After serving in World War II Og Mandino found himself with a severe drinking problem and a flagging career as a salesman. When his wife left him – taking their child with her – he was on the verge of suicide, but decided to look into self-help books before he did. What he read, he later said, changed his life and eventually helped him to stop his destructive drinking. He became a bestselling author, publishing his major work "The Greatest Salesman in the World" in 1968. In this book, Mandino uses a fictional character named Hafid, who encounters various Biblical figures throughout his life. The book includes Mandino's "10 Vows of Success" which he says readers can follow to find a satisfying life. These include actively defining goals and avoiding self-pity. Mandino said his works were inspired by the Bible and influenced by Napoleon Hill, W. Clement Stone, and Emmet Fox. He believed fervently in learning from one's own mistakes and wrote, "Every defeat, every heartbreak, every loss, contains its own seed, its own lesson on how to improve your performance the next time.”
Mark Sappenfield
Dear Reader,
About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:
“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”
If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.
But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.
The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.
We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”
If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.
