And it’s actually just six words.

Before I tell you, however, I need to add a disclaimer.

The 6-word sentence you’ll soon see might sound over-simplistic.

It might also sound like some fairy tale crap.

I promise you it’s neither.

I found it in the book “The Strangest Secret” by Earl Nightingale, which I first read in my teens.

What’s funny is this book wasn’t supposed to exist.

It was only meant to be a recording.

Nightingale recorded a talk for his sales team to be used as a motivational speech during an out of town trip.

That recording simply became the first spoken word message to win a Gold Record by selling over a million copies.

The whole message is life changing, but the sentence that reveals the secret steals the show.

And here it is:

We become what we think about.

Not that revolutionary, I know.

But true and straight to the point.

In the book, Nightingale describes the mind as follows:

“Your mind—and the universe more broadly—does not discriminate between positive and negative “crops”: whether you sow poison or promise, you will reap that which you sow in equal measure.”

This has been a shared sentiment of many authors and important historical figures.

Here are some examples:

“A man’s life is what his thoughts make of it” – Marcus Aurelius

“A man is what he thinks about all day long.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

“The greatest discovery of my generation is that human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind.” – William James

“Everything is possible for one who believes” – Jesus Christ (Mark 9:23 NIV)

I could keep going.

Many have spoken about this before.

And since that’s the case, why did I say it might sound over-simplistic or even akin to magic?

Because people don’t really understand the significance of it.

Lots of people have seen out-of-context clips from motivational speakers saying things that sound insane.

Things along the lines of:

“People are poor because of their mindset.”

“You need to be positive and money will come your way.”

“You’re poor because your mind wants you to be”.

99.8% of the people who watch these just go:

“How do people pay to hear this much bullsht?”*

I totally understand why someone might react this way.

It sounds like they’re randomly blaming people for their current situation.

And I believe many of these self-proclaimed coaches indeed do that because they themselves don’t understand what it means to become what you think about.

Think about it this way:

Would you yell at someone for not playing football well if you’ve never taught them before?

Or for not speaking Spanish well if they never were taught how to learn it?

Doesn’t make sense, does it?

It’s the same root problem here.

We’re all born with the most powerful device in the world.

The one device responsible for all of the technology, engineering, architecture, music, paintings, literature, literally every single thing that exists in the modern world today.

This device is the mind.

Only problem is: it doesn’t come with a user’s guide.

Hence, if we learn how it works, we can make it bring about the reality we want.

We don’t lack talent, we lack information.

That’s why Nightingale’s work turned my life upside down when I was 15.

I randomly found the original recording on YouTube (or maybe it found me) one day.

I couldn’t explain why, but I always had a thing for listening to older people talking.

It felt like information I wouldn’t be able to get anywhere else due to their personal experiences.

So I sat there and listened to it attentively.

And every word he said made more and more sense.

After every sentence, a click would go off in my mind.

It felt like I had found the biggest secret in the universe.

Until then, I believed that success was something you’d only achieve after working for decades in a company.

That’s when I head Nightingale explaining his definition of success, which I still carry with me to this day:

“Success is the progressive realization of a worthy ideal”.

In his own words:

“Success is the schoolteacher who’s teaching school because that’s what he or she wants to do. It’s the woman who’s a wife and mother because she wanted to become a wife and mother and is doing a good job of it. […] It’s the successful salesman who wants to become a top-notch salesman and grow and build with his organization. A success is anyone who is doing deliberately a predetermined job because that’s what he decided to do deliberately.”

I was one of those who would associate success with just having a ton of money.

I had never thought of it as progressively doing something you deem truly worthwhile to the point of dedicating your life to it.

If you align both (what you do and who you truly are), it will be inevitable for bigger financial results to follow suit.

As Nightingale says:

“Success is not the result of making money. Earning money is the result of success, and success is in direct proportion to our service. […] Don’t concern yourself with money. Be of service. Build, work , dream, create. Do this, and you’ll find there’s no limit to the prosperity and abundance that will come to you.”

Understanding we become what we think about is the strangest secret because it will dictate what happens in every area of your life (willingly or not), yet we’re never taught even just a little bit about it.

AT ALL.

The reason it will inevitably have this much impact is because how you think will determine how you interpret what happens around you.

Your interpretation will constitute your reality.

You can go from thinking you’re a victim to thinking you’re the baddest mf alive all through nurturing different thoughts.

The issue is that our brains aren’t dumb.

It won’t change just because you’ve started to “think positively” and are now practicing “positive self affirmations”.

Not ever.

It will change when you give it reasons to believe in a different story about you and your life.

Here’s a personal example I can give you:

When I started working as an English teacher, I used to think I wasn’t that qualified since I had no degree.

I objectively spoke English at a much higher level than most non-native speakers I had ever met, but still felt like I wasn’t good enough.

I wanted to have a degree, but only because I thought I would be recognized as a teacher if I had one.

My confidence back then was 100% dependent on what others thought.

I even had a set of explanations as to why they could believe me even though I had no degree just in case.

However, in the few times I was asked about it, every time I said I learned English on my own and had no degree, people’s reactions were positively surprised.

To the point where one even said:

“I think you getting to this level of English and having the teaching knowledge you’ve acquired with all the books you’ve read is even more impressive than having a degree, it means you took it upon you to develop build all of this.”

From then on, I never felt under qualified again.

It was a simple shift in perspective:

Young John → Having a ton of knowledge but no degree = Fleeing from responsibility and not good enough.

Updated John → Having a ton of knowledge but no degree = Having discipline and a true love for learning that, if combined with serfdom, will bring about incredible results.

Truly, it is all summed up in this quote from Nightingale’s “Lead The Field”:

“You are at this moment the living embodiment of the sum total of your thoughts to this point in your life. You can be nothing else. Each one of us is in charge of his or her own life. Each one of us is completely responsible. The only thing in the world that can take you to your goals in life is your mind.”

Whatever language you want to learn.

Whatever project you want to start.

Whatever dream you want to live.

It all starts in your mind.

It all starts with you knowing you can do it.

None of this fake self help bullsh*t.

Just knowing that your mind can bring anything to reality.

So we might as well forge the reality we want to live in.

Please, read this book and/or listen to the recording.

If you truly understand it and act on it, you will never be the same.

Enjoy the strangest secret, my friend.