My Shadow Ran Fast

By Bill Sands

A Man Who Found the Meaning of Life in a Solitary Cell . . .Who Fought His Way Up from Rock Bottom to Win Wealth and Success!

Bill Sands was doing three consecutive life terms in San Quentin by his nineteenth birthday. He admitted that he was on his way to committing murder if he hadn’t been stopped. Thirty years later he was a successful businessman, a famous speaker and the author of a bestselling book. Along the way he had been a pilot, a boxer, a comedian, and a diamond miner. Bill Sands died in 1969, but he left behind as his legacy this exciting story of his life so that others could benefit from his incredible experiences.

Bill Sands was a devoted follower of Napoleon Hill, an author and advisor to two Presidents who devoted his life to creating a formula for success. This formula consisted of seventeen principles that anyone can learn. Here in Sands’ bestselling life story, he demonstrates the power of applying Hill’s formula for success. This edition contains a special introduction explaining exactly which of Hill’s principles Sands used—or abused.

My Shadow Ran Fast is the incredible story of a remarkable man—an ex-convict actively engaged in prison reform work and in the rehabilitation of criminals. Learn how to unleash your power to control your life just as Bill Sands did. Whatever your mind can conceive and believe, you can achieve!

"An excellent portrayal of a very mixed-up and dangerous
young man. I highly recommend this book."-CLINTON T. DUFFY, FORMER WARDEN OF SAN QUENTIN PRISON

• Language: English
• Publisher: G&D Media
• Release date: Feb 15, 2019
• ISBN: 9781722522193

Bill Sands

By his nineteenth birthday Bill Sands was doing three consecutive life terms in San Quentin. He admitted that he was on his way to committing murder if he hadn’t been stopped. Thirty years later he was a successful businessman, a famous speaker and the author of a bestselling book. Along the way he had been a pilot, a boxer, a comedian and a diamond miner. Bill Sands died in 1969, but he left behind as his legacy this exciting story of his life so that others may benefit from his incredible experiences.

Book preview

Introduction

In every adversity, Napoleon Hill often pointed out, there is the seed of an equivalent benefit." You are about to read one of the most inspiring proofs of that statement that has ever been written.

At first glance, Bill Sands and Napoleon Hill came from very different worlds. Sands was a child of wealthy parents and a broken home; he landed in San Quentin by the time he was eighteen. Hill grew up poor, with a supportive father and step-mother, and was on his way to law school by his eighteenth birthday.

But these contrasts can be deceiving. In his early teens, Nap, as his family called him, was the terror of his Virginia county. He packed a pistol and once nearly destroyed a neighbor’s home with a prank. He was a rebel just like Bill Sands.

The difference for Hill was his step-mother, who saw the promise of this bright but destructive boy, and told him that she had faith that he could make of himself anything he wanted. She expressed that faith with the gift of a typewriter and encouraged him to write. Profoundly affected by his step-mother’s confidence in him, Hill did begin to write, setting him on a path that would lead him to become one of the most influential figures of the twentieth century.

Bill Sands didn’t get that kind of encouragement. As you will shortly learn in his own vivid and powerful words, almost everything about Sands’ early life taught him to believe that he was unloved and worthless and that the only way to make his mark on the world was through rebellion and crime.

Yet Bill Sands would come to learn, through harsh and brutal lessons—as well as through the wisdom of a few extraordinary people—that his life was his to shape, his to control. What makes his story so compelling is the honesty with which he describes his mistakes and his discoveries. If ever there were an example of a man who remade himself by sheer determination, it is Bill Sands.

The lessons that Sands learned from the long list of adversities he faced are a testament to Napoleon Hill’s conviction that whatever you can conceive and believe, you can achieve. Only once does Bill Sands tell us that he heard those words directly, but in his own experiences and those of the people who helped him—and in the experiences of the people he helped—their truth is obvious.

