15.
[Sidenote: The Pill Fiend.]
How often we see the pill fiend. In his vest pocket he has a small
apothecary shop--a collection of round paste-board boxes and little
bottles. Every little while he dopes himself. If his stomach is on a
strike, he pops in a pill. If his head aches, he takes a tablet. If he
sneezes, he takes a cold-cure pill.
When anyone around speaks of a pain or ache, he hands the person a pill.
The pill eater is a hypochondriac, and very likely his doctor knows it.
His salvation is that the doctor probably gives him harmless stuff in
pill form. The patient doesn't know this, and it's like a rabbit's foot
or a piece of pork rubbed on a wart--it satisfies the mind and nature
makes the cure.
Often, however, the pills are not innocent; the pill fiend buys the
tablets and pills direct from the druggist. The headache tablet is most
likely one of the coal tar drugs like acetanilid, and that is positively
harmful when taken too often.
There are times to take pills--in cases of emergency, when you can shock
nature with a poison and bring a wholesome reaction.
These times are rare, and the doctor should be the sole judge as to when
such treatment is necessary.
Exercise, diet, correct habits of living will prevent the congestion and
clogging-up that causes illness and pain.
[Sidenote: A Dangerous Habit.]
The pill habit is nothing less than a drug habit, and the drug habit
positively weakens the system. The headache tablet does not cure the
headache; it only stops the pain; the evil is still there. The headache
is merely nature's signal that something is out of whack.
Headaches are generally caused by stomach disorders, eye strain, or
neuralgia; the latter in turn is caused by too much uric acid in the
system.
Eat fruit, drink plenty of water, and that will flush the system and
stop stomachic headache.
See the optician if it's eyes. If you have a frequent headache in the
forehead, very likely it's the eyes, even though you do not suspect it.
If it's neuralgia, get a corrective diet from the doctor.
I know scores of men, and women, too, who take pills enough to kill a
person. Their systems have been educated up to it; they are saturated
with poison.
And the worst of it is they never get well while taking the pills; it is
only a temporary deadening of the pain.
Then, there are many who take pills to make them sleep. That's a crime.
It's self-murder by slow degrees, for they are surely shortening their
lives by this poison dope pill habit.
[Sidenote: Nature, the Curer.]
Mark this: Nature, and Nature alone, effects cures, and it's in very,
very few instances that a poison pill can be used to advantage. You can
keep well by getting good air, good water, good sunshine, good food,
good exercise, good rest, good cheer and good thought. That is what I
call my golden prescription, and it will do wonders for you, and every
doctor will tell you so.
Pills kill, if you keep up the habit. There are no two ways about it. I
say positively and knowingly that this pill habit is absolutely life
shortening.
Don't try to argue; the evidence is unshakable on this point.
If you could have seen the derelicts in the hospitals that I have, if
you could have seen the wretched bodies, destroyed nerve systems, the
broken-down, emaciated, hopeless shells of men and women addicted to the
baneful pill habit, you would be as positive as I am that pills kill if
you keep up the habit.
Life is sweet and precious to us all. Do not shorten it by taking pills
and tablets for every ache or pain. Try nature's way. Realize that
mental suggestion and will-power will drive away most pains or temporary
aches.
Brace up, cheer up; chuck the pills in the garbage can.
16.
[Sidenote: Two Kinds of Pleasures.]
There are two principal kinds of pleasures that man seeks; one is
material pleasures, and about ninety-nine per cent of the human family
devote themselves to these. The remainder--the one per cent--seek mental
pleasures, and this little group is the one that gets the real, lasting,
satisfying and improving pleasures out of life.
The material pleasures are the social pleasures of eating, displaying,
possessing, and so forth. Material pleasures generate in the human the
desire for fluff, feathers, and four-flushing.
Material pleasures accentuate the desire to possess things, and in the
strife for possession, hearts are broken, fortunes wasted, nerves
shattered, and the finer sentiments calloused.
The homes where material pleasures abound are the ones where worry,
neurasthenia and nervous prostration abound.
Material pleasures are merely stimulants for the time being, and there
always come the intermittent reflexes of gloom and depression.
