Chapter 55
We often hear it said of a man, "Everything he undertakes succeeds," or "Everything he touches turns to gold." By the force of his character and the creative power of his thought, such a man wrings success from the most adverse circ.u.mstances. Confidence begets confidence. A man who carries in his very presence an air of victory, radiates a.s.surance, and imparts to others confidence that he can do the thing he attempts. As time goes on, he is reenforced not only by the power of his own thought, but also by that of all who know him. His friends and acquaintances affirm and reaffirm his ability to succeed, and make each successive triumph easier of achievement than its predecessor. His self-poise, a.s.surance, confidence, and ability increase in a direct ratio to the number of his achievements. As the savage Indian thought that the power of every enemy he conquered entered into himself, so in reality does every conquest in war, in peaceful industry, in commerce, in invention, in science, or in art add to the conqueror's power to do the next thing.
Set the mind toward the thing you would accomplish so resolutely, so definitely, and with such vigorous determination, and put so much grit into your resolution, that nothing on earth can turn you from your purpose until you attain it.
This very a.s.sertion of superiority, the a.s.sumption of power, the affirmation of belief in yourself, the mental att.i.tude that claims success as an inalienable birthright, will strengthen the whole man and give power to a combination of faculties which doubt, fear, and a lack of confidence undermine.
Confidence is the Napoleon of the mental army. It doubles and trebles the power of all the other faculties. The whole mental army waits until confidence leads the way.
Even a race-horse can not win the prize after it has once lost confidence in itself. Courage, born of self-confidence, is the prod which brings out the last ounce of reserve force.
The reason why so many men fail is because they do not commit themselves with a determination to win at any cost. They do not have that superb confidence in themselves which never looks back; which burns all bridges behind it. There is just uncertainty enough as to whether they will succeed to take the edge off their effort, and it is just this little difference between doing pretty well and flinging all oneself, all his power, into his career, that makes the difference between mediocrity and a grand achievement.
If you doubt your ability to do what you set out to do; if you think that others are better fitted to do it than you; if you fear to let yourself out and take chances; if you lack boldness; if you have a timid, shrinking nature; if the negatives preponderate in your vocabulary; if you think that you lack positiveness, initiative, aggressiveness, ability; you can never win anything very great until you change your whole mental att.i.tude and learn to have great faith in yourself. Fear, doubt, and timidity must be turned out of your mind.
Your own mental picture of yourself is a good measure of yourself and your possibilities. If there is no out-reach to your mind, no spirit of daring, no firm self-faith, you will never accomplish much.
A man's confidence measures the height of his possibilities. A stream can not rise higher than its fountain-head.
_Power is largely a question of strong, vigorous, perpetual thinking along the line of the ambition, parallel with the aim--the great life purpose. Here is where power originates._
The deed must first live in the thought or it will never be a reality; and a strong, vigorous concept of the thing we want to do is a tremendous initial step. A thought that is timidly born will be timidly executed.
There must be vigor of conception or an indifferent execution.
All the greatest achievements in the world began in longing--in dreamings and hopings which for a time were nursed in despair, with no light in sight. This longing kept the courage up and made self-sacrifice easier until the thing dreamed of--the mental vision--was realized.
"According to your faith be it unto you." Our faith is a very good measure of what we get out of life. The man of weak faith gets little; the man of mighty faith gets much.
The very intensity of your confidence in your ability to do the thing you attempt is definitely related to the degree of your achievement.
If we were to a.n.a.lyze the marvelous successes of many of our self-made men, we should find that when they first started out in active life they held the confident, vigorous, persistent thought of and belief in their ability to accomplish what they had undertaken. Their mental att.i.tude was set so stubbornly toward their goal that the doubts and fears which dog and hinder and frighten the man who holds a low estimate of himself, who asks, demands, and expects but little, of or for himself, got out of their path, and the world made way for them.
