Cigarets
We cannot call to mind a single instance where the habitual cigaret smoker got to the top of the ladder and held his position. We see heads of large establishments smoke cigarets, but the habit was acquired after the position was attained.
The cigaret smoker suffers from lapses of memory, his nerves are shattered, his judgment is not good, he forgets things and is irritable. He cannot hope to compete with the clear-brained individual who does not smoke cigarets.
It is not the cigaret itself that does the harm, it is the smoke inhaled into the delicate lung tissue. This smoke covers the lungs with yellow nicotine, carbon and poisonous gases.
Some men smoke pipes because they wish to escape the criticism to which the cigaret smoker is subject. The pipe smoker who inhales does himself more injury than the cigaret smoker who inhales, because the pipe smoker takes in more smoke.
Go to the medical college dissecting room and see the lungs of a man who inhaled smoke, and you will quit the habit if you have been guilty.
Don't burn your lungs with cigaret smoke, or pipe smoke either.
The fight to get to the front is hard enough anyway, and if you want to win, do not poison your blood with tobacco smoke.
Return Good For Evil
One of the first laws was "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth," but as time went on and man developed mentally his animal instincts were subordinated and the law was changed, and the new law was this: "return good for evil."
Nearly every man who has an injury done him tries to repay the injury. He must either repay it with good or with evil. If he repays it with evil he does not get satisfaction. If he repays it with good he gets happiness. It is certain that payment of evil with good can satisfy a man who is looking for revenge, while it has always been a question whether there is any satisfaction in paying evil with evil.
If a man does you a mean turn he is expecting you will repay him in like manner. He guards himself against this. He is ready for your revenge, but if you repay him with good you attack him in a weak spot and make him feel like thirty cents, and this is all the revenge you can ask for.
It is all right to get square with a man who does you a wrong, and the best way to get square is by doing him a good turn.
You should keep mental ledger accounts with all of your friends and all your enemies. When a person does you an injury, debit him until you have a chance to credit his account with some good turn; when you credit his account be sure you overpay what you are owing him, so you will have a balance coming to your credit.
We have been taught to return good for evil, but we have heard the saying so many times that few of us pay any attention to it.
It's worth while testing, this rule of returning good for evil. The next time someone harms you, repay him by doing him a kindness, and see if you don't feel happier, and at the same time get all the satisfaction you are looking for. It matters not whether the person to whom you have done a kindness appreciates it; you have been benefited and received happiness by your own act, for virtue is its own reward.
The man who returns good for evil, has the satisfaction of the man who has on clean underwear, the world may not know it but he does, and that is all that is necessary.
Learn to Play
Nature has given us many positives and negatives. It has given us the ability to work hard, and it has given us the ability to play hard. Work while you work and play while you play. The man who is successful is the man who works hard during business hours, and then goes home and leaves his office behind him and takes up play.
A man should devote a part of each day to recreation, to outdoor exercise, to frivolity and to frollicking with his children at home. If he does not care to play, worry will take the place of play.
Worry and hard work together will kill a man. Work and play will make him live.
No two things can occupy the same space at the same time. These brains of ours are always busy, and we should be careful what we give the brain to act upon.
If we work hard all day, the tendency is that in the evening the brain revolves the things that have been going through it during the day. A review of these thoughts produces worry, especially if our occupation has been a strenuous one and if things have not been to our liking. When we devote ourselves to play, then worry and brain rack will be absent all the time we are playing. Play was made to rest the brain. Your sleep will be better if you have indulged in recreation, and your mind will be clearer the next morning.
Good Fellowship
Call a man a fellow and he will resent it, call him a good fellow and he feels complimented.
The good fellow is ever found where pleasures abound. He shines at the dinner. His knowledge of mixed drinks is a revelation.
The good fellow spends his time where the glasses clink, where the horses run, and where the revelers congregate. His earnings go for dinners, bottles and shows, and while these occupy his mind he imagines he is having a good time, that his actions evidence "good fellowship."
Go to the clubs and you will see the "good fellow." He is spoken of by all the other "good fellows" as a "good fellow." And they are all good fellows together.