The desire to show off, to excite envy in others, is always present at
the homes where material pleasures are the rule.
Material pleasures call for crowds. Mental pleasures are best enjoyed in
solitude.
The material pleasure-seeker lives a life of convention, engagements,
routine, strain, and high tension.
[Sidenote: Mental Pleasures Are Best.]
The person who is so fortunate as to appreciate and follow mental
pleasures is serene, natural, happy and content. A cozy room, loved ones
around, music, books, love and social conversation--those are mental
pleasures; those are best. He who can pick up a book and read things
worth while, gets satisfaction unknown to those whose life is a round of
banquets, theaters, dances, automobiles, parties, bridge, clubs and
society doings.
When you spend the evening playing cards, the chances are you come home
late, and when you retire, it takes perhaps an hour or so before you
fall to sleep.
And during the night you dream of cards, of certain hands, of certain
circumstances, or certain persons who were prominent in the evening's
game.
The reason you do not go to sleep after an exciting evening is that you
have set your nerve carburetor at high tension and have forgotten to
lower it before you go to sleep.
[Sidenote: Good Reading.]
On the other hand, when you have been reading a restful book, full of
good thought, you establish an equilibrium, a relaxed state of nerves,
and particularly, you have switched the current or direction of your
day's thoughts. That change spells rest, and you retire and go to sleep
easily.
You will scarcely believe what a wondrous change for the better you will
notice in yourself if you make it a rule to have a brain clearing,
mental inventory, and nerve relaxation every night before you go to
sleep.
Your brain works at night always; oft-times you have no remembrance of
your dreams, but if your last hour, before retiring, was an hour of
excitement, tension or unusual occupation, you will likely go over it
all again in your dreams.
If you will let nothing prevent your evening period of soliloquy, you
will establish your mental habits into a rhythm that will give you
peace, rest and benefit.
In the olden days, when most families had evening worship or family
prayers, the members of those households slept soundly and restfully.
Particularly was this so because of the habit formed of getting the mind
on peaceful, helpful, comforting, soul-satisfying thoughts that remained
fresh on the brain tablets as the members of the home circle went to
sleep.
Too often the books read in the home circle are all of the exciting,
fascinating, highly colored imaginative type. People read stories of
love, adventure or crime, and they dream these same things almost every
night.
I have found that it pays to read two classes of literature in the same
evening. First read your novel, story, or fascinating book, but fifteen
minutes before you are ready to go to sleep, read some good, wholesome,
helpful, uplifting book, and that good stuff will be lastingly filed
away in your brain.
[Sidenote: What to Read.]
Finish your evening with books that are interesting, yet educational.
Such books as "Life of the Bee" by Maeterlinck, or any one of Fabre's
wonderful books on insect life; "Riddle of the Universe" by Haeckel;
Darwin's books; Drummond's "Ascent of Man;" "Walks and Talks in
Geological Fields" is a splendid mental night cap; "Power of Silence;"
"Physiology of Faith and Fear;" Emerson's "Essays;" Holmes' "Autocrat
of the Breakfast Table;" "Rubaiyat" of Omar Khayyam; Tom Moore's Poems;
"Plutarch's lives;" Seneca; Addison; Bulwer Lytton; Hugo; Carlyle's
"Sartor Resartus." This latter book will not fascinate you like
Carlyle's "French Revolution," but you will learn to love its fine
language, its fine analysis of character, of times, and of things.
[Sidenote: What You Gain.]
There are countless books of the good improving kind. Always save one of
them for your solid reading, after you have read light literature or
novels. If you will get the habit, you will notice great benefits and
rapid advancement in your mental equipment. You will sleep better, think
clearer; you will learn to enjoy mental pleasures more than material
pleasures.
Fifteen minutes, then, to be yours, yours alone, in which you quiet,
soothe, strengthen and pacify yourself and add abundant resources and
assets.
Let the last reading in the evening be something worth storing up in
that precious brain of yours, and the good, worth-while deposit will
grow and produce beautiful worth-while mental fruit.
[Sidenote: Don't Overdo It.]