The Napoleon Hill Foundation has chosen to publish this new edition of Bill Sands’ bestselling life story because it so clearly demonstrates the power of Napoleon Hill’s philosophy of success. At the beginning of each chapter you will find an introduction which highlights the parallels between Hill’s insights and Sands’ experiences.

Over the course of his life, Napoleon Hill developed a system of seventeen principles that he knew was essential to success, no matter what goal a person had set. First and foremost was the development of a definite purpose for one’s life. When he had such a purpose—whether it was causing trouble or getting out of prison—Bill Sands showed he had the determination to get what he wanted as quickly as was humanly possible. When he lacked that purpose, as you will see, Sands drifted and was unhappy.

Hill also knew that no matter the goal, we all need support, encouragement and wisdom from others. This was the foundation of the master mind alliance, in which people united behind a purpose can achieve far more than a single person. In his life Sands found two striking examples of this, first with the warden of San Quentin prison, Clinton T. Duffy, and Duffy’s wife, and later with his own wife, Pony, a woman who had overcome her own share of trouble and believed profoundly in Sands’ ability to offer hope and inspiration.

You will also see how important faith was to Sands’ life. In his case, it wasn’t the faith of an organized religion, but faith in the fact that giving people the opportunity and the knowledge to improve their lot would be profoundly liberating. Whether it was in Leavenworth prison or the jungles of Bolivia, Sands knew that by putting that faith into practice he could inspire other people to take control of their destinies.

And no matter how harshly life had dealt with Sands, he came to realize that Hill’s concept of going the extra mile, of doing more than it took simply to get by, was not only essential to getting ahead, it was a moral precept that set leaders apart and repaid the effort it took many times over. In the waters of wartime Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), going the extra mile meant that Bill Sands saved a human life and won the respect and admiration of many. The price he paid for his bravery was short-lived, but his commitment to doing whatever it took to help others was not.

In prison and reform school, Sands discovered quickly how brutally he would be repaid for being the most arrogant and meanest guy around. Instead, he began to develop what Hill called a pleasing personality. He was far from being a patsy who would do what it took to get by; he remained as tough as ever, solid was the word in prison, but he made people admire him and that admiration gained him the cooperation and assistance of everyone from fellow inmates to diplomats.

Sands never would have succeeded without personal initiative, the willingness to take charge of his circumstances, to mold them to his needs. No matter the trust a few wise and helpful people—beginning with the father he had thought hated him—expressed in him, he realized that he had to take that trust and demonstrate that it was well-founded, that he had the ability to assert his will against the odds and social conventions that said a convicted felon was always a bad risk.

With W. Clement Stone, Napoleon Hill made the phrase positive mental attitude (PMA) the mantra of people determined to succeed. From the moment he began to believe that he could change his lot in life, Sands developed a determination and resourcefulness that blessed almost every one of his efforts, underscoring the tremendous benefits of keeping his mind focused on his goals and his progress in their direction.

With that PMA, Sands began to develop his enthusiasm, a quality that only increased his ability to convince others of the value of what he wanted to do. Enthusiasm carried him through many moments when his goals seemed distant and terrifying. In those times when he lacked a definite purpose, Sands recognized that it was the absence of enthusiasm that made him restless and kept him on the move, searching for something to which he could devote himself.

As Sands’ stories will demonstrate, prison life required intense focus just to stay alive. In San Quentin he was forced to develop self-discipline, the ability to be always alert to his goals, to evaluate situations as quickly as possible, and to stick with his game plan once it was chosen. He saw that no matter how valuable his goal, no matter how much he wanted it, he had to devote all his energies toward obtaining it or face certain disappointment.

Self-discipline brings with it two additional benefits, the first of which is accurate thinking. Again and again Sands would encounter people who offered him all kinds of useless advice, advice that would have landed him back in prison or worse, yet once he knew what his goals and standards were, he was able to apply them rigorously to make only those choices which brought him closer to what he wanted. There were times, though, when Sands wasn’t able to think accurately, and he paid the price in terms of his happiness and his health.

