Skip to main content

Earl Nightingale

In this 200th episode – Earl Nightingale . . .

The audio segment you heard in the intro was the voice of Earl Nightingale. I've been thinking about this special 200th episode for a few months now, considering what would be fitting. So, I went back and listened to many of the early episodes of On the Fly. I asked myself these questions, Why a podcast? What did I want to share with others? And who unknowingly had the most significant influence on my life?

Little did I realize it then, but in hindsight, one person's destiny and life’s work influenced my thinking for the better. Allow me to introduce you to that person and how he changed the lives of countless millions by serving others through the power of the spoken word.

His name is Earl Nightingale. He was born on March 12, 1921 – March 25, 1989. Earl was an American radio broadcaster, author, philosopher, and entrepreneur fascinated with human character development, motivation, and meaningful existence.

A Marine who served during WWII on the USS Arizona, the ship that was attacked on December 7, 1941, in Pearl Harbor. Killed that day were 1,177 of the 1,512 crew members on board at the time; he was one of only 15 marines to survive the attack that day. While in the Marine Corps, Earl volunteered as an announcer with a local radio station. This eventually sparked his desire to move to Chicago and explore his newfound "broadcasting career."

He began hosting his daily commentary program in Chicago on WGN radio's vast, 50,000-watt clear channel. Earl's broadcasting career spanned over 40 years, and through the period of 1950-1956, he was known as the hero's voice in the popular action-adventure series, 'Sky King,' which also ran on WGN radio.

Nightingale wrote and recorded over 7,000 radio programs, 250 audio programs, television programs, and videos during his lifetime. He authored The Strangest Secret, hailed as "one of the great motivational books of all time." He then went on to narrate this book in 1956. It was the first audio recording to achieve gold record status (over one million copies sold).

So, Why a Podcast?

What captured my attention as a young boy was Earl Nightingale's daily five-minute program, "Our Changing World," which aired in 1959 five minutes a day, five days a week during those 40 years. This is what On the Fly, an on-demand audio segment, is modeled after. Earl’s program was heard on over one thousand radio stations, the most widely syndicated program of its time. Subsequently, those five-minute segments would be compiled and distributed as a digital audio download, The Essence of Success.

I've made those segments a part of my life for over 55 years. Whenever I need a lift or a reminder of what’s important in my life, I re-listen to select segments on my iPhone.

His message is profound yet so simple that people pass over it like a stranger in the night, it’s this:

                        WE BECOME what we think about.

That, my listening friends, is the “Essence” of The Strangest Secret.


                        WE BECOME what we think about.


I challenge you to look him up on YouTube, Amazon, or Google - Earl Nightingale. Get a copy of his book The Strangest Secret and experience how your attitude, relationships, work, and life will blossom.


I’m Patrick Ball; thanks for listening to this 200th milestone episode; see you in the next episode.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Most Popular of All Time

The Gopher Problem and the High Powered Solution

Vacationing in Maine this week, just a short drive down the coast from Freeport, it is hard not to think about the outsized impact one frustrated outdoorsman had on the gear we all use today. Bad equipment can ruin a perfectly good day on the water or the trail, but it takes a special kind of vision to turn cold feet into a century-old empire. This is the story of the company we now know as L.L.Bean, but more importantly, it is a masterclass in integrity, learning from failure, and standing behind your work. In 1912, Leon Leonwood Bean faced a persistent problem: returning from expeditions in the Maine woods with cold, wet feet. Instead of complaining, he got creative. He had a local shoemaker stitch waterproof rubber soles onto the flexible leather uppers of a hunting boot. He called it the Maine Hunting Shoe and mailed a flyer promising perfect satisfaction. Then reality arrived. Ninety of his first 100 pairs failed when the rubber separated from the leather. Not an effective product...
Post a Comment
Read more

On Becoming Real

Some things get better with wear: old shoes, old friendships, and old books. Especially old books. A new volume arrives with crisp corners and a spine that hasn’t yet learned to bend. An old one has been somewhere. It has traveled through time in the hands of people who may no longer be around to tell us what they found inside. The copy of The Velveteen Rabbit (first published in 1922) on my desk is one of those books. My friend Don Hanley gave it to me. This late-1950s Doubleday edition features William Nicholson’s original illustrations and cream paper boards softened by age. Worn corners, a split spine, and colored tabs mark passages worth revisiting. Don didn’t hand me a keepsake. He gave me homework. When we talked about the book recently, he pointed me straight to the nursery conversation between a young rabbit and an old Skin Horse. The rabbit had noticed the mechanical toys around him—the ones with internal gears, bright paint, and stick-out handles that seem terribly impressiv...
Post a Comment
Read more

A Dog, a Beer . . . and the Ghost of 1912

Whenever you step into an American cathedral of our National Pastime built before modern ergonomics, municipal zoning, or crowd-flow dynamics, an unspoken understanding forms, creating a welcoming, timeless atmosphere. You trade legroom, sensible corridors, and personal space for the privilege of communing with ghosts. Last week, Lori and I made our pilgrimage to Fenway Park to watch our Chicago Cubs take on the Boston Red Sox (a taut 0–2 contest that felt spiritually tied to their 1918 World Series meeting). Staying just across the Charles River at the Courtyard Marriott in Cambridge gave us one immeasurable tactical advantage: we walked. While the automotive gridlock around Kenmore Square took on the character of the Siege of Yorktown—horns echoing across the asphalt like musket fire—we simply strolled across the Boston University Bridge, enjoying the river breeze and feeling smugly superior to everyone trapped behind a steering wheel. Fenway, built in the spring of 1912, holds rough...
Post a Comment
Read more

Paris – the End of Silence

✈️  In this special episode: Paris – the End of Silence Sometimes, connection arrives in the most unexpected form—not through grand gestures, but through a quiet voice carried by technology. In a Paris apartment, I finally understood my family’s words . . . and felt my mother’s presence in every sentence. Since I was a little boy, France has been both a beautiful and frustrating paradox in my life. Every six to nine years, my mother, Mauricette, would take my brothers and me back to La Rochelle to visit our French family. The moment we arrived, the air would fill with a sound I loved but couldn’t share in—the rapid-fire, musical rhythm of French. My aunts, uncles, and cousins would warmly sweep me into hugs and kisses, their words flowing like a lovely melody I couldn’t quite catch. I’d smile brightly, trying to communicate with my eyes and hands. But as soon as we stepped off the plane, my mother and her sister-in-law, Joséan, started talking animatedly. They were gone, chatting h...
2 comments
Read more