Some day the good fellow is taken sick and dies. He has not a cent to his name, and the other good fellows take up a collection to bury him. The only persons at the funeral are the other good fellows, and the only requiem he receives is "Well, he was a good fellow."
The good fellow at fifty is working for the good business man. The good fellow is like the butterfly, and sips life's pleasures, and shows off his fancy colors, living for today only.
The successful man is like the ant, he works and puts something away each day, where he can get at it in the future.
When winter comes with its chilling blasts, the butterfly has nothing in reserve and it starves to death, while the ant keeps himself alive on the product of his own labor.
Some day the good fellow finds himself in need. He goes to other good fellows, but they can't help him because they are in the same boat themselves. Then our good fellow grows pessimistic, and finds out too late that it does not pay to be a good fellow.
Good fellows don't get good jobs very often. When they do get them they don't hold them very long.
It is a mighty poor recommendation to be referred to as a good fellow. People seem to think that the words "good fellow" cover a multitude of sins, and when a man has done wrong, or makes a mistake, or uses bad judgment, the other good fellows try to excuse his faults by saying—"Well, he is a good fellow, anyhow."
The good fellow bursts upon us with his halo about him. As time passes the halo dims and the good fellow peters out.
The good fellow who is so popular at the Club today is found tomorrow trying to eke out an existence selling books and life insurance to other good fellows.
There is nothing in good fellowship that can be negotiated at the bank. The credit man of the wholesale house does not give credit on good fellowship.
Hard Work
It is a mistaken idea that hard work kills men. Hard work never killed a man. It is the improper care of oneself when he is not working that does the damage.
The more a man does with his brain the less his hands will have to do. The better a man's reasoning and common sense are, the more successful he will be. It requires hard work these days to keep up in the race.
You cannot make a success unless you work hard. Hard work will be much easier if you keep worry out of it.
Hard work brings success, but to do hard work, the machinery must be in good order. You must keep your constitution up, you must have plenty of sleep and you must learn to eat and breathe properly.
No story of success has ever been truly written that did not depict hard work in every line.
Success comes by inches, not by leaps or bounds. Success is the pushing forward each day by hard work.
Burn the candle at one end only and you replace each day what you have burned, by rest, sleep and recreation. By burning the candle at one end only and replacing it fully each day, your candle will not burn out.
Kindness
"A little word in kindness spoken,A motion or a tear,Has often healed the heart that's brokenAnd made a friend sincere."
"A little word in kindness spoken,A motion or a tear,Has often healed the heart that's brokenAnd made a friend sincere."
"A little word in kindness spoken,
A motion or a tear,
Has often healed the heart that's broken
And made a friend sincere."
There's nothing in business that pays so well as kindness. A man may spend his money, and in proportion as he spends it he reduces his principal. With kindness the matter is different, for in proportion as you spend kindness your principal increases.
Lincoln said "You can catch more flies with a drop of honey than with a gallon of vinegar."
Kindness is beautiful. It brings round you many persons who are ready to say kind words to you. This subtle, potent influence of having lots of friends to help you by their actions and showing their hearts is a great blessing. It is surprising that people know so little of the value of kindness.
The word "gentleman" is really a compound word, meaning gentle-man, and these words together in their simplicity are the true definition of the word gentleman.
Kindness means gentleness. No man is a gentleman who is not kind.
People are glad to recognize goodness and kindness in an individual. No one can act the part if he is not sincere. We must cultivate kindness, if there is little of it in our makeup. We must take an inventory of our qualities, and if the weeds of mean impulses are crowding out the delicate flowers of kindness, we should pull out those weeds and give the flowers a chance to grow.
Lincoln was a kind man, kindness was his chief delight, and his examples of kindness have been of untold benefit to millions of people. You remember he said, "When they lay me away let it be said of me that as I traveled along life's road I have always endeavored to pull up a thistle and plant a rose in its stead."
Life at best is short, and the only things we really get out of life are happiness, health and love. Money cannot buy these things.
The trouble with many business men is that they imagine good examples and kindness have no place in business. They think the time to be kind is after they have attained success financially. They think the time to show kindness is outside of business hours.
