A Novel Approach to Success

You May Be Severely Limiting Yourself by not….

Reading novels! This is a bone of contention I’ve had during over thirty years’ worth of discussions with fellow self-help authors, motivational speakers, success coaches, and others who think reading self-help and personal growth and other nonfiction books is the only key to enlightenment and a life of fulfillment. Wrong! Oh, all of those books make a valuable contribution to our knowledge and awareness of the way life works, but a good novel can do this just as effectively and sometimes more so.

Learning More From Novels

This may sound strange from someone who has written six books on success and self-development, seven if you count the free ebook offered here, but I think I have learned more from the literally thousands of novels, mainly mystery novels, I have read since first encountering Sherlock Holmes at the age of eight, not to mention the wonderful OZ books, Tom Swift, The Hardy Boys, and even Tarzan–much more adult in novel form than in the movies. My mother, a writer herself, though she only had a couple of short stories published prior to her marriage, read mysteries and suspense thrillers. E. Phillips Oppenheim was one of her favorites. My father read nonfiction books, and Dale Carnegie and Dr. Norman Vincent Peale were among his favorites. So I luckily was exposed and attracted to both forms.

A good novelist is also a good psychologist and philosopher, understanding much about human behavior and observing it as intensely as any social scientist. I was made keenly aware of this when I did a college term paper for a psychology course on the Travis McGee detective novels of John D. MacDonald. He was a master at summing up the emotional motivations of his characters, as well as an early and masterful proponent of environmental reform. I got an A+ for that paper.

Anne Perry, Novelist and Fellow Ex-Convict

This piece was inspired by something I just read today in a mystery titled A Breach of Promise, by the bestselling mystery novelist Anne Perry, who has two series featuring mysteries set in 19th Century England. I loved these when I was in prison, as they took me far out of my real physical world into a totally different time and place. And also, I felt a certain rapport as Anne Perry was actually Juiet Marion Hulme, who served five years in prison after committing perhaps the most notorious and brutal murder ever recorded in New Zealand in 1954. She and her best friend, Pauline Parker, conspired to bludgeon Pauline’s mother to death because she wanted to leave the country and thus separate the two inseparable friends. A movie based on the case, Heavenly Creatures, was made in 1994, starring Kate Winslet as the teenaged Juliet, aka Anne Perry. It was only when the movie was released that a reporter found out what happened to Anne Perry, who was living in a remote area of England and writing bestselling mystery novels. Though her crime was much more serious than mine, and as a teenager, she served less than half the time I served in prison, I felt a certain connection to Anne Perry and sought out her books. Ironically, one of my friends who doesn’t make a practice of reading novels, ordered those from Amazon.com and had them sent to me. That was Mark Victor Hansen, who provided dozens upon dozens of books during my incarceration, both fiction and nonfiction.

And what did she write that inspired me to write this?  A brilliant statement, I think, about the nature of time–a favorite subject of mine:

Time was a peculiarly elastic measurement. It was an empty space, given meaning only by what it contained, and aferwards distorted in memory.

Tell me that can’t stir your thinking juices.  One of the activities I started in prison was a composition book filled with lines that particularly moved or stimulated my imagination that were contained in the novels I read.  These formed a large segment of the more than one thousand books I read in those twelve years.

I’ll share a couple of those quotes from my collection:

Most of us come from the past, and we re-create the present. Those who excel come from the future, their vision, their mission, and it pulls them forward.

J. F. Freedman, House of Smoke

We wouldn’t care so much what people thought of us if we knew how seldom they did.

John Lanchester, Mr. Phillips

Of course, sometimes novelists will quote actual philosophers or other great thinkers:

Heidegger says that life is action and passion, and that a man fails to take part in the action and passion of his times at the peril of being judged not to have lived.

Jack Higgins, Day of Reckoning

And I’ll let Mark Twain have the final word on the subject:

The man who doesn’t read good books has no advantage over the man who can’t read them.

Now get thee to a library or Amazon.com!

Jerry

Accentuate The Positive

Significant Early Programming Delivered by Bing Crosby

In traditional psychology much was made of the negative messages we got when we were young children, and not enough attention was paid to positive messages that were conveyed early on. That’s still largely true. I never, until quite recently, even made the connection between the first “favorite song” I had as a child and my attitude toward life.

