You should be as well prepared physically for the contest as the prize fighter who is determined to keep his record. Or, like the Greek god Hercules, you should be able to win largely by the force of your reserve power. It was said that Hercules made such an impression of great reserve force on his antagonist that he never had to put forth much strength in wrestling. He won as much by the impression of confident power which he radiated, as by the degree of strength he exerted.
In other words, if you do not back up your general ability and special training with robust health you will be forever at a disadvantage in the game of life. You must keep yourself fit for your job, always in a condition to do your best or you will be handicapped in the game.
It is the law of life that the “weakest shall go to the wall.” Frailness of body is an inevitable handicap in life. Physical weakness largely discounts the possibilities of achievement. The slow but striving tortoise may beat out the hare in the race. The steadfast, plodding student may take the prizes of life which his more brilliant competitor never attained. But the tortoise, though slow, is sound of body. Cripple him and all his plodding will avail him little.
True, there have been weak men who have done wonders in life in spite of frailness and physical infirmity. But they are only the exceptions that prove the rule. Alexander Pope, “the gallant cripple of Twickenham,” sewed up in canvas; St. Paul, short in stature, of inferior presence and almost blind, are types of the men whose great souls overcame their bodily weakness. Cæsar, Pascal, Nelson, were other types of the indomitable spirit which can not be limited by sickness or infirmity. But, in the main, the man who “makes good” has good health.
As a salesman you carry all your capital with you. You are in business, but you carry everything connected with it, your factory, your sales department with you. Your machinery assets are mental, and if you don’t do your best to keep them in fine condition you will show about as much sense as a farmer who would leave all his valuable farm machinery out-doors in all sorts of weather, to be ruined by wind and dew, rain and snow. Your skill, your expertness, your facility of expression, your tact, your discretion, your power of discrimination, your knowledge of human nature, your courage, your initiative, your resourcefulness, your cheerfulness, your magnetism, in fact, every one of your mental faculties is a part of your business capital, is an asset, and its condition depends entirely on the care you take of the engine which furnishes the motor power for all your mental machinery. That engine is your body.
The physical soil is the soil in which your faculties are nourished. If this soil is impoverished, if your vitality is low, if you are sapping your energies by vicious, ignorant, or foolish habits, your faculties will not thrive.
Some time ago an ambitious young fellow came to me and asked me to tell him how to increase his ability and his power to achieve things. He was pale and emaciated, with something like signs of dissipation in his face. The young man seemed very anxious to get along in the world but, evidently, he had taken the wrong path. A few questions brought out the fact that although not dissipating in the ordinary sense, the course he was pursuing was almost as disastrous to his health. He was sitting up till one or two o’clock at night, studying, while working very hard in the day-time, and to brace up his depleted strength he was not only drinking coffee and tea to excess, but he was also taking whiskey, and even drugs. He did not seem to know that this artificial stimulus to his brain was like a whip to a tired horse, and that it was only a question of time until he would be a physical and mental wreck.
It is amazing how ignorant many otherwise intelligent people are when it comes to a question of body and health building. Young people often ask me to tell them how they can increase their ability, and in nine cases out of ten I find that, like the young man above, they are doing some fool things that defeat the very object they have in view.
Now, the surest way to increase your ability, to multiply and strengthen your faculties, is to lay a good foundation of health, and to guard it as you would your most precious possession—for that is really what it is. Vigorous, abounding health will emphasize, reinforce and multiply the forcefulness of all the faculties, and the sum of these faculties constitutes your ability, the force that achieves, that creates.
It will make a tremendous difference to you what sort of a man you take to your prospect. I say “you take,” because you are the master of the salesman. There is something bigger back of the salesman, than the salesman himself. You are the salesman’s manager, his trainer, his educator. There is a master in you, who, to a very large extent, dictates the sort of a man “you take” to your prospect, because he will be the sort of a man you make him. To be a whole man, mentally, physically, and spiritually is your business. To be deficient on any of these planes is to be only two parts a man. To be one hundred per cent. a man—that is your problem.