The Three Keys To Success (1956)
Title: “The Three Keys To Success”
Author: LORD BEAVERBROOK
Publisher: W. CLEMENT STONE, PUBLISHER NEW YORK
Year of Publication: 1956
Pages: ~126
LOC Catalog Entry: http://lccn.loc.gov/56009588
Copyright Status: Public Domain in the United States and countries following the rule of the shorter term
EXCERPT:
“HOW TO CONQUER FEAR
No man can travel far along the road to success without courage.
I do not refer to the physical courage that sustains men on the battlefield, but to that rarer quality— moral courage.
This quality has nothing to do with mere stubborn-ness, which is sometimes a kind of cowardice. Many weaknesses derive from stubbornness.Men cling to a business indefinitely in the fond wish that a loss may yet be turned into a profit. They hope for a better day, which their intelligence tells them will never dawn.
For this attitude of mind, stupidity is a better word than stubbornness, and a far better word than courage. When reason and judgment bid us give up the immediate battle and start afresh on some new line, it is intellectual cowardice, not moral courage, that bids us persevere.
Courage cannot be divorced from judgment.
On the other hand, cowardice can also consist in too great a readiness for compromise. To the compromising mind the certainty of half a loaf is always better than the probability of a whole one.
Great affairs, above all things, require for their successful conduct sensitivity to the drift of events, to the characters or changing views of friends and opponents. Great affairs require a careful avoidance of that rigidity of standpoint that stamps the doctrinaire or the mule. The mind must be receptive and plastic.
But this quality in the man of affairs, which is akin to the artistic temperament, may degenerate into mere pliability.
Never to fight, always to negotiate for a remnant of the profits, then becomes the rule of life. At each stage in the career the primrose path will beckon more attractively toward the bonfire and the uphill path of contest look more stony and unattractive. In this process the intellect may remain unimpaired, but the moral fiber degenerates.
I once had to make a difficult choice between sticking to my guns or compromising. It was in the days of my youth when I was forming the Canada Cement Company. One of the concerns offered for sale to the combine was valued at far too high a price. In fact, it was obvious that only by selling it at an overvaluation could its debts be paid.
The president of this overvalued concern was connected with the most powerful group of financiers that Canada has ever seen.
Their smile would mean fortune to a young man, and their frown ruin to men of lesser position. The loss of including an unproductive concern at an unfair price would have been little to me, personally, but it would have saddled the new amalgamated industry and the investors with a liability instead of an asset.
It was certainly far easier to be pliable than to be firm. Every kind of private pressure was brought to bear on me to accede to the purchase of the property.
When this failed, all the immense engines for the formation of public opinion which were at the disposal of the opposing forces were directed against me. And that attack was cleverly conducted. Those who had failed to induce me to break faith with the investing public appealed to that public to condemn me for forming a trust.
I am prepared now to confess that I was (in my youth) bitterly hurt and injured by the injustice of these attacks. But I regret nothing. Why? Because these early violent criticisms taught me to treat ferocious onslaughts in later life with complete indifference.
What is more, that innate judgment that dwells in the recesses of the mind tells me that my whole capacity for action in affairs would have been damaged by the moral collapse of yielding to that threat. Pliability would have become a habit rather than a matter of judgment and will, for fortitude comes only by practice.”
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Introduction by Joseph P. Kennedy … vii
1. How to Use the Master Key 3
2. The Importance of Your First $5,000 8
3. Beware of Consistency! … 15
4. How to Conquer Fear …. 20
5. Read! 27
6. How to Improvise 32
7. Don’t Have a Card-Index Mind . 41
8. Don’t Trust to Luck! …. 47
9. How to Save 53
10. How to Sell 56
11. Learn to Speak in Public … 61
12. The Road to Happiness 70
13. Never Resign! 75
14. “There Is Always Room for a Man of Force, and He Makes Room for Many” 83
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