The real way to be happy is to do the thing now, live each day for itself. Get kindness in each day.
The man who is grave, austere, the man who tries to skin the other fellow, who devotes all his energies to money-making alone, finds as the years go by and he has attained his goal, but that he does not know how to enjoy himself.
There are three periods in a man's life—the future, the now and the past. When we attain old age our life is largely made up of reminiscences, or looking back over the past. If our past life has been one of struggle, worry and getting the best of the other fellow, then there is little happiness in looking back over such a life.
The true philosopher does the thing now, he lives each day. He puts kindness into his action, and when he grows old, he can look back through a life that was pleasant as he lived it, and pleasanter now in living it over again.
One of the Greek philosophers expresses the following beautiful thought: "If there is any good deed I can do, or kindness I can show, let me do it now. Let me not defer or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again."
The trouble is that some of us keep our kindnesses, or rather the expression of it, until it is too late.
We should remember—"Do not keep the alabaster box of your love and tenderness sealed up until your friends are dead. Fill their lives with sweetness, speak approvingly cheerful words while their ears can hear them; the kind things you mean to say when they are gone say before they go. The flowers you mean to send for their coffins send to brighten and sweeten their homes before they leave them. If my friends have alabaster boxes laid away full of fragrant perfumes of sympathy and affection which they intend to lay over my dead body, I would rather they would bring them out in my weary and troubled hours, and open them, that I may be refreshed and cheered by them while I need them. I would rather have a plain coffin without a flower and a funeral without an eulogy, than a life without the sweetness of love and sympathy. Let us learn to anoint our friends beforehand for their burial. Post-mortem kindness does not cheer the troubled spirit. Flowers on the coffin cast no fragrance backward over life's weary way."
The Salesman
Selling goods or soliciting requires careful study. The salesman who makes the greatest success in the long run is the man who has practiced truth and established himself in the confidence of his customers.
The whirlwind makes a good showing on the start, but, by the law of compensation, what a man gains in speed he loses in power.
Some customers are slow to open up and extend their confidence to a salesman. Others make up their minds quickly and express their preferences.
A great deal of preliminary work can be avoided if the salesman is tactful on the start. First impressions are lasting, and a salesman should study carefully his first appearance. He should be neatly but not flashily dressed. He should be a gentleman above all things. The gentleman dresses so that later we can not accurately describe the clothes he wore. It is the flashily dressed salesman we can describe later on, for his clothes are so out of the ordinary that they are remarkable in this respect. The flashily dressed salesman is remembered by his clothes rather than by his personality.
The solicitor should never smoke in the presence of the customer on first acquaintance. The matter of smoking in a customer's presence has prejudiced many a man against a salesman who has this practice. Business men have prejudices, and to some smoking is highly obnoxious. Under no circumstances smoke in a customer's presence unless the customer is smoking, or until at least you are well acquainted with him, and have received his permission to smoke.
Times without number the writer has left his half-finished cigar in the hall-way before entering the customer's presence.
Story telling is like a two-edged sword; sometimes it helps and sometimes it is a distinct disadvantage to tell stories. You must know when to tell stories, and, above all, do not tell stories to your customer that he could not repeat in his home.
Above all things, the salesman must know his man. If the customer gives evidence that he is fond of a story, then remember a good story and tell it to him. No salesman ever made a distinct hit by telling vulgar stories. While a customer may laugh, he forms an opinion of you that is not complimentary, and, if you are always telling stories that you would not repeat where women were present, the customer forms a very low estimate of your character.
The facts are the world is full of good stories, and good stories help your case, while vulgar stories hurt it.
Drinking is another method used by many salesmen to gain favor with a customer, and what we have said about vulgar stories may be applied to the matter of drinking.
Years ago it was a general practice to take the customer out and get him half seas over before trying to sell him.
The customers who are most susceptible to influence through whiskey are the ones who are most likely later on to cause you trouble, either through failure in business or through their preference for some other individual who can outdo you in the matter of drinking.
You must get your customer by the heart and not by the stomach. You must make your customer believe in you.
