Napoleon Hill
I will be a
successful man.
I will bring with me a check, signed in blank and made payable to
you, and you may fill in the amount because you have saved me from
myself by introducing me to myself - that self which I never knew until
you stood me in front of that looking-glass and pointed out the real
me."
As that man turned and departed in the crowded streets of Chicago I saw, for the first time in my life, what strength and power and possibility lie hidden in the mind of the man who has never discovered the value of Self-reliance. Then and there I made up my mind that I, too, would stand in front of that same looking-glass and point an accusing finger at myself for not having discovered the lesson which I had helped another to learn.
I did stand before that same looking-glass, and as I did so I then and there fixed in my mind, as my definite purpose in life, the determination to help men and women discover the forces that lie sleeping within them. The book you hold in your hands is evidence that my definite purpose is being carried out.
The man whose story I have related is now the president of one of the largest and most successful concerns of its kind in America, with a business that extends from coast to coast and from Canada to Mexico.
A short while after the incident just related, a woman came to my
office for personal analysis. She was then a teacher in the Chicago
public schools. I gave her an analysis chart and asked her to fill it
out. She had been at work on the chart but a few minutes when she
came back to my desk, handed back the chart and said,
"I do not believe I will fill this out."
I asked her why she had decided not to fill out the chart and she
replied:
"To be perfectly frank with you, one of the questions in this chart put me to thinking and I now know what is wrong with me, therefore I feel it unnecessary to pay you a fee to analyze me."
With that the woman went away and I did not hear from her for two years. She went to New York City, became a writer of advertising copy for one of the largest agencies in the country and her income at the time she wrote me was $10,000.00 a year.