It is understandable that an ambitious young man, in his late twenties and early thirties, wanting success in all its various guises, and with a belief in the power of the mind, would be attracted to certain kinds of books, tapes and courses. The young man I’m talking about was, of course, me.

How could I resist books with titles like The Magic of Thinking Big, How to Win Friends and Influence People, Think and Grow Rich, How to Have Confidence and Power in Dealing with People? Around this time my mother, browsing in a used book store, happened upon six volumes of a set called Personal Success Library. I still have them.

These books shared certain characteristics.

Firstly, they were relentlessly upbeat, replete with success anecdotes which may or may not have been true. For example, there were many paragraphs that read like this:

“In 1902, Wedgewood G. Davenport Junior went to his boss and showed him how he could cut the time taken to produce widgets by 75%. The boss said to himself, “This is a clever fellow. I shall make him head of the Widgets section.” Davenport was only 16 at the time, but within three years he had been promoted to Vice President. By the time he was thirty he was a millionaire with a beautiful wife, two children, and a large country house with a swimming pool. What opportunities can you spot in your line of work? In your workbook, write down three ideas that you can work on over the next week.”

Secondly, as indicated above, many of them came with accompanying workbooks, for your homework. The Personal Success Library even has sets of cards with the main points on them, so that you can quickly “mug up” on a strategy while eating your breakfast. (I have never used them, or the workbooks.)

Thirdly, they were terribly old-fashioned, especially in style.

Interestingly, if you can get beyond these stylistic hurdles, the advice isn’t at all bad. I’ve just read, in one of the Personal Success Library books, a short chapter called How To Teach. As a teacher, there isn’t really anything I’d disagree with, even though the book is now nearing seventy years old.

Tapes and talks with titles like “How to attract money” also held their charms. I enjoyed them, though whether they worked or not is another matter. If they did, I didn’t notice! I don’t suppose my natural cynicism helped. I often thought to myself that probably the best way of attracting money is to give talks and make tapes with titles like “How to Attract Money.”

The only course I remember, with fondness as it happens, was one called Loving Relationships Training. This was a two day, or possibly three day, intensive that included talks, breathing techniques and other elements that I no longer recall. The atmosphere was highly charged, in a positive way. Once again, my cynicism whispered to me that such positivity was an illusion, or a mirage, simply the natural outcome of spending hours every day hearing positive things from the people running the course and the people on it. However, something happened which caused me to doubt that that was the whole story.

This was back in the days when smoking was allowed on the London Underground, and nobody spoke to each other while travelling. For example, I will never forget sitting on the tube surrounded by dozens of men with their heads buried in the newspaper. The train went through a tunnel, and at the same time all the lights went out, so we were travelling in complete darkness. When we finally emerged into the daylight, all those men were still in exactly the same positions even though it would have been impossible to read their papers in those circumstances.

Well, on the way home from the first day of the Loving Relationships Training, complete strangers kept starting a conversation with me. One person asked me if I had a light for his cigarette. Another gave her views on the current political situation. Someone else speculated whether it was going to rain tomorrow. All this time I just wanted to read my book, How To Win Friends and Influence People.

The next day the folk running the course asked if anyone wanted to relate any experiences they’d had, so I put myself forward and related that journey. People were falling about laughing, but that isn’t the main point of this article. Afterwards a girl I thought was stunning, and who had not given me the time of day before, came up to me.

“What happened?!”, she asked. “You usually walk around as if you’re about to ask permission to breathe. But you absolutely came alive while giving that talk.”

I didn’t know what had happened, but I knew that it felt good. It was also then that I knew that while I am no good at small talk and networking as is commonly understood, I know how to engage an audience and work at a level beyond my self-doubt.

So, success at last – just not in the way I expected!