We are very apt to think of men who have been unusually successful in any line as greatly favored by fortune; and we try to account for it in all sorts of ways but the right one. The fact is that their success represents their expectations of themselves--the sum of their creative, positive, habitual thinking. It is their mental att.i.tude outpictured and made tangible in their environment. They have wrought--created--what they have and what they are out of their constructive thought
We must not only believe we can succeed, but _we must believe it with all our hearts_.
We must have a positive conviction that we can attain success.
No lukewarm energy or indifferent ambition ever accomplished anything.
_There must be vigor in our expectation, in our faith_, in our determination, in our endeavor. _We must resolve with the energy that does things_.
Not only must the desire for the thing we long for be kept uppermost, but there must be strongly concentrated intensity of effort to attain our object.
As it is the fierceness of the heat that melts the iron ore and makes it possible to weld it or mold it into shape; as it is the intensity of the electrical force that dissolves the diamond--the hardest known substance; so _it is the concentrated aim, the invincible purpose_, that wins success. Nothing was ever accomplished by a half-hearted desire.
Many people make a very poor showing in life, because there is no vim, no vigor in their efforts. Their resolutions are spineless; there is no backbone in their endeavor--no grit in their ambition.
One must have that determination which never looks back and which knows no defeat; that resolution which burns all bridges behind it and is willing to risk everything upon the effort. When a man ceases to believe in himself--gives up the fight--you can not do much for him except to try to restore what he has lost--his self-faith--and to get out of his head the idea that there is a fate which tosses him hither and thither, a mysterious destiny which decides things whether he will or not. You can not do much with him until he comprehends that _he is bigger than any fate_; that he has within himself a power mightier than any force outside of him.
One reason why the careers of most of us are so pinched and narrow, is because we do not have a large faith in ourselves and in our power to accomplish. We are held back by too much caution. We are timid about venturing. We are not bold enough.
Whatever we long for, yearn for, struggle for, and hold persistently in the mind, we tend to become just in exact proportion to the intensity and persistence of the thought. _We think ourselves into smallness, into inferiority by thinking downward_. We ought to think upward, then we would reach the heights where superiority dwells. The man whose mind is set firmly toward achievement does not appropriate success, _he is success_.
Self-confidence is not egotism. It is knowledge, and it comes from the consciousness of possessing the ability requisite for what one undertakes. Civilization to-day rests upon self-confidence.
A firm self-faith helps a man to project himself with a force that is almost irresistible. A balancer, a doubter, has no projectile power. If he starts at all, he moves with uncertainty. There is no vigor in his initiative, no positiveness in his energy.
There is a great difference between a man who thinks that "perhaps" he can do, or who "will try" to do a thing, and a man who "knows" he can do it, who is "bound" to do it; who feels within himself a pulsating power, an irresistible force, equal to any emergency.
This difference between uncertainty and certainty, between vacillation and decision, between the man who wavers and the man who decides things, between "I hope to" and "I can," between "I'll try" and "I will"--this little difference measures the distance between weakness and power, between mediocrity and excellence, between commonness and superiority.
The man who does things must be able to project himself with a mighty force, to fling the whole weight of his being into his work, ever gathering momentum against the obstacles which confront him; every issue must be met wholly, unhesitatingly. He can not do this with a wavering, doubting, unstable mind.
The fact that a man believes implicitly that he can do what may seem impossible or very difficult to others, shows that there is something within him that makes him equal to the work he has undertaken.
Faith unites man with the Infinite, and no one can accomplish great things in life unless he works in oneness with the Infinite. When a man lives so near to the Supreme that the divine Presence is felt all the time, then he is in a position to express power.
There is nothing which will multiply one's ability like self-faith. It can make a one-talent man a success, while a ten-talent man without it would fail.
Faith walks on the mountain tops, hence its superior vision. It sees what is invisible to those who follow in the valleys.
