From the book, the magic of thinknig big.

People– as you think yourself to success, that’s what you will study, people. You will study people very carefully to discover, then apply, success-rewarding principles to your life. And you want to begin right away.

Go deep into your study of people, and you’ll discover unsuccessful people suffer a mind-deadening thought disease. We call this disease excusitis. Every failure has this disease in its advanced form. And most “average” persons have at least a mild case of it.

You will discover that excusitis explains the difference between the person who is going places and the fellow who is barely holding his own. You will find that the more successful the individual, the less inclined he is to make excuses.

But the fellow who has gone nowhere and has no plans for getting anywhere always has a bookful of reasons to explain why. Persons with mediocre accomplishments are quick to explain why they haven’t, why they don’t, why they can’t, and why they aren’t.

Study the lives of successful people and you’ll discover this: all the excuses made by the mediocre fellow could be but aren’t made by the successful person.

I have never met nor heard of a highly successful buisness executive, military officer, salesman, professional person or leader in any field who could not have found one or more major excuses to hide behind. Roosevelt could have h idden behind his lfeless legs; Truman could have used “no college education”; Kennedy could have said “I’m too young to be president”; Johnson and Eisenhower could have ducked behind heart attacks.

Like any disease, excusitis gets worse if it isn’t treated properly. A victim of this thought disease goes through this mental process: “I’m not doing as well as I should. What can I use as an alibi that will help me save face? Let’s see: poor health? lack of education? too old? too young? bad luck? personal misfortune? wife? the way my family brought me up?”

Once the victim of this failure disease has selected a “good” excuse, he sticks with it. Then he relies on the excuse to explain to himself and others why he is not going forward.

And each time the victim makes the excuse, the excuse becomes imbedded deeper within his subconsciousness. Thoughts, possitive or negative, grow stronger when fertilized with constant repetition. At first the victim of excusitis knows his alibi is more or less a lie. But the more frequently he repeats it, the more convinced he becomes that it is completely true, that the alibi i the real reason for his not being the success he should be.

Procedure One, then, in your individual program of thinking yourself to success, must be to vaccinate yourself against excusitis, the disease of the failures.

Excusitis appears in a wide variety of forms, but the worst types of this disease are health excusitis, intelligence excusitis, age excusitis and luck excusitis. Now let’s see just how we can protect ourselves from these four common ailments.

FOUR MOST COMMON FORMS OF EXCUSITIS

1. “But my health isn’t good.” Health excusitis ranges all the way from the chronic ” I don’t feel good,” to the more specific “I’ve got such and such wrong with me.”

“bad” health, in a thousand different forms, is u sed as an excuse for failing to do what a person wants to do, failing to accept greater responsibilities, failing to make more money, failing to achieve success.

Millinos and millions of people suffer from health excusitis. But is it, in most cases, a legitimate excuse? Think for a moment of all the highly successful people you know who could-but who don’t -use health as an excuse.

My physician and surgeon friends tell me the perfect speciment of adult life is non-existent. There is something physically wrong with everybody. Many surrender in whole or in part to health excusitis but success-thinking people do not.

Two experience3s happened to me in one afternoon that illustrate the correct and incorrect attitude toward health. I had just finished a talk in Cleveland. Afterwards, one fellow, about 39, asked to speak to me privately for a few minutes. He compolimented me on the meeting, but then said, “I’m afraid your ideas can’t do me much good.”

“You see,” he continued, “I’ve got a bad heart, and I’ve got to hold myself in check.” He went on to explian that he’d seen four doctors but they couldn’t find his trouble. He asked me what I would suggest he do.

“Well,” I said, “I now nothing about the heart, but as one layman to another, here are three things I’d do. First, I’d visit the finest heart specialist I could find and accept his diagnosis as final. You’ve already checked with four doctors and nonoe of them has found anything peculiar with your heart. Let the fifth doctor be your final check. It may very well be you’ve got a perfectly sound heart. But if you keep on worrying about it, eventually you may have a very serious heart ailment. Looking and looking and looking for an illness often actually produces illness.

“The second thing I’d recommend is tha tyou read Dr. Schindler’s great book, How to live 365 days a year. Dr. Schindler show sin this book that three out of every four hospital beds are occupied by people who have EII–Emotionally Induced Illness. Imagine, three out of four people who are sick right now would be well if they had learned how to handle their emotions. REead Dr. Schindler’s book and develop your program for emotions management.

“Third, I’d resolve to live until I die.” I went on to explain to this troubled fellow some sound advice I received manay years ago from a lawyer friend who had an arrested case of tuberculosis. This friend knew he would have to live a regulated life but this hasn’t stopped him from practicing law, rearing a fine familly and really enjoying life. My friend, who now is 78 years old, expresses his philosophy in these words: ” I’m going to live until I die and I’m not going to get life and death confused. While I’m on this earth I’m gonig to live. Why be only half alive? Every minute a perosn spends worrying about dying is just one mintue that fellow might as well have been dead.”

I had to leave at that point because I had to be on a certiaqn plane for Detroit. On the plane the second but much more pleasant experience occurred. After the noise of the take-off, I heard a ticking osund. Rather startled, I glanced at the fellow sitting beside me, for the sound seemed to be coming from him.

He smiled a big smile and said, “Oh, it’s not a bomob. It’s just my heart.”

I was obviously surprised, so he proceeded to tell me what had happened.

Just 21 days before, he had undergone an operation which involved putting a plastic valve into his heart. The ticking sound, he explained, would continue for several months until new tissue had grown over the artificial valve. I asked him what he was going to do.

“Oh,” he said, “I’ve got big plans. I’m going to study law when I get back to Minnesota. Someday I hope to be in government work. The doctors tell me I must take it easy for a few months, but after that I’ll be like new.”