The Victorious Attitude

by Orison Swett Marden

There is a divine current within us which would always flow Godward, always lead to our ultimate advantage, did we not obstruct it, or turn it aside by our doubts and fears.

He who has conquered doubt and fear has conquered failure.

James Allen.

When David Hume, the agnostic, was twitted with his inconsistency in going to hear the orthodox Scotch minister, John Brown, preach, he replied, "I don't believe all that he says, but he does, and once a week I like to hear a man who believes what he says."

If you utter a lie with the conviction that you are speaking the truth people will believe what you say, whereas if you proclaim a truth in a weak, hesitating voice, in a doubting manner, no one will believe you. If you should take a tray of genuine gold pieces upon the street and try to sell them, while showing by your very expression that you did not believe in what you had for sale, you could not dispose of those gold pieces for a tithe of their value. Nobody would believe either in their genuineness or in your own. Your timid, doubting, hesitating manner would queer all your chances of doing what you wanted to do.

I used to go trout fishing with two men, one of whom was always saying that he never had any luck fishing, that he somehow didn't have the knack, and never expected to catch many fish. This doubt totally unfitted him for successful trout fishing. He didn't take enough interest in the sport to study the habits and the haunts of the trout. He did not know the likely places in streams and rivers to drop his hook. He did not know the best kinds of bait to use. His doubt of his ability led to indifference, and this made him a failure as a trout fisher. The other man never had a doubt of success. If there were any trout to be caught he felt sure he would catch them. For years he had made a study of trout habits. He could tell which side of the big rocks to cast his hook, and he knew how to cast it in a way that would tempt the trout. Fishing in the same stream alongside the doubtful, indifferent fisherman he would catch ten times as many fish.

If there is a great big doubt in your self-faith, if you have left a bridge standing for your retreat in case of defeat, if you lack clean-cut, firm decision, if there is any interrogation point in your confidence in yourself, there will be a limp in your success gait, and you will not be able to rise out of mediocrity.

Our worst enemies are not outside but inside of us. Every human being harbors a traitor who is always on the watch to thwart his ambition, to turn him aside from his aim. That traitor is doubt. You must make up your mind at the very outset of your career that you will always be followed about by certain mental enemies, mental traitors, which will try to dissuade you from doing the highest or biggest thing possible to you. Doubt is one of the most insistent of these, and will dog your steps to your grave. The man or woman who is not strong enough to resist its insidious attacks will never do what he or she is capable of doing, and was sent into the world by the Creator to do.

The person who is always fearful of consequences, who is in doubt as to the outcome of his acts, or whether he is really capable of doing what he undertakes, will always be a weakling. No one who is not bigger than his doubts can ever accomplish anything great or worth while, because this subtle enemy kills initiative and self-confidence, and without these dominant qualities no human being can measure up to his possibilities.

But for doubt, which strangles the very beginning of things, initiative instead of being so rare would be a common virtue among all classes. Nine out of ten average individuals are held back from testing their powers by the suggestions of doubt. If it were possible to drive from the human mind this specter which stands at the door of our hopes, of our resolution, which throws its baleful shadow across our vision, civilization would forge ahead by leaps and bounds. This miserable traitor, under the guise of a friend, is holding down millions of men and women below the level of their powers, keeping them from beginning things which they are capable of doing, but which doubt warns them at their peril not to attempt.