In these days the business man likes to deal with a salesman who is business from the start. He only buys goods because he expects to make money on them, and the sooner the transaction is over, the sooner he can turn his attention to other matters.
The best advertising solicitors and best salesmen are those who get business on business grounds and through their knowledge of their business, rather than through their ability to tell stories, order dinners and drink liquor.
The good salesman studies the other side of the question. He acquaints himself with the method used by the customer in disposing of his goods. He does not talk his own side of the case all the time. He works with the customer, tries to give him good advice and shows an interest in the customer's business. Such a salesman gets close to the customer, and retains his patronage long after the good fellow has passed away.
Be wise, be patient, and above all things, acquaint yourself thoroughly with the goods you are selling. Know more about them than your customer does. Live up to your obligations. Keep your appointments. Study your customers' welfare. Help them when opportunity offers.
The life insurance solicitor who gets the most turn-downs is the one who writes the most policies, because the fact he gets so many turn-downs is owing to the fact that he has seen so many people.
Hard work, cheerfulness, honesty, patience, sobriety and knowledge of good goods will make a man a successful salesman.
Honesty
Under this caption we are expected to say "Honesty is the best policy." This expression is as old as the hills, and if it were not good it would not have obtained so long, for honesty certainly is the best policy.
Many a man in business practices absolute honesty and integrity, because honesty is the simplest and best method he knows of for doing business.
No man can succeed permanently, who is dishonest in his practices. The successful business man is the one who practices honesty in all actions and dealings during his business experience.
Honesty begets honesty. The man who is honest in his dealings with his fellowman has a subsidy which money cannot buy. He gets honest treatment at the hands of others.
The merchant who cuts a bolt of silk in the middle and puts different prices on each piece, may figure he is making money by his action, but retribution is sure to follow.
Honesty is a slow road to wealth, but, in accordance with the law of compensation, in proportion as the business built up on honesty is slow, so in proportion will it last longer.
Honesty is the best advertisement a man can have in his business.
Success
If after the employe strikes a balance each day, he finds that he is moving forward, then he is on the road to success. And so it is with the business man, only the proportions are greater.
One cent put at four per cent. interest per annum nineteen hundred years ago, with interest added to the principal every twenty-five years, would represent today more money than there is in the world. It would have taken twenty-five years before the original investment of one cent was doubled.
If a man had started that plan his grandchildren would have said the scheme was no good because it was too slow.
The boy goes to school regularly and shows little advance in his mentality if you measure from day to day, but the boy is gaining every day. He is going ahead slowly but certainly.
The gambler and the foolish man like success to come quickly and with great strides. It is because there are many foolish men and gamblers that the get-rich-quick fake thrives.
The man who gets rich suddenly usually indulges in such sports as lighting cigars with ten dollar bills, and his wind-up is in the pauper's grave.
No man knows the true value of money unless he has worked for it. The man who has earned his dollars through the penny route knows the value of the penny, and he gets mighty good value when he spends a dollar.
The man who walks steadily in one direction does not appear to be making much progress. The ship on the ocean seems to be standing still. When night comes the man who has been walking steadily has disappeared, and the ship that seemed to be standing still has vanished beyond the horizon.
The law of compensation says, The more haste the less speed, and so in the matter of success, we must not feel discouraged because the speed at which we are traveling forward does not seem noticeable when compared with the rapid pace of some of our friends.
Be not impatient. Learn to wait. Be a good stayer. Do not let the success of the get-rich-quick creature deter you from your resolve to move forward slowly. You will get there in the long run.
And when your hair is silvered and cares rest easily upon your shoulders, the long road you have traveled will be a source of infinite satisfaction to you. Your retrospection will be pleasant, and the very things that were hard in your youth, are sources of satisfaction to you in your old age.
Do not use the yard measure in counting your progress, but use the inch rule that has fine fractions on it.
Thinking
"I did not think" is an excuse offered by many. Thinking is the thing in business.
The trunk railroad, the trans-Atlantic cable, the steam engine, the electric light, the wireless telegraph, the very republic in which we are living, came about through thinking.