Get the home reading habit. Don't overdo it. Call on friends; go to a
good picture show once in a while, to good concerts, to good plays, but
do not make this going-out-in-the-evening-plan a habit. Let it be merely
a dessert, or a rarity. Like candy and ice cream, it is proper and
enjoyable when it is not overdone.
The lover of books and home can enjoy the play, because he only goes to
plays worth while, and he doesn't overdo it.
The confirmed theater-goer is a pessimist; he roasts nearly every play,
and he is universally bored.
When you get started reading worth-while books on science, on history,
on geography, on travel, on natural history, you tap an inexhaustible
field of pleasure and satisfaction.
At any time, you can pick up your book and be happy.
Waits in railway stations will be opportunities; trips on trains will be
pleasant; evenings alone will be enjoyable, if you can get into a book
you like.
Mental pleasures are best.
Material pleasures are merely passing shadows--to be enjoyed for the
brief moment before they disappear.
17.
[Sidenote: Verbomania.]
The malady Verbomania is spreading rapidly. What's that? You have never
heard of Verbomania? Well, then, it's taken from _verbosus_, the Latin
word meaning "abounding in words," the using of more words than is
necessary. _Mania_, also Latin, means "to rage"--excessive or
unreasonable desire. Therefore, Verbomania is the excessive desire to
use more words than are necessary.
There is too much talk nowadays and too little thinking. Some persons
start their gab carburetors, and they talk and talk mechanically,
without any effort spent in thinking. Just like walking, the motion just
goes by itself.
Scientists have suggested that perhaps too much talking without thinking
is a disease. I don't see that there is any _perhaps_ about it. Disease
is an unnatural condition--a function of the mind or body out of its
natural order of working.
We know we can sit down and run ideas through our brain without words,
and we can use a lot of words without ideas.
You have read whole pages in a book without receiving an idea. One can
rattle off words and not have ideas. When the fountain of words flows in
a desert of ideas, it's Verbomania.
[Sidenote: Think More, Talk Less.]
People in all walks of life have the disease; they talk together too
much without any reason other than to take up time or make themselves at
ease. Pink teas, receptions and society functions are great rookeries
for these Verbomania birds to gather and indulge in their gabfest.
The pianist through long practice is able to play a difficult
composition without thinking about it; it's automatic; it's habit in
action.
The society dodo bird is just as dexterous in spinning words without
thought, as the pianist with his difficult piece.
Our rapid mode of living, our conventions and customs are responsible
for much of the Verbomania.
I should like to take my Dictophone to a fussy "afternoon" and record
the word evacuations, the footless conversation, the forced
pleasantries, the set sentences that mingle into a hum and buzz. A
wilderness of words in a barrenness of ideas.
This abuse of the use of speech makes headaches, weariness, worry,
unrest; it saps strength, lowers pep, and lessens resistance.
The cure for Verbomania is to keep away from these butterfly buzz bees;
put the clothes-pin of caution on your lips; spend more time alone with
your thoughts. Nourish your idea plants that have been starved; prune
your word plants.
Don't expose yourself to the crowds where the Verbomaniacs gather. The
disease is contagious; it's easy to acquire and hard to retire.
These are ideas put in type to convey a truth for the benefit of all who
read these lines, and it is some truth, too.
18.
Love builds homes, gold builds houses. The home has a mongrel dog which
is called Prince, and all the family love it. The house had a pedigreed
bull pup that is kept in the barn.
[Sidenote: House and Home.]
There is all the difference between the family which has a home and the
family which has a house. In houses we find broken hearts, worry,
nervous prostration, because there is idleness, artificiality and
aimlessness. In homes we find warm hearts, happiness and love, because
those in the home have natural, helpful occupation.
In the house is cold reserve; the occupants read when compelled to stay
indoors; they grow crabbed and cross and get into a state of habitual
dumbness and selfishness.
In the home there is unselfishness, thoughtfulness, and love expressed.
Meal time is joy time; it's the get-together period of smiling faces.
In the house the breakfast table is merely a lunch station in the
hurried trip from the bedroom to the office.
The sensitive wife of the house gets stinging remarks that abide with
her after the lord and master of the house has departed.
[Sidenote: What Makes Home.]
