message, became the largest syndicated radio show of its kind anywhere and was distributed to a worldwide audience via Nightingale- Conant. At its peak, about 1,000 radio stations carried the show.
The Nightingale-Conant partnership was dubbed a “mastermind alliance” by W. Clement Stone because the skills of both men were so complementary. Between them, they built Nightingale-Conant into the premier audio self-improvement company in the country.
In 1960, Nightingale recorded Lead the Field, 12 records focused on an enduring success principle. It has been updated over the years and has sold more than 1 million copies. “I can’t tell you how many people have told me that listening to Lead the Field was the trigger that changed their lives,” says Vic Conant, chairman of the board for Nightingale-Conant. “It’s one of the classics of the personal-development industry like Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich.”
Although Nightingale died 20 years ago in March 1989, his books and audio programs continue to inspire people around the world. Best-selling author and motivational speaker Zig Ziglar says, “Earl Nightingale has inspired more people toward success and fortune than any other motivational speaker on the planet.”
Nightingale’s widow, Diana, attributes his enduring appeal to the fact that his work, based on universal laws, is as relevant today as it was when he wrote it: “You become what you think about, you will reap what you sow and you must provide service to others.”
SUCCESS is your guide for personal and professional development through inspiration, motivation and training.
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Earl Nightingale is one of the most inspirational people I’ve ever come across. When you read one of his books, or listen to one of his audio tapes, you discover that every other sentence is pure gold. The following 45 morsels of wisdom were taken from Earl Nightingale’s essay, “Lead the Field”.
1. “If the grass is greener on the other side it’s probably getting better care.”
2. “Each of us creates his or her own life largely by our attitude.”
3. “You can control your attitude. Set it each morning.”
4. “It is our attitude toward life that determines life’s attitude toward us. We get back what we put out.”
5. “Others treat us as we treat them. They react to us. They only give us back a reflection of our own attitude.”
6. “Most people begin their day in neutral. They will simply react to whatever confronts them.”
7. “Gratitude and expectancy are the best attitude.”
8. “. . . Our outlook on life is a kind of paint brush and with it we paint our world. It can be bright and filled with hope and satisfaction or it can be dark and gloomy. The world we experience is a reflection of our attitude.”
9. “Don’t take the attitude of waiting for people to be nice to you – be nice to them.”
10. “Be positive, cheerful, grateful and expectant.”
11. “Always keep that happy attitude. Pretend that you are holding a beautiful fragrant bouquet.”
12. “Don’t wait for change. You change.”
13. “Develop and project an attitude that says ‘yes’ to life.”
14. “You must radiate success before it’ll come to you.”
15. “Treat every person as the most important person on earth. To them, they are the most important person.”
16. “People don’t have great attitudes because of great success, they have great success largely because of great attitudes.”
17. “Don’t catch the bad and infectious attitudes of others.”
18. “Before you can achieve the kind of life you want you must think, act, talk, and conduct yourself in all of your affairs as would the person you wish to become.”
19. “Ask yourself every morning, ‘how can I increase my service today?’”
20. “Goals reflect your choice of destination.”
21. “Most people don’t know what they want. Do you?”
22. “Set worthy goals. Don’t drift along as a wandering generality. Be a meaningful specific.”
23. “Success is not a destination but a journey. Anyone who is on course toward a worthy goal is successful. Success does not lie in the achievement of a goal but in its pursuit. Success is a journey!”
24. “One thing a goal must do is fill us with positive emotion when we think about it. The more intensely we feel about a goal the more progressively we’ll move toward it.”
25. “Control your thoughts. Decide about that which you will think and concentrate upon. You are in charge of your life to the degree you take charge of your thoughts.”
26. “Spend one hour every day thinking about your goal and how to get there.”
27. “Don’t waste time thinking about needless things.”
28. “Whatever it is you seek in the form of rewards, you must first earn in the form of service. Each of us serves a portion of humanity, all those with whom you come in contact.”
29. “Every-time we use a product or service, someone is serving us.”
30. “Think not about future rewards but about present service.”
31. “Find what you can do best that renders service to others and do it with all your might.”
Earl Nightingale Daily Checklist
32. “Make the best use of what you have and what you are in the time you’ve been granted.”
33. “We are at our very best, and we are happiest, when we are fully engaged in work we enjoy on the journey toward the goal we’ve established for ourselves.”
Earl Nightingale Checklist Pdf
34. “Put in motion the right cause and the right effect will take care of itself.”
Earl Nightingale Checklist Pdf
35. “Life can only return to you that which you sow. What do you have to sow? You have great wealth; you can think,
you have talent, and you have time.”
36. “Money is the harvest of our production and service. We in turn use it to obtain the production and service of others.”
37. “Money is an effect. It is the result of a cause, and the cause is valuable service.”
38. “We will receive not what we idly wish for but what we justly earn. Our rewards will always be in exact proportion to our service.”
39. “Success is the progressive realization of a worthy ideal.”
40. “Failures . . . believe that their lives are shaped by circumstances … by things that happen to them … by exterior forces.”
41. “Think of a ship with the complete voyage mapped out and planned. The captain and crew know exactly where the ship is going and how long it will take — it has a definite goal. And 9,999 times out of 10,000, it will get there.”
42. “The human mind is much like a farmer’s land. The land gives the farmer a choice. He may plant in that land whatever he chooses. The land doesn’t care what is planted. It’s up to the farmer to make the decision. The mind, like the land, will return what you plant, but it doesn’t care what you plant.”
43. “Everything that’s really worthwhile in life came to us free — our minds, our souls, our bodies, our hopes, our dreams, our ambitions, our intelligence, our love of family and children and friends and country. All these priceless possessions are free.”
44. “Success is not the result of making money; earning money is the result of success — and success is in direct proportion to our service.”
45. “Your world is a living expression of how you are using and have used your mind.”
If you’re looking for a straight-forward, easy-to-apply system for setting and achieving goals, “How to Live Your Best Life – The Essential Guide for Creating and Achieving Your Life List” is your answer.
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