It’s obvious to me now, of course, that listening over and over again, on an old 78 RPM record to Bing Crosby singing Accentuate The Positive had an impact. At that tender age, of maybe four or five, I didn’t really understand or pay much attention to the lyrics, which were written by the great lyricist Johnny Mercer (the music by Harold Arlen of Over The Rainbow fame). But take a look and you’ll see what I mean:

 You've got to accentuate the positive
 Eliminate the negative
 Latch on to the affirmative
 Don't mess with Mister In-Between

 You've got to spread joy up to the maximum
 Bring gloom down to the minimum
 Have faith or pandemonium
 Liable to walk upon the scene

A Whole Consciousness Training in One Song

It really is pretty potent stuff. Not only accentuate the positive, but eliminate the negative and latch onto the affirmative–and just as powerful, don’t mess with Mr. In-Between.

Interestingly enough, my other favorite song was also sung by Bing Crosby. Of course, nowadays, many people are not aware of how this crooner dominated entertainment in the 1930s, 1940s, and well into the 1950s. In fact, he was still going strong as an actor and TV star until his death in 1977. At one point in a career never duplicated, he had the number 1 record, the number 1 radio show, and was the top box office star at the movies. That other song probably also had an impact, now that I think about it. I certainly have lived my life devoted to personal freedom. And that song, Don’t Fence Me In, probably also was programming me unawares. There was also a third Bing Crosby hit, sung with The Andrews Sisters, that I loved, Pistol Packin’ Mama, and I have no idea what impact if any that had on my life.

What Were Your Powerful Positive Programming Events?

It would be useful for you to go back and remember some song or book or movie, or even TV show that was a special favorite, and then explore what positive message it may have given you that you may have been too young to fully understand or appreciate.

And now, thanks to the Internet, you can find those old songs or books or movies, and relive the childhood experience.

And though this was a pretty personal blog post, I did want to let you know that I have another blog that is even more personal, and not necessarily focused on prosperity consciousness. You can check it out by clicking on my name under Blog Roll.

Prosperity Expansion versus Prosperity Congestion

Sherlock Holmes To The Rescue

It is a lot easier to become prosperous in today’s world–thanks to the immense number of choices and successful people willing to teach us how they did it. Conversely, it is also a lot harder as our brains become filled to overflow with all the material being thrown at us 24/7. I talk in The Moneylove Manifesto about what I call The Law Of Subtraction–the need to remove extraneous thoughts and ideas and information from the congested traffic pouring into our heads. And I use one of my major mentors in this area to illustrate the point, Arthur Conan Doyle, in the persona of his most famous character, Sherlock Holmes. Here’s the quote I used, just one of many on the same subject throughout the Sherlock Holmes library:

“The mind is like an attic, you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool
takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which
might be useful to him gets crowded out.”

A Joke To Learn From

And I was reminded of this when a friend sent me the following joke that was selected as the funniest joke in the world by over 40,000 people online. It speaks to the same point:

Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson went on a camping trip. After a good meal
and a bottle of red, they lay down for the night and went to sleep. Some
hours later, Holmes woke up, nudged his friend and said, “Watson, I want
you to look up at the sky and tell me what you see.” “I see millions and
millions of stars.” Sherlock asked, “What does that tell you?”

After a minute or so of pondering, Watson said “Astronomically, it tells
me that there are millions of galaxies and potentially billions of
planets. Astrologically, I observe that Saturn is in Leo. Horologically, I
deduce that the time is approximately a quarter past three in the morning.
Theologically, I can see that God is all powerful and that we are small
and insignificant. Metereologically, I suspect that we will have a
beautiful day today. What does it tell you?”

Holmes was silent for about 30 seconds and said, “Watson, you idiot! Someone has stolen our tent!”

This also reminded me of one of Holmes’ comments in one of the books in which he asserted he knew nothing at all about astronomy because he couldn’t find a use for that information in his life and his work, so he never studied it.

A List Of Knowledge You Need

A useful practice is to make a list of what you really need to know to achieve the goals you desire. Gone are the days when knowing a little about a lot of things was a good path to success. This is the era of the expert, and you can become an expert in any specific area you choose. But being picky, being selective, being discerning about the knowledge you let in is vital in this process. And you must be willing to shut out even interesting, useful information if it doesn’t serve your primary purpose. There just isn’t enough time to know it all, so you must make choices. Even in selecting whom you want to learn from. I see people downloading internet marketing courses from several different “Internet Gurus” at the same time, and trying to go back and forth. In this instance, more is not better, just confusing. Choose a teacher the way you would choose a mate for life, very very carefully. But I would also use my Ninety Day Trial Period strategy. If you don’t learn what you want to know within the first ninety days, it is time to move on to another teacher.

And no matter what information you take in, no matter how profound or entertaining it is, make certain you don’t take in so much you won’t even notice when your tent’s been stolen.
Jerry