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It takes a highly intellectual individual to enjoy leisure ... Most of us had better count on working. What a man really wants is creative challenge with sufficient skills to bring him within the reach of success so that he may have the expanding joy of achievement ... Few people overwork; plenty overeat, overworry, overdrink ... Few realize real joy and happiness of conquest. The basis of mental health for the average adult is more work, provided the work is not mere drudgery.

The happiness which brings enduring worth to life is not the superficial happiness that is dependent on circumstances. It is the happiness and contentment that fills the soul even in the midst of the most distressing of circumstances and most bitter environment. It is the kind of happiness that grins when things go wrong and smiles through the tears. The happiness for which our souls ache is one undisturbed by success or failure, one which will root deeply inside us and give inward relaxation, peace, and contentment, no matter what the surface problems may be. That kind of happiness stands in need on no outward stimulus.

An executive cannot gradually dismiss details. Business is made up of details and I notice that the chief executive who dismisses them is quite likely to dismiss his business. Success is the sum of detail. It might perhaps be pleasing to imagine oneself beyond detail and engaged only in great things, but as I have often observed, if one attends only to great things and lets the little things pass the great things become little; that is, the business shrinks. It is not possible for an executive to hold himself aloof from anything. No business, no matter what its size, can be called safe until it has been forced to learn economy and rigidly to measure values of men and materials.

The quintessential revolution is that of the spirit, born of an intellectual conviction of the need for change in those mental attitides and values which shape the course of a nation's development. A revolution whichaims merely at changing official policies and institutions with a view to an improvement in material conditions has little chance of genuine success. Without a revolution in spirit, the forces which had produced inequities of the old order would continue to be operative, posing a constant threat to the process of reform and regeneration. It is not enough merely to call for freedom, democracy and human rights. There has to be a united determination to persevere in the struggle, to make sacrifices in the name of enduring truths, to resist the corrupting influences of desire, ill will, ignorance, and fear.

One big reason why men do not develop greater abilities, greater sales strength, greater resourcefulness is because they use neither their abilities nor their opportunities. We don't need more strength or more ability or greater opportunity. What we need is to use what we have. Men fail and their families suffer deprivations when all the time these men have in their possession the same assets other men are utilizing to accumulate a fortune ... Life doesn't cheat. It doesn't pay in counterfeit coin. It doesn't lock up shop and go home when pay-day comes. It pays every man exactly what he has earned. The age-old law that a man gets what he earns hasn't been suspended. When we take that truth home and believe it, we've turned a big corner on the high road that runs straight through to success.

Hope is a state of mind, not of the world ... Either we have hope or we don't; it is a dimension of the soul, and it's not essentially dependent on some particular observation of the world or estimate of the situation. Hope is not prognostication. It is an orientation of the spirit, and orientation of the heart; it transcends the world that is immediately experienced, and is anchored somewhere beyond its horizons ... Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously heading for success, but rather and ability to work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed. The more propitious the situation in which we demonstrate hope, the deeper the hope is. Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.

THE MAN WHO THINKS HE CAN: If you think you are beaten, you are, If you think that you dare not, you don't, If you'd like to win, but you think you can't, It's almost certain you won't. If you think you'll lose, you've lost, For out in the world you'll find, Success begins with a fellow's will, It's all in the state of mind. If you think you are outclassed, you are, You've got to think high to rise, You've got to be sure of yourself before You can ever win a prize. Life's battles don't always go To the stronger or faster man, But soon or late the man who wins Is the man who thinks he can. NOTE: A copy of this inspirational poem hangs on the wall in Arnold Palmer's office. Arnie has made it a practice to read the poem at the start of each day. It serves him as a source of inspiration, courage and motivation that enables him to attack whatever problems and challenges that day might bring. It works for Arnie. It will work for you. Try it.