Lesson Nine - The Habit of Doing More Than What You are Paid

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The Law of Increasing Returns is no invention of mine, nor do I lay claim to the discovery of the principle of rendering more service and better service than paid for, as a means of utilizing this Law. I merely appropriated them, after many years of careful observation of those forces which enter into the attainment of success, just as you will appropriate them after you understand their significance.

 

You might begin this appropriation process now by trying an experiment which may easily open your eyes and place back of your efforts powers that you did not know you possessed.

 

Let me caution you, however, not to attempt this experiment in the same spirit in which a certain woman experimented with that Biblical passage which says something to the effect that if you have faith the size of a grain of mustard, and say to yonder mountain be removed to some other place, it will be removed.

 

This woman lived near a high mountain that she could see from her front door; therefore, as she retired that night she commanded the mountain to remove itself to some other place.

 

Next morning she jumped out of bed, rushed to the door and looked out, but lo! the mountain was still there.

 

Then she said: "Just as I had expected! I knew it would be there."

 

I am going to ask you to approach this experiment with full faith that it will mark one of the most important turning-points of your entire life.

 

I am going to ask you to make the object of this experiment the removal of a mountain that is standing where your temple of success should stand, but where it never can stand until you have removed the mountain.

 

You may never have noticed the mountain to which I refer, but it is standing there in your way just the same, unless you have already discovered and removed it.

 

"And what is this mountain?" you ask! It is the feeling that you have been cheated unless you receive material pay for all the service you render.

 

That feeling may be unconsciously expressing itself and destroying the very foundation of your temple of success in scores of ways that you have not observed.

 

In the very lowly bred type of humanity, this feeling usually seeks outward expression in terms something like this: "I am not paid to do this and I'll be blanketyblankety-blank if I'll do it!" You know the type to which reference is made; you have met with it many times, but you have never found a single person of this type who was successful, and you never will.

 

Success must be attracted through understanding and application of laws which are as immutable as is the law of gravitation. It cannot be driven into the corner and captured as one would capture a wild pig.

 

For this reason you are requested to enter into the following experiment with the object of familiarizing yourself with one of the most important of these laws; namely, the Law of Increasing Returns.

 

The experiment: During the next six months make it your business to render useful service to at least one person every day, for which you neither expect nor accept monetary pay. - Go at this experiment with faith that it will uncover for your use one of the most powerful laws that enter into the achievement of enduring success, and you will not be disappointed.

 

The rendering of this service may take on any one of more than a score of forms.

 

For example, it may be rendered personally to one or more specific persons; or it may be rendered to your employer, in the nature of work that you perform after hours.

 

Again, it may be rendered to entire strangers whom you never expect to see again. It matters not to whom you render this service so long as you render it with willingness, and solely for the purpose of benefiting others.

 

If you carry out this experiment in the proper attitude of mind, you will discover that which all others who have become familiar with the law upon which it is based have discovered; namely, that - You can no more render service without receiving compensation than you can withhold the rendering of it without suffering the loss of reward.

 

"Cause and effect, means and ends, seed and fruit, cannot be severed," says Emerson; "for the effect already blooms in the cause, the end pre-exists in the means, the fruit in the seed."

 

"If you serve an ungrateful master, serve him the more. Put God in your debt. Every stroke shall be repaid. The longer the payment is withholden, the better for you; for compound interest on compound interest is the rate and usage of this exchequer."

 

"The law of Nature is, Do the thing and you shall have the power; but they who do not the thing have not the power."

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"Men suffer all their life long, under the foolish superstition that they can be cheated. But it is as impossible for a man to be cheated by anyone but himself, as for a thing to be, and not to be, at the same time. There is a third silent party to all our bargains. The nature and soul of things takes on itself the guaranty of fulfillment of every contract, so that honest service cannot come to loss."

 

Before you begin the experiment that you have been requested to undertake, read Emerson's essay on Compensation, for it will go a very long way toward helping you to understand why you are making the experiment.

 

Perhaps you have read Compensation before. Read it again!

 

One of the strange phenomena that you will observe about this essay may be found in the fact that every time you read it you will discover new truths that you did not notice during previous readings.

 

 

A few years ago I was invited to deliver the graduation address before the students of an eastern college. During my address I dwelt at length, and with all the emphasis at my command, on the importance of rendering more service and better service than that for which one is paid.

 

After the address was delivered, the president and the secretary of the college invited me to luncheon.

