• Author: Unknown
• Editor: B-7413
• Newspaper: The Umpire volume 5
• Page Number:
• Date: 4 19 1916
• Tags:
• advice

BE WILLING TO TRY Comparatively few of us know how much we can accomplish until we try. How often I have heard the expression: "Oh, it isn't in me to do that sort of a thing, and it's no use trying." This expression is often said, when the idea of of taking up some new line of work has been suggested to you by some of your friends or acquaintances. It is right then that a great mistake is made for you invite failure by thinking it before an effort is made to tackle the task. How would you like some of your acquaintances to say of you, "It's no use asking him to take up that work; he hasn't got the snap in him?" Now as a fact, what does that fellow really know about you? Nothing. He has just made a hazardous guess at best, and knows nothing of your capacity. Furthermore, you don't know what you really can do until you have made the effort. Nor does any main know his capacity until he tries. It's just the power to to try out something he never did before that marks off man from the animal. It's just the trying that develops the power. "The law of nature is that they who do the thing shall have the power. "No man can antedate his experience, or guess what faculty or feeling a new object shall unlock, any more than he can draw today the face of a person whom he shall see tomorrow for the first time." "Fear of making a mistake, fear of failing fear of looking silly—it is these fears that hold us back, keep us within the same narrow lines of life. We ought to make a move every day, opening up new and better ways of action, new mental fields, new spiritual chambers hidden within. No one ever comes to the end of possibilities in any part of his being, in any of his faculties." Being always willing to try, we must make ourselves equally willing to fail and fail at first, indifferent to failure and to ridicule. Then add faith in ourselves and we make success certain.