Do not go through the world talking poverty and asking every one you
deal with to show you special consideration because you are "poor" and
"unfortunate."
If you do this with an idea of saving a few dollars here and there, you
will always have to do it, because you are creating poverty conditions
by your constant assertions.
It is a curious fact that the people who are always demanding
consideration in money matters demand the best that is going at the
same time.
I have known a woman to make a plea for cut prices in a boarding house
because she was so poor, yet she wanted the sunniest room and the best
location the house afforded.
It is the charity patients who make the most complaint of a physician's
skill or a nurse's attention.
If you cannot afford to do certain things, or buy certain objects,
don't. But when you decide you must, decide, too, that you will pay
the price, and make no whining plea of poverty.
There are two extremes of people in the world, one as distasteful as
the other. One is represented by the man who boasts of the costliness
of every possession, and invites the whole world to behold his opulence
and expenditure.
His clothes, his house, his servants, his habits, seem no different to
the observer from his neighbor's, yet, according to his story, they
cost ten times the amount.
The other extreme is the man who dresses well, lives well, enjoys all
the comforts and pleasures of his associates, yet talks poverty
continually, and expects the entire community to show him consideration
in consequence.
Another thing to avoid is the role of the chronically injured person.
We all know him.
He has a continual grievance. He has been cheated, abused, wronged,
insulted, disappointed and deceived. We wonder how or why he has
managed to exist, as we listen to the story of his troubles.
No one ever treats him fairly, either in business or social life.
Everybody is ungrateful, unkind, selfish, and he could not be made to
believe that these experiences were of his own making.
All of us meet with occasional blows from fate, in the form of insults,
or ingratitude, or trickery from an unexpected source.
But if we get nothing else but those disappointing experiences from
life, we may rest assured the fault lies somewhere in ourselves.
We are not sending out the right kind of mental stuff, or we would get
better returns.
You never can tell what your thoughts will do
In bringing you hate or love,
For thoughts are things, and their airy wings
Are swift as a carrier dove.
They follow the law of the universe--
Each thing must create its kind,
And they speed o'er the track to bring you back
Whatever went out from your mind.
In the main, we must of necessity get from humanity what we give to it.
If we question our ability to win friends or love, people will also
question it.
If we doubt our own judgment and discretion in business, others will
doubt it, and the shrewd and unprincipled will take the opportunity
given by our doubts of ourselves, to spring upon us.
If in consequence we distrust every person we meet, we create an
unwholesome and unfortunate atmosphere about ourselves, which will
bring to us the unworthy and deceitful. Stand firm in the universe.
Believe in yourself. Believe in others.
If you make a mistake, consider it only an incident.
If some one wrongs you, cheats, misuses or insults you, let it pass as
one of the lessons you had to learn, but do not imagine that you are
selected by fate for only such lessons. Keep wholesome, hopeful and
sympathetic with the world at large, whatever individuals may do.
Expect life to use you better every year, and it will not disappoint
you in the long run. For life is what we make it.