The other benefit of self-discipline is controlled attention, the heightened focus of all of one’s faculties on one’s goal. By controlling his attention, Sands was able to recognize opportunities which had escaped thousands of other people, to save himself from the efforts of others to undermine or cheat him, and to ignore those factors which distracted him from what he wanted to achieve. It was his controlled attention to the wondrous woman he eventually met that won her love and brought Sands a life-partner who would sustain him in his darkest moments and inspire him to his greatest feats.

Teamwork is the cousin of a master mind alliance, but it requires the ability to motivate and inspire people whose commitment to your cause is not as intense as your master mind partners’. From a dance studio in Fresno to a swimming team in Bombay, Sands was able to inspire teamwork through his enthusiasm, his pleasing personality and his personal initiative.

As for learning from adversity and defeat, Sands did that time and time again, not just from his prison time, but from his difficulties dealing with the bullies, cowards and cheats who ever afterward conspired to punish him for the hard choices he made. It was in fact the most stinging defeat of his post-prison existence that revealed to him the definite purpose that gave his entire life meaning and allowed him to do so much good for people who had made the same mistakes he had.

Creative vision is the quality that allows determined people to see great things. It is more than recognizing opportunity, it is creating opportunity by combining ideas and facts in new ways. When he embarked on his program of inspiring prisoners and other people with the story of his life—and doing it in a way that drew on all his experiences over the years—Sands demonstrated the creative vision that made attaining his life’s goal possible.

Dogged pursuit of a goal can overwhelm one’s life, and Napoleon Hill recognized how dangerous it is to ignore maintaining sound health. Sands learned that lesson almost too late, but once he did, the attention he paid to staying healthy and strong didn’t detract one iota from his goal; in fact it would open new doors for him and allowed him to work and prevail when others might have been overwhelmed.

A little neglect, Benjamin Franklin pointed out, may breed great mischief. Great goals and lofty ambitions—worthy and important as they may be—can lure us away from the small details of our life, but it is in these details that we lay the groundwork for all our successes. Hill would always emphasize the importance of budgeting time and money and Sands recognized very early on how precious his time and resources were. Had he let the demands of required duties overtake him in prison and afterward, he never would have improved himself, never would have been able to take advantage of opportunity when he saw it. Instead, he realized that time and money were tools to exploit. Until he mastered them, he would never master himself.

Mastering ourselves means mastering our habits, otherwise they quickly master us. Sands’ first significant habit was rebellion against authority; that habit mastered him completely. Only his dedication to his goal of being released from prison motivated him to begin changing his habits. But once he began to cultivate the habits he needed to improve himself, he spent his life reinforcing them so that they always brought him closer to his goals. This miraculous process, by which the good work we do strengthens itself, is what Hill called cosmic habitforce, the means by which the universe maintains order. But cosmic habitforce applies whether habits are good or bad. Had Sands never mastered his habit of rebellion, it surely would have made him a permanent resident of the California penal system.

Once out of prison, Sands—unaided, misunderstood and alone—sought to find himself, to discover what life was really about and make the most of it. He traveled around the world, from one high-paced adventure to another. He craved action, excitement, the good things of life. Several times he became a rich, successful businessman. But money and material possessions were not the answer. Slowly he came to realize what his life goal must be, and only then did he find satisfaction and a sense of accomplishment.

It’s to be hoped that your life has not taught you the lessons that Bill Sands learned quite as harshly. But whether you’ve walked a harder road up till now than Sands did, or you’ve already enjoyed the benefits of the wisdom Napoleon Hill believed is humanity’s birthright, you’ll find that this remarkable tale will inspire and surprise you, offering insight and practical examples of the way in which anyone can turn a life around and have a profound effect on both self and community.

BOOK ONE

Chapter 1

Being born to wealth and privilege may seem like the fast track to success. Cash and social access appear to bring opportunity trailing along behind. But the child of the poorest parents can receive blessings a thousands times more valuable: self-confidence, love, and the sense that our fate is our own to control.

