I realize looking back that so much of my destiny lay in a handful of stories, a few that were personal and others I found in books.
My parents taught me that doing well in business and doing good deeds in the world should be inseparable. They instilled in me an entrepreneurial spirit that looked forward to philanthropic ends. I was taught how to create wealth in order to practice virtue.
I loved the evenings at our house as my mother, Josie Jackson, created a soothing atmosphere that eventually lulled us to sleep. After dinner and once all of our chores were finished, my mom would relax for half an hour by sitting down at the piano and playing her favorite songs. My mother was a dedicated school teacher. When she was twelve years old, her church’s regular piano player died suddenly, so Mom started playing the piano for church services.
In the evenings when Mom’s piano playing stopped, we kids all headed for the sofa. We curled up around her, and she read to us. Our home was full of books, and usually we got to choose the evening stories. It was in that setting that I first began to hear about young boys who had overcome incredible obstacles to become great successes.
I learned about the adventures of Andy Carnegie, the little Highlander boy who had come to America from Scotland when he was thirteen years old. I had nearly memorized the stories of Henry Ford, Cecil Rhodes, and William Carey, but something made my heart pound when I listened to Mom read about John D. Rockefeller and Dwight L. Moody.
During my teen years, I read books like Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich, the book Hill wrote with W. Clement Stone, Success Through a Positive Mental Attitude, and Stone’s book The Success System That Never Fails.
The power of the stories my mom read to me changed my life for good. By the time a child is three years old, there is a readiness level to mentally and emotionally reach out to the outside world to find pegs on which to hang feelings, dreams, and fantasies.
Those pegs have a way of later becoming the linchpins of life. I’m so glad my mom took the time to read enduring stories to me.