Every man should take from five to fifty minutes each day to divorce his mind from the strenuous activity surrounding him, and devote that time to thought, and good will come out of it.
The brain is like a muscle, it must be exercised or it becomes flabby.
Cultivate concentration of thought; study your sphere of usefulness; cut out the weeds that grow in your brain; get out of the mental rut you are in; stop drifting; keep your brain healthily active.
Men are paid either for what they think or for what their muscles do. Man's muscles have a limit; he can move just so much matter by physical force. But his capacity from a mental standpoint is unlimited.
The world offers golden prizes to the man who thinks. Therefore we should cultivate our brains and make them expand. The brain is like a plant. If you nourish and cultivate it and care for it, it will grow too.
Excitement, striving for pleasures, indulging in reading light, frothy literature, excessive daily newspaper reading are all weeds and thought killers.
Don't act on impulses. The get-rich-quick man or the fake mine promoter says, "Buy today, the price goes up tomorrow." These fakirs don't want you to think. Thinking is an enemy to their persuasive arguments. If you think, and think rightly, the fakir does not get you.
When you get a nasty letter don't answer it right away. Think it over. Think carefully. If your thoughts of revenge are so strong that you cannot calm yourself down, then write a letter and express yourself in the fullest degree. Leave the letter on your desk. Do not look at it for three hours. Then when you look at it you will instantly determine to tear it up, because in the meantime you have been thinking.
Thoughts expressed on paper have a different sound than if they are uttered verbally, therefore you should think carefully when you write.
Cultivate poise, calmness, and practice careful thought before you speak or write.
In proportion as you master difficult problems through thought, your brain will be ready for greater conquests.
Here are some things to think about during these times when business is so good.
These prosperous times are dangerous times. In times of prosperity we build up false idols, and raise our hopes and ambitions beyond the safety point.
Prosperity makes most of us careless. We don't give our business the careful consideration we should. We run to extremes during prosperous times.
We should make the most of prosperity while it is here. We should enjoy it to the fullest, but we should remember that for every high tide there is a low ebb.
Prosperity should enable us to put away a reserve for the hard times.
We should be careful that prosperity does not turn our heads or cause us to lose our vigilance.
Home Life
After all we say and do, the real pleasure of this world comes from the home. The gilded palaces we see in our travels abroad are beautiful to look upon presently, but later on they serve their purpose to make a contrast with the sweet simplicity of home.
When you go home, cut business out, and let play and sociability and love occupy your time.
A married man should be in partnership with his wife. The man being fitted with sturdier physique, with strong ability to combat, should take up the heavy burden of business, for those are the things he can do the best. The wife should take up the home part of the duties of the firm, and when evening falls each member of the firm should try to lessen or take away the cares to which the other has been subject during the day.
The best place in the world is the home, and in proportion as home life is unsatisfactory or uncongenial, so in proportion are the Clubs filled with dissatisfied and unhappy men. If you want to hear pessimistic talks on home life, talk with those derelicts who spend most of their time at the Clubs.
Learn to make much of little things. Learn that smiles and good humor in the home bring happiness, and iron out the frowns and check the mean impulses arising within us. Be pleasant every morning until ten o'clock, and the rest of the day will take care of itself. Start out in the morning right and happiness will be home at night.
There is nothing in your old age that will be such a comfort to you as retrospection, or looking back over a long life of happiness in the home. The happy little incidents which today seem trivial will be remembered in the future, and a thousand and one occurrences which are happening in the home are being put away in the store-house of memory, later to be called upon and enjoyed again.
In the evening of life when you and your silver-haired partner sit before the fire place, when you have retired from active participation in your respective branches of the business, which is bread winning on the part of the man and bread making on the part of the woman, then you will have a happiness and satisfaction which all the gold in the world could not buy. The pleasures of the old who have had happy homes during their lives are the greatest pleasures in the world.
The sunset of your life will not be beautiful unless your home life was pleasant during your day of work.
Optimism
The man who is an optimist may be laboring under a delusion, but certain it is that he is happy while under the delusion.
Every man should have ideals. He should see the beauty and good in things. He may not accomplish his ideals, but the anticipation and working out of them is a mighty pleasant vocation.
