Ambition and Success. Orison Swett Marden

larger outlook, and their ambition grows with their achievement.

      If you are getting a fair salary in a mediocre position there is danger of hypnotizing yourself into the belief that there is no need to exert yourself very much to get up higher. There is danger of limiting your ambition so that you will be half content to remain a perpetual clerk when you have the ability to do much better.

      This satisfaction with the lesser when the greater is possible often results from relatives or friends telling you that you are doing well, and that you would better let well enough alone. These advisers say: “Don’t take chances with a certainty. It is true you are not getting a very big salary, but it is a sure thing, and if you give it up with the hope of something better you may do worse.” Don’t let any one or any conditions make you think you have not the ability to match your longings. Wrapped up in every human being there are energies which, if unfolded, concentrated, and given proper attention will develop his highest ideal.

      Our longings are creative principles, prophecies, indicative of potencies equal to the task of actual achievement. These latent potencies are not given to mock us. There are no sealed orders wrapped within the brain without the accompanying ability to execute them.

      When you once get a glimpse of yourself as you were intended by your Maker to be, with all of your latent possibilities developed into realities; when you once see yourself as the superb man it is possible for you to be, nothing and no one but yourself can prevent you from attaining your ambition.

      It is only the man who has stopped growing that feels satisfied with his achievements. The growing man feels a great lack of wholeness, of completeness. Everything in him seems to be unfinished because it is growing. The expanding man is always dissatisfied with his accomplishment, is always reaching out for something larger, fuller, completer.