The Prosperity & Wealth Bible. Kahlil Gibran
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planning his life work needs, especially, knowledge. First, he needs to know himself, physically, intellectually and morally, his strength and weaknesses, his tastes, inclinations and special talents.
The next essential in successful planning is such a scheme as will recognize all the great facts and factors entering into the life. Every young man should study himself know his own ability, find out his own talent and special inclinations, and then lay out, as a general does his order of battle, as an architect does his building, his life plan.
A large class of young men seem to have formulated no plans, schemes, purposes, beyond the present and the immediate future.
Not long since I heard a distinguished man giving one great reason for his success and he had risen under very adverse influences from ignorance and poverty to wide knowledge and a position of great honor and power in these words:
“When as a country lad I entered college in my ‘teens, I laid out carefully in advance a course of five years in Arts and four following years in Theology. I was poor and had to earn my money during the vacations, by editorial work during the college year, and labored under great disadvantages in other respects. Yet my carefully matured plans I followed out through nine years without deviation, and if I have met with success in life it has been largely owing to my ability to plan my work carefully and then stick to my plans until I had completed them.”
The Right Use of Difficulties
There is no better test of character than a man’s treatment of difficulties. The coward shuns them; the lazy man tries to go around them; the idler dawdles in front of them, waiting like Micawber for something to turn up or some miracle to remove them; the baby-man waits for some friend to lift him over them ; but the manly man surmounts them.
There are two important questions for young men: How are we to think about our difficulties? How are we to treat our difficulties?
1. How are we to think about the difficulties we meet in life? This is a question of vast importance, for upon its correct solution depends largely our happiness and our success.
We should never look upon difficulties as misfortunes. They are often, and when rightly used, always among our greatest blessings. Difficulties encountered start the mind to active enterprise, develop the inventive genius, spur us to exertion, summon our resources and exercise them for growth and enlargement.
Difficulties are to young people what the wind is to the young oak nature’s method of causing us to lay hold more deeply on her strength and grow stronger fiber in our mental and moral being. Difficulties furnish us our grandest opportunities becoming, as they do, the great incentive and inspiration to our undeveloped forces. They call forth our reserve power. They are Heaven-ordained instrumentalities for awakening the slumbering powers within us to life and activity.
A young man with many difficulties in his way ought to thank God and take courage. He should spell the word d-i-f-f-i-c-u-l-t-i-e-s, but should pronounce it opportunities.
2. How are we to treat our difficulties?
First, we must face them squarely. Many of life’s difficulties are more imaginary than real. They dwindle to insignificance the moment we gaze resolutely upon them. Study them as carefully as you would an opponent in battle whom you are determined to conquer. Learn all you can from friend and foe about the difficulties you are encountering. Remember you are born to conquer, and resolve to be a victor. Let there be no shunning, no whining, no waiting, no sickly, babyish dependence on others. Your own right hand, your own strong heart, your own indomitable will these can give you the victory.
Take your difficulties as the athletes take their hard and rigid training with a welcome; and remember each difficulty conquered means more manly strength.
Read the history of the world’s greatest men and see how they conquered poverty, prejudice, and opposition; how they triumphed over bodily weakness (“out of weakness were made strong” through difficulties) ; how they overcame mental and moral deficiencies, and rose up giants from the contests and victors in the battle, and became men of whom the world was no* worthy, because they overcame difficulties.
Conquer your difficulties and you have conquered the world.
Self-Assertion as a Success Factor
Many a well-educated man of good address and ability fails to win a satisfactory position in life because he lacks self-assertion. He has a shrinking nature and abhors publicity; the thought of pushing himself forward is repugnant to him, and so he is left behind in the race by the hustling, stirring, vigorous people around him, many of whom do not possess one-tenth of his ability or natural advantages.
Many young people have a totally mistaken conception of the meaning of healthy aggressiveness. They frequently confound it with egotistic boastfulness, decry it as a lack of modesty, and consider it the sign of petty, vulgar soul. They think it unbecoming to try to make a good impression in regard to their own ability, and shrink from public gaze, believing that, if they work hard, even in retirement, they will come out all right.
As a matter of fact, however, in this competitive age, it is not only indispensable to have our mental storehouses well stocked with superior goods, but it is also necessary to advertise them, for even an inferior article, if well-advertised, will often sell rapidly, while a superior one without advertisement will sell at a dead loss.
No one sympathizes with the blatant, conceited, over-confident youth who has the list of his accomplishments and virtues at his tongue’s end, and inflicts them on any one he can induce to listen. He is the very opposite of the unassuming young man, who, while conscious of his power, makes no parade of it, but simply carries himself as if he knew his business thoroughly.
When questioned as to what he can do, a modesty self-assertive person does not give weak, hesitating answers, saying, “I think I can do that,” or “Perhaps I could do it,” creating a feeling of doubt not only in his own mind but also in that of his questioner, which undoubtedly acts to his disadvantage. He knows he can do certain things, and he says so with a confidence that carries conviction.
This is the sort of self-assertion or self-confidence that young men and women must cultivate if they would raise themselves to their full value. It is a quality as far removed from vulgar, shallow self-conceit as the calm exercise of conscious power is from charlatanism.
Thousands of young men and young women are occupying inferior positions today because of their over-humility, so to speak, or fear of seeming to put themselves forward. Many of them are conscious that they are much abler than the superintendents or managers over them, and are consequently dissatisfied, feeling that an injustice has been done them, because they have been passed over in favor of more aggressive workers. But they have only themselves to blame. They have been too modest to assert themselves or to assume responsibility when occasion has warranted, thinking that , in time their real ability would be discovered by their employers, and that they would be advanced accordingly. But a young man with vim and self-confidence, who courts responsibility, will attract the attention of those above him, and will be promoted when a retiring, self-effacing, but much abler youth who worked beside him is passed by. It is useless to say that merit ought to win under any circumstances the fact remains that there is very little chance for a young man, no matter what his ability, to forge ahead, if he lacks a just appreciation of himself and is destitute of that consciousness of power and willingness to assume responsibility which impresses his personality on others and opens the door to recognition of his merit. ‘Tis true, ‘tis pity, and pity ‘tis, ‘tis true” that modest worth that retires from the public gaze and works in secret, waiting to be discovered and to have prizes thrust upon it, waits in vain. The world moves too fast in this twentieth century to turn aside to seek out shrinking ability. We must all go to the world. We need not delude ourselves with the idea that it will come to us, no matter how able or meritorious we may be. While actual inability can never hope to hold its own, even though, through self-conceit and aggressive methods, it may succeed in pushing its way ahead for a time, it is equally true that shrinking, self-effacing ability rarely comes to its own. Success.