 

While we were eating, the secretary turned to the president and said: "I have just found out what this man is doing. He is putting himself ahead in the world by first helping others to get ahead."

 

In that brief statement he had epitomized the most important part of my philosophy on the subject of success.

 

It is literally true that you can succeed best and quickest by helping others to succeed.

 

Some ten years ago, when I was engaged in the advertising business, I built my entire clientele by the application of the fundamentals upon which this lesson is founded. By having my name placed on the follow-up lists of various mail order houses I received their sales literature. When I received a sales letter or a booklet or a folder which I believed I could improve I went right to work on it and made the improvement, then sent it back to the firm that had sent it to me, with a letter stating that this was but a trifling sample of what I could do - that there were plenty of other good ideas where that one came from - and, that I would be glad to render regular service for a monthly fee.

 

Invariably this brought an order for my services. On one occasion I remember that the firm was dishonest enough to appropriate my idea and use it without paying me for it, but this turned out to be an advantage to me, in this way: A member of the firm who was familiar with the transaction started another business and as a result of the work I had done for his former associates, for which I was not paid, he engaged me to serve him, on a basis that paid me more than double the amount I would have realized from his original firm.

 

Thus the Law of Compensation gave back to me, and with compound interest added, that which I had lost by rendering service to those who were dishonest.

 

If I were looking for a profitable field of employment today, I could find it by again putting into action this plan of re-writing sales literature as a means of creating a market for my services.

 

Perhaps I would find others who would appropriate my ideas without paying for them, but by and large people would not do this for the simple reason that it would be more profitable to them to deal fairly with me and thereby avail themselves of my continued services.

 

 

Several years ago I was invited to deliver a lecture before the students of the Palmer School, at Davenport, Iowa.

 

My manager completed arrangements for me to accept the invitation under the regular terms in effect at that time, which were $100.00 for the lecture and my traveling expenses.

 

When I arrived at Davenport, I found a reception committee awaiting me at the depot and that evening I was given one of the warmest welcomes I had ever received during my public career, up to that time.

 

I met many delightful people from whom I gathered many valuable facts that were of benefit to me; therefore, when I was asked to make out my expense account so the school could give me a check, I told them that I had received my pay, many times over, by that which I had learned while I was there. I refused my fee and returned to my office, in Chicago, feeling well repaid for the trip.

 

The following morning Dr. Palmer went before the two thousand students of his school and announced what I had said about feeling repaid by what I had learned, and added: "In the twenty years that I have been conducting this school I have had scores of speakers address the student body, but this is the first time I ever knew a man to refuse his fee because he felt that he had been repaid for his services in other ways. This man is the editor of a national magazine and I advise every one of you to subscribe for that magazine, because such a man as this must have much that each of you will need when you go into the field and offer your services."

 

By the middle of that week I had received more than $6,000.00 for subscriptions to the magazine of which I was editor, and during the following two years these same two thousand students and their friends sent in more than $50,000.00 for subscriptions.

 

Tell me, if you can, how or where I could have invested $100.00 as profitably as this, by refusing to accept my $100.00 fee and thereby setting the Law of Increasing Returns to work in my behalf?

 

We go through two important periods in this life; one is that period during which we are gathering, classifying and organizing knowledge, and the other is that period during which we are struggling for recognition.

 

We must first learn something, which requires more effort than most of us are willing to put into the job; but, after we have learned much that can be of useful service to others, we are still confronted  with the problem of convincing them that we can serve them.

 

One of the most important reasons why we should always be not only ready but willing to render service, is the fact that every time we do so, we gain thereby another opportunity to prove to someone that we have ability; we go just one more step toward gaining the necessary recognition that we must all have.

 

Instead of saying to the world, "Show me the color of your money and I will show you what I can do," reverse the rule and say, "Let me show you the color of my service so that I may take a look at the color of your money if you like my service."

 

In 1917, a certain woman who was then nearing the fifty-year milepost of life, was working as a stenographer, at fifteen dollars a week. Judging by the salary she must have been none too competent in that work.

 

Now note this change: Last year, this same woman cleared a little over $100,000.00 on the lecture platform.

 

What bridged that mighty chasm between these two earning capacities? you ask, and I answer: The habit of performing more service and better service than that for which she was paid, thereby taking advantage of the Law of Increasing Returns.

 

This woman is well known throughout the country, as she is now a prominent lecturer on the subject of Applied Psychology.

 

Let me show you how she harnessed the Law of Increasing Returns.

