The Victorious Attitude

by Orison Swett Marden

Doubt is responsible for more suicides, more misery, more bankrupt lives, more failures, than any other one thing. It makes more people afraid to start out on a course they know they ought to pursue than any other thing. Standing right at the gateway of our choice, at the parting of the ways, when we have fully resolved to take the path that is best for us, a hard and forbidding one compared with the easy way along the line of least resistance, doubt calls a halt. It bids us pause and think once more, asks us to look again at the rugged path we have chosen and consider whether we really want to pay the price of our choice, to take that turning when the other looks so much brighter and pleasanter and is so very much easier.

This is the point of cleavage which marks the beginning of failure for the timid soul who is not bigger than his doubt. The suggestions pushed into his mind by his enemy make him hesitate. He is moved to "stop, look, and listen." He begins to reconsider, to look again at the obstacles ahead, and the longer he looks the bigger they grow. He becomes frightened, fears he cannot do the thing that at first seemed possible, and finally turns aside to the easier path of mediocrity and commonness.

Doubt has killed more splendid projects, shattered more ambitious schemes, strangled more effective genius, neutralized more superb effort, blasted more fine intellects, thwarted more splendid ambitions than any other enemy of the race.

Talk about drug victims and slaves of drink! Doubt has more victims than even these terrible enemies of the race. We see them everywhere in menial and lowly positions, perpetual clerks, discontented drudges, hewers of wood and drawers of water, paralyzed at the very gateway of their career by that fatal trait which they have never learned how to strangle, to neutralize with its opposites, faith, hope, confidence, assurance.

How many thousands of employees plodding along in mediocrity to-day could have been in business for themselves but for this great enemy inside of them! How many splendid young men have been kept out of the pulpit, how many superb lawyers, in possibility, have been strangled by this traitor! How many men are to-day clerks, bookkeepers, or other subordinates, who might have been managers, superintendents or proprietors themselves but for the work of this damnable traitor!

When opportunity presented itself these doubters were afraid. They waited for certainty. They dared not take chances. They did not realize that opportunity is a maiden who admires the bold, courageous, self-confident suitor. They did not wake up in time to the fact that she will not trust herself to the timid, the hesitant, the over-cautious suitor. When too late they realized that while the doubter is wavering and hesitating, wondering if he dare try to win, the daring, intrepid wooer steps in and wins.

The great prizes of life are for the courageous, the dauntless, the self-confident. The timid, hesitating, vacillating man who listens to his doubts and fears stops to make up his mind, and—the opportunity has passed beyond his reach.

Doubt, uncertainty, or fear as to results, is the great discourager of the human race. It is the dire enemy of all achievement. It tells the poor boy and girl who long for an education that it is foolish for them to think of going through school and college without money or without somebody to help them. It tells them that there are many more poor boys and girls in every school and college who are trying to pay their way than will ever find opportunities to make their education available. It is always whispering to them that there is a big waiting list of men and women who were graduated years ago everywhere looking and waiting, trying in vain to get something to do to earn back the amount they spent on their education.

No matter what you attempt to do, what new enterprise you may undertake, what progressive plans you may make, the traitor doubt will bob up and call a halt, will try to dissuade you from your purpose. It will suggest to you how many others have undertaken similar things and have gone to the wall, have failed to accomplish what they expected. It will tell you that you had better go slow, that it is foolish to go into business in times like these, that you should wait until you are better prepared, until you have more capital; in short, that there are stumbling blocks in the way, and that you must consider the step very carefully before you venture to decide.

It does not matter what we plan to do, doubt is always there ready to knock our resolutions, and, if possible, to discourage us even from attempting to put our plans in execution. Who could ever estimate how many superb inventions and discoveries, which would have helped emancipate the race from drudgery and hard conditions, have been side-tracked by this traitor!