Did it pay to go the extra mile for 20 years? I want to tell you, I wasn’t smart enough to recognize what would happen in the beginning. My fondest expectations never led me beyond putting out one interpretation of the philosophy which would sell 100,000 copies. The average book sells less than 2,000 copies. One hundred thousand is considered wonderful. Why do my books sell better than others? Because 20 years of concentrated experience while I was going the extra mile went into them, and the reader picks that up and recognizes that. That’s what makes the books sell.
I am calling that to your attention because just as sure as anything, those of you who are new to the philosophy will come to the place I did when you will feel that this business of going the extra mile sometimes pays off and sometimes does not. I want to tell you now that it always pays off and never lets you down and pays off in proportion to the intensity of how you apply it. I don’t know how it does this or what causes it to be done, but I do know that before you get to the place in the application of this philosophy where it is paying off in terms of what you want in life, you will be tested many times. You will undergo sometimes a very severe series of tests, and remember when those testing times come that they are a great privilege because they give you an opportunity to make an introspective inventory of yourself to see whether you have what it takes or not.
The last time I was forced to take inventory I wasn’t so sure if I had what it took or not, and I was quite sure that if I hadn’t had this philosophy, I wouldn’t have made the grade. I was called upon to go the extra mile in a series of transactions that took all the willpower, and every bit of faith I could muster, and out of that came my greatest gain to prove that this philosophy can do anything. It can with your help. The attitude you take toward it will be the determining factor.
My going the extra mile for 20 years with Andrew Carnegie I suppose did look foolish to my brother and my father and some of my other relatives who believed that I had taken 20 years out of my life at a time when I should have been making money. But there was one person in the world who didn’t think it was foolish, and that was my stepmother. I only had one Master Mind ally to help me see it through. She said to me after I had attempted my first book and failed, “I don’t attempt to be your psychic, but the time will come when you will be the greatest author of all time in your field.” And I actually blushed because somehow I thought it couldn’t be true.
I went back a little while ago to the place in Virginia where I was born. The house was gone. There was a pile of stones where what used to be the chimney had stood. It was a one-room house. We did everything in one room—ate there and slept there. I remember it so well. When they went to move to another mountain, I was just a little fellow, and they picked me up and put me on top of all our possessions in the wagon. And I remember so well looking into the future and saying to myself, “I suppose I will never be rich enough to have household items like this.” I don’t think I would ever have gotten out of those mountains if I hadn’t applied this extra mile principle. I would be in those mountains now, probably making moonshine and killing rattlesnakes like some of my cousins who are there now.
I went back up there not long ago and called on all my relatives who I could find, and not one of them had changed. They were living just like their ancestors had centuries ago. I came to the conclusion that had I not had a marvelous woman come into my home, I would still be there. She taught me the benefit of going the extra mile long before I came in contact with Andrew Carnegie. As a result of that, in every job I have ever had, I have made more money than anyone else made in that same job. At the age of 16 years, I was a manager in a coal mine because I had been taught not to stand around and wait for somebody to tell me what to do but to anticipate and jump right in and do it. That’s what I mean by going the extra mile. Don’t wait for people to have to tell you. That takes a lot of kick out of it. Tell yourself and jump in and do it.
Source: Positive Influence by Napoleon Hill