Remembering From Og Mandino

Over the years, I have been coming back to read The Greatest Salesman in the World Og Mandino. I have just started reading the scrolls again... it has been my best habit since I first read them in 1986. In 1991 I actually did the scrolls, as they were recommended by their fictional writer, reading them thrice daily, out loud in the evening; thirty days for each of ten, and lived them as best I could.

1990 and early '91had been my most difficult period up to then, for many reasons. I had left a job I loved because I didn't think I was being treated well. But I made a mistake with my choice of new work... and soon I left it. I had my first health scare... and it gave me a chance, no, an excuse to back away honorably from what I was doing. I got into some consulting that was very unsatisfying... and it was then that I remembered this little book with the weird name... The Greatest Salesman in the World. I bought it again, sat in my apartment near Denver where I was spending my weeks consulting, and started reading. Forty-five minutes later, I made up my mind that I would study the scrolls.

There is a good little story at the beginning that seems a little far fetched, even a little religious. At first it is hard to take the story seriously. But then as the scrolls un-ravel, they begin to make sense. I will go over them here on this blog, and what they meant to me... but in no way can I do justice to the real thing.

The most striking line in the first half of the book comes after the writer describes that "failure is man's inability to reach his goals in life, whatever they may be"... he goes on to say "my actions are ruled by appetite, passion, prejudice, greed, love, fear, environment, habit, and the worst of these tyrants is habit". I started to think about my own life, and began to check off most of these... and by that stage of my life, honestly, I was feeling like a failure.

He went on to say "therefore, if I must be a slave to habit, let me be a slave to good habits".

Now there is an interesting contrast... I had learned from Danny Cox, an accelerationist from Tustin, California that I had heard speak several times, that the only way to overcome a bad habit is to replace it with a good one... Danny was circa 1988 and the book was staged in the BC years... maybe there is something to this, I thought.

So, I started to work on me... especially my bad habits. Looking back, I did get to some of them... but I fear that I have fallen back into a few, and grew some that need to be dealt with... more on that later.