The pessimist is always unhappy, and when no definite thing is before him to worry about, the very fact that there is nothing to worry about makes him unhappy.
The pessimist says "Business is not half as good as it would be if it was twice as good as it is." The optimist says "Business is twice as good as it would be if it was only half as good as it is."
Grizzly Pete, of Frozen Dog, Idaho, is an optimist, and Webb Grubb, of the same town, is a pessimist. A short time ago they had a big rain storm in Frozen Dog. Webb Grubb kicked about the rain. Grizzly Pete, all wreathed in smiles, said "Rain is a mighty good thing to lay the dust." A few days later the sun came out oppressively warm. Webb Grubb kicked about the warm weather. Grizzly Pete, again all smiles, said "Hot weather and sunshine are mighty good things to dry the mud."
The pessimist goes about with a dark lantern peering into out-of-the-way places, ever looking for meanness and things to find fault about.
The optimist goes about in the bright sunlight looking for the beautiful things, and sees more things by the aid of the great sunshine than the pessimist can find with his little dark lantern.
The optimist rises in the morning with gladness in his heart, sunshine in his face and smiles upon his lips. The mere privilege of living and enjoying nature is a priceless satisfaction to him. He gets good out of life every moment he lives. He is a man to be envied, if envy is ever allowable.
The pessimist warps his mind and his physique, and his influence on others is decidedly bad.
The optimist raises the average of the world by his presence, the pessimist lowers the average.
The optimist is in the majority, however, and the world is growing better.
Learn to see beauty in the small things. Study nature. Watch the processes of plant life and animal life. Surround yourself with helpful influences; books, music, friends.
There is no investment a man can make that yields such unbounded returns as optimism.
Optimism cannot be bought with money. It is as free as the air we breathe. That is why poor people generally are optimists.
Memory
The man whose memory allows him to play four games of chess blindfolded is good for nothing else.
Book-keepers who can name every folio page and every customer's balance are good for little else.
There is nothing in mental gymnastics from the dollar standpoint.
The good lawyer or the good business man does not rely on his memory, but rather his ability to find out things and get at results.
If you remember only the customers who are slow pay or shaky, it will be a lot easier than to remember the names of all the customers who pay promptly.
If your wife wants you to get something down town tomorrow, write her request on a little piece of paper, roll it up in a ball, put it in your pocket with your loose change. Forget the incident, let the paper do the memory act.
Next day when you reach in your pocket for change you will find the little ball with the reminder on it.
If there is something you want to attend to at home, drop yourself a postal card.
Carry a little pad of paper in your pocket. Write down the little things you are to do. Don't store your mind with these temporary matters. Let the tab remember for you.
Let your mind be like a sieve, and have the meshes coarse enough to keep in the big things and let the little things go through.
Have your business figures written down, your comparative sales, increases or losses. Study the written figures. Have system. Do things methodically. Don't trust to your memory. If the thing you see or hear is worth keeping, write it down on the little tab.
The orator who commits his speech to memory is in a sorry plight if he forgets a sentence.
If you are to speak at a dinner, lay out your plan, divide your topic into several parts. Jot down the catch lines, and just before you speak look over the ticket. Charge your brain with the points or ideas and build the words around them.
Don't remember things with verbatim correctness. Remember the skeleton thought, the idea.
When you quote a price or figure, jot it down. Confirm the verbal statement by a written memorandum.
Memory is a bad servant sometimes. You remember a thing one way and the other fellow remembers it another way. You are both honest, but one of you is wrong. If you had made a memorandum in duplicate or jotted down the figures, what trouble it would have saved you.
Where dollars are concerned it is good sense to trust to a written memo., and not to any mental memo.
No use to cram your brain with transient things, when lead pencils and paper are so cheap and so easily obtainable.
The employe who trusts to his memory hurts the business, and after he quits a lot of misunderstandings will come up.
Insist on your employes making memorandums of things and prices, for when the employe goes he takes his memory with him. If he has a memorandum you know the facts.