 

First, she goes into a city and delivers a series of fifteen free lectures. All may attend who will, without money and without price. During the delivery of these fifteen lectures she has the opportunity of "selling herself" to her audience, and at the end of the series she announces the formation of a class for which she charges twenty-five dollars per student.

 

That's all there is to her plan!

 

Where she is commanding a small fortune for a year's work there are scores of much more proficient lecturers who are barely getting enough from their work to pay their expenses, simply because they have not yet familiarized themselves with the fundamentals upon which this lesson is based, as she has done.

 

Now, I would like to have you stop right here and answer this question: If a fifty-year-old woman, who has no extraordinary qualifications, can harness the Law of Increasing Returns and make it raise her from the position as stenographer at fifteen dollars a week to that of lecturer at over $100,000.00 a year - why cannot you apply this same law so that it will give you advantages that you do not now possess? Never mind what is to come in the remainder of this lesson until you have answered this question and - answered it AS IT SHOULD BE ANSWERED!

 

You are struggling, either meekly or earnestly, to make a place for yourself in the world. Perhaps you are exerting enough effort to bring you success of the highest order, if that effort were coupled with and supported by the Law of Increasing Returns.

 

For this reason, you owe it to yourself to find out just how you can apply this law to best advantage.

 

Now go back to that question, again; for I am determined that you shall not pass it by lightly, without giving yourself the benefit of at least trying to answer it.

 

In other words, there is no mistaking the fact that you are being brought face to face with a question that vitally affects your future, and, if you evade it, the fault will be with you. You may lay this lesson aside after you have read it, and it is your privilege to do so, without making any attempt to profit by it; but, if you do so, you will never again be able to look at yourself in a mirror without being haunted by the feeling that - YOU HAVE DELIBERATELY CHEATED YOURSELF!

 

Perhaps this is telling the truth in an undiplomatic way; but, when you aquired this course on the Law of Success, you did so because you wanted facts, and you are getting them, without the embellishment of apology.

 

After you have finished this lesson, if you will go back and review the lessons on Initiative and Leadership and Enthusiasm, you will better understand those lessons.

 

Those lessons and this one clearly establish the necessity of taking the initiative, following it with aggressive action and doing more than you are paid to do.

 

If you will burn the fundamentals of these three lessons into your consciousness you will be a changed person, and I make this statement regardless of who you are or what your calling may be.

 

If this plain language has made you angry, I am glad; for it indicates that you can be moved!

 

Now, if you would profit by the counsel of one who has made many more mistakes than you ever made, and for that reason learned a few of the fundamental truths of life, harness this anger and focus it on yourself until it drives you forth to render the service of which you are capable.

 

If you will do this you can collect a king's ransom as your reward.

 

 

Now let us turn our attention to still another important feature of

this habit of performing more service and better service than that for which we are paid; namely,

the fact that we can develop this habit without asking for permission to do so.

 

Such service may be rendered through your own initiative, without the consent of any person.

 

You do not have to consult those to whom you render the service, for it is a privilege over which you have entire control.

 

There are many things you could do that would tend to promote your interests, but most of them require the co-operation or the consent of others. If you render less service than that for which you are paid you must do so by leave of the purchaser of the service, or the market for your service will soon cease.

 

I want you to get the full significance of this right of prerogative, which you have, to render more service and better service than that for which you are paid, for this places squarely upon your shoulders the responsibility of rendering such service, and if you fail to do so, you haven't a plausible excuse to offer or an "alibi upon which to fall back, if you fail in the achievement of your definite chief aim in life.

 

One of the most essential yet the hardest truths that I have had to learn,

is that every person should be his own hardest task-master.

 

We are all fine builders of "alibis" and creators of "excuses" in support of our short-comings. We are not seeking facts and truths as they are, but, as we wish them to be. We prefer honeyed words of flattery to those of cold, unbiased truth, wherein lies the weakest spot of the man-animal.

 

Furthermore, we are up in arms against those who dare to uncover the truth for our benefit.

 

One of the most severe shocks I received in the early part of my public career was the knowledge that men are still being crucified for the high crime of telling the truth.

 

I recall an experience I had some ten years ago, with a man who had written a book advertising his business school. He submitted this book to me and paid me to review it and give him my candid opinion of it. I reviewed the book with painstaking care, then did my duty by showing him wherein I believed the book was weak.

 

Here I learned a great lesson, for that man became so angry that he has never forgiven me for allowing him to look at his book through my eyes. When he asked me to tell him frankly what "criticism" I had to offer of the book, what he really meant was that I should tell him what I saw in the book that I could "compliment."

