We now know that PMA is a positive mental attitude. And we also know that a Positive Mental Attitude is one of the 17 success principles. When you begin to apply a combination of these principles with PMA in your chosen occupation or to a solution of your personal problems, you are on the road to success. Then you are on the right track and headed in the right direction towards getting what you want.
To achieve anything worthwhile in life, it is imperative that you apply PMA, regardless of what other success principles you employ. PMA is the catalyst which makes any combination of success principles work to attain a worthwhile end. It is NMA, combined with some of the same principles, that is the catalyst which results in crime or evil. And grief, disaster, tragedy—sin, disease, death—are some of its rewards.
The students who enroll in the PMA Science of Success course are often people who consider themselves failures in some area of their lives. The very first question such a person might be asked when he enters the class is: Why? Why are you taking this course? Why haven’t you had the success you would like to have? And the reasons which they give tell us a tragic story about the causes of failure.
“I never really had a chance to get ahead. My father was an alcoholic, you know.”
“I was raised in the slums and that’s something you can never get out of your system.”
“I only had a grammar school education.”
These people are all saying, in essence, that the world has given them a raw deal. They are blaming the world and circumstances outside themselves for their failures. They blame their heredity or their environment. They start out with a negative mental attitude. And, of course, with that attitude, they are handicapped. But it is NMA that is holding them down, not the external handicap that they give as the cause of their failure.
A lesson learned from a child
There is a wonderful little story about a minister who, one Saturday morning, was trying to prepare his sermon under difficult conditions. His wife was out shopping. It was a rainy day and his young son was restless and bored, with nothing to do. Finally, in desperation, the minister picked up an old magazine and thumbed through it until he came to a large brightly colored picture. It showed a map of the world. He tore the page from the magazine, ripped it into little bits and threw the scraps all over the living room floor with the words:
“Johnny, if you can put this all together, I’ll give you a quarter.”
The preacher thought this would take Johnny most of the morning. But within ten minutes there was a knock on his study door. It was his son with the completed puzzle. The minister was amazed to see Johnny finished so soon, with the pieces of paper neatly arranged and the map of the world back in order.
“Son, how did you get that done so fast?” the preacher asked.
“Oh,” said Johnny, “it was easy. On the other side there was a picture of a man. I just put a piece of paper on the bottom, put the picture of the man together, put a piece of paper on top, and then turned it over. I figured that if I got the man right, the world would be right.”
The minister smiled, and handed his son a quarter. “And you’ve given me my sermon for tomorrow, too,” he said. “If a man is right, his world will be right.”
There’s a great lesson in this idea. If you are unhappy with your world and want to change it, the place to start is with yourself. If you are right, your world will be right. This is what PMA is all about. When you have a Positive Mental Attitude, the problems of your world tend to bow before you.
Source: Success Through a Positive Mental Attitude by W. Clement Stone & Napoleon Hill