THE SATISFIED MAN
F. W. Robertson has said, “Whoever is satisfied with what he does has
reached his culminating point--he will progress no more. Man’s destiny
is to be not dissatisfied, but forever unsatisfied.”
One of the saddest things in life is to see men and women who started
out with high hopes and proud ambitions settle down in mediocre
positions, half satisfied just merely to get a living, to plod along
indifferently.
Oh, what tragedy there is in being content with mediocrity, in getting
into a state where one is indifferent to the larger, better things of
life!
When you are satisfied with the life you are living, with the work you
are doing, with the thought you are thinking, with the dreams you are
dreaming, satisfied with the character you are building, with your
ideals, you may be sure that you are already beginning to deteriorate.
There is little hope for the man who feels satisfied with himself, who
does not know, “the noble discontent that stirs the acorn to become an
oak.” Man’s ambition to improve something somewhere every day to get a
little further on and a little higher up than he was the day before,
an insatiable passion for bettering things all along the line, is the
secret of human progress.
Do you realize, my young friend, that if the motive were big enough,
if you had a very unusual incentive, you could materially improve
upon what you now are satisfied to consider your best endeavor? As
an employee you may think you are doing your level best, and are
conscientious, loyal, true and industrious; and yet, if a great prize
should be offered you to bring your work up to a certain higher
standard for the next sixty days, would you rest until you had
succeeded in very greatly improving what you now think is your best
work?
Don’t you think, you who pride yourself that it would be impossible to
better what you are now doing, that if your name were over the door as
proprietor instead of the name of the company you work for you could
jack yourself up about fifty per cent; that you would find some way of
doing it? Don’t you think you would be a little more ambitious, make a
little better use of your time, that you would try to call out a little
more ingenuity and effectiveness, a little more resourcefulness? Do you
think you would jog along in the same half-hearted manner, thinking
more of your salary than of your opportunity to absorb the secrets
of your employer’s success? Do you think you would stand by without
protest and see the merchandise injured, or wasted, when you could stop
it; or that you would be so careless or make so many blunders yourself?
Don’t you think the prize to be gained would make you take a little
more interest in things than you do now; make you a little more alert,
more eager for the success of the business?
It is a deplorable sight to see so many young men and young women
apparently so satisfied with themselves, with what they are doing,
that they have no great yearnings, no insatiable longing for something
higher and better.
Multitudes of capable employees are satisfied to plod along in
mediocrity instead of rising to the heights, where their ability would
naturally carry them. I have a friend who has a much superior brain
to the man he is working for, and yet for a great many years he has
been on an ordinary salary. He has never married. He takes life in an
easy-going way and whenever I have tried to encourage him to go into
business for himself, to show him how much superior he is to the man
he is working for, he always says, “Why should I exert myself more or
take on greater business, responsibilities? I have nobody but myself to
consider. I like to have a good time, and don’t want to have the worry,
the care and anxiety of running a business of my own, although I know
perfectly well I could do it if I wanted to.”
Of course, the higher up in the world a man gets the greater his
responsibility, but think of the satisfaction which comes from the
consciousness that he has made the most of his talents, that he has
not buried any of them in a napkin, the satisfaction which comes from
the feeling that he has made good, that he has delivered his message
to the world and delivered it like a man, that he has fulfilled his
mission, that he has made the most possible of the material and the
opportunities given him. The feeling that he has no regrets, that he
has done his level best more than compensates for any additional effort
and greater responsibility.
We tend to become like our aspirations. If we constantly aspire and
strive for something better and higher and nobler, we cannot help
broadening and improving. The ambition that is dominant in the mind
tends to work itself out in the life. If this ambition is sordid and
low and animal, we shall develop these qualities, for our lives follow
our ideals.
Civilization has made its greatest advancement under the stress of
necessity, under the leadership of a great ambition to satisfy the
heart’s yearnings for better things. We do our best work while we are
trying desperately to match our dreams with their reality.
The struggle of man to rise a little higher, to get into a little more
comfortable position, to secure a little better education, a little
better home, to gain a little more culture and refinement, to possess
that power which comes from being in a position of broader and wider
influence through the acquirement of property, is what has developed
the character and the stamina of our highest types of manhood to-day.
This upward life-trend gives others confidence in us.
When we have attained a little success, when we have gained a little
public applause, how many of us think we can relax our efforts,
and before we realize it our ambition has disappeared, our energy
evaporated. A sort of lethargy comes over us and lulls us into inaction.
First successes, and especially early successes, to many act like an
opiate. They are overcome with inertia which only an unsatisfied and
determined ambition can overcome. It takes more grit and a stronger
will to force ourselves to do our level best after we have demonstrated
without doubt that we have the ability to do what we undertake, than it
does to achieve the actual first success itself.
One of the greatest enemies to ambition is personal inertia, and it is
one of the hardest things to overcome. The temptation to slide along
the line of the least resistance, to get into a comfortable position
and take one’s ease, is so strong that many allow it to master them.
The ambition is not persistent enough or strenuous enough to shame them
out of their inertia, or prod them on to greater things. Mediocrity is
often a premium upon laziness. The poet tells us,
“He who would climb the heights sublime,
Or breathe the purer air of life,
Must not expect to rest in ease,
But brace himself for toil or strife.”
One of the most discouraging problems in the world is that of trying
to help the ambitionless, the half-satisfied, those who have not
discontent enough in their natures to push them on, initiative enough
to begin things, and persistency enough to keep going.
If a young man is apparently satisfied to drift along in a humdrum way,
half content with his accomplishments, undisturbed by the fact that he
has used but a very small part of himself, a very small percentage of
his real ability, that his energies are running to waste in all sorts
of ways, you cannot do much with him. If he lacks ambition, life,
energy and vigor--is willing to slide along the line of the least
resistance and exerts himself as little as possible, there is nothing
upon which to build.
It is the young man who is not satisfied with what he does, and who is
determined to better his best every day, who struggles to express the
ideal, to make the possible in him a reality, that wins.
Activity is the law of growth; effort the only means of improvement.
Whenever men have obeyed their lower nature and ceased to struggle to
better their condition, they have deteriorated physically, mentally and
morally; while, just in proportion as they have striven honestly and
insistently to improve their situation, they have developed a larger
and nobler human type.
When a man who is said to be the highest salaried official in the
United States was asked to give the secret of his success, he replied,
“I haven’t succeeded. No real man ever succeeds. There is always a
larger goal ahead.”
It is the small man who succeeds in his own estimation. Really great
men never reach their goal, because they are constantly pushing their
horizon out further and further, getting a broader vision, a 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.