 

That's human nature for you! We court flattery more than we do the truth. I know, because I am human.

 

All of which is in preparation for the "unkindest cut of all" that I am duty-bound to inflict upon you; namely, to suggest that you have not done as well as you might have done for the reason that you have not applied a sufficient amount of truth set out in Lesson on Self-control, to charge yourself with your own mistakes and short-comings.

 

To do this takes self-control and plenty of it.

 

If you paid some person who had the ability and the courage to do it, a hundred dollars to strip you of your vanity and conceit and love for flattery, so that you might see the weakest part of your make-up, the price would be reasonable enough.

 

We go through life stumbling, falling and struggling to our knees, and struggling and falling some more, making asses of ourselves, and going down, finally, in defeat, largely because we either neglect or flatly refuse to learn the truth about ourselves.

 

Since, I have come to discover some of my own weaknesses through my work of helping others discover theirs, I blush with shame when I take a retrospective view of life and think how ridiculous I must have seemed in the eyes of those who could see me as I wouldn't see myself.

 

We parade before the enlarged shadows of our own vanity

and imagine that those shadows are our real selves,

while the few knowing souls with whom we meet stand in the background

and look at us with pity or with scorn.

 

Hold on a minute - I am not through with you yet. You want me to delve into the depths of your real self and give you an introspective inventory of what is there, and I am going to do the job right, as nearly as I can.

 

Not only have you been fooling yourself as to the real cause of your failures of the past, but you have tried to hang these causes on the door of someone else.

 

When things did not go to suit you, instead of accepting full responsibility for the cause, you have said, "Oh, screw this job! - I don't like the way 'they' are treating me, so I'm going to quit!"

 

Don't deny it!

 

Now let me whisper a little secret in your ear - a secret which I have had to gather from grief and heartaches and unnecessary punishment of the hardest sort - Instead of "quitting" the job because there were obstacles to master and difficulties to be overcome, you should have faced the facts and then you would have known that life, itself, is just one long series of mastery of difficulties and obstacles.

 

The measure of a man may be taken very accurately by the extent to which he adapts himself to his environment and makes it his business to accept responsibility for every adversity with which he meets, whether the adversity grows out of a cause within his control or not.

 

Now, if you feel that I have "panned" you rather severely, have pity on me, O Fellow-Wayfarer, for you surely must know that I have had to punish myself more sorely than I have punished you before I learned the truth that I am here passing on to you for your use and guidance.

 

I have a few enemies - thank God for them! - for they have been vulgar and merciless enough to say some things about me that forced me to rid myself of some of my most serious short-comings; mainly those which I did not know I possessed. I have profited by the criticism of these enemies without having to pay them for their services in dollars, although I have paid in other ways.

 

However, it was not until some years ago that I caught sight of some of my most glaring faults which were brought to my attention as I studied Emerson's essay on Compensation, particularly the following part of it: "Our strength grows out of our weakness. "

 

Not until we are pricked, and stung, and sorely shot at, awakens the indignation which arms itself with secret forces.

 

A great man is always willing to be little. 

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While he sits on the cushion of advantage he goes to sleep.

 

When he is pushed, tormented, defeated, he has a chance to learn something; he has been put on his wits, on his manhood; he has gained facts; learned his ignorance; is cured of the insanity of conceit; has got moderation and real skill.

 

The wise man always throws himself on the side of his assailants.

It is more in his interest than it is theirs to find his weak point.

 

Blame is safer than praise. I hate to be defended in a newspaper. As long as all that is said is said against me, I feel a certain assurance of success. But as soon as honeyed words of praise are spoken of me, I feel as one that lies unprotected before his enemies."

 

Study this, the philosophy of the immortal Emerson, for it may serve as a modifying force that will temper your metal and prepare you for the battles of life, as carbon tempers the steel.

 

If you are a young person, you need to study it all the more, for it often requires the stern realities of many years of experience to prepare one to assimilate and apply this philosophy. Better that you should understand these great truths as a result of my undiplomatic presentation of them than to be forced to gather them from the less sympathetic sources of cold experience.

 

Experience is a teacher that knows no favorites. When I permit you to profit by the truths I have gathered from the teachings of this cold and unsympathetic teacher called "experience," I am doing my best to show you favoritism.

 

 

Thus we approach the close of this lesson without having exhausted the possibilities of the subject; nay, without having more than scratched the surface of it.

 

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Lesson Nine - The Habit of Doing More Than What You are Paid

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