Poverty and failure are self-invited. The disasters people dread often come to them. Worry and anxiety enfeeble their force of mind and so blunt their creative and productive faculties that they are unable to exercise them properly. Fear of failure, or lack of faith in one’s ability, is one of the most potent causes of failure. Many people of splendid powers have attained only mediocre success, and some are total failures, because they set bounds to their achievement, beyond which they did not allow themselves to think that they could pass. They put limitations to their ability; they cast stumbling blocks in their way by aiming only at mediocrity or predicting failure for themselves, talking their wares down instead of up, disparaging their business, and belittling their powers.
Thoughts are forces, and the constant affirmation of one’s inherent right and power to succeed will change inhospitable conditions and unkind environments to favorable ones. If you resolve upon success with energy, you will very soon create a success atmosphere and things will come your way. You can make yourself a success magnet
“If things would only change!” you cry. What is it that changes things ? Wishing, or hustling?—dreaming, or working? Can you expect them to change while you merely sit down and wish them to change? How long would it take you to build a house sitting on the foundation and wishing that it would go up? Wishing does not amount to anything unless it is backed by endeavor, determination, and grit.
Webster’s father was much chagrined and pained when Daniel refused a fifteen-hundred-dollar clerkship in the court of common pleas in New Hampshire, which he had worked hard to secure for him after he left college. “Daniel,” he said, “don’t you mean to take that office?” “No, indeed, father; I hope I can do much better than that. I mean to use my tongue in the courts, not my pen. I mean to be an actor, not a register of other men’s acts.” Sublime self-faith was characteristic of this giant’s career.
Every child should be taught to expect success, and to believe that he was born to achieve, as the acorn is destined to become an oak. It is cruel for parents and teachers to tell children that they are dull or stupid, or that they are not like others of their age. They should inspire them, instead, with hope and confidence and belief in their success birthright. A child should be trained to expect great things, and should believe firmly in his God-given power to accomplish something worth while in the world.
Without self-faith and an iron will man is but the plaything of chance,—a puppet of circumstances. With these he is a king, and it is in childhood the seeds must be sown that will make him a conqueror in life.
If you want to reach nobility, you can never do it by holding the thought of inferiority,—the thought that you are not as good as other people; that you are not as able; that you cannot do this; that you cannot do that. “Can’t” philosophy never does anything but tear down; it never builds up. If you want to amount to anything in the world, you must hold up your head. Say to yourself continually: “I am no beggar. I am no pauper. I am not a failure. I am a prince. I am a king. Success is my birthright, and nobody shall deprive me of it.”
A proper self-esteem is not a vulgar quality. It is a very sacred one. To esteem oneself justly is to get a glimpse of the Infinite’s plan in us. It is to get the perfect image which the Creator had in mind when He formed us,—the complete man or woman, not the dwarfed, pinched one which lack of self-esteem or of self-confidence sees. When we get a glimpse of our immortal selves, we shall see possibilities of which we never before dreamed. A sense of wholeness—of power and self-confidence,—will come into our lives which will transform them. When we rate ourselves properly we shall be in tune with the Infinite; our faculties will be connected with an electric wire which carries unlimited power; and we shall no longer stumble in darkness, doubt and weakness. We shall be invincible.
Chapter II.
Getting Aroused
“HOW’S the boy gittin’ on, Davis?” asked Farmer John Field, as he watched his son, Marshall, waiting upon a customer. “Well, John, you and I are old friends,” replied Deacon Davis, as he took an apple from a barrel and handed it to Marshall’s father as a peace offering; “we are old friends, and I don’t want to hurt your feelin’s; but I’m a blunt man, and air goin’ to tell you the truth. Marshall is a good, steady boy, all right, but he wouldn’t make a merchant if he stayed in my store a thousand years. He weren’t cut out for a merchant. Take him back to the farm, John, and teach him how to milk cows!”
If Marshall Field had remained as clerk in Deacon Davis’s store in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, where he got his first position, he could never have become one of the world’s merchant princes. But when he went to Chicago and saw the marvelous examples around him of poor boys who had won success, it aroused his ambition and fired him with the determination to be a great merchant himself. “If others can do such wonderful things,” he asked himself, “why cannot I?”
Of course, there was the making of a great merchant in Mr. Field from the start; but circumstances, an ambition-arousing environment, had a great deal to do with stimulating his latent energy and bringing out his reserve force. It is doubtful if he would have climbed so rapidly in any other place than Chicago. In 1856, when young Field went there, this marvelous city was just starting on its unparalleled career. It had then only about eighty-five thousand inhabitants. A few years before it had been a mere Indian trading village. But the city grew by leaps and bounds, and always beat the predictions of its most sanguine inhabitants. Success was in the air. Everybody felt that there were great possibilities there.
Many people seem to think that ambition is a quality born within us; that it is not susceptible to improvement; that it is something thrust upon us which will take care of itself. But it is a passion that responds very quickly to cultivation, and it requires constant care and education, just as the faculty for music or art does, or it will atrophy.
If we do not try to realize our ambition, it will not keep sharp and defined. Our faculties become dull and soon lose their power if they are not exercised. How can we expect our ambition to remain fresh and vigorous through years of inactivity, indolence, or indifference? If we constantly allow opportunities to slip by us without making any attempt to grasp them, our inclination will grow duller and weaker.
“What I most need,” as Emerson says, “is somebody to make me do what I can.” To do what I can, that is my problem; not what a Napoleon or a Lincoln could do, but what I can do. It makes all the difference in the world to me whether I bring out the best thing in me or the worst,—whether I utilize ten, fifteen, twenty-five, or ninety per cent, of my ability.
Everywhere we see people who have reached middle life or later without being aroused. They have developed only a small percentage of their success possibilities. They are still in a dormant state. The best thing in them lies so deep that it has never been awakened. When we meet these people we feel conscious that they have a great deal of latent power that has never been exercised. Great possibilities of usefulness and of achievement are, all unconsciously, going to waste within them.
Some time ago there appeared in the newspapers an account of a girl who had reached the age of fifteen years, and yet had only attained the mental development of a small child. Only a few things interested her. She was dreamy, inactive, and indifferent to everything around her most of the time until, one day, while listening to a hand organ on the street, she suddenly awakened to full consciousness. She came to herself; her faculties were aroused, and in a few days she leaped forward years in her development. Almost in a day she passed from childhood to budding" womanhood. Most of us have an enormous amount of power, of latent force, slumbering within us, as it slumbered in this girl, which could do marvels if we would only awaken it.
The judge of the municipal court in a flourishing western city, one of the most highly esteemed jurists in his state, was in middle life, before his latent power was aroused, an illiterate blacksmith. He is now sixty, the owner