HE CAN WHO THINKS HE CAN, AN IRON WILL & PUSHING TO THE FRONT. Orison Swett Marden
by those who did them.
No one ever knows just how much dynamic force there is in him until tested by a great emergency or a supreme crisis. Oftentimes men reach middle life, and even later, before they really discover themselves. Until some great emergency, loss, or sorrow, has tested their timber they cannot tell how much strain they can stand. No emergency great enough to call out their latent power ever before confronted them, and they did not themselves realize what they would be equal to until the great crisis confronted them.
I have known of several instances where daughters reared in luxury were suddenly thrown upon their own resources by the death of their parents and the loss of their inherited fortunes. They had not been brought up to work, did not know how to do anything useful, had no trade, and no idea how to earn a livelihood; and yet all at once they developed marvelous ability for doing things. The power was there, latent; but responsibility had not hitherto been thrust upon them.
Young men suddenly forced into positions of tremendous responsibility by accident or death are often not the same men in six months. They have developed strong manly qualities which no one ever dreamed they possessed. Responsibility has made men of them. And it makes women of inexperienced and untried girls who are suddenly thrust into an emergency where they are obliged to conduct a business or support a family.
Many people distrust their initiative because they have not had an opportunity to exercise it. The monotonous routine of doing the same work year in and year out does not tend to develop new faculties. All the mental powers must be exercised, strengthened, before we can measure their possibilities.
I know young men who believe in everybody but themselves. They seem to have no doubt about other people accomplishing what they undertake, but are always shaky about themselves: “Oh, do not put me at the head of this or that; somebody else can do it better than I.” They shrink from responsibility because they lack self-faith.
The only way to develop power is to resolve early in life never to let an opportunity for doing so go by.
Never shrink from anything which will give you more discipline, better training, and enlarged experience. No matter how distasteful force yourself into it. There is nothing like responsibility for developing ability. Never mind if the position is hard; take it and make up your mind that you are going to fill it better than it was ever before filled.
I once heard a man say he regretted more than anything else in his life that he had indulged his natural inclination to decline every position of responsibility offered him. He was naturally so shy that any position which attracted attention or gave him the least publicity was distasteful to him. His magnificent possibilities remain undeveloped because he has never had that responsibility which calls out one’s reserves and develops his latent powers. Many a time he thought he would change his course, and made up his mind never to let another opportunity for self-development go by him unimproved. But the habit of delaying until he should be better prepared got such a hold of him that he could not change. The result is that, although he is a man of recognized power, with a superb mind, his life has been an extremely quiet one, very tame and unimportant compared with what it would have been had he made it a rule to thrust himself into every position of responsibility which would have called out the best in him.
Many people never discover themselves or know their possibilities because they always shrink from responsibility. They lease themselves to somebody else and die with their greatest possibilities unreleased, undeveloped.
Personally, I believe it is the duty of every young person to have an ambition to be independent, to be his own master, and to resolve that he will not be at somebody else’s call all his life—come and go at the sounding of a gong or the touch of a bell—that he will at least belong to himself; that he will be an entire wheel and not a cog; that he will be a whole machine, although it may be a small one, rather than part of someone else’s machine.
The very stretching of the mind toward high ideals, the looking forward to the time when we shall be our own masters, working along the lines of a resolution, a fixed, irrevocable determination, has a strengthening, unifying influence upon all of the faculties, and you will be a stronger man or woman, whatever your future, if you keep steadily, persistently in mind your own individual declaration of independence. It means freedom, it means delivery from restraint, from a certain feeling of slavery which attaches to every subordinate position. I do not believe that it is possible for any one to reach the same magnitude of manhood or womanhood, to grow to the same statute, after giving up the struggle for absolute independence or the hope of going into a business or profession or something else all of one's own.
It is true that not every person has the executive ability or strength of mind, the qualities of leadership, the moral stamina, or the push to conduct a business successfully for himself and stand his ground. There are, also, many instances of young men who have others dependent upon them, and who are not in a position to take the risks of going into business for themselves. A great many, however, work for others merely because they do not dare to take the risk of starting on their own responsibility. They lack the courage to branch out. The fear of possible failure deters them. Moreover, a great many start as boys in certain occupations, work up to a fairly good salary, and, though they may be ambitious to be independent, are yet held back by the distrust of their own powers and the advice of others, to “let well enough alone,” until the habit of doing the same thing year in and year out becomes so fixed that it is very difficult to wrench themselves out of their environment.
Again, a great many people prefer a small certainty to a big uncertainty. There is no disposition to hazard, no desire to take risks, in their make-up. They do not want to assume large responsibilities. They prefer steady employment, and the certainty that every Saturday night they will find fixed sums in their pay envelopes, to the great risks, responsibilities, and uncertainties of a business of their own.
You may not have the ambition, the desire, or the inclination to take responsibility. You may prefer to have an easier life, and to let somebody else worry about the payment of notes and debts, the hard times, the dull seasons, and the panics. But, if you expect to bring out the greatest possibilities in you,—if growth, with the largest possible expansion of your powers, is your goal,—you cannot realize your ambition in the fullest and completest sense while merely trying to carry out somebody else’s programme and letting him furnish the ideas.
There must be a sense of complete independence, not partial but complete, in order to reach the highest growth. We do not attain our full stature of manhood or womanhood in captivity or in slavery, but in freedom, in absolute liberty. The eagle must be let out of the cage, no matter how large or how comfortable, before it can exhibit all the powers of an eagle.
It is the locked-up forces within, that lie deep in our natures, not those which are on the surface, that test our mettle. It is within everybody’s power to call out these hidden forces, to be somebody and to do something worth while in the world, and the man who does not do it is violating his sacred birthright.
Every man or woman who goes through the world with great continents of undiscovered possibilities locked up within him commits a sin against himself and that which borders on a crime against civilization.
Don’t be afraid to trust yourself. Have faith in your own ability to think along original lines. If there is anything in you, self-reliance will bring it out.
Whatever you do, cultivate a spirit of manly independence in doing it. Let your work express yourself. Don’t be a mere cog in a machine. Do your own thinking and carry out your own ideas, as far as possible, even though working for another.
Chapter VIII.
An Overmastering Purpose
BEFORE water generates steam, it must register two hundred and twelve degrees of heat. Two hundred degrees will not do it; two hundred and ten will not do it. The water must boil before it will generate enough steam to move an engine, to run a train. Lukewarm water will not run anything.
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