Dale Carnegie
Learn How to Bring Out Your Greatness
First published by Sheba Blake Publishing Corp. 2019
Copyright © 2019 by Dale Carnegie
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.
Dale Carnegie asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
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1
You Have Greatness Within You
Virtually everyone has dreams and desires within them that they would like to achieve, but many question whether they have the ability to achieve those dreams and desires. They lack the self confidence in themselves and their abilities to believe that their dreams and desires are achievable. They often think that their dreams and desires are just wishful fantasies that can’t be realistically achieved. In order to achieve your dreams and desires, you must realize that you have the capability to achieve them, you have the greatness within you to achieve those dreams and desires.
Everyone is capable of achieving great things and accomplishments, but many times in our society, we are held back by one or more obstacles that prevent us from realizing this capability. The obstacles can vary; one such obstacle is that we are instilled with a limiting belief when we are very young that we can only achieve so much in our lives. It can be if we come from a poor family with very limited means and resources that we can’t get enough education and/or enough opportunity to raise ourselves out of poverty and into a higher wealth status. Our family has been poor for so long and our opportunities so limited that we just come to “accept the fact” that we can’t break out of that status and must continue to maintain that status.
Another obstacle is that our family has had many people enter into a specific field, and due to pressure from family members, we may feel that we have to enter that specific field as well, even though our true talents and greatness may lie within another field or occupation. If all of the members of a family have entered the military, a family member who doesn’t feel it is the best fit for him/her may still attempt to follow in his/her family’s footsteps and attempt to make a career in the military because other members of the family have done so successfully. To do otherwise may be considered an offense to the family or be looked upon as turning one’s back on the family, even though that person’s best talents and greatness lie in a career outside of the military.
It is obstacles such as these that often prevent people from finding the real greatness within them, that leads them to choose paths that they manage to do well enough, but that really don’t fulfill or satisfy them as another career path or life could do for them. That is unfortunate, as our true greatness will lead us to skills and career paths that both fulfill us in terms of what we want to do with our lives and being able to make the greatest difference in the world that we can. Fortunately, we don’t have to be bound by these obstacles, and we definitely shouldn’t if we want to find our true greatness and achieve the most success and accomplishments in our lives.
As human beings, we are most capable of doing our best work when we do something that inspires us, that truly motivates us to do our best work. Too often in our society today, many people just go through the motions of the tasks required by their occupation, just to obtain a paycheck in order to pay their bills, support their families, and keep a roof over their heads. In truth, many of those people are NOT satisfied by their current occupations, but they tolerate them and put up with them because they are skilled enough at the positions for the businesses to keep them, the salaries paid are high enough to maintain a decent or better quality of living, and the situation is better than having no work at all. However, in truth, many people are not satisfied, and they are not tapping into the greatness within them because they haven’t found their true calling and the occupation or tasks where their best skills and passions lie.
Therefore, it is important that we take the time and effort to try many activities and challenges in our lives to find out where our true skills and interest lie. This is often easiest to do in school and why many incoming college freshmen take their time to try many courses in an effort to determine what they are interested in and what they are good at. This is often why they do not declare a major until the end of their sophomore years (though some intensive career choices, such as business or medical degrees, can require them to declare by the end of their freshman year). However, if you are not a student (i.e. are older than a student), that doesn’t mean you can’t take on new challenges and activities to see if your best skills and your greatest interests lie elsewhere than what you are currently doing with your life.
For instance, you can volunteer for various charities that involve tasks and challenges that are outside of your “comfort zone,” what you are most used to doing. For example, if you are involved in the business world, such as an accountant, marketer, or chief executive officer (CEO), volunteering to help homeless people will likely involve different skills and attributes than you’d normally do in your everyday occupation. For instance, you may be cooking food, carrying supplies, and building homes, tasks you would not do in accounting, marketing, or business management.
Volunteering can help to add new skills to your profile, plus it can give you insight into you as a person and help you find out if you can make a greater impact on our world in another way, find your true greatness within you and use it to help the world, and yourself as well.
Many people are afraid to go outside of their comfort zones and push themselves to do other things. One reason why is because they just don’t like feeling uncomfortable; as human beings, we like comfort and we like things that are familiar. We just have a tendency to avoid unfamiliar situations, partly out of natural instinct, and partly out of fear of the unknown. Another reason is that we are afraid that we will perform poorly at these new tasks and challenges we sign up or volunteer for, and as human beings, we are often fearful of performing poorly at tasks, partly because we are afraid we’ll get replaced by someone better in a work environment, and partly because we just don’t like performing poorly at something, as this brings down our self-esteem and self confidence. A third reason is that, if we are performing poorly in front of others, we fear we may receive ridicule and/or criticism by them because we performed poorly in front of them.
To find your greatness, you need to overcome these fears and hesitations. It’s natural to feel these tendencies; even some of those who have done great achievements and accomplishments (i.e. found their greatness) have admitted they’ve felt butterflies or apprehension over trying something new, performing in front of other people, and/or just doing something different from what they are accustomed to doing. However, they found the courage and desire to overcome these fears and push themselves to do these different tasks and activities in order to expand their skill set, learn more about themselves, and determine where their true greatness lies. The key point is that, you can also do this; it is not limited to the successful or famous, as they were in a similar situation as you are now, just looking for their calling or greatness to help enrich their lives and enable them to provide the most value to the world.
You need to remember that no one is good at every activity that they
