Transformational Income: If

Long before Napoleon Hill wrote his book Think and Grow Rich, long before the Great Depression that inspired Hill’s earnest book, long before World War I, Nobel prize laureate Rudyard Kipling wrote a poem entitled IF:

If you can keep your head when all about your
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream – and not make dreams your master;
If you can think – and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disasterr
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spokenr
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build ‘em up with wornout tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winningsr
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginningsr
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinewr
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in your
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on”;

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings – nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minuter
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run -
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And – which is more – you’ll be a Man my son!

Leaving aside the male chauvinism of that poem; it is a good reminder of the fact that the word LIFE contains within it that word IF.

That word can be a cruel taskmaster. Perhaps we heard it from our parents as we were growing up: “If you would only listen!” “If you weren’t so dumb!” “If you would only stop and think!”

Or that word “if” can become an alibi that we use as adults:

If only I didn’t have a wife and family….
If only I had more “pull”….
If only I had more money….
If only I had a better education….
If only I could get a job….
If I only had the time….
If times were better….
If people only understood me….
If I could live my life over again….
If only I didn’t have to worry about what people would say….
If only I had been given a chance….
If “they” didn’t have it in for me….
If I were only younger….
If I could only do what I want….
If I had been born rich….
If I could meet the “right people”….
If I had the breaks some people have….
If only I dared assert myself….
If I didn’t have to keep house and look after the kids (or grandkids)….
If I could just save some money….
If I only had somebody to give me a leg up….
If I lived in a big city….
If I could just get started….
If I were only free….
If I were not so fat….
If I could only get out of debt….
If I hadn’t failed….
If I only knew how….
If I didn’t have so many worries….
If everybody wasn’t against me….
If I were more sure of myself….
If “Que Sera, Sera” were not true….
If I didn’t have to work so hard….
If I hadn’t lost my money….
If I didn’t have a “past”….
If I only had a business of my own….
If people would only listen to me….
IF***and this is the greatest of them all***
If I had the courage to see myself as I really am.
I would find our what is wrong with me and correct it.

Building alibis with which to explain away failure, Hill tells us, is a national pastime. It is a habit as old as the human race and it is fatal to success!

Your alibis are the children of your own imagination; it is human nature to defend your own brainchild.

Plato understood this when he said, “The first and best victory is to conquer self. To be conquered by self is, of all things, the most shameful and vile.”

You may have been able to use your alibis before – you may even have been able to convince yourself that they were obvious and true.

But now you have no excuses, no alibis.

Now you know the truth that you have the privilege and the responsibility of creating in your own mind, a burning desire for success and riches.

It costs you but little effort to use that knowledge but the price of failure to use it is just that: failure.

Kipling’s poem is about being yourself and believing in yourself – whether you are a man, my son, or a woman, my daughter.

Hill’s advice is about expecting more of yourself and of life. If you follow it, you will be, my son or daughter, a success.