The well-know book, Success Through a Positive Mental Attitude (Hardcover, 1960) (PMA), reveals the thinking of two highly successfuly men: Napoleon Hill and W. Clement Stone.

It’s a highly inspiring book with chapter after chapter of thrilling snippets of stories of real people succeeding through PMA! It’s so ’sticky’ that I read almost half the book in one sitting.

The way these two masters define PMA is wonderful - through a lesson from the story of a little child…

What happened was a minister was trying hard to prepare a sermon and was distracted by his young son who was growing restless and bored. To occupy him, the minister cut out a page with a map of the world from an old magazine, tore it into tiny pieces and told his son to assemble them.

Thinking that the child would take the whole morning, he set about preparing his sermon but he was shocked that it took him only ten minutes!

On investigating how he did it so fast, the child said that there was a picture of a man on the other side. So he put a piece of paper, put the picture of the man, and put a piece of paper on top, then turned it over…

The little child figured that if he got the man right, the world would be right. The minister smiled and handed a quarter to his son, saying that now he got his sermon:

“If a man is right, his world will be right!”

The lesson here is: 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. That is what PMA is all about. And when you have PMA, the problems of your world tend to bow before you.

Do drop a comment or two how you find this little story…
 

Allan Pease, of ‘Body Language’ fame, gave practical on how to use ask questions to promote a conversation in his other book, Talk Language.

Personally, I have been asked by a woman very personal questions. She was a business contact that I met at a business networking session. Having agreed to meet for coffee one day, she fired her barrage of questions at me:

Question 1: Are you married?

Me: Yes

Question 2: Do you have kids?

Me: No

Question 3: Why you don’t have kids?

Me: ???

Question 4: What’s wrong?

Me: $%##!^$#$**#&$#!&^&#^&#*#!

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As you can see, I fired her after she asked her 4th question!

What’s wrong with the above scenario?

First off, I told her that this is our first meeting and she had no rights to my privacy.

Secondly - I didn’t tell her - that she did not realize how to use questions to promote a conversation …

(To be continued in Part 2 …)