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“How
to Develop Self-Confidence
In Speech and Manner” eBook Online Version
How To Develop
SELF-CONFIDENCE
IN SPEECH & MANNER
By GRENVILLE KLEISER
Formerly Instructor in Public Speaking at Tale Divinity School, Yale
University ; Author of "How to Speak in Public," ''Humorous Hits
and How to Hold an Audience," "How to Develop Power and Personality in Speaking," "How to Argue and Win," etc.
FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY
NEW YORK AND LONDON
1912
Copyright, 1910, by
FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY
Printed in the United States of America
Published, October, 1910
All rights reserved
PREFACE
The purpose of this book is to inspire in men lofty ideals. It is particularly for those who daily defraud themselves because of doubt, fearthought, and foolish timidity.
Thousands of persons are held in physical and mental bondage, owing to lack of self-confidence. Distrusting themselves, they live a life of limited effort, and at last pass on without having realized more than a small part of their rich possessions. It is believed that this book will be of substantial service to those who wish to rise above mediocrity, and who feel within them something of their divine inheritance. It is commended with confidence to every ambitious man.
Grenville Kleiser.
New York City,
October, 1910
CONTENTS
I. Preliminary Steps
II. Building the Will
III. The Cure of Self-consciousness
IV. The Power of Eight Thinking
V. Sources of Inspiration
VI. Concentration
VII. Physical Basis
VIII. Finding Yourself
IX. General Habits
X. The Man and the Manner
XI. The Discouraged Man
XII. Daily Steps in Self-culture
XIII. Imagination and Initiative
XIV. Positive and Negative Thought
XV. The Speaking Voice
XVI. Confidence in Business
XVII. Confidence in Society
XVIII. Confidence in Public Speaking
XIX. Toward the Heights
XX. Memory Passages that Build Confidence
Chapter I
PRELIMINARY STEPS
The development of self-confidence begins properly with intelligent self-examination. The mind must be closely scrutinized, undesirable tendencies checked; faults eradicated, and correct habits of thought and conduct firmly established.
To achieve the best results this personal overhauling, or stock-taking, should be thorough and fearless.
Fear thought is a disease, to be diagnosed as carefully as any other malady. It arises largely from perverted mental habits. The mind is permitted habitually to dwell upon thoughts of doubt, failure, and inefficiency. So great does this power become, when permitted to rule unchecked, that it affects to greater or less degree almost every act of one's life.
The extremes to which timidity will sometimes go are as amusing as they are absurd. Men fear poverty, darkness, ridicule, microbes, insomnia, dogs, lightning, burglars, cold, solitude, marriage, Friday, lawyers, death, thirteen, accident, and ghosts. The catalog of dreaded possibilities might include black cats, mice, ill luck, criticism, travel, disease, evil eyes, dreams, and old age.
It is true there is a legitimate and honest fear, like that of the young soldier who, upon being asked after his first battle how he felt, replied: "I was afraid I would be afraid, but I was not afraid." It is right and proper that one should fear to do a mean or cowardly thing, to injure another, or to commit any kind of wrong. This fear, however, instead of weakening personal character, imparts to it new and manly force.
To walk straight up to the thing feared will often strip it of its terror. In one of the old fables we read that when man first beheld the camel its huge size caused him to flee in dreadful fear. But later, observing the animal's seeming gentleness, he approached him less timidly, and then, seeing the almost spiritless nature of the beast, he boldly put a bridle in his mouth and set a child to drive him. We can in like manner conquer fearthoughts of the human mind.
Fear has well been called our most ancient enemy. Primitive humanity were unprotected against more powerful animals, and in those early days they had good reason, doubtless, for manifesting (great fear; but it is difficult to justify the wide-spread fear that exists to-day.
Thousands of persons can say truthfully: "I have all my life feared things that never happened." The danger of this fear attitude is that it frequently attracts that which is dreaded most, and the words of Job are literally fulfilled: "For the thing which I greatly feared is come upon me and that which I was afraid of is come unto me." We are told that one of the bravest of African chiefs was driven into a cold sweat of agonizing fear merely by the constant ticking of a watch.
If worry is due to lack of self-reliance, fear is an acknowledgment of inferiority.
It does not stand still, and unless throttled will gradually overwhelm its victim, making him at last "Like one, that on a lonesome road Doth walk in fear and dread, And having once turned round walks on, And turns no more his head; Because he knows a frightful fiend Doth close behind him tread."
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