In the home the family gets up plenty early enough. Songs and jokes,
kisses and love pats are found; the family is on time, and there is
happiness all around. Homes are sweet, because love is present. Houses
built by gold are just hotels.
I've noticed the difference when a friend invites me to come to his home
or to his house; the word he uses, home or house, indicates to me what I
will find when I go there.
In the house I meet a maid or butler at the door. I see conventional
furniture, conventional rooms. I am shown into a conventional waiting
room, and I wait conventionally for the hostess to come forward with a
stiff backbone, a forced smile, and a languid handshake.
When I go to a home built with love, I find a tidy dressed wife at the
door, rosy children, and I get a warm, old-fashioned hand clasp, and a
beaming, smiling face that spells welcome.
And the dinner--that, too, tells the difference between the
"depend-on-the-cook" establishment and the "wife-who-is-the-boss" home.
At the house is formality and frigidity; at the home is ease and
enjoyment. The children of the home make breaks and we love them for it;
it's natural instinct and frankness.
In the house is worry; in the home is happiness.
Verily, there's a difference in the atmosphere of the house built with
gold and the home built with love; one is worthless existence, the other
worth-while living.
19.
[Sidenote: Seven Simple Health Suggestions.]
I haven't space in this book to give reasons or show proofs for
everything I suggest, but I want right here to give you a few definite,
short, positive, helpful rules about food, thought, habit and exercise
that will pay you the most wonderful dividends in health and happiness.
First--Drink two or three glasses of warm, not hot, water, the first
thing when you arise in the morning.
Second--Repeat this resolve as you are drinking the water: "I will be
pleasant this morning until ten o'clock, and the rest of the day will
take care of itself."
Third--Walk to your office or place of business, unless it is over four
miles, in which case walk the first three miles and ride the remainder
of the distance.
Fourth--Eat one or two apples every day, and do not insult Nature's
proper adjustment by peeling the apple. You want the skin because it has
things in it you need for your body, and especially for your brain, and
you have especial need of the roughage the skin gives.
[Sidenote: Get Enough Sleep.]
Fifth--Spend eight or nine hours a day in bed. I belong to the
sixty-three hour club; that means nine hours a day rest, seven days in a
week, which is sixty-three hours. If, through business, travel or other
circumstances, I stay up late one or two nights a week, I balance books
before the week is up by taking a rest on Sunday afternoon or going to
bed earlier one or two nights.
Sixth--Don't stay in bed Sunday morning. It will make you tired, loggy,
stupid and cross. Get up Sunday, say, a half hour or an hour later than
week days. Later in the day take a nap if you wish.
Seventh--Spend fifteen minutes just before going to bed in quiet,
relaxed solitude. This is the time to slow down your tension, relax your
muscles and soothe your nerves.
These rules you can easily remember and if you follow them as I hope you
will, the red blood will course in your veins and joy will be in your
countenance and the halo of happiness will be around your face.
20.
Every once in a while the human has a negative day. Every act, thought,
or spoken sentence has a but, a don't, a can't, or some other negative
attachment to it.
[Sidenote: The Negative Attitude.]
The children laugh, play and cut up in the morning, and mother says: "I
don't know what I shall do with you, you are just wearing me out." This
puts a fear-thought and a weakness-germ both in mother and the kiddies.
On Sunday afternoon the family is resting. Mother maybe gets the blues,
and says: "What's the use, I never get anywhere, go any place; it's just
grind, work and worry all the time."
Mother worries because there's a leak in the roof and the water stained
the paper in the spare room. She worries because she lives in a rented
house, and says: "I have no heart to fix things up because this is a
rented house."
This negative thought brings on a misery state; it's worry, and the
worry comes because you dwell on the off side of things. You rehearse
your problem, you go over your work, you count your obstacles, and you
pile up the negative and fear thoughts.
Bless you, my dear sister, I know what this negative can't, don't, but,
and what's-the-use thought is and how it brings misery. I know how the
children get on your nerves and make you say "don't" all day to them.
[Sidenote: Show Your Positive Side.]
There's only one way to drive out this negative thought and that is to
switch your will power to the positive current. Next time you have a
negative day and the fear thoughts come, just start in one by one and
count your blessings of health, blessings of home, and blessings of
love.