It was the sustaining power of a mighty self-faith that enabled Columbus to bear the jeers and imputations of the Spanish cabinet; that sustained him when his sailors were in mutiny and he was at their mercy in a little vessel on an unknown sea; that enabled him to hold steadily to his purpose, entering in his diary day after day--"This day we sailed west, which was our course."
It was this self-faith which gave courage and determination to Fulton to attempt his first trip up the Hudson in the _Clermont_, before thousands of his fellow citizens, who had gathered to howl and jeer at his expected failure. He believed he could do the thing he attempted though the whole world was against him.
What miracles self-confidence has wrought! What impossible deeds it has helped to perform! It took Dewey past cannons, torpedoes, and mines to victory at Manila Bay; it carried Farragut, lashed to the rigging, past the defenses of the enemy in Mobile Bay; it led Nelson and Grant to victory; it has been the great tonic in the world of invention, discovery, and art; it has won a thousand triumphs in war and science which were deemed impossible by doubters and the faint-hearted.
Self-faith has been the miracle-worker of the ages. It has enabled the inventor and the discoverer to go on and on amidst troubles and trials which otherwise would have utterly disheartened them. It has held innumerable heroes to their tasks until the glorious deeds were accomplished.
The only inferiority in us is what we put into ourselves. If only we better understood our divinity we should all have this larger faith which is the distinction of the brave soul. We think ourselves into smallness.
Were we to think upward we should reach the heights where superiority dwells.
Perhaps there is no other one thing which keeps so many people back as their low estimate of themselves. They are more handicapped by their limiting thought, by their foolish convictions of inefficiency, than by almost anything else, for _there is no power in the universe that can help a man do a thing when he thinks he can not do it_. Self-faith must lead the way. You can not go beyond the limits you set for yourself.
_It is one of the most difficult things to a mortal to really believe in his own bigness_, in his own grandeur; to believe that his yearnings and hungerings and aspirations for higher, n.o.bler things have any basis in reality or any real, ultimate end. But they are, in fact, the signs of ability to match them, of power to make them real. They are the stirrings of the divinity within us; the call to something better, to go higher.
No man gets very far in the world or expresses great power until self-faith is born in him; until he catches a glimpse of his higher, n.o.bler self; until he realizes that his ambition, his aspiration, are proofs of his ability to reach the ideal which haunts him. The Creator would not have mocked us with the yearning for infinite achievement without giving us the ability and the opportunity for realizing it, any more than he would have mocked the wild birds with an instinct to fly south in the winter without giving them a sunny South to match the instinct.
_The cause of whatever comes to you in life is within you_. There is where it is created. The thing you long for and work for comes to you because your thought has created it; because there is something inside you that attracts it. It comes because there is an affinity within you for it. _Your own comes to you; is always seeking you_.
Whenever you see a person who has been unusually successful in any field, remember that he has usually thought himself into his position; his mental att.i.tude and energy have created it; what he stands for in his community has come from his att.i.tude toward life, toward his fellow men, toward his vocation, toward himself. Above all else, it is the outcome of his self-faith, of his inward vision of himself; the result of his estimate of his powers and possibilities.
The men who have done the great things in the world have been profound believers in themselves.
If I could give the young people of America but one word of advice, it would be this--"_Believe in yourself with all your might._" That is, believe that your destiny is inside of you, that there is a power within you which, if awakened, aroused, developed, and matched with honest effort, will not only make a n.o.ble man or woman of you, but will also make you successful and happy.
All through the Bible we find emphasized the miracle-working power of faith. Faith in himself indicates that a man has a glimpse of forces within him which either annihilate the obstacles in the way, or make them seem insignificant in comparison with his ability to overcome them.
Faith opens the door that enables us to look into the soul's limitless possibilities and reveals such powers there, such unconquerable forces, that we are not only encouraged to go on, but feel a great consciousness of added power because we have touched omnipotence, and gotten a glimpse of the great source of things.