Pushing to the Front

by Orison Swett Marden

Erase all the shadows, all the doubts and fears, and the suggestions of poverty and failure from your mind. When you have become master of your thought, when you have once learned to dominate your mind, you will find that things will begin to come your way. Discouragement, fear, doubt, lack of self-confidence, are the germs which have killed the prosperity and happiness of tens of thousands of people.

Every man must play the part of his ambition. If you are trying to be a successful man you must play the part. If you are trying to demonstrate opulence, you must play it, not weakly, but vigorously, grandly. You must feel opulent, you must think opulence, you must appear opulent. Your bearing must be filled with confidence. You must give the impression of your own assurance, that you are large enough to play your part and to play it superbly. Suppose the greatest actor living were to have a play written for him in which the leading part was to represent a man in the process of making a fortune—a great, vigorous, progressive character, who conquered by his very presence. Suppose this actor, in playing the part, were to dress like an unprosperous man, walk on the stage in a stooping, slouchy, slipshod manner, as though he had no ambition, no energy or life, as though he had no real faith that he could ever make money or be a success in business; suppose he went around the stage with an apologetic, shrinking, skulking manner, as much as to say, "Now, I do not believe that I can ever do this thing that I have attempted; it is too big for me. Other people have done it, but I never thought that I should ever be rich or prosperous. Somehow good things do not seem to be meant for me. I am just an ordinary man, I haven't had much experience and I haven't much confidence in myself, and it seems presumptuous for me to think I am ever going to be rich or have much influence in the world." What kind of an impression would he make upon the audience? Would he give confidence, would he radiate power or forcefulness, would he make people think that that kind of a weakling could create a fortune, could manipulate conditions which would produce money? Would not everybody say that the man was a failure? Would they not laugh at the idea of his conquering anything?

Poverty itself is not so bad as the poverty thought. It is the conviction that we are poor and must remain so that is fatal. It is the attitude of mind that is destructive, the facing toward poverty, and feeling so reconciled to it that one does not turn about face and struggle to get away from it with a determination which knows no retreat.

If we can conquer inward poverty, we can soon conquer poverty of outward things, for, when we change the mental attitude, the physical changes to correspond.

Holding the poverty thought, keeps us in touch with poverty-stricken, poverty-producing conditions; and the constant thinking of poverty, talking poverty, living poverty, makes us mentally poor. This is the worst kind of poverty.

We can not travel toward prosperity until the mental attitude faces prosperity. As long as we look toward despair, we shall never arrive at the harbor of delight.

The man who persists in holding his mental attitude toward poverty, or who is always thinking of his hard luck and failure to get on, can by no possibility go in the opposite direction, where the goal of prosperity lies.

There are multitudes of poor people in this country who are half satisfied to remain in poverty, and who have ceased to make a desperate struggle to rise out of it. They may work hard, but they have lost the hope, the expectation of getting an independence.

Many people keep themselves poor by fear of poverty, allowing themselves to dwell upon the possibility of coming to want, of not having enough to live upon, by allowing themselves to dwell upon conditions of poverty.

When you make up your mind that you are done with poverty forever; that you will have nothing more to do with it; that you are going to erase every trace of it from your dress, your personal appearance, your manner, your talk, your actions, your home; that you are going to show the world your real mettle; that you are no longer going to pass for a failure; that you have set your face persistently toward better things—a competence, an independence—and that nothing on earth can turn you from your resolution, you will be amazed to find what a reenforcing power will come to you, what an increase of confidence, reassurance, and self-respect.