|
“How
to Develop Self-Confidence
In Speech and Manner” eBook Online Version
A common source of ill-health comes from the worry habit. In its aggravated form this is said to cause cancer. Plow- ever that may be, we know that it does cause endless trouble and grief. The time and energy that are often spent in worry would be sufficient, if properly applied, to remove wholly the cause of worry. Timid men are much addicted to this debilitating habit. They worry not only about the past but about what is to come. This is particularly noticeable in the case of a diffident man who knows he must make a speech at some function or other. He spends his days and nights, not so much in diligent preparation as in worrying over the thought of embarrassment and failure. He spends sleepless nights in thinking how he will surely discredit himself in the eyes of all his friends, and when he stands before them to speak he has lost all natural control of his powers.
To cure the worry habit it is of little practical use to say "Don't worry." A man so afflicted should ask himself pertinent questions, such as, what am I worrying about? How can I remedy the matter? When he knows what should be done, let him proceed to do it. Perhaps it looks impossible. Let him at least try. Upon close analysis we very often find that the matter we have been worrying about is not worth it. Why, for instance, should a man rack body and soul over a few dollars? If a man owes you money and will not pay it, is it not better to cancel the debt than to cancel your health and peace of mind? Your worrying man exerts a bad influence. It was a rule of one of the Roth’s child’s, a great financier, not to have anything to do with an unlucky man or an unlucky plan. Why? Because the man who has been unlucky gets to think himself unlucky and is commonly a man who worries. Through contact with him, you readily get into your system the microbe of discontent and presently two worrying men spring up where only one was before. No one cares to meet the long-faced man, the man with the hard-luck story. The reason is evident. We know that a man who takes time to grumble and complain is taking that time from actual hard work. To worry is to acknowledge that things and events are too large for you, and that you are in some way inferior. The man who is intent upon building a high degree of self-confidence will avoid worry, real or imaginary, and if he has a grievance he will lose it in his work.
In these bustling times it is well to be on one's guard against the habit of nervousness. Many men are living at too intense a pace. The expenditure of nerve force is out of proportion to the supply, and actual results do not warrant the high price of worn out, nervous, physical collapse, and premature death. At the end of a year, a man of poise will achieve many times more than a nervous, erratic person, who possibly spends half his time in rectifying hasty mistakes. Every man, then, should cultivate poise. Like a piece of finely adjusted machinery, his thoughts and acts should be carried on without strain or friction. But let it be remembered that poise begins in the mind and should be developed there that it may express itself in the outward life of a man. As Horatio W. Dresser says: "Let us seek first that calmness which spares us the petty frictions of life, then gradually attain adjustment. Since it is the little interior friction, the mental worry and the nervous tension which wear us out, we should pause and let down the tension, take off the strain. Inner poise we must have if we would be outwardly at peace; and poise is a balance of opposites, a nice adjustment; such that we move along with the stream of life, instead of against it."
A man should not work at his maximum. There should be something in reserve for the extra "spurt" that may be demanded by some emergency. Self-confidence depends in no little degree upon reserve power. To use up one's vitality as quickly as it is generated, is to live close to the danger-line. Then one day something snaps, and we see a man moving about uncertainly, like a steamer that has been crippled and disabled in mid-ocean and sends out signals for help.
Every man should have a playtime for at least a small part of each day, and a reasonably long vacation every summer. Good health is impossible when the machinery works incessantly during many years. There must be rest and relaxation, a change of air and scene, a new line of thought, a larger and better outlook. Said a successful publisher, "I would keep better hours if I were a boy again. I would go to bed earlier. Sleep is our great replenisher. If we sit up late, we decay, and sooner or later we contract a disease called insomnia. Late hours are shadows from the grave."
|