Nothing can hurt you. You've been through these negative days time and
time again; the clouds gathered, you were blue, lonesome, homesick and
heartsick, but next day you got busy with work, and occupation drove
away the clouds, and the sunshine came. The next Sunday you get in this
negative state, just put on your hat and go out to see some neighbor, or
go to the park, or take a walk.
Don't sit and stew and fret over your magnified troubles.
Let the children play and laugh; they are not hurting anyone. God bless
them. They don't have worries; their little lives are all too short.
Their example of smiles and laughter should make you happy. Soon, too
soon, they will grow up and go their ways in life and how precious will
be the memories of their carefree, golden, happy childhood days.
Cut out envy; that's a mighty bad negative wire. It's the devil's
favorite food to make worry and discontent.
[Sidenote: Envy Makes Worry.]
Many of the people you envied in the past are dead and buried. Many of
the people you envy now are at heart miserable, and you wouldn't envy
them if you could look through the artificial outside and know their
real hidden thoughts and lives.
"What's-the-use"--that's a bad thing to say; it plants worry seed.
You are all right; you have far more blessings than sorrows. You can
never be entirely free from troubles, care or little irritations.
Rise superior to these things; those around you are affected by and
susceptible to your influence and example.
If you have a "but," an "if" or a "don't" tied to every command to your
children, they will recognize your uncertainty and your negative,
hurtful attitude, and they will take your threats, as well as your
promises, with a grain of salt.
Be careful in giving commands; don't put a Spanish bit in the children's
mouths to jerk them and torture them.
Be positive, make your promises and orders stick, and the kiddies will
soon know you mean what you say.
[Sidenote: Exposing Your Weakness.]
These negative "driving me crazy" attachments to your commands spell
weakness, and make you drive, cajole and spin out your orders, and the
children hesitate and are slow to obey. Let them see your positive side.
Let them learn to obey with a "yes, mamma" spirit, and your orders will
be less frequent, shorter, and they will be obeyed on the instant.
The kiddies learn to size you up, mamma, and if they see a wobbly,
worried, despondent, unsure attitude in you, they will discount your
threats and make allowances, saying: "That's mamma's way."
Don't show your cry side but show your smile side.
Sunday is a great trial day for you, mamma, but don't let your negative
wires get the best of you.
Sing as you make the beds and tidy up; let sunshine in and drive out the
gloom.
Blue Sundays are horror days for the children; you can't expect them to
sit still like older folks. They are full of red blood and active
muscles.
Don't make Sunday a day of punishment to your children. They get their
cue from you. Don't you be negative and cross and gloomy. It's bad
business for you and all the family.
21.
The benefits of walking are so quickly apparent that I hope to get you
to make the start and keep it up for two weeks. Then you will require no
further urging.
[Sidenote: The Best Exercise.]
In walking, there are two most important things to do in order to get
the greatest benefits: first--walk alone; second--walk your natural
gait. So many people tell me they would like to walk all, or part of the
way, between their home and office if they had company.
Company is the very thing you don't want in walking, and there are two
reasons for this. One is, if you walk with a friend, you will hold
yourself back, or else you will be walking faster than your natural
gait. In either case it is a conscious effort, and this conscious
effort, to a large degree, will cause you to lose much of the benefit
from your walk.
The most important reason, however, is that if you walk with a friend,
you are sure to talk, and thus you are using your nervous energy and
tiring your brain--the very thing you want to avoid.
[Sidenote: Walk, Not Talk.]
Walking gives you physical exercise which is absolutely necessary for
health. It is the best exercise I know of, because you do not overdo
your strength. Walking is beneficial, because when you walk alone, you
give your brain a rest. You cannot read the papers, you cannot talk, and
your mental apparatus gets complete rest.
I recommend that you walk anywhere from three to four miles in the
morning. If your home is more than four miles from the office, walk
three or four miles of the distance and then take the car.
Do not walk home in the evening unless the walk is a short one. In the
evening you are tired, and you should conserve your strength. In the
morning you are fresh, and the exercise comes to you at a time it is
most needed. It will give you strength and courage, and help to keep you
in a good mood all day.
