of ability, you weaken your self-confidence, and that is to undermine the very foundation of all achievement.
So long as you carry around a failure atmosphere, and radiate doubt and discouragement, you will be a failure. Turn about face; cut off all the currents of failure thoughts, of discouraged thoughts. Boldly face your goal with a stout heart and a determined endeavor and you will find that things will change for you; but you must see a new world before you can live in it. It is to what you see, to what you believe, to what you struggle incessantly to attain, that you will approximate.
“Trust thyself; every heart vibrates to that iron string.”
I know people who have been hunting for months for a situation, because they go into an office with a confession of weakness in their very manner; they show their lack of self-confidence. Their prophecy of failure is in their face, in their bearing. They surrender before the battle begins. They are living witnesses against themselves.
When you ask a man to give you a position, and he reads this language in your face and manner, “Please give me a position; do not kick me out; fate is against me; I am an unlucky dog; I am disheartened; I have lost confidence in myself,” he will only have contempt for you; he will say to himself that you are not a man, to start with, and he will get rid of you as soon as he can.
If you expect to get a position, you must go into an office with the air of a conqueror; you must fling out confidence from yourself before you can convince an employer that you are the man he is looking for. You must show by your very presence that you are a man of force, a man who can do things with vigor, cheerfulness, and enthusiasm.
Self-reliance which carries great, vigorous self-faith has ever been the best substitute for friends, pedigree, influence, and money. It is the best capital in the world; it has mastered more obstacles, overcome more difficulties, and carried through more enterprises than any other human quality.
I have interviewed many timid people as to why they let opportunities pass by them that were eagerly seized by others with much less ability, and the answer was invariably a confession like the following: “I have not courage,” said one; “I lack confidence in myself,” said another; “I shrink from trying for fear I shall make a mistake and have the mortification of being turned down,” said a third; “It would look so cheeky for me to have the nerve to put myself forward,” said a fourth; “Oh, I do not think it would be right to seek a place so far above me,” said another, “I think I ought to wait until the place seeks me, or I am better prepared.” So they run through the whole gamut of self-distrust. This shrinking, this timidity or self-effacement, often proves a worse enemy to success than actual incompetence. Take the lantern in the hand, and you will always have light enough for your next step, no matter how dark, for the light will move along with you. Do not try to see a long way ahead. “One step enough for me.”
A physical trainer in one of our girls' colleges says that his first step is to establish the girls in self-confidence; to lead them to think only of the ends to be attained and not of the means. He shows them that the greater power lies behind the muscles, in the mind, and points to the fact so frequently demonstrated, that a person in a supreme crisis, as in a fire or other catastrophe, can exert strength out of all proportion to his muscle. He thus helps them to get rid of fear and timidity, the great handicaps to achievement.
I believe if we had a larger conception of our possibilities, a larger faith in ourselves, we could accomplish infinitely more. And if we only better understood our divinity we would have this larger faith. We are crippled by the old orthodox idea of man’s inferiority. There is no inferiority about the man that God made. The only inferiority in us is what we put into ourselves. What God made is perfect. The trouble is that most of us are but a burlesque of the man God patterned and intended. A Harvard graduate, who has been out of college a number of years, writes that because of his lack of self-confidence he has never earned more than twelve dollars a week. A graduate of Princeton tells us that, except for a brief period, he has never been able to earn more than a dollar a day. These men do not dare to assume responsibility. Their timidity and want of faith in themselves destroy their efficiency. The great trouble with many of us is that we do not believe enough in ourselves. We do not realize our power. Man was made to hold up his head and carry himself like a conqueror, not like a slave,—as a success, not as a failure,—to assert his God-given birthright. Self-depreciation is a crime.
If you would be superior, you must hold the thought of superiority constantly in the mind. A singularly modest man of so retiring a disposition that at one time he did not show half of his great ability, whose shrinking nature and real talent for self-abasement had actually given him an inferior appearance, told me one day how he had counteracted this tendency toward self-depreciation. Among other things, he said he had derived great benefit from the practice he had formed of going about the streets, especially where he was not known, with an air of great importance, as though imagining himself the mayor of the city, the governor of the state, or even the President of the United States. By merely looking as though he expected everybody to recognize that he must be a person of note, he changed not only his appearance, but also his convictions. It raised him immeasurably in his own estimation. It had a marked effect upon his whole character. Where he once walked through the streets shrinking from the gaze of others and dreading their scrutiny, he now boldly invites, even demands, attention by his evident superiority, for he has the appearance of one whom people would like to know. In other words, he has caught a glimpse of his divinity; he really feels his superiority, and his self-respecting manner reflects it.
Be sure that your success will never rise higher than your confidence in yourself. The greatest artist in the world could not paint the face of a madonna with a model of depravity in his mind. You cannot succeed while doubting yourself of thinking thoughts of failure. Cling to success thoughts. Fill your mind with cheerful, optimistic pictures,—pictures of achievement. This will scatter the spectres of doubt and fear and send a power through you which will transform you into an achiever. No matter how poor or how hemmed in you may be, stoutly deny the power of adversity or poverty to keep you down. Constantly assert your superiority to environment. Believe in yourself; feel that you are to dominate your surroundings. Resolve that you will be the master and not the slave of circumstances. This very assertion of superiority; this assumption of power; this affirmation of your ability to succeed,—the attitude that claims success as an inalienable birthright,—will strengthen the whole man and give great added power to the combination of faculties which doubt, fear and lack of confidence undermine.
Self-confidence marshals all one’s faculties and twists their united strength into one mighty achievement cable. It carries conviction. It makes other people believe in us. What has not been accomplished through its miraculous power! What triumphs in invention, in art, and in discovery have been wrought through its magic! What does not civilization owe to the invincible self-faith of its inventors, its discoverers, its railroad builders, its mine developers and city builders? It has won a thousand victories in science and in war which were deemed impossible by faint-hearted doubters.
The fact that you believe implicitly that you can do what may seem impossible or very difficult to others, shows that there is something within you that has gotten a glimpse of power sufficient to do the thing.
Many men who have achieved great things cannot account for their faith. They cannot tell why they had the implicit confidence that they could do what they undertook, but the result was evidence that something within them had gotten a glimpse of latent resourcefulness, reserve power, and possibilities which would warrant that faith ; and they have gone ahead—often when they could not see a ray of light—with implicit confidence that they would come out all right, because this faith told them so.
It told them so because it had been in communication with something within them that was divine, that which had passed the bounds of the limited and had entered the domain of the limitless.
When we begin to exercise the faculties
