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“How
to Develop Self-Confidence
In Speech and Manner” eBook Online Version
This assists in establishing a standard of truth, and at the same time furnishes the mind with many nourishing and useful thoughts. Here are some examples:
"The confidence which we have in ourselves gives birth to much of that which we have in others.''--La Rochefoucauld.
“‘Tis better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all.'' --Tennyson.
"He who has once been very foolish will at no other time be very wise.''--Montaigne.
"Nothing is said nowadays that has not been said before.''--Terence.
'' He must necessarily fear many, whom many fear.''--Seneca.
"Courage in danger is half the battle." --Plautus.
"The multitude is always in the wrong." --Dillon.
"Thought once awakened does not again slumber.''--Carlyle.
'' Second thoughts, they say, are best.'' --Dryden.
"There is a tide in the affairs of men, which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; Omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries." --Shakespeare.
"We should not let others do our thinking for us. Our individuality is too precious to be so sacrificed. Too many persons are like a chief of the South Sea Islands described by Sir John Lubbock. "Wishing to question him, Sir John first bountifully fed him, whereupon he fell into slumber. "When awakened he simply said: "Ideas make me sleepy." There are men who dislike thinking for them- selves; it is too much like work; it makes them drowsy, and, after all, what is the use of it? Such men lack the true spirit of independence and courage. They are not in line; let it be said with pity, for great work, leadership, and noble success.
Right thinking gives tone and vigor to the physical man, purifies and enlarges his mental world, and leads him into spiritual realization. While our thoughts are building body and character, they are also shaping human destiny. "What a man thinks in his spirit in the world," declared Swedenborg, "that he does after his departure from the world when he becomes a spirit." To think that our thoughts comprise "the city of man's soul" should awaken in us a determination not to waste this precious substance in reckless prodigality.
A man who thinks right has reason to feel proud of himself, and he walks abroad with "the holiday in his eye." There is no weakness, no timidity, no hesitation, since to him right is might. He has learned to make his thought selective, by aid of which he takes the good and rejects the bad. He knows, too, how to fit each thought into its proper place, make correct inferences, and form well-considered judgments.
This clear and positive thinking is constructive in its character; it builds new power and discloses ever-widening fields of usefulness. Wrong or negative thinking is destructive; it produces nothing but paralysis, fear, hopelessness, and heartrending failure.
Eight thinking means cheerful thinking. It means that a man is an intellectual optimist, who sees nothing but good in himself and in those about him. His thought goes out to clarify and brighten the lives of other men. Let Robert Louis Stevenson inspire discouraged men to similar heroism. Propped up in bed for weeks at a time, and racked by pain, not a weak or negative thought escaped his lips. But his glorious mind framed this: "A happy man or woman is a better thing to find than a five-pound note. He or she is a radiating focus of good will; and their entrance into a room is as though another candle had been lighted. We need not care whether they could prove the forty-seventh proposition; they do a better thing than that, they practically demonstrate the great theorem of the livableness of life."
When a difficult question came to Webster he would say, "Let me sleep on it." He must give his thought time to mature. Deliberateness and patient meditation played a prominent part in the building of his mind.
How shall a man exclude fear thought from his life? Certainly not by affirming such sentences as "I have no fear," "I am not weak," "I do not lack ability," "I am not a failure." Remembering that only positive thoughts are constructive, he will avoid even the use of negative symbols as "weak," "fear," "lack," "failure." He will say, rather, "I am self-confident," "I am strong," "I am able," "I am a success." These affirmations will be made both silently and audibly, always with deep conviction and earnestness.
Let the student remember, however, that these affirmations must be confirmed by actual performance. A man might sit in his office chair and continually affirm that he was a success, and nothing but success, until he fell over from heart failure. When you say "I am courageous," you must demonstrate it in your daily life. You may say "I am hopeful, powerful, buoyant, cheerful," but if you then proceed to sit down in a corner by yourself and bemoan your fate, you are simply deluding yourself. It is not sufficient that you believe what you affirm; you must be it, live it, and act it.
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