Synopsis
The theme of this unique book is that the three main qualities necessary to achieve success are Judgment, Industry, and Health. A person may have two of these attributes and go far. But unless he has all three, he will not go all the way. The bitterest thing in life is failure. And the pity is that it is almost always the result of some avoidable error. There need be no such thing. Everyone can achieve his own success. The trouble in so many cases is that it takes time and opportunity for someone to discover in what direction his own natural bent lies. Hence the misfits. A young man may choose the wrong trade or profession, or he may be in the right business but the wrong department. The employer, nevertheless, votes him of little or no use. Much worse, the employee himself admits his failure. And by that very act of admission he has failed. Anyone who has strayed in youth to the wrong profession and failed may yet, however, prove himself an immense success in another field. To take a practical instance: salesmanship requires, above all, the spirit of optimism. Yet that same spirit in the finance department might ruin a firm. Thus the quality that brought failure in finance might mean sure success in the sales department. Hence no young man should be judged a failure on his initial try. He may yet succeed in another venture. Like all human affairs, success is partly a result of predestination and partly of free will. You cannot create genius, but you can either improve or destroy it. What are the qualities that make for your success? I repeat: They are three: Judgment, Industry, and Health. And the greatest of these is Judgment. This book will show you how to use these three keys to attain success in your own life.
About the Author
Born in Ontario, Sir William Maxwell Aitken (1879-1964), later ennobled as Lord Beaverbrook, was initially a successful Canadian financier before retiring from business in 1910 to embark upon a political career. In 1910 he took up a seat in the House of Commons, where he represented Ashton-under-Lyne for the Conservative party. With good political connections, and a close friend of future Prime Minister David Lloyd George, Aitken served on the Western Front from early in 1915 as a journalist attached to Canadian forces (as 'Canadian Eye Witness'). In May 1915 Aitken was appointed as the Canadian force's official records officer and, from 1916, the Canadian government's official representative in France. Aitken was ennobled as Baron Beaverbrook by Lloyd George (now Prime Minister, succeeding Asquith) in 1917 and appointed to the London government on 10 February 1918, as Minister of Information - dealing with government propaganda, where he worked alongside notables including Charles Masterson and John Buchan (the latter author of the bestselling war stories The 39 Steps, Greenmantle and Mr Standfast). Beaverbrook's elevation to government was at least in part due to his role in engineering Asquith's ousting as premier with Lloyd George as his replacement in December 1916. An energetic man, Beaverbrook immediately set about a coordinated British propaganda programme, responsible for the dissemination of war information at home, among Allies and in neutral countries. His close colleague, Lord Northcliffe, meanwhile was responsible for directing propaganda towards the populations of enemy nations. Clever in his use of propaganda, Beaverbrook commissioned a series of poster campaigns designed by famed artists of the period, and encouraged successful authors to write pamphlets and newspaper articles; the latter group included such luminaries as Rudyard Kipling, H G Wells and Sir Henry Newbolt, as well as Buchan). With the renewed outbreak of war in 1939 and Winston Churchill's appointment as Prime Minister in 1940, Beaverbrook returned to government, serving as Minister for Aircraft Production (1940-41), Minister of Supply (1941-42), Minister of War Production (1942) and Lord Privy Seal (1943-45). He died in 1964.
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