Wisdom & Empowerment: The Orison Swett Marden Edition (18 Books in One Volume). Orison Swett Marden

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СКАЧАТЬ and that is, to keep on his feet, and, if he falls, to fall on his feet, and under no circumstances lose his balance. If he can keep calm and act deliberately when others are confused and excited, he has a leading part to play in life. It gives him a tremendous power in his community, because it is the level-headed man, who keeps an even keel in any storm, that is sought for in great emergencies, looked for in the crisis. The shaky man, the waverer, the man who is never certain of himself, who topples over when the crisis comes, who loses his backbone in a panic, is only a fair-weather man, and, like a timid girl, could sail a ship only on a smooth sea.

      A balanced man has good judgment, and this implies symmetry of development of the various faculties. And strength of character and of mind come from the harmony of evenly-developed faculties.

      In a perfectly-balanced mind no one faculty is developed out of proportion to the others.

      In a perfectly-adjusted machine every part is made with reference to every other part. The movement of every wheel in a perfect timepiece must be exquisitely adjusted to the entire watch, and each must be suited to every other wheel in the watch. You would not boast of your watch because it had a very powerful mainspring while all the other parts were very delicately constructed and were not intended for so much power. We value a watch in proportion as it keeps perfect time, for this is its purpose.

      How rare it is to find among city youth a really good business head, well-balanced, normal, without any great weakness which cuts the average down to mediocrity. A superb, well-balanced head, with faculties keen, judgment clear and sound, a mind that is not made one-sided by prejudice, not weakened by superstition, is a rare thing.

      Many youths are one-sided from lack of good, sensible, all-round training. Some one faculty, which happens to be predominant, is forced in its education, and the weaker ones, which ought to have exercise in order to keep the balance of all the faculties, atrophy from disuse. The training and education of the great majority of youths are not calculated to develop symmetry of faculty, balance of mental power. There is a great discrepancy between the physical and the mental training; or some one faculty is forced out of all proportion until the balance is lost.

      The great object of early training should be to maintain the balance, to get equipoise of faculty, symmetry of evolution, because only in this way can good judgment be developed, a sound mind produced. For those who have not reached maturity, one-sided development, forced special training, is one of the greatest curses of modern life. No wonder our insane asylums are overrun. The one-faculty-development is responsible for a large part of the lost balance, the lack of symmetry, the poor, weak judgment of many of our people.

      Mental poise indicates power, because poise is the result of mental harmony. One-sided minds, no matter how brilliant in some particular faculty, are never balanced minds, any more than a tree is harmonious which has sent practically all of its sap, its nourishment, into the development of one huge branch, so that other parts of the tree have suffered from starvation.

      The poised physician or surgeon in a critical case where a life hangs in the balance always has the advantage of the excitable one who is full of fear and loses his head.

      Mental poise gives strength to the lawyer. The poise of mind suggests great reserve power. It is the lawyer who maintains his equanimity and perfect mental equipoise in a great trial, while the little attorneys rant and fume, who carries weight with the jury.

      It was Webster’s great mental equanimity that made him the colossal figure he was in the Senate and at the Bar. His consciousness of great mental power gave him tremendous advantage over weaker men who doubted their ability to cope with him.

      Mental poise gives us a glimpse of the possibilities of the coming man, of man when all of his faculties shall be symmetrically developed, so that his life will express harmony instead of discord.

      The greatest forces in the universe are noiseless, are perfectly poised. Scientists tell us that there is force enough in a few acres of growing grass to run all the machinery of the world, and yet, like all the other forces of nature, it is absolutely noiseless. The most delicate ear can not detect any friction, the slightest lack of harmony, in the works of nature.

      The strongest characters are never noisy. They are balanced, poised, serene. The water in a little mountain brook dashing down over the rocks will make more noise than the mighty Mississippi River. Weak characters, like an empty wagon, are noisy. They fuss and fume and accomplish but little.

      The effectiveness of our work depends upon all our faculties working in harmony. We often see a man without any apparent talent or brilliant faculties get ahead much faster and succeed much better in life than others of apparently greater power, because his faculties are in harmony. One does not fight against another, neutralize another, or counteract its achievements.

      To produce an ideal man capable of bringing to bear the greatest amount of personal power is the great aim of race development. This man will be proportionate, symmetrical, balanced. Wholeness will be characteristic of him. The ultimate aim is not to produce the greatest artist, lawyer, merchant, or statesman, but the greatest man,—symmetrically developed, strong because of the harmony of all his faculties.

      It is much better to have mental balance than brilliancy. It is better to have comparatively small ability well-balanced, than to be a one-sided genius.

      All our faculties are so tied together, so interrelated that whatever affects one affects all the others. The improvement, therefore, of any one quality of the mind, like the improvement of the judgment, strengthens all the other good qualities, whereas the weakening of one tends to weaken all the others and to lower the standard of the whole. A boy does not realize that if he forms the habit of not sawing the wood straight or of not driving the nail true, or of leaving the sled or the toy half finished, this defect will not only drag itself all through his career, but will also demoralize all of his other faculties, weaken his judgment, affect his industry and his ambition, and lower his general standard of life, because of this law of interrelationship of faculties.

      The boy brought up on the farm has a great advantage over the city-bred youth, in that he has been compelled to develop common sense by exercising his own ingenuity in a thousand ways to extricate himself from dilemmas in the woods or on the farm because there was no possibility of getting help. He has been forced to make the sled or the toy which he could not afford to buy, and has learned to use tools with skill in making and repairing things about the farm or the house. All these things have tended to develop his horse sense.

      All-around, level-headed men are scarce. They are always at a premium. We find many splendid men, who are wonderfully competent in many faculties, but who are always doing strange, unbusiness-like things. Their poor judgment is always tripping them up, so that their character is like the course of a crooked river which often runs back on itself in its course through an uneven country.

      The reputation of being erratic or a little bit off in your judgment, of doing foolish things, so that people can not rely upon you, is fatal to advancement.

      If you are onesided, unbalanced, no matter how able you may be in some special line, sound business men will not care to have anything to do with you, for they know you might do very foolish things and make serious mistakes under pressure and in an emergency, just the time when a cool head is needed.

      The country is full of broken, disappointed lives, lives that are all tattered and torn, in which victories have been swallowed up in defeat, effective strokes marred by unfortunate slips, lives in which there is no well-put-together work, but a great ambition coupled with a total lack of system and ability to save the result of great efforts.

      There are plenty of these careers that are as checkered as a crazy quilt, just because of a lack of mental balance and good sense СКАЧАТЬ