Learn to Say No.
Look over the history of the thousands who have failed in business, and you will find in nearly every instance the failure was due to an inability to say No.
People come to us under various guises and ask us to do things which in our better judgment we had rather not do, and too many have not the backbone to say No.
We are led to invest in mining stocks and to embark in precarious enterprises because we cannot say No.
We endorse notes and go security for our friends, not because we want to but because we cannot say No.
There is a class of "good fellows" who are after us to join them in physical pleasures, the foregoing of which would be better for us physically, financially and mentally. Too many join them because they cannot say No.
It is rarely a man goes off deliberately and gets drunk. The lone drunk is usually the result of sorrow, sudden financial blow or a hard jolt of some sort.
The man who gets drunk generally does so because he cannot say No when bibulous friends press him to take a drink.
The ability to say No, to refrain from going with the crowd, to decline to go down stream is, more than any other one thing in this life, the mark of a strong character.