Mandino - A Better Way to Live

How do you get the most benefit from all seventeen Rules to Live By? Easy. Just remember that all of us have a pretty large collection of bad habits that weaken our chance to succeed in life. Each of the rules you will learn will help you to get rid of a bad habit by replacing it with a good one. Thats your key to a better life. Concentrate on just one rule per day. None of the rules are very long. Longevity is not a necessary requirement for value or truth. Read the rule in the morning, follow its guideline throughout the day, put a tiny check mark on the page, and then move on to the next rule on the following morning.

By the time you have moved through all seventeen rules, you may decide to go through them again. Wonderful!

The plan is simple, but its all up to you. Persist, give it a fair chance, and soon you will discover that many of your old bad habits that have been holding you back are gradually being replaced by good habits, life-changing habits. What to do then? Share what you have learned, just as I have shared myself, and my life, with you.

Only then will you realize what success and a better way to live truly means.

Og Mandino
From A Better Way to Live

Bantam Books by Og Mandino

A BETTER WAY TO LIVE

THE CHOICE

THE CHRIST COMMISSION

THE GIFT OF ACABAR (with Buddy Kaye)

THE GREATEST MIRACLE IN THE WORLD

THE GREATEST SALESMAN IN THE WORLD

THE GREATEST SALESMAN IN THE WORLD, PART II: The End of the Story

THE GREATEST SECRET IN THE WORLD

THE GREATEST SUCCESS IN THE WORLD

MISSION: SUCCESS!

OG MANDINOS UNIVERSITY OF SUCCESS

THE RETURN OF THE RAGPICKER

A BETTER WAY TO LIVE
A Bantam Book
Bantam hardcover edition / February 1990

All rights reserved.
Copyright 1990 by Og Mandino.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 89-17950.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmittedin any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any informationstorage and retrieval system, without permission inwriting from the publisher.
For information address: Bantam Books.

eISBN: 978-0-307-78092-8

Published simultaneously in the United States and Canada

Bantam Books are published by Bantam Books, a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc. Its trademark, consisting of the words Bantam Books and the portrayal of a rooster, is Registered in U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries. Marca Registrada. Bantam Books. 1540 Broadway, New York, New York 10036.

v3.1

For two very special grandchildren,
Danielle and Ryan
and their parents,
Carole and Dana

LESSONS FROM MY PAST

I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with success unexpected in common hours.

T HOREAU
Walden

Choice! The key is choice. You have options. You need not spend your life wallowing in failure, ignorance, grief, poverty, shame, and self-pity!

There is a better way to live!

M ANDINO
The Choice

There was only one other customer in Don Junes Scottsdale barber shop, and he couldnt help overhearing my announcement to Don that I was finally golfed out and ready to commence work on my next book, one that would be based primarily on material from keynote speeches that I deliver many times each year to corporate and association conventions.

In all my writing and speech-making throughout the years. I am forever reminding my audiences that, like the laws of nature, gravity, and physics, the true principles of success have been with us for thousands of years. They have never changed! And these old principles will always work for youor against youno matter how you are trying to live your life.

Unfortunately, were living in an age that often seems to be traveling faster than the speed of light. Were all looking for fast answers to our problems easy solutions quick fixes free lunches elevators to success and this futile search for a philosophers stone that will somehow magically transform our daily efforts into trunks of gold has blinded us to the old laws that have always worked and always will work. Even though theyre still right under our noses, we no longer recognize them and so they have become secrets. How sad.

Although I planned, in the new book, to introduce and then explain these ancient principles and how they could be applied by my readers to change their lives, almost immediately, for the better, both my publisher, Bantam Books, and I felt that we should have a different title than The Greatest Secrets of Success, which is how my speech has always been billed and promoted. But what? Several agonizing weeks passed while we tossed ideas around with little progress.

For most authors, writing without a title is no big deal. They just forge ahead with their work, confident that sometime before they complete the book, a year or more in the future, either they or their publishers are certain to come up with something provocative enough for that cover page. Not me. Ive always needed a title firsta banner around which I could rally my thoughts and feelings constantly, not only when I was at the typewriter but also when I was away from it.

Commencing with The Greatest Salesman in the World, in 1967, Ive always known the title of all thirteen of my books before I ever typed the first sentence of Chapter One, and since that procedure has worked well enough to sell more than twenty million volumes, in eighteen languages, I wasnt about to alter my routine in any way. And then, as has happened so many times in my life, fate, chance, luck, coincidence, God (call it what you will) intervened and resolved my problem.

After that other barber-shop customer paid for his haircut, he hesitantly approached my chair, where Joan was already doing my nails, and said, Mr. Mandino, I think your books are great. Im a dentist, and I give courses in self-esteem to other members of the dental fraternity, which, for reasons we still dont completely comprehend, has one of the highest suicide rates of any profession in the nation. I use many of your books to reinforce the guidelines on living that I teach.

I mumbled some words of appreciation as he was opening the front door. He paused before stepping outside, turned back, and said, My favorite book of all you have written is The Choice.

I grinned and nodded. There was a lot of me in that one.

I rather thought so. Would you be open to a suggestion from this unabashed fan of yours?

You bet!

Well, in the The Choice, your hero walks away from corporate life and writes a book with a great title that becomes a smash best-seller. I wish you would seriously think about writing a book with that very same title. Perhaps you might even consider it for this new book you were just discussing with Don. Then you could take the rules and suggestions for a more fulfilling existence that your hero wrote and spoke about in that book and combine them with the many other old principles and secrets of success that you have dealt with in all your other works and speeches for so many years. Do that and you most certainly would produce a very special volume that could help millions escape from their prisons of drudgery and unhappiness. Just make it simple and easy for us to use and followa modern