HE CAN WHO THINKS HE CAN, AN IRON WILL & PUSHING TO THE FRONT. Orison Swett Marden
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she never would cook, no matter what misfortunes might come to her; married a man who lost his money, and she was forced to part with her servants and to do the cooking herself for the family. She thought she never could do it, but she determined to make breadmaking an art; to elevate cooking and make it a science in her home; and she succeeded.
No matter how humble your work may seem, do it in the spirit of an artist, of a master. In this way you lift it out of commonness and rob it of what would otherwise be drudgery.
You will find that learning to thoroughly respect everything you do, and not to let it go out of your hands until it has the stamp of your approval upon it as a trade-mark, will have a wonderful effect upon your whole character.
The quality of your work will have a great deal to do with the quality of your life. If your work quality is down, your character will be down, your standards down, your ideals down. The habit of insisting upon the best of which you are capable, and of always demanding of yourself the highest, never accepting the lowest, will make all the difference between mediocrity or failure, and a successful career.
If you bring to your work the spirit of an artist, instead of an artisan—if you bring a burning zeal, an all-absorbing enthusiasm—if you determine to put the best there is in you in everything you do, no matter what it is, you will not long be troubled with a sense of drudgery. Everything depends on the spirit we bring the task. The right spirit makes an artist in the humblest task, while the wrong spirit makes an artisan in any calling, ho matter how high that calling may be.
There is a dignity, an indescribable quality of superiority, in everything we do which we thoroughly and honestly respect. There is nothing belittling or menial which has to be done for the welfare of the race. You cannot afford to give the mere dregs, the mere leavings of your energies, to your work. The best in you is none too good for it.
It is only when we do our best, when we put joy, energy, enthusiasm and zeal into our work, that we really grow; and this is the only way we can keep our highest self-respect.
We cannot think much of ourselves when we are not honest in our work—when we are not doing our level best. There is nothing which will compensate you for the loss of faith in yourself; for the knowledge of your reputation for doing bungling, dishonest work.
You have something infinitely higher within you to satisfy than to make a mere living, to get through your day’s work as easily as possible. It is your sense of right; the demand within you to do your level best; to develop the highest thing in you; to do the square thing—to be a man. This should speak so loudly in you that the mere bread-and-butter question, the money-making question, should be absolutely insignificant in comparison.
Start out with the tacit understanding with yourself that you will be a man at all hazards; that your work shall express the highest and the best things in you, and that you cannot afford to debase or demoralize yourself, by appealing to the lowest, the most despicable, mean side of yourself by deteriorating, by botching your work.
How often we see people working along without purpose, half committed to their aim, only intending to pursue their vocation until they strike snags! They intend to keep at it as long as it is tolerable, or until they find something they like better. This is a cowardly way to face a life-work which determines our destiny.
A man ought to approach his life task, however humble, with the high ideals that characterize a great master as he approaches the canvas upon which he is going to put his masterpiece—with a resolution to make no false moves that will mar the model that lives in his ideal.
A sacred thing, this, approaching the uncut marble of life. We cannot afford to strike any false blows which might mar the angel that sleeps in the stone; for the image we produce must represent our life-work. Whether it is beautiful or hideous, divine or brutal, it must stand as an expression of ourselves, as representing our ideals.
It always pains me to see a young person approaching his life-work with carelessness and indifference, as though it did not make much difference to him how he did his work if he only got through with it and got his pay for it. How little the average youth realizes the sacredness, the dignity, the divinity of his calling!
There is a higher meaning, something broader, deeper, and nobler in a vocation than making a living or seeking fame. Making a life is the best thing in it. It should be a man-developer, a character-builder, and a great life school for broadening, deepening, and rounding into symmetry, harmony, and beauty all the God-given faculties within us.
The part of our life-work which gives us a living, which provides the bread and butter and clothes and houses and shelter, is merely incidental to the great disciplinary, educative phase of it—the self-unfoldment. It is a question of how large and how grand a man or woman you can bring out of your vocation, not how much money there is in it.
Your life-work is your statue. You cannot get away from it. It is beautiful or hideous, lovely or ugly, inspiring or debasing, as you make it. It will elevate or degrade. You can no more get away from it than you can, of your own volition, rise from the earth.
Every errand you do, every letter you write, every piece of merchandise you sell, every conversation, every thought of yours—everything you do or think is a blow of the chisel which mars or beautifies the statue.
The attitude of mind with which we perform our life-work colors the whole career and determines the quality of the destiny. It is the lofty ideal that redeems the life from the curse of commonness, and imparts a touch of nobility to every calling. But a low, sordid aim will take the dignity out of any occupation.
Chapter VII.
Responsibility Develops Power
THERE is enough latent force in a Maximite torpedo shell to tear a warship to pieces. But the amount of force or explosive power in one of these terrific engines of destruction could never be ascertained by any ordinary concussion.
Children could play with it for years, pound it, roll it about, and do all sorts of things with it; the shell might be shot through the walls of an ordinary building, without arousing its terrible dynamic energy. It must be fired from a cannon, with terrific force, through a foot or so of steel plate armor, before it meets with resistance great enough to evoke its mighty explosive power.
Every man is a stranger to his greatest strength, his mightiest power, until the test of a great responsibility, a critical emergency, or a supreme crisis in his life, calls it out.
Work on a farm, hauling wood, working in a tannery, storekeeping, West Point, the Mexican War, doing odd jobs about town, were not enough to arouse the sleeping giant in General Grant. There is no probability that he would ever have been heard from outside of his own little community but for the emergency of the Civil War.
There was a tremendous dynamic force in the man, but it required the concussion of the great Civil War to ignite it. No ordinary occasion touched his slumbering power, no ordinary experience could ignite the powder in this giant. Under common circumstances he would have gone through life a stranger to his own ability, just as most of the great dynamite shells now in existence will probably never be exploded because of the lack of a war emergency great enough to explode them.
Farming, wood-chopping, rail-splitting, surveying, storekeeping, the state legislature, the practice of law, not even the United States Congress, furnished occasions great enough, resistance strong enough, to ignite the spark of power, to explode the dynamic force in Abraham Lincoln. Only the responsibility of a nation in imminent peril furnished sufficient concussion to ignite the giant powder in perhaps the greatest man that ever trod the American Continent.
There is no probability that Lincoln would have gone down in history as a very great man but for the crisis of the Civil War. The nation’s peril was the responsibility thrust upon him which brought out the last ounce of his reserves, his latent power of achievement, the resources which he never would have dreamed he possessed but for this emergency.
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