The power of positive thinking (4).

In 1908, Napoleon Hill was given the task of interviewing Andrew Carnegie. During the interview, Carnegie remarked that “it’s a shame that each new generation must find a way to success by trial and error when the principles are really clear cut.”

Carnegie challenged Hill to create a practical set of principles that anyone could use. Reportedly, it only took Hill 29 seconds to accept the challenge, expecting Carnegie to underwrite the project.

Carnegie asked whether Hill was willing to devote 20 years of his life to develop the project while supporting himself. Carnegie said as follows:

“It is not my unwillingness to supply the money. It is my desire to know if you have in you the natural capacity for willingness to go the extra mile, that is, to render the service before trying to collect for it. Successful people are those who render more service than they are required to deliver.”

In fact, Hill did spend exactly 20 years interviewing the business and political leaders of his time. Later, Hill met W. Clement Stone and they jointly founded Success Unlimited magazine and authored Success Through A Positive Mental Attitude.

We recently read Believe And Achieve: W. Clement Stone’s 17 Principles Of Success. One of the most interesting stories was that of Dr. Henry Viscardi, Jr., winner of the 1984 Napoleon Hill Foundation award for meritorious achievement.

Viscardi was born with stumps for legs. He relates his story as follows:

“I spent the first seven years of my life in a hospital ward in Harlem. I was released from that hospital at age seven to get along the best I could, living in a cold-water flat on New York’s West Side, where growing up was a matter of survival.”

Viscardi was 27 when he received his first prosthetic legs.

“Until then, in my manhood, I stood only 3 feet, 8 inches tall. I know all there is to know about pity and pain and ridicule. Then one day, there I was standing tall and straight, able to look down on my mother’s head, to look at the clock on the mantle, to see the tops of cars on the road, to hang onto the strap on the subway, to stand up to a telephone that I could never reach before.

“As a child, I wondered, ‘Why me? Why was I chosen to go through this?’ My mother, a simple woman, an immigrant from Italy, answered in her simple wisdom: ‘When the Lord and his council held a meeting to decide where the next crippled child would be born, they decided that the Viscardis would be a good family.’

“The most important thing, I think, is that I never thought of myself as different, even though I knew I was. I always considered myself as being the same as anyone else, and given the opportunity to become a learned man, I could succeed in life. I really didn’t count it as a handicap, it was just something that made me desire all the more to be successful.”

During WWII, Viscardi worked as a field officer for the Red Cross and spent a lot of his time at Walter Reed Hospital working with the gravely wounded. “I saw thousands of maimed, horribly disfigured young men coming back…It was a terribly sobering experience with those men to try to boost their morale, to tell them that there was a world out there.”

After the war, Viscardi founded an organization to help disabled Veterans and established training centers for the handicapped in 60 locations around the world. Viscardi has received honors from organizations in almost every country in the world and was an advisor to every President starting with FDR. By his own example, Viscardi inspired millions of handicapped people.

What motivated Viscardi was his desire to offer handicapped Veterans “the dignity of a productive life”.

“The challenge of serving these men appealed to me, to help them find a place where they could work and produce and seek out a dignified life instead of living off the pensions and welfare the government offered them.”

Almost everyone has a defect of one kind or another. If you dwell on what you don’t have, it’s hard to appreciate what you do have. Turning a handicap into a strong message of hope is inspirational to everyone.