I feel healthy! I feel happy! I feel terrific!

THE HEART OF HAPPINESS

PAUL SUTHERLAND

WE STOOD ON TABLES or chairs, threw our hands in the air, and as animated and loud as our tired, sleep-deprived bodies would allow, yelled through hoarse throats, “I feel healthy! I feel happy! I feel terrific!”

I was 18 and had quit three-quarters of the way through my first term of college because I had been accepted into Mr. W. Clement Stone’s Combined Insurance Sales & License Preparation two-week training in downtown Chicago. If I passed, I was guaranteed a job.

My fellow students showed up that first morning very tired. Our trainer, whose job it was to mold us into purpose-driven “positive-attitude, never-give-up sales machines,” noticed our heavy heads and said to us, “Stand up! Now repeat after me, ‘I feel healthy! I feel happy! I feel terrific!’” He explained that on the road to success we were not always going to feel like making that next sales call, reading that next book on success, or being on fire with positive enthusiasm, so we could simply repeat to ourselves out loud or in silence, “I feel healthy! I feel happy! I feel terrific!” We repeat these words, he said, because we have powerful brains, in charge of how we feel, since our emotions and actions follow our thoughts.

I listened! When I look at how sophisticated our world has become, that simple mantra, along with books like Laws of Success and Think and Grow Rich that were part of Mr. Stone’s curriculum, seem trivial and very old school. The idea that someone could get purpose out of selling insurance might seem a bit simple. Or maybe not.