Mandino - Secrets for Success and Happiness

Welcome

Take my hand. Become my companion and friend in these pages. Fly with me to strange cities and follow me onto theater and convention hall stages, before large crowds, when I give my speech on success and happiness. Then relax with me here in my studio, in the glow from the fireplace, and take long walks by my side through the pines and birches behind my old farmhouse while the snow is falling and the squirrels are waiting to be fed.

Most important, listen to me as I touch upon a large variety of subjects, some trivial, some vital, while we pass through weeks and months together. If you do, listen closely our time together just might give you an idea or two that will help to improve the conditions of your life.

All of us are beset by fears and pain and doubts. We let ourselves get turned away from our goals by obstructions. But it is possible, as Marie Curie once reminded us, to change our world so that nothing in life is to be feared, only understood.

By Og Mandino:

THE GREATEST SALESMAN IN THE WORLD

THE GREATEST SALESMAN IN THE WORLD, PART II: THE END OF THE STORY

THE GREATEST MIRACLE IN THE WORLD

THE GREATEST SUCCESS IN THE WORLD

THE GREATEST SECRET IN THE WORLD

THE GIFT OF ACABAR (WITH BUDDY KAYE)

THE CHRIST COMMISSION

THE CHOICE

OG MANDINOS UNIVERSITY OF SUCCESS

MISSION: SUCCESS!

A BETTER WAY TO LIVE

THE RETURN OF THE RAGPICKER

A TREASURY OF SUCCESS UNLIMITED

U.S. IN A NUTSHELL

CYCLES

THE TWELFTH ANGEL*

THE SPELLBINDERS GIFT*

SECRETS FOR SUCCESS AND HAPPINESS*

*Published by Fawcett Books

Books published by The Random House Publishing Group are available at quantity discounts on bulk purchases for premium, educational, fund-raising, and special sales use. For details, please call 1-800-733-3000.

A Fawcett Book
Published by The Random House Publishing Group

Copyright 1995 by Og Mandino
Excerpt from The Spellbinders Gift copyright 1994 by Og Mandino

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Fawcett Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

Fawcett Books and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material:

The J. Peterman Company: Excerpts from the OWNERS MANUAL copyright 1991 by The J. Peterman Company. Reprinted by permission of Mr. J. Peterman.

Success Unlimited, Inc.: A Letter to Two Sons by Og Mandino appeared in SUCCESS UNLIMITED Magazine in December 1968, Vol. 15, No. 12. Copyright 1968 by Success Unlimited, Inc. Fathers Day by Og Mandino appeared in SUCCESS UNLIMITED Magazine in June 1971, Vol. 18, No. 6. Copyright 1971 by Success Unlimited, Inc.

eISBN: 978-0-307-78822-1

www.ballantinebooks.com

v3.1

Dedicated to that special guardian angel who has loved and cared for me through all these years my wife, Bette.

Pursue, keep up with, circle round and round your life, as a dog does his masters chaise. Do what you love. Know your own bone, gnaw at it, bury it, unearth it, and gnaw it still.

However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad, as you are. It looks poorest when you are richest. The fault-finder will find faults even in paradise. Love your life, poor as it is. Humility, like darkness, reveals the heavenly lights. Superfluous wealth can only buy superfluities. Money is not required to buy any necessary of the soul.

Henry David Thoreau

1991

A life that is worth writing at all, is worth writing minutely and truthfully.

H ENRY W ADSWORTH L ONGFELLOW

January 2

Welcome

Take my hand. Become my companion and friend in these pages. Fly with me to strange cities and follow me onto theater and convention hall stages, before large crowds, when I give my speech on success and happiness. Then relax with me here in my studio, in the glow from the fireplace, and take long walks by my side through the pines and birches behind my old farmhouse while the snow is falling and the squirrels are waiting to be fed.

Most important, please listen to me as I touch upon a large variety of subjects, some trivial, some vital, while we pass through weeks and months together. If you do, listen closely our time together just might give you an idea or two that will help to improve the conditions of your life.

What are you planning for the years ahead? Are you looking forward to them with joy and excitement and anticipation, or have you already raised the white flag of surrender and decided that your life has been a waste? Did you intend to write one life story and now sadly realize that you have written another? Are you filled with remorse and self-pity when you compare the volume as it is with what you had hoped to make it?

Hold my hand. Tightly. It is not too late. Pay attention to my words and you will soon discover that mixed in with my rambling are ideas and suggestions, many not mine, that can change your life. All of us are beset by fears and pain and doubts. We let ourselves get turned away from our goals by obstructions. But it is possible, as Marie Curie once reminded us, to change our world so that nothing in life is to be feared, only understood.

January 4

Although this is truly a personal journal, it is being kept with eventual publication in mind. Henry David Thoreau once wrote, He is not the great writer who is afraid to let the world know that he ever committed an impropriety. Does it not know that all men are mortal?

From the age of twenty Thoreau spent his entire adult life keeping a journal. At first, perhaps, his entries were for his eyes alone, but as years passed, his journal commentaries were often rewritten and polished with the intention of having others read his words.

Thoreaus Walden, as well as all his other writings, including the thirty-nine volumes of his journal, have brought great joy and contentment and understanding to my life ever since high school, and yet although I have written seventeen books, I have never considered keeping a journal of my own until the seed was planted by an old friend, Robert Conklin. It had been my honor to speak at a convention of the Conklin Company years ago, and we have kept in touch, through the years, via mail.

Three closing paragraphs in a letter from Bob were the prime motivation for my daring to undertake this journal:

Og, I dont believe you have any idea how much of a legend you have become. Your works will live far beyond our present generation. Although all of your books are, in a way, self-disclosures, I hope you find a channel of some kind to allow those of the future to have an even more intimate knowledge of the spirit behind the pen.

Personal essays? Biographical sketches? Diary? A journal, perhaps? Five hundred years from now people will be writing about you. What they dont know they will invent. Why not give them authentic material?

I hold your success in awe, my friend. You accomplish in a month what most authors and speakers would relish for a lifetime.