Bill Sands did not grow up with those important gifts. He learned instead that he was an object, a tool. The innate human desire to shape his own life was in him, but circumstances gave it only one outlet: rebellion.

You cannot erase the mistakes of your upbringing or your youth, but you can recognize them and decide to change the effect they have on the way you think and act. Life either rides us, Napoleon Hill noted, or we ride it. Consider carefully whether you are still reacting to bad lessons you learned long ago, whether you are letting your past ride you. If you are, decide today that you have learned new, better lessons, and that you will build your life upon them.

This is the way the trouble started.

The one incident that closed the door forever on my childhood and triggered a chain of bitter events that didn’t come to a halt until I was 23 years old. Until that day, life had been normal for me, as the only child of a wealthy and politically powerful man and his beautiful cultivated wife.

Except, of course, for the beatings …

I was then 12 years old. We lived in the biggest house at the peak of the highest hill in Whittier, California. Long after we had moved away, the house was still known as Judge Sewell’s place.

The world knew my father, Harry Fisher Sewell, tall and kindly in appearance, resembling a smooth-shaven Abraham Lincoln, as an intense, passionate man. He was driven by overpowering motives. He was an inspired speaker. He had an unbelievable capacity for work. A brilliant attorney, he had acquired a reputation for winning tough cases and was a natural for politics.

He was also, I learned later, an alcoholic.

During my childhood, my impression of him was vague, perhaps because I saw so little of him. He was at that time a Superior Court judge in Los Angeles.

My mother in her way had stature equal to his. Her charm, wit and brilliance captivated all who met her. Her personality won for her admiration as a gracious hostess during my father’s tenures as an assemblyman, as a power in the legislature and, finally, as a judge. She was ambitious and obsessed with a need for perfection. Possessed of a keen, analytic mind, she found political life fascinating. She had even greater goals for my father than he had for himself.

The road leading up to Judge Sewell’s place was steep. I was out of breath as I ran between the brick gateposts in the driveway. My father’s black town car was already parked. I went into the kitchen, where my mother, cool and serene in the heat, was overseeing cook’s preparations for dinner. I had been taught that grubby little boys didn’t grab pretty creatures for fear of soiling them, so I blew her a kiss. She reacted in her usual aloof manner. This cool hands-off air worked as effectively with our political guests as with me. We all responded with a sense of awe.

There was nothing unusual in the events of that day. Actually, there wasn’t even a beating. Mother and I had dinner together, while my father was served a tray in the library. This was his custom whenever he needed to check over documents before an evening appointment with a client.

At bedtime, I went upstairs to my room. It must have been late when my mother shook me into wakefulness. She turned the lamp full into my blinking eyes to make sure I was conscious.

Son, come downstairs with me, she ordered. There’s something your father and I want to discuss with you.

Too sleepy to be more than faintly puzzled, still confused by the abrupt awakening, I fumbled with my bathrobe and followed her down the hall. Instead of going into the library, the usual gathering place when the family was alone, we entered the spacious, formal parlor.

There sat my father. He was alone. Instead of slumping in a relaxed manner, as was his habit, he sat stiff and erect on a small hard chair.

Now, I was fully awake. Suddenly fear clutched me; I could scarcely breathe. Tension was holding my father rigid. He looked tired, angry and (Was it possible?) frightened. My father, frightened!

He looked at my mother, and when he spoke, his voice was flat and rasping, "If you do this thing, I shall never forgive you."

I had never heard my mother addressed this way before. I stared at her, stunned, waiting for an explanation. There was something strange in her manner. Although she was regal as ever, she looked like an imperious goddess who had decreed that the sacrificial ceremony begin. The illustration was fleeting. Everything was real again once she spoke. She didn’t answer my father directly. Instead, she turned to me with the familiar cool self-control.

Son, I am going to divorce your father. Do you understand what that means?

Understand? How could I understand? There had been no hint, no warning, no sign of friction evident to my boyish perceptions. They were my gods. I adored and worshipped them. How could they do this to each other and to me?

