Printed courtesy Dwight L. Sullivan, 96 years old

There is very little difference in people says Clement Stone, but that little difference makes a big difference. The little difference is attitude. The big difference is whether it is positive or negative.

Nowhere is this principle better illustrated than in the story of the young bride from the East who, during the war, followed her husband to an Army camp on the edge of the desert in California. Living conditions were primitive at best, and he had advised against it, but she wanted to be with him.

The only housing they could find was a run-down shack near an Indian village. The heat was unbearable in the daytime -- 115 degrees in the shade. The wind blew constantly, spreading dust and sand all over everything. The days were long and boring. Her only neighbors were the Indians, none of whom spoke English.

When her husband was ordered farther into the desert for two weeks of maneuvers, loneliness and the wretched living conditions got the best of her. She wrote her mother that she was coming home -- she just couldn't take any more. In a short time she received a reply which included these two lines:

Two men looked out from the prison bars,
One saw mud, the other saw the stars.

She read the lines over and over and began to feel ashamed of herself. And she didn't really want to leave her husband. All right, she'd look for the stars.

In the following days she set out to make friends with the Indians. She asked them to teach her weaving and pottery. At first they were distant, but as soon as they sensed her interestwas genuine they returned her friendship. She became fascinated with their culture, history -- everything about them.

She began to study the desert as well, and soon it, too, changed from a desolate, forbidding place to a marvelous thing of beauty. She had her mother send her books. She studied the forms of the cacti, the yuccas and the Joshua trees. She collected seashells that had been left there millions of years ago when the sands had been an ocean floor. Later, she became such an expert on the area that she wrote a book about it.

What had changed? Not the desert; not the Indians. Simply by changing her own attitude she had transformed a miserable experience into a highly rewarding one.