The human machine is very complicated, and even a little thing may seriously impair its harmony and efficiency. A bad fitting shoe may cut down your effectiveness temporarily, or as long as you wear it, twenty-five per cent. A speck of dirt in the eye would cripple a Napoleon, as a hair in the works would seriously injure the best timepiece in the world. A hasty, bolted lunch, of poor, adulterated food, may impair your digestion, cut down your brain power and make you ineffective when it is of the utmost importance that you be effective.
Efficiency lies in the symmetry and perfect functioning of all of your organs. If they are not trying to help you make a sale; if you have treated them badly and they are protesting, they will beat you. You may think that, no matter how you feel, you can put a deal over by sheer will power, but remember that your will power is dependent upon the harmonious action of all your bodily functions. It will weaken just as soon as any one of these is impaired. If not one, but several of them—your digestive organs, your liver, your heart, your kidneys, your brain, are fighting against you, trying to defeat your purpose, you will not win out no matter how hard a fight you put up. Many a superb salesman has finally lost out by making an enemy of all the organs which make for health and success.
Do you realize what goes into every sale you make? Did it ever occur to you that your brains, your education, your training, your experience, your skill, your ingenuity, your resourcefulness, your originality, your personality—about all your life capital is flung into every selling transaction?
The result of every canvass you make will depend very largely upon how much of yourself you fling into it, and how intensely, how enthusiastically, cheerfully, and tactfully you fling yourself in. You cannot bring the whole of yourself to the sale unless every function of your body gives its consent. Your physical organism must be in perfect harmony or your vitality will be lowered, and you will be robbed of a certain percentage of your possible power.
The great thing when you approach a prospect is to be all there, not to leave ten, fifteen, twenty or twenty-five per cent. of yourself in the bar-room or in some other vicious resort the night before. Do not fling a lot of your ability away in bad food, or in a too rich and complicated diet, viciously taken. Be sure when you call on a prospect that you take a good digestion along with you; it is the best friend of your brain. If your digestion is ruined by over-eating, or if your brain is not well fed, no amount of will power, or cocktail or whiskey braces, will compensate for the loss you suffer.
Many a promising salesman has failed to make good because he made a habit of turning night into day and could take only about half of himself to his work. Many a cracker-jack salesman has lost a sale by partaking too heartily of dinner, or by a fit of indigestion brought on by some indiscretion in eating.
Multitudes of people go through life working hard, trying desperately to succeed, but are terribly disappointed by the meagerness of their achievement, simply because they did not take care of their health. They are all the time devitalized; they lack blood, or it is of poor quality; it lacks fire and force, and, of course, the brain and all the faculties deteriorate to correspond with the blood.
The achievement follows the vitality, and this in turn depends on the general care of the body. The kind of food, its quality and amount, the manner in which we partake of it, our physical habits, work, rest, recreation, sleep,—these are the things on which health and vitality depend. These furnish our physical energy and achievement depends upon energy. It would be impossible even for the brain of a Webster to focus with power, if fed with poor ill-nourished blood.
Everywhere we see bright, educated young men and women, with good brains, crippled by poor health, mocked by great ambitions which they can never realize. A large part of their ability is lost to the world because of some physical weakness which might be remedied by careful, scientific living.