The Victorious Attitude

by Orison Swett Marden

Many a person has ruined his life effort by depreciating it and sending out to those about him the negative vibration of his inferiority. We radiate our faith, our confidence in ourselves or our doubts, and distrust. Others catch the contagion of our opinion of ourselves.

Whatever you do, don't set up in your own mind and in that of others a picture of yourself as a weak, ineffective, negative personality. People do not realize the harm they do by making uncomplimentary and unfavorable remarks about themselves. It does not matter what it may be, the assertion of anything unfavorable to us or unlike what we wish to be is injurious. How often we hear men and women say: "I never can remember anything. I am always forgetting umbrellas and packages. I never can remember names or faces," and similar negative, depreciatory remarks. It never occurs to them that by making such statements as these they are strengthening their defects. They are not aware that by impressing these unfortunate images of themselves upon their mental mirror they are seriously injuring their self-confidence, their ultimate chance of being what they would like to be or of getting what they desire.

The character of civilization would be radically changed in a short time if parents were to teach their children the wonderful, strengthening, character-building power in the habit of affirmation. If boys and girls were impressed with the truth that the constant affirming of the good, the beautiful and the true, the insistent holding of the ideal of themselves as they would like to be, is a real creative force that tends to actualize what they long for many of the problems of the race would be solved.

As a matter of fact the worst enemy, as well as the best friend, any human being ever has is inside of him. The very mental attitude of the majority of people is utterly antagonistic to their advancement.

A really brainy professional man whom I meet quite often is a striking example of the baneful effects of the negative self-depreciatory thought. He wanted to do something big in his line, but he has had only mediocre success, and in consequence has so soured on life that he seems to have lost the power to enjoy himself. The truth is, the early contracted habit of self-castigation and unfavorable comparison with others who were more fortunate at the start has stayed by him through the years and practically disqualified his mind for real enjoyment or for making the most of his talents.

Another negative character of this type is a man in commercial life who is forever recalling his lack of opportunities. He never tires of referring to the fact that he was handicapped at his very birth by a slovenly slipshod father, and that all through life he has been placed at a great disadvantage compared with other men. He believes, and constantly affirms that he is unlucky, that he has never been at the right spot at the right time, that no matter how hard he works he feels a mysterious something holding him back.

Some malignant fate, or destiny, he complains, is always tripping him up, thwarting his most strenuous efforts, overturning his best laid plans. Through its machinations, although he has worked harder than anybody else he knows, he and his family have remained in poverty, while his associates have become prosperous.

The cause of this man's failure is not far to seek. It is plain that he started wrong and has been going wrong ever since. He has been talking failure all his life, affirming hard times, poverty, ill luck, and disappointment. He has been sowing thistles and all sorts of ill weeds in his garden and yet he wonders why his harvests have been so stingy, so blighted and over-shadowed by weeds.

Affirmations, acts, motives, ambitions, mental attitudes are the seeds sown in human gardens. Their character determines what our harvests shall be. Our future reaping depends entirely on our past sowing. What we are enjoying or suffering to-day is the result of yesterday's sowing. We are reaping weeds, thistles, thorns, or beautiful flowers and luscious fruit, according to the seeds we have sown.

The only soil in which our good seed thoughts will flourish is that of mental harmony. In this fruitful ground lies the secret of all efficiency and happiness. To come into unity with the Author of our being is to realize perfect mental harmony. And this is the first requisite of an efficient life, a goal that can be reached only by the road of constant, unfailing affirmation.