I cannot too strongly emphasize the importance of walking alone, for it
is then that you shift your nerve energy from the dry cell battery of
the brain to the magneto, which is the spinal cord. The spinal cord
works automatically and it doesn't wear itself out. The brain tires if
it uses its energy.
In walking you use the thought and the brain impulse to start the
magneto, and then the spinal cord action is automatic.
This automatic action of the spinal cord is a wise provision of nature
to conserve strength.
The spinal cord energy is what you might call automatic habit.
For instance, in dressing and undressing yourself, you will recall that
you put on or take off your clothes in regular order without giving the
matter any thought. It is just habit.
If you wish to demonstrate the difference between the control of the
physical body by brain impulse, and the spinal cord impulse, try this
some morning: Start out for your exercise and mentally frame sentences
like this as you walk--"right step, left step, right step, left step,"
and so on. Give thought to each step you have taken, and notice how
tired you will be when you have gone half a mile.
The next morning, start to walk naturally; give no thought to walking;
keep your mind on the beauties of nature which you are passing, or
indulge in pleasant soliloquy, and you will feel no fatigue.
There isn't a bit of theory in this chapter; it is positive, practical
sense that I have proved by my own experiences and by the experiences of
everyone to whom I have made this suggestion of walking alone.
The moral is this--walk every morning and walk ALONE.
22.
The body is made up of billions of little cells. These individual cells
are in a state of perpetual activity. They exhaust, wear away, break
down with work, and rebuild on food and rest. Every process of life--the
beat of the heart, the throb of the brain in thought, the digestion of
food, the excretion of waste--all are due to the activity of groups of
highly specialized individual cells.
[Sidenote: Body Waste.]
Every cell uses up its own material and throws off poisonous by-products
during activity. These by-products, or wastes, are very poisonous to the
individual cell as well as to the entire organism. To get rid of this
waste is one of the first duties of the system.
It is with the body, made up of its countless millions of individual
cells, just as it is with a city and its myriad people: the sewage of
the community must be collected and disposed of. The city forms its
poisons which we call sewage and the body its poisons, which we call
excreta (or carbonic acid, urea, uric acid, faeces, etc.). It is no
more important for a city to gather up and get ride of its poisonous
sewage than for the animal organism to collect and excrete its
cell-waste. Hence, the importance of maintaining normal and constant
elimination throughout the body.
[Sidenote: Health's Safety-First.]
Elimination is kept up by the alimentary tract, the kidneys, the skin,
and the lungs. These four are the great pipe-line sewerage systems, so
to speak, by which the body throws off its gaseous, liquid and solid
poisons.
The lungs momentarily strain carbonic acid out of the blood and throw it
out in the expired air. They likewise exhale other noxious matters from
the system.
The alimentary tract throws off faeces, made up of the waste tissue from
the whole system, especially the digestive organs, as well as
indigestible and non-nutritious portions of the food.
The kidneys strain out urea, uric acid, and certain other poisons from
the blood and eject them through the urinary tract.
Finally the skin likewise is an excretory organ and exhales a very
definite amount of gaseous and fluid waste in the course of each
twenty-four hours.
The skin throws off all the way from a pint to two quarts of liquid
each day in the form of vapor.
[Sidenote: Proper Functioning.]
Thus, to carry on normal elimination from the body, the breathing,
digesting, urinary and cutaneous systems must be kept working normally.
To impair the work of any of these is to retard bodily drainage. To make
certain that elimination is going on naturally, it is necessary to
secure perfect functioning of lungs, bowels, kidneys and the skin.
Any stoppage in the process of elimination means that some fault has
crept into the work of one of these excretory systems. It must be plain
now why a disorder of any one of these organs of elimination means so
much more profound disturbance to the whole organization than merely
disease in one structure. It means that waste products are retained
which ought to be thrown out of the body; so straightway every cell in
the body begins to be more or less affected. Some poisons disturb one
organ more and some another, but in the end the whole body must
inevitably be affected.
Lack of exercise, bolting of food, eating soft, starchy things, failure
to chew properly, failure to get enough roughage, insufficient water,
insufficient fruit--these are the general causes of stoppage in the
elimination processes.