I looked to my mother through tears I couldn’t control. I searched her face in desperate hope. But all I saw was disapproval. She was realistic; she had asked me a question. Did I understand it? Before I could manage even a confused answer, her impatience revealed itself.

It means you must decide which parent you want.

I stared, numb and confused.

There it was. She actually expected me to choose between them. To pick one and turn my back on the other. I waited with childish faith for a miracle that would bring them together and me within their arms. Perhaps it was some kind of test, cruel, ridiculous, but a test to discover what I would do.

But neither broke. Neither came toward me. Neither said, I love you, I want you, I can’t live without you. Yet this was the only thing I could say to them. To both of them.

Suddenly a shattering thought exploded in my head. Neither loved me. The revelation was in their faces. They weren’t testing my love. All they wanted to find out was which of them would be saddled with me. I stood there unable to speak or stop the flow of tears. I couldn’t make a choice. I could not be disloyal to either of my parents.

I rushed out of the room, crying like a child. Twice I stumbled on the stairs and finally made it back to my room, where I threw myself on the bed and pulled the ends of the pillow around my ears to shut out the coldness downstairs. But I couldn’t shut out the terror inside of me.

My mother came into the room again. Her strong hands pulled me from the bed a second time and propelled me toward the door. She was relentless.

Mother, if you divorce Dad, we won’t be able to have our Christmas mornings …

I want you downstairs, she said firmly, with patent disgust at my tears and frail logic. We can discuss Christmas later.

Once again I was marched into that room. Once again she demanded my decision. Since I could not speak, she directed my answer.

I think you are old enough to realize a son’s place is at his mother’s side, and I am sure you will stay with me. I have told your father so. That’s correct, isn’t it, Son?

Perhaps if my father had spoken then, my future would have been different. But he sat there with his head between his hands. What hurt most was my feeling that my mother was manipulating my life in order to spite my father. For there was no love in her voice, either for me or him. But evidently he didn’t even care, didn’t care at all.

He didn’t raise his head, and finally I said, I—guess—so. Once the words were out, the dam inside of me broke. I ran sobbing from the room. No one followed me this time. I lay in bed waiting for someone to come and comfort me. Finally I cried myself to sleep. My dreams were haunted by the conviction that neither my father nor my mother ever had loved or wanted me.

The following year was for me a nightmare of boarding schools. My mother obtained a divorce and arranged a new life for herself. I neither saw nor heard from my father. I told myself that, after that night in the parlor, I hadn’t really expected to.

I was 13 years old and miserable. One drowsy summer afternoon, I was late in getting home. It wasn’t until I had actually swung off my bike that I remembered Mother’s earlier admonition to return well before suppertime. Mother was in the garden, snipping roses for the dining centerpiece from the abundant climbers that surrounded the large patio.

Go to your room, she ordered curtly.

Suddenly weary and apprehensive, I climbed the stairs and entered my large pleasant room. I went into my bathroom, stripped my shirt and splashed my face with cold water. Mother had not yet appeared, so I quickly doffed my dusty blue jeans, socks and shoes, washed properly and began to comb my hair.

Does that make you feel better?

I don’t know how long she had been standing at the bathroom door. Her question was rhetorical; she was leading up to something.

"Tell me then, how does this feel?" Her usually calm voice had turned into a scream. She was holding a long switch in her hand, and now I saw her raise it in the direction of my nearly naked body. I turned and dodged. But not far enough. Something hot and sharp struck the side of my left arm and scraped onto my back. I touched the hurt spot with my hand, which was immediately stained with blood. I looked at my mother with horror.

Her eyes were alight, the way they looked when she appraised her handiwork on the Christmas tree. But there were strange and terrifying lines pressed into her face. Her soft lips were thinned in frenzy.

Turn around! she ordered. I hesitated. The whip came down in an arc, leaving a welt across my face. Her weapon was a yard-long branch of the rose climber, which was covered from one end to the other with quarter-inch thorns. She was still wearing a garden glove in one hand; the other glove was wrapped around the branch to protect her own flesh.

