At the very outset of your career it is a splendid thing to make up your mind that you are going to be a conqueror in life, that you are going to be the king of your mental realm and not a slave to any treacherous enemy; that you will choose the wisest course, and, no matter how forbidding or formidable the difficulties in the way, that you will take the turning which points toward the goal of your ambition, no matter who or what may bar your onward path. Don’t let doubt balk your efforts. Don’t let it paralyze your beginning and make you a pigmy so that you will not half try to make good when you have a waiting giant in you. Confidence, self-assurance, self-faith—these are the great friends which will kill the traitor doubt.
The fact that you have an almost uncontrollable impulse, a great absorbing ambition to do a thing which meets with the approval of your judgment and your better self, is a notice served upon you that you can do the thing, and should do it at once.
Do not be afraid of taking responsibilities. Make up your mind that you will assume any responsibility which comes to you along the line of your legitimate career and that you will bear it a little better than anybody else ever before has. There is no greater mistake in the world than that of postponing present responsibility thinking that we will be better prepared to assume it later. It is accepting these positions as they come to us that gives us the preparation; for we can do nothing of importance easily, effectively, until we have done it so many times that it becomes a habit.
How often we hear people make remarks like this: “I know that I ought to do this thing to-day, but I do not believe I will,” or “I do not feel like it.” So they, perhaps, procrastinate, or let the thing slide along, and do just the opposite to what they know they ought to do.
If those who are disappointed with what they have so far accomplished, would only make up their minds that for one month they would force themselves to do the things they dislike, but which they know would be for their good, they would get a new start on the success road, a grip on themselves and their possibilities. Their whole work system would feel the resultant tonic.
On the very resolution to do the thing which is best for you—no matter how disagreeable, no matter how humiliating, no matter how much you may suffer from sensitiveness or a feeling of unpreparedness—depends the development of your manhood, or womanhood.
Why be afraid to demand great things of yourself? Affirm your ability to do and be and powers which you never dreamed you possessed will leap to your assistance. “Trust thyself. Every heart vibrates to that iron string.”
There is no one that can shut the door which leads to any legitimate ambition, to a larger, fuller life, but yourself. There are no obstacles, no difficulties, no power on earth, nothing but yourself that can make God’s promise to man void: “Behold, I have set before you an open door which no man can shut.”
We are all reservoirs of power, and what we make of ourselves, what we achieve in life, is not dependent on the outward things, but on the extent to which we draw on our hidden forces, our latent talents and resources.
Whatever comes to us in life we create first in our mentality. As the building is a reality in all its details in the architect’s mind before a stone or brick is laid, so we create mentally everything which later becomes a reality in our achievement. Our heart longings, our soul aspirations, are something more than mere vaporings of imagination. They are prophecies, predictions, couriers, forerunners of things that can become realities.