What were your thoughts when you checked out Stone?

Christoph

Stone coined the phrase “Positive Mental Attitude” or PMA.

As a child, he grew up with a wonderful single mother, but was poor. They ate puffy rice, for example, and he sold newspapers at 6 to help get money.

This catapulted what would eventually be a sales and business career in insurance (started by his mom when she bootstrapped herself from seamstress to sewing business owner to eventually buying a small insurance company).

Over his life, W. Clement Stone gave away $277 million dollars for a variety of causes mental health, politics, and more. He lived to be 100. His wife, Jesse, 2 years younger than him, also lived to be 100.

That’s right — both centenarians. And he dropped out of law school to marry his wife because he’d learned what he needed and because he felt his wife would be a great positive influence on him. She was.

He was a huge believer in what he called “self-motivators”. You would call them affirmations, but they weren’t necessarily in the “I…” format.

He’s ALSO famous for, “Do it now!” his favourite self-motivator. He would pick an inspirational phrase, idea, or command, and repeat it out loud to himself with energy 40-50 times 2-3x/day. He’d pick a different one every 7-10 days or so. This, he felt, allowed him to memorize it and for it to come to mind when needed. Things like, “A deal’s a deal, and a promise is a promise.”

What’s more, when building his insurance empire he published a newsletter with self-motivators and other success ideas for his sales force. Many of his salespeople became rich and happy, not necessarily in that order (PMA, remember).

Stone later teamed up with Napoleon Hill to write, Success Through a Positive Mental Attitude. Hill agreed to work with Stone on the condition that Stone agree to be Hill’s business manager. That worked out well too: We hear more of Hill than of Stone!

If you listen to the audio program I mentioned in my first comment, you’ll get an enormous kick out of it. You can buy it on MP3 online, or if you want you can listen free on YouTube as much as strikes your fancy here.

Unfortunately, you miss out on a fabulous audio forward by Og Mandino that is worth listening to. Find the MP3 for that. Mandino said he owed his later happiness success after post WW2 financial failure and alcoholism to Stone’s philosophy of positive mental attitude.

Keep up the great work, Ray, and best of success!

Response:

Chris,

Thank you very much for the detailed information on Stone. One of my own “motivators” is that I get up each day to learn something. Today, thanks to you, I have. We certainly do walk in the footsteps of remarkable people, don’t we?

Have an amazing week!

Ray

According to Stone, “A positive mental attitude, PMA, is the right attitude in a given environment or situation.”

That is a wonderful definition. And this is a wonderful post!

I think you hit the nail exactly on the head and elaborating on it beautifully. From Stone’s definition or your expanded description one could have a positive mental attitude at golf, business, love, the grocery story, as a soldier on a battlefield, while a doctor performing surgery, or blogging.

It doesn’t even limit one to pleasant thoughts although they should predominate most of the time for this is the very definition of happiness, which contributes enormously to success not to mention to a *cough* positive attitude.

Response:

Hey, Chris

Thanks for taking the time to leave such an insightful comment. The idea for this article came from the way I often see positive thinking portrayed in media. It seems to be generally scoffed at, i contend, because it is really wishful thinking being portrayed.

So many peoples’ lives could be different, if they focused on keeping their thoughts positive and took action on them.

I am not familiar with Stone’s work. I will have to look into. Thank you for the information.

Stay inspired!

Ray

Cheyenne Morgan

Thanks for the comment. Very good thoughts all. You stole my thunder a bit, as today’s blog was going to be on this very topic.

I think The Secret is doing a lot of good for a lot of people. For that, it is a blessing.

I’m so glad The Secret has empowered your thoughts and encouraged you to take action.

Thinking and action are the twin foundations of success, peace of mind, and happiness in life. Getting your thoughts flowing in a positive direction, what your company and mine are about, is the first step.

However, we live in a world of action and when the thoughts are not followed by action we can wind up getting stuck.

The Secret is a wonderful doorway to introduce people to these concepts. From its success, I think it is unequaled since Peale’s The Power of Positive Thinking in its impact on society.

What you are doing at Life Mastery Unlimited is such important work. If children can be taught these principles early in life, it will save them a lot of heartache in learning the hard way as so many of us have.

Peace and continued success to you and your company.

Ray