Control Your Mental Attitude!

by Napoleon Hill

Mental attitude is a two-way gate across the path of life which can be swung one way into the path that leads to success and the other way into the road that leads to failure. What a profound thought it is to recognize that the one thing which can bring us success or failure, bless us with peace of mind or curse us with misery all the days of our lives, is simply the privilege of taking possession of our own minds and guiding them to whatever ends we choose, through our mental attitude!

Your mental attitude is the major factor which attracts people to you in a friendly spirit of cooperation, or repels them, according to whether your attitude is positive or negative; and you are the only person who can determine which it shall be.

Your mental attitude is an important factor in the maintenance of sound health. All doctors know that a patient’s mental attitude is vitally important in the cure of physical ailments.

Mental attitude is the warp and the woof of all salesmanship, regardless of what one is selling - merchandise, personal services, sermons, or any other idea or commodity. A person with a negative mind can sell nothing. He may take an order from someone who buys something from him, but no selling was done. Perhaps you have seen this truth demonstrated in many retail stores where the minds of the “sales people” clearly were not directed toward pleasing the customers.

The successful salesman conditions his mental attitude before he comes into the presence of his prospective purchaser, by seeing himself making the sale. He recognizes that if he makes a sale to his prospective buyer, he must first make that sale to himself through his own mental attitude.

Mental attitude controls, very largely, the space one occupies in life, the success one achieves, the friends one makes, and the contributions to posterity which one makes.

The most convincing evidence of the importance of mental attitude is the fact that it is the only thing over which anyone has been given absolute, unchallengeable privilege of personal control. You cannot control the thoughts and actions of others, but you can control every thought you express, every word you utter.

Here then is the most profound, the most significant of all facts which influence an individual’s life. It is logical to believe that by giving every person the complete control over his own mental attitude and his thinking the Creator intended this to be a priceless asset, the gift of supreme importance to mankind.

Henley, the poet, must have understood this great truth when he wrote the lines “I am the Master of my Fate, I am the Captain of my Soul.” Truly, we may become the captains of our worldly destinies precisely to the extent that we take possession of our own minds and direct them to definite ends through control of our mental attitude.

Your mental attitude can be conditioned and controlled by a number of factors, among them, these:

1. By a BURNING DESIRE for the attainment of a definite purpose based upon one or more of the nine basic motives which activate all human endeavor, the first three of which are: the emotion of love, the emotion of sex and the desire for financial gain.
2. By close association with people who are themselves positive-minded and who inspire others to think and act in terms of a positive mental attitude. Every person who aspires to become a top-ranking success should have one or more “pace makers”-people whose achievements and characters he admires - whom he endeavors to emulate, to overtake and even to excel. Hero worship can be very beneficial if one chooses the right persons as heroes.
3. By auto-suggestion through which the mind is constantly being given definite directives until it attracts only that for which these directives call. This procedure should be carried on both silently and orally. One very successful actor goes over his lines many times daily while looking at himself in a mirror. A successful lawyer addresses an imaginary court and jury many times before he goes into court with his cases. And a clergyman of national prominence delivers his sermons to himself, in front of a mirror, many times before he goes into the pulpit of his church.
4. By the habit of daily prayer in which one expresses gratitude for the blessings he already possesses instead of asking for more, requesting instead more wisdom with which to make better use of his present riches. This habit perhaps ranks at the top of the list in importance because it is one in which the full powers of one’s religious belief can be strengthened and made to serve whatever ends one may choose.

You have within you a sleeping giant who is ready to be awakened and directed by you to the performance of any sort of service you desire. And when you wake up some morning and find yourself on the success beam and in the upper brackets of success, you will wonder why you had not sooner discovered that you had all of the makings of a big success.

Source: Success Unlimited. July, 1956, pgs. 29-32.