Be Positive!

If your goal is personal advancement, do not let negative feelings stand in your way. Dreams and imaginings avail nothing in raising us to what our souls aim at, without fruitful work; nor can these faculties grow in one brief instant — they need time and effort. How, then, can we advance in practice, and not by mere daydreams?

Half a century ago many believed that personality was hereditary and admitted of no change whatever: environment was merely the ground where the inherited endowments grew, without any perceptible transformation coming over them. How often this philosophy persuaded people that they had been born with music rather than come by it! Today, however, that philosophy lies at rest where the geographical theory reposes which held that the earth is flat and not round!

We do not believe that knowledge is the means of that progress which is bound up with intelligence, unless we enter the broad field of culture, and the laboratory. Facts are the fruit of personal experiment, which works to steer life along the roads of success and advancement.

There is another truth that science makes clear: progress is the result of striving and development, not a hereditary process. A positive spirit has helped many to reach their goals after spending but little effort, while the negative spend double the effort on the very same undertaking, and may arrive at no result. From this last group come the protests and the discontent. Listen to this one, who says: "I am ready to accept the facts of science, and I will spend my utmost effort to improve my character — but how? What must I do? Where do I begin? And how do I overcome the obstacles that bar my way?" Obstacles: here is the crux of our subject, for they rise up even before the beginning and paralyze our thoughts from moving. Were it not for them, progress would be easily won simply by studying the circumstances around us and the careers of those who have attained some measure of success.

You know that if you could overcome the difficulties you would reach the summit of success, and your ambitious soul longs for this. Then hear this example: suppose a man has a quantity of stones stacked in his garden and wants to move them. Does he think first that he is not up to it — so let the work wait for tomorrow?... He has, then, the desire to work, and every time he looks at the heap of stones it grows more insistent, and he wishes it would vanish in the twinkling of an eye. This man lacks practical "tactics,"

and his case holds true for our undertakings, the great and the small alike.
Will, strength, result, success — even failure — are bound to one another by a single firm tie. Now let us suppose that this man's wealthy father offered him ten thousand liras in return for moving the stones: no doubt he would hurry to the work. Where have the negative obstacles vanished? They have been swept away by that sense which spurred him on to work.

And here is another example: Souad is a shy girl who all but melts when she meets a new face, and always chooses the back seat; then too she is not herself in the morning, and speaks to her companions at work with a scowl. It happened that she discussed this state of hers with a wealthy lady, who promised her a present of two thousand liras within three weeks, on condition that she do her utmost to conquer her shyness and change her manner at work. And how quickly the change came over Souad's soul, at the mere thought of obtaining the money! Thus one promises oneself alluring rewards that make one forget the hurdles — which we count as nothing but an imaginary, negative thing, formed in the mind before it ever comes out into the field of action. And the strongest weapon you can use against them is positiveness, and promising yourself the moral and material profit you will gain from smoothing away the difficulties — provided you use this means when you are in the field of practice, and not in daydreams!