Confidential Chats with Boys

by William Lee Howard

I have already told you, but purposely repeat it, NO BOY OR MAN CAN BE A SUCCESS UNLESS HIS HEART AND COMPLETE INTEREST ARE IN HIS WORK. The most difficult part of the problem is at the beginning. Your father or mother wants you to be a lawyer or minister, your teacher says you have great talent for a medical career, but you do not care for any one of these professions. You find it hard to really know just what to do, and I sympathize with you all. I think that those who see you from the outside, who look upon you just as a real boy and have no such relations to you as parents or teachers, are in fact the best judge of what you are capable of being fitted for in a life’s career. Go and advise with some successful man who knows you in your play and daily life, but do not take his advice if it is something HE likes and you detest. You will soon have to be your own master, and now is a good time to commence. But fit yourself for something, you MUST. Notice how everything around you is fitted by nature and then trained by man, to do its work. The bulldog is not taken out in the field to nose for game; the draft horse is not taken to the trotting track; the canary bird is not trained to catch eagles. No, each and every kind has its special work to do in making the world go around, and each of us has to be trained according to our talents. Just because we all have two legs and arms does not indicate that we are all the same—just human beings all turned out from the same mold. Arms are made for one man to use them in a certain line of work that another man cannot, with success, use his. And so on.

Every man who has trained his particular talents to their highest point and then strives to widen them, is an aristocrat—a prince, whether he is a brick-layer or lawyer. He only sinks to the level of a commoner who has neglected that working stuff which is in him. And he does not neglect this if he is happy in his work, or rather, if it is pleasure instead of work.

This does not mean that all the preparatory work will be congenial or without real labor. No, much of the work that you have to do preliminary to that which is to bring you success, will be HARD work—plugging work, full of disagreeable details, but all necessary to build the foundations.

The dirty, muddy work involved in digging for the foundation of some building that will be a pride to its architect, is disagreeable, but the architect must see that this work is properly done; must get right into the mud and dirt himself to know that every detail he has worked out is being rigidly followed. If the designer of the useful and beautiful building did not have constantly in his mind the results of all this digging, he would be a failure, he would never be a designer and builder of magnificent works for the future generations to admire.

It is just so with everything you start out to do. Start out with a high purpose and the common-sense idea that you HAVE to learn all the details first—to do the digging before that purpose can be fully carried out.

Concentration, constant concentration upon your goal is the only rule to follow. Like football, you move toward the goal by punting, touchdowns, and penalties which put you back, but you have ever one end in view—to reach the goal. A willingness to take all the hard knocks and throw-downs with the mind’s eye fixed on the goal, is the kind of stuff which wins out.

Never be a quitter.

Concentration is absolutely necessary to get the power out of you and force it to do its work. As someone has said, if you will concentrate the rays of the sun by the means of a magnifying glass you can burn a hole in almost anything. If you focus all your forces on one thing you can do wonders.

Don’t be a scatterer.