VISUALIZE YOURSELF IN A BETTER POSITION
No matter in what business you may be, or what your profession, your
prime ambition should be to attain a high-water mark in it. The love of
excellence is the lodestar that leads the world onward. It is this that
makes not only the successful business or professional man, but also
the all-round successful person in any line of endeavor.
Andrew Carnegie said, “I would not give a fig for the young man in
business who does not already see himself a partner, or the head of the
firm.”
Do not rest for a moment in your thought of yourself as a head clerk,
foreman, or manager in any concern, no matter how big it is. Say each
day to yourself, “My place is higher up.” Be king in your dreams. Vow
that you will reach the position with untarnished reputation, and make
no other vow to distract your attention.
I am frequently asked by youths and young men whether I think they
really have enough in them to make much of a success in life, anything
that will be distinctive or worth while, and I answer, “Yes, you have.
I know you have the ability to succeed, but I don’t know that you will.
That rests entirely with you. If you have the energy and the will to
succeed nothing can hold you back. But if you have not, no amount of
education, no pull or influence, no power on earth outside of yourself
can push or lead or boost you into success.”
There is nothing so important in your life as your mental attitude
towards yourself, what you think of yourself, the model which you hold
of yourself and your possibilities. If this is small, narrow, and
dwarfed your life will correspond.
You must see yourself above a clerkship or you will never be anything
higher than a clerk. You must visualize yourself in a better position,
and hold constantly a grim determination to reach it or you will
never get there. Never for a moment blur your motive or weaken your
determination by harboring a doubt of your ability to reach your goal.
Whenever you do this you are neutralizing just so much of the force
which would take you there.
Remember, there is a partnership waiting for you somewhere if you are
big enough and determined enough and have pluck enough to take it. If
you do not there is probably someone very near you who will do so,
someone who perhaps has not had nearly as good an opportunity as you
have had. And in the years to come, if you do not take advantage of
this opportunity to climb, you will no doubt, grumble at your “ill
luck” and wonder how Billy or Johnny or Jo, who worked alongside of
you, managed to get the partnership or coveted position.
A recent writer says: “My advice to all those just starting to travel
life’s turnpike is: ‘Don’t start until you have your ideal. Then don’t
stop until you get it.’”
Very few of us realize how dependent our growth is on some special
stimulus. Every act must have a motive. We do nothing outside of our
automatic habitual acts without an underlying motive. Perhaps the
stronger life motive of the average man is that which comes from his
desire to get up in the world.
[Illustration: Copyright, 1900, by McClure, Phillips & Co.
LINCOLN STUDYING BY THE FIRELIGHT.]
There was a force behind Lincoln which drove him from a log cabin up
to the White House. There was a vision of the North Pole which haunted
Peary, filled him with ambition to climb to the earth’s uttermost
boundary, and finally drove him, after repeated failures, to the Pole.
The same indomitable inner force urged the despised young Jew, Benjamin
Disraeli, to push his way up through the lower classes in England, up
through the middle classes, up through the upper classes, until he
stood a master, self-poised, upon the topmost round of political and
social power, the prime minister of the greatest country in the world.
The story of those men is the same at bottom as that of every man who
has attained greatness. They were continually urged forward and upward
by some inward prompting they could not resist.
This instinctive impulse to keep pushing on and up is the most curious
and the most interesting thing in human life. It exists in every normal
human being, and is just as pronounced and as real as the instinct of
self-preservation. Upon this climbing instinct rests the destiny of
the race. Without it men would still be savages, and living in caves
and huts. Civilization, as we know it, would not exist. There would be
no great cities, no great factories, no railroads, no steamships, no
beautiful homes or parks, pictures, sculpture or books, but for this
mysterious urge which we call ambition.
The best of every man’s work is above and beyond himself, and is
accomplished in the struggle to attain a lofty ideal. The artist stands
aside and points through his work to a glimpse of the universal art.
In his inspired moments the individuality of the orator is melted and
fused into the all-pervading fire of eloquence. In art or business,
in science or the daily commonplace tasks of life, the gods will move
along toward the line of absolute excellence or they will leave us to
our own devices.
We do our most effective work in our struggle to get what we are after,
to arrive at the goal of our ambition. We put forth our greatest
effort, our most strenuous endeavor, while we are climbing, not after
we have arrived at our goal. This is one reason why rich men’s sons
rarely achieve any great personal success. They lack the climbing
motive of necessity, that tremendous urge, the prodding of ambition
which drives us on to achieve what we desire and are capable of
attaining. Ambition is the leader of all great achievement. It is the
forerunner which goes ahead and clears a way for the other faculties.
The ambition is not always a safe guide, however. There are two wings
to genius. Common sense and good judgment must accompany the ambition,
or it will very often run away with a man. We have seen splendid pieces
of machinery, whose iron fingers would punch holes through solid steel
plates without a single jar. The machinery accomplishes this wonderful
feat because of a huge balance-wheel. It is the stored-up power,
velocity, and momentum which enable it to accomplish this wonderful
task. Take away the balance-wheel, and the machinery, which does its
work as easily as a cook would make the holes in rolled-out pastry,
falls all to pieces the moment the balance-wheel is removed. The
balance-wheel is the secret. The judgment is man’s balance-wheel--great
common sense, horse sense. His ambition will run away with him if he
does not have this.
The young man who overestimates his ability, who plunges beyond his
depth, who is over-confident, whose self-trust is not based upon an
accurate knowledge of his ability and limitations, almost always comes
to grief. It is just as necessary to know what you are not qualified
for, and to let it alone, as to know what you can do, and do it.
“Study yourself,” says Longfellow, “and most of all, note well wherein
kind nature meant you to excel.”
It takes a giant to do a giant’s work. What a Morgan or a Carnegie
would do with perfect ease and safety, might be as impossible for you
to accomplish as to lift yourself by your own boot straps. On the other
hand, you may be able to do something which even a Morgan could not do.
Study your own adaptations. Try to get a measure of your possibilities.
A man should early take an inventory of his ability and locate himself
where he belongs. If he has but one talent he should not try to train
with the ten-talent man. He should simply try to make the most of his
one talent.
It is impossible to make one talent do the work of ten talents, no
matter how ambitious, or how much energy one may fling into his work.
A great brain does a great thing easily. We all do our best work
without overstraining. It is dangerous to over-tax one’s faculties.
I have seen a college student who has overstrained his brain until he
has seriously marred his mental power in the foolish effort to try to
head his class when he was not a natural scholar. He seemed to think
that by making a superhuman effort, studying all the time when others
were at play, during holidays and Sundays, always plugging, plugging,
plugging,--he could overcome any handicap. While he managed to come
pretty near leading his class he never completely rallied from the
effects of overstraining his brain.
It is a great thing to be able to measure our talents, to understand
ourselves so thoroughly that we will undertake just so much as we are
able to accomplish, and will not aim at the unattainable.