Again there was the faint whirring sound. This time pain burned a streak across my buttocks, which were protected only by my cotton shorts. I could feel the thorns catch in the material, causing a dozen lacerations of my skin.

Take them off. Take them off, so I can get to the bare skin. Then I’ll give you something to remember this by … Her eerie scream had a worse effect on me than the pain. I was paralyzed with horror; my hands gripped the shorts. The branch struck me again with demonic furry, this time across my shoulders. I moved my hands up to ward off the incredible pain. At that moment, she reached out and jerked my shorts by the beltline from the rear with such violence that they tore. The buttons flew off. It seems odd that I should still recall the sound they made against the tile floor.

The next sound I heard was not my mother’s voice but my own. The scream frightened me as much as the agony in my own flesh. My vocal cords hadn’t reacted until the third blow. Then the thorns snagged and ripped cruelly through the quivering flesh. There was only that one scream torn from inside of me; it was followed by a convulsive sobbing. I don’t know how many times that branch rose and fell. But, at last, I waited for a blow and it did not come.

I was leaning on my elbows over the basin. Vaguely I realized the medicine cabinet door above my head was being opened. Suddenly there was a renewal of pain. She was sloshing alcohol over my back, stirring the coals of agony into hideous searing fire. I had never before fainted, but this was more than I could take. The bathroom seemed to fill with grey smoke; the walls began to tilt and turn. My knees folded.

"Please, Mother, please …"

That whisper was the last thing I remembered. Still, I had a hazy impression of her taking some towels into my bedroom and spreading them on my bed. Then she returned to get me, and placing her powerful hands on my arms, she steered me to my bed.

I lay there like a whipped animal, dully relieved to find its ordeal over but too cowed to move or to whimper. After an eternity, the alcohol ceased to burn; all that remained was the agony of the incident itself, which was more powerful than the physical pain. There was the shattering realization that something was shockingly wrong in my mother’s behavior toward me. I had rebelled before at her sadistic attitude toward punishment but never really questioned it. An only child is in a quandary. Often, his life—like mine—is emotionally barren. He has no standards to draw on, no guideposts to give him insight into the normal relationship between parent and child. Unbelievable as it may sound, he often thinks that whatever is happening to him is a rule of conduct for all families. That my mother showed me no love hurt me, naturally, but I consoled myself with the thought that she must be proud of me. Her friends complimented her on my behavior. But Mother was never swayed by the ideas of others. She taught me to love Mother, God and my Country. In that order.

But that day, the beating served only to reinforce the bitter conclusion that, while she taught me to love Mother, it was impossible for Mother to love back. This, evidently, was true of my father, too. Neither of them, I was certain, had ever loved me.

Eventually, I managed to get to my feet. It was an ordeal. There was no great scene of devastation in bed or bathroom. What I didn’t realize was that the devastation was there, inside of me, and already biding its time.

Hope, like the craving for love, dies hard in the very young. Never once did I cease to hope that by the pursuit of excellence I might earn my mother’s affection. The need to excel paid off well at school. The need for perfection, combined with persistence and an endless capacity for work, gained for me a reputation as a good student and athlete. Consequently, my relationship with my schoolmates was satisfying. In fact, I seemed to get along well with everyone but my parents. Yet it was from my father that I had inherited a feeling for words. I placed in statewide oratorical contests. My achievements in swimming meets attracted newspaper coverage as school, city and state records began to fall.

Now surely, I thought, my mother would express some pride in me. But she remained indifferent. She rejected my pleas that she attend the swimming meets and dramatic presentations. I longed for her to see me in an outstanding role. But she had no time for these matters—only for punishments. Even a minor infraction aroused the threat of a beating. Because this had been such a traumatic time of life for me, I recently checked with former teachers, coaches, friends and associates to discover just what sort of adolescent I really was. My conduct was