HE CAN WHO THINKS HE CAN, AN IRON WILL & PUSHING TO THE FRONT. Orison Swett Marden
grander, and more beautiful than we are. We have a feeling that what we are is out of keeping with—does not fit—the larger, greater life-plan which the Creator patterned for us; that it is mean, sordid, stingy, and pinched compared with the pattern of that divine man shown us in the moment of our highest vision.
It is this creative power of the imagination, these dreams of the dreamers made good, that will ultimately raise man to his highest power; that will break down the barriers of caste, race, and creed, and make real the poet’s vision of the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world.
“The Golden Age lies onward, not behind.
The pathway through the past has led us up:
The pathway through the future will lead on,
And higher.”
Chapter VI.
The Spirit In Which You Work
IT ought not to be necessary to ask a man if he likes his work. The radiance of his face should tell that. His very buoyancy and pride in his task; his spirit of unbounded enthusiasm and zest, ought to show it. He ought to be so in love with his work that he finds his greatest delight in it; and this inward joy should light up his whole being.
A test of the quality of the individual is the spirit in which he does his work. If he goes to it grudgingly, like a slave under the lash; if he feels the drudgery in it; if his enthusiasm and love for it do not lift it out of commonness and make it a delight instead of a bore, he will never make a very great place for himself in the world.
The man who feels his life-yoke galling him; who does not understand why the bread-and-butter question could not have been solved by one great creative act, instead of every man’s being obliged to wrench everything he gets from nature through hard work; the man who does not see a beneficent design and a superb necessity in the principle that every one should earn his own living—has gotten a wrong view of life, and will never get the splendid results out of his vocation that were intended for him.
Multitudes of people do not half respect their work. They look upon it as a disagreeable necessity for providing bread and butter, clothing and shelter—as unavoidable drudgery, instead of as a great man builder, a great life university for the development of manhood and womanhood. They do not see the divinity in the spur of necessity which compels man to develop the best thing in him; to unfold his possibilities by his struggle to attain his ambition, to conquer the enemies of his prosperity and his happiness. They cannot see the curse in the unearned dollar, which takes the spur out of the motive. Work to them is sheer drudgery—an unmitigated evil. They cannot understand why the Creator did not put bread ready-made on trees. They do not see the stamina, the grit, the nobility, and the manhood in being forced to conquer what they get. No one can make a real success of his life when he is all the time grumbling or apologizing for what he is doing. It is a confession of weakness.
What a pitiable sight to see one of God’s noblemen, made to hold up his head and be a king, to be cheerful and happy and to radiate power, going about whining and complaining of his work, even deploring the fact that he should have to work at all! It is demoralizing to allow yourself to do a thing in a half-hearted, grudging manner.
There is a great adaptive power in human nature. The mind is wonderfully adjustive to different conditions; but you will not get the best results until your mind is settled, until you are resolved not only to like your work, but also to do it in the spirit of a master and not in that of a slave. Resolve that, whatever you do, you will bring the whole man to it; that you will fling the whole weight of your being into it; that you will do it in the spirit of a conqueror, and so get the lesson and power out of it which come only to the conqueror.
Put the right spirit into your work. Treat your calling as divine—as a call from principle. If the thing itself be not important, the spirit in which you take hold of it makes all the difference in the world to you. It can make or mar the man. You cannot afford grumbling service or botched work in your life's record. You cannot afford to form a habit of half doing things, or of doing them in the spirit of a drudge, for this will drag its slimy trail through all your subsequent career, always humiliating you at the most unexpected times. Let other people do the poor jobs, the botched work, if they will. Keep your standards up, your ideals high.
The attitude with which a man approaches his task has everything to do with the quality and efficiency of his work, and with its influence upon his character. What a man does is a part of himself. It is the expression of what he stands for. Our life-work is an outpicturing of our ambition, our ideals, our real selves. If you see a man’s work you see the man.
No one can respect himself, or have that sublime faith in himself, which is essential to all high achievement, when he puts mean, half-hearted, slipshod service into what he does. He cannot get his highest self-approval until he does his level best No man can do his best, or call out the highest thing in him, while he regards his occupation as drudgery or a bore.
Under no circumstances allow yourself to do anything as a drudge. Nothing is more demoralizing. No matter if circumstances force you to do something which is distasteful, compel yourself to find something interesting and instructive in it. Everything that is necessary to be done is full of interest. It is all a question of the attitude of mind in which we go to our task.
If your occupation is distasteful, every rebellious thought, every feeling of disgust, only surrounds you with a failure atmosphere which is sure to attract more failure. The magnet that brings success and happiness must be charged with a positive, optimistic, enthusiastic force.
The man who has not learned the secret of taking the drudgery out of his task by flinging his whole soul into it, has not learned the first principles of success or happiness. It is perfectly possible to so exalt the most ordinary business, by bringing to it the spirit of a master, as to make of it a dignified vocation.
The trouble with us is that we drop into a humdrum existence and do our work mechanically, with no heart, no vim, and no purpose. We do not learn the fine art of living for growth, for mind and soul expansion. We just exist.
It was not intended that any necessary employment should be merely commonplace. There is a great, deep meaning in it all—a glory in it. Our possibilities, our destiny are In it, and the good of the world.
Why is it that most people think that the glory of life does not belong to the ordinary vocations—that this belongs to the artist, to the musician, to the writer, or to some one of the more gentle and what they call “dignified" professions? There is as much dignity and grandeur and glory in agriculture as in statesmanship or authorship.
Some people never see any beauty any where. They have no soul for the beautiful. Others see it everywhere. Farming to one man is a humdrum existence, an unbearable vocation, a monotonous routine; while another sees the glory and the dignity in it, and takes infinite pleasure in mixing brains with the soil and in working with the Creator to produce grander results.
I knew a cobbler in a little village who took infinitely more pride in his vocation than did the lawyer, or even the clergyman, of that town. I know a farmer who takes more pride in his crops than any other person in his community takes in his calling. He walks over his farm as proudly as a monarch might travel through his kingdom. This true master-farmer will introduce his visitor to his horses and cows and other animals as though they were important personages. That is the kind of enthusiasm that takes the drudgery out of the farm and makes a joy out of a life which to many is so dull and commonplace.
I have known a stenographer on small pay who put a higher quality of effort into her work than the proprietor of the great establishment she worked for, and she got more out of life than he did. I knew a school-teacher in a little district twenty-five miles from a railroad, in a schoolhouse right in the forest, who took more pride in her work and in the progress of her pupils than some presidents of colleges whom I have known appeared to take in their duties.
A girl who declared that she never would