Worry
Nothing will prevent effective work like worry. If you are given to introspection and worry, and allow these things to go unchecked, they become habits with you, and while your sleep, in a measure, is an antidote for worry, yet the more worry you have the less soundly you will sleep, and consequently the less effective sleep will be in correcting the injury caused by worry.
Sunshine and darkness cannot be present at the same time, for in nature one of the first rules we find is that no two objects can occupy the same place at the same time. No matter how much one is given to the worry habit, he experiences reflex moments when he does not worry. Some of our pessimistic friends who are given to the worry habit say it is impossible for them not to worry. You are thinking of what you are reading, and if your mind is interested in it you are not worrying while you are reading these articles, and this shows that if you are interested in reading there is little chance for worry to get in; for your mind is occupied.
Men have tried all sorts of things to escape worry. Some of them frequent places where gaiety and mirth abound, so that they are for the time being banishing worry, but in proportion as these things keep one from worrying, the reaction is stronger when it does come, and the individual who tries to escape worry by going the pace and occupying his time with light things, suffers more keenly from worry when it does come. Some men turn to drink to kill worry. Many a man imagines while he is drunk and his brain is clogged with alcohol that he is the happiest man in the world, and some of them go to the extent of imagining their finances are in a flourishing condition. The alcohol fills the brain with fancy pictures, and for the time being the mind forgets to worry. When the alcohol wears away the brain takes up the worry again in an increased degree.
To kill worry by the active process is like trying to cure rheumatism by external application. The only thing you do is to stop the pain temporarily. The best way to cure rheumatism is to go at it through the blood. Eradicate the uric acid from the system, and then the rheumatism will disappear. The best way to cure worry is not by local applications, but by getting at the root of things. Eliminate as far as possible the things which cause worry. Remember that as long as you live there will come things across your path that are not to your liking. You should be philosophical, and make the best of things that are about you. Look at the bright side rather than the dark.
There are only two things in the world to worry about. First—the things we can control or change; second, the things over which we have no control. Now, it is manifestly useless to worry over the first kind; for we can correct the thing and there will be nothing to worry about.
It is manifestly useless to worry over the things we cannot control, for, as set down in the second proposition, we cannot change the things. It therefore behooves us to eliminate from our calculations the second kind of worry, for no amount of worry can possibly change that kind. We must therefore confine our attention to the first kind, the kind we can change, and when we have changed the thing there is no cause to worry.
Nothing helps a man's health so much as contrasts in climate or habits. When the doctor tells you it is necessary to go to California or Arizona, or some other distant point, he knows that fifty per cent. of the good you will get by the change is from the water, air, sunshine and surroundings, and the other fifty per cent. of the good you will get is because you have been taken away from the very things that have been causing you worry. If you can't get contrasts by trips to other distant points, you can get the contrasts right where you live. If your mind is occupied in the day with deep thinking and hard business problems, you should occupy your evening with something that will contrast with it. Take up some light literature, play with your children, or work at some hobby in which you are interested.
The trouble with those who worry most is that they have worked themselves up to such a frenzied state they can't read anything excepting startling newspaper articles and freakish, frothy books.
The man with rheumatism cannot cure himself in a day, neither can the man with the worry habit eradicate worry from his make-up in a day or so.
The man who worries should make up his mind he is going to read and get interested in the reading. Let him set apart ten minutes the first day, and agree that he will devote those ten minutes honestly, intently to the subject before him. The next day he can add a minute or two, and so on until he can read one or two hours at a time. Finally, the wrinkles will be ironed out and the horizon will be brightened.
As we are, so is the world to us. The most familiar objects change their aspect with every change of the soul. When you worry, everything is distorted, everything appears unnatural, the world looks dark, our friends seem far off. The jokes we hear fall flat. We indulge ourselves in pessimism.
When the whole matter is summed up philosophically, there is no bad luck in the world except sickness. All other so-called hard luck is simply temporary. If you lose your money, don't worry about it, make some more. If you lose a friend, don't worry; show him his mistake. If you lose an opportunity, do not worry; be ready for the next one.
Life is short. The end of life is death. What's the use of worrying.
Worry is like drink. The more you give it the more it fastens on you.
