Pushing to the Front

by Orison Swett Marden

Everybody is attracted by lovable qualities and is repelled by the unlovely wherever found. The whole principle of an attractive personality lives in this sentence. A fine manner pleases; a coarse, brutal manner repels. We cannot help being attracted to one who is always trying to help us,—who gives us his sympathy, who is always trying to make us comfortable and to give us every advantage he can. On the other hand, we are repelled by people who are always trying to get something out of us, who elbow their way in front of us, to get the best seat in a car or a hall, who are always looking for the easiest chair, or for the choicest bits at the table, who are always wanting to be waited on first at the restaurant or hotel, regardless of others.

The ability to bring the best that is in you to the man you are trying to reach, to make a good impression at the very first meeting, to approach a prospective customer as though you had known him for years without offending his taste, without raising the least prejudice, but getting his sympathy and good will, is a great accomplishment, and this is what commands a great salary.

There is a charm in a gracious personality from which it is very hard to get away. It is difficult to snub the man who possesses it. There is something about him which arrests your prejudice, and no matter how busy or how worried you may be, or how much you may dislike to be interrupted, somehow you haven't the heart to turn away the man with a pleasing personality.

Who has not felt his power multiplied many times, his intellect sharpened, and a keener edge put on all of his faculties, when coming into contact with a strong personality which has called forth hidden powers which he never before dreamed he possessed, so that he could say things and do things impossible to him when alone? The power of the orator, which he flings back to his listeners, he first draws from his audience, but he could never get it from the separate individuals any more than the chemist could get the full power from chemicals standing in separate bottles in his laboratory. It is in contact and combination only that new creations, new forces, are developed.

We little realize what a large part of our achievement is due to others working through us, to their sharpening our faculties, radiating hope, encouragement, and helpfulness into our lives, and sustaining and inspiring us mentally.

We are apt to overestimate the value of an education from books alone. A large part of the value of a college education comes from the social intercourse of the students, the reenforcement, the buttressing of character by association. Their faculties are sharpened and polished by the attrition of mind with mind, and the pitting of brain against brain, which stimulate ambition, brighten the ideals, and open up new hopes and possibilities. Book knowledge is valuable, but the knowledge which comes from mind intercourse is invaluable.

Two substances totally unlike, but having a chemical affinity for each other, may produce a third infinitely stronger than either, or even both of those which unite. Two people with a strong affinity often call into activity in each other a power which neither dreamed he possessed before. Many an author owes his greatest book, his cleverest saying to a friend who has aroused in him latent powers which otherwise might have remained dormant. Artists have been touched by the power of inspiration through a masterpiece, or by some one they happened to meet who saw in them what no one else had ever seen,—the power to do an immortal thing.

The man who mixes with his fellows is ever on a voyage of discovery, finding new islands of power in himself which would have remained forever hidden but for association with others. Everybody he meets has some secret for him, if he can only extract it, something which he never knew before, something which will help him on his way, something which will enrich his life. No man finds himself alone. Others are his discoverers.

It is astonishing how much you can learn from people in social intercourse when you know how to look at them rightly. But it is a fact that you can only get a great deal out of them by giving them a great deal of yourself. The more you radiate yourself, the more magnanimous you are, the more generous of yourself, the more you fling yourself out to them without reserve, the more you will get back.

You must give much in order to get much. The current will not set toward you until it goes out from you. About all you get from others is a reflex of the currents from yourself. The more generously you give, the more you get in return. You will not receive if you give out stingily, narrowly, meanly. You must give of yourself in a whole-hearted, generous way, or you will receive only stingy rivulets, when you might have had great rivers and torrents of blessings.