Drink one or two glasses of warm water, not hot, the first thing in the
morning.
Eat one or two apples, skins and all, every day. Eat toast, especially
the crust. Eat cracked wheat or whole wheat bread often.
Exercise plenty. Keep cheerful. Eat regularly.
Very likely you eat too much. You don't need three big meals a day
unless you work outdoors at hard physical labor.
Your body is an engine. No use to keep the boiler red hot and two
hundred pounds of steam on if your work is light.
Good health depends upon proper assimilation and elimination as nature
intended.
Eat less, exercise more, you who work indoors. If you don't use this
caution, you are just slowly killing yourself.
23.
[Sidenote: Never Say "Can't."]
Many have the habit of keeping their minds on their weaknesses or their
shortcomings. If they read of some one doing a great thing or making a
worth-while accomplishment, they say: "I never could do such a thing."
These persons are always saying, "I never have luck. I can't do this. I
can't do that."
Always knocking, always thinking "can't" instead of "can" makes for
fear, irresoluteness, uncertainty and weakness of character.
To say, "I can't, I haven't the ability, I am unlucky" makes you weak
and knocks out all chance for doing things.
Nothing comes out of the brain that wasn't burned in by thought. If you
disparage yourself, belittle your capacity, or drown your good impulses
with doubt and self-accusation, you are putting away a lot of bad
thought in your brain, and no wonder you will lack in initiative,
ambition, confidence and courage.
To those who claim to be unlucky, I want to say you are not
unlucky--you simply lack pluck.
You start at undertakings with a handicap of fear. You have made up your
mind that you can't accomplish. You are half beaten before the game
starts. In place of the will to achieve, you approach your task in fear
and trepidation. In place of confidence and courage and high
aspirations, you set out on your journey with the millstone of doubt and
irresolution around your neck.
[Sidenote: Confidence and Success.]
There is but one way to succeed. That is to cast fear and
self-accusation aside, and throw your full weight into the struggle with
a song on your lips and confidence in your heart. "Victory" should be
your battlecry and "Confidence" should be emblazoned on your shield.
Many a man has been whipped in a fight, defeated in a contest, or beaten
at an undertaking, but he didn't show it or let the other fellow know
it. He just kept on with a brave front, and finally the other fellow
quit, mistaking grim determination, pluck and perseverance for strength
and victory.
Ethan Allen with his handful of men were asked to surrender by the
British general with his superior force. By all the rights and rules of
war, Ethan was licked, but he didn't give in. He replied: "Surrender
h--ll; I've just commenced to fight." If Ethan had accused himself and
said, "I can't whip that big bunch; there's no hope," he would have been
whipped to a finish.
Don't show the enemy or the world your weakness. Don't admit anything
impossible that is capable of accomplishment.
It's the "I can" man who wins. No man ever won a fight if he started out
by saying, "I can't whip him, he is too much for me; I am no match for
him, but I'll try."
No person ever made success in business if he started in with
uncertainty, lack of confidence and unbelief in his ability. Confidence
has ever been half the battle.
[Sidenote: The World's Judgment.]
Knock yourself, and the world will accept you at your own estimate. Show
streaks of yellow cowardice, and the mob will pounce on you like a pack
of hungry wolves. Accuse yourself, curse your luck, belittle your worth,
be afraid, and you will remain a mere bump on a log, unnoticed,
uninteresting, uninvited.
The world welcomes men who do things. The world judges by outward
appearances. If your heart is sick, if your courage is low, don't show
it. Put up a stiff attitude and act with confidence, and that attitude
will carry you over many a pitfall and past many an obstacle.
Show strength and the world will help you; show weakness and the world
will shun you.
You are prejudiced when it comes to judging yourself. You compare your
weakness with your friends' strength, and this comparison is unfair; it
makes you lose confidence.
[Sidenote: Doubt and Belief.]
Nothing hurts one worse than doubting one's own ability, assets, and
character. When you find yourself experiencing doubt, or inability, or
hard luck, turn square around and say: "Begone, doubt; henceforth I have
belief."