Cultivate a cheerful disposition. Mix with people who are cheerful. Do not allow the garden of your mind to grow up with worry weeds.
Occupation kills worry. If your mind is filled with uplifting work or brain training it will have little time to worry.
Promises
A business man may be rated as worth a million, but if he breaks his promises regarding payments or fulfillments of contracts, he will find later on those who deal with him will insist upon cash transactions.
Keeping promises is the basis of credit. Let it be said of you that you always keep your promise; that you have never been known to break your word, and you will need little persuasion to get the credit man's O.K.
If you purchase for cash right along, some day you can ask for and will receive a small credit, if you promise to make your payments on a certain date. If you keep your promise you can repeat the operation. Later on you will be given larger credit, because you have been keeping your promises. You can increase your credit step by step to amazing proportions if your promises are always kept.
The business world places much confidence in promises. The note in the bank is a written evidence of the promise. The note says on the face of it "I promise to pay." The Government of the United States issues bank notes on the face of which is a promise.
When you make promises as regards dates, jot down the promise in your memorandum book. Whatever you do, keep that promise. The man who breaks his promise in little things will break them in greater ones.
When you make a promise to meet a man it is just the same as promising to pay a man money. In either instance you are in the man's debt, and the obligation is not cancelled until the debt is paid. In other words, until the promise is fulfilled.
Just so sure as the sun sets, the man who habitually breaks his promises will surely break his business.
Independence
It seems to be the rule rather than the exception that the moment a business man attains success he grows independent.
There is no such thing as independence within the full meaning of the word. Every creature in the world is dependent more or less.
The man who takes delight in his so-called independence and forces it to the front, soon receives knocks.
The constant tapping and knocking hurts anyone. Boosts beat knocks. The man who has a reputation for being independent never gets boosts.
Some business men forget the obligations they are under. They forget the help that was extended to them in time gone by. They furnish up a fine mahogany office, with an outer room, and outside of this another room with an information desk. They cultivate coldness and independence. They make it difficult for their friends to see them. They put a lot of red tape around their business, and by these acts they get out of touch with the pulse of the business. They look at things through colored glasses. Their judgment gets warped.
In proportion as a man cultivates independence and autocratic ideas, just so in proportion is he nearing the brink over which many have fallen to destruction. When an independent man has a fall, his enemies glory and loud are the shouts that arise from them, and if we listen closely we will hear the multitude say: "Serves him right."
There is nothing like democracy in business. By this it must not be understood that the head of the concern is to see every pedler, or every life insurance agent. But if the business man is accessible, and greets you with a glad hand, and in the pleasant manner turns you over to the proper department head, you go away from the office satisfied, and you give this man a boost instead of a knock.
The late P. D. Armour was a good example of the point we are making, he did not waste time in social visits during business hours, but anyone who had business with the Armour Institution could get an interview with Mr. Armour. It has often been remarked by business men that they would rather have a turn-down from Mr. Armour than an order from some of the other houses, for Mr. Armour always made one feel good.
No one can be independent. The larger one's business is the more the proprietor is dependent on those around him.
It takes many months to build a sky scraper, yet a wrecking company can tear a sky scraper to the ground in a few days, and so it is with a man's reputation. It takes years to get good credit in the commercial world, but if success spoils a man and makes him independent, he has created enemies, and there is no telling where these enemies will get in their work. It is like the worms eating through the bottom of a ship. Some day the craft goes down because of the silent attacks made in it, which were not visible from the surface.
Some day the independent man is surprised to have the bank call him in and insist that he take up his loans. He is astonished; he does not know why this sudden change has happened, but like as not some secret enemy in the bank, or some secret competitor who has a friend in the bank, has gotten in his work, and then this independent man finds out how really dependent he is.
The safer a man is from attacks, the safer his business is from the financial standpoint, and the more generous this man should be in his consideration for others.
No man can afford to be independent. Men who have built up their business slowly are not the ones whose heads are turned and who affect this independent air. The independent man is nearly always the newly rich or the suddenly successful business man, and the moment he sets himself up as independent he is made the target for an army of enemies who are waiting for a chance to injure him.