Personality and YOU

The Art of Making Sense Or How to Develop the
Faculty of Reasoning
Logical consequences are the scare crows of fools and the bea-cons of wise men.
—T.H. Huxley
An acid test of the mental calibre of a person is his ability to rea-son correctly. Correct reasoning is logic.
What is Logic?

The C.O.D. defines ‘logic’ as ‘science of reasoning, proof or infer-ence.’ James Dorever, (‘A Dictionary of Psychology’) defines it as
“The branch of science which investigates the principles of reason-ing, deductive and inductive or more generally the principles of
thought.” According to Chase “Logic is the process of drawing a con-clusion from one or more statements or propositions called premis-es.” For our purpose, the definition given by Morris R. Cohen and
Ernest Nagel will do: “Logic is correct reasoning. To be logical is to
argue reasonably. By means of logic we can find out what follows if
we accept a given statement as correct.” Logic is also explained as
an analysis of ‘because’. “Logical fallacies occur when the because
does not follow, does not make sense. Sound logic occurs when it
does.”
Here is a statement supported by four becauses all wrong:
The earth is flat. Why?
Because it looks flat.
Personality and YOU 1
Because people would fall off the underside if it were a ball.
Because the gods say it is.
Because my father (or teacher) told me so.
It is unsound logic which cannot tell the valid reason why:
I do not love thee, Doctor Fell,
The reason why, I cannot tell,
But this alone I know full well,
I do not love thee Dr Feel.
It is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions from sufficient
premises. For example:
All men are mortal,
Sultan is a man.
Therefore Sultan is mortal.
The following instances does not satisfy this test:
Fish live in water.
Whales are not fish.
Therefore Whales do not live in the water.
The following is not a valid argument although premises and
conclusion are true:
Fish live in water.
Monkey are not fish.
Therefore Monkeys do not live in the water.
Deductive/Inductive Logic
Deductive logic means reasoningly deduction, that is, inferring
from premises or prepositions representing already known facts; it
is inference from general to particular. Inductive logic means rea-soning by induction that is inferring of general law from particular
instances. Induction is the basis of the scientific method. Inference
is the process of drawing a conclusion or a conclusion reached on
the basis of previously made or accepted judgements.
Personality and YOU 2
Illustrations
Deductive Reasoning
“If A is true and B is true then C follows necessarily.”
Inductive Reasoning
He is good at heart, honest in dealing, generous towards others;
so he is true Christian.
Main Principles of Logic
There are three main principles of logic:
(1) The principle of identity
Illustration: If anything is A it is A.
(2) The principle of contradiction
Illustration: Nothing can be both A and not A.
(3) The principal of excluded middle
Illustration: Anything must be either A or not A.
Uses of Logic
Bacon observes that Logic enables man to contend  i.e., argue
with methodical reason. Logic also teaches us that things are not
always what they seem. Those who rush at things without using
judgment run themselves into strange and unexpected danger.
There is the Aesop fable of a dog which was fond of eating eggs.
Mistaking a shell fish for an egg one day, he opened his mouth wide
and bolted it with one great gulp. The weight of it in his stomach
caused him intense pain: “Serve me right”, he said “for thinking that
anything round must be an egg.” Logic provides an indispensable
discipline. It teaches us the art of making sense. Though it does not
provide us with an error-proof grammar of thinking, it guarantees
our reasoning against many errors. It makes our minds flexible and
agile. It guards us against haste and prejudice in thinking. It enables
us “to organise our thoughts in regular order.” It saves us from the
traps of sophism (false argument intended to deceive).
Fallacies
Logical fallacies are obstacles to straight thinking, “road blocks
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that throw us off the track and detour our reasoning.” In our effort
to master the method of logical exposition it is of the utmost impor-tance to detect fallacies and to avoid them carefully. Fallacies are
defined as “errors in reasoning”. Logical fallacies are types of false
reasoning. In each the reason which follows the term because fails,
under analysis, to make sense. Either the facts are inadequate or the
logic is bad or both.
Here we have space to mention only principal logical fallacies:
Pot Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc: Cause and Effect
This form of fallacy is based on the assumption that whatever
follows an event is therefore caused by it. It is a Latin phrase mean-ing, after this therefore on account of this. It indicates a tendency to
confuse sequences with consequence.
Illustrations
A woman breaks a mirror and later in the day loses her purse.
The broken-mirror she says caused the loss. The reason that break-ing a mirror caused some misfortune is pure post hoc.
There is the story of the Oxford student who drank numerous
whiskies and sodas every night and could not think clearly. He gave
up whisky and took brandy, then gin with his soda, but the effect
was the same. “Undoubtedly”, he concluded, “It was the soda.” (if he
tried the whisky, brandy and gin without the soda, he would have
discovered his error.)
That a war broke out after an eclipse does not prove that the
eclipse caused it.
Arguing in a Circle
This fallacy consists in proving a proposition from another that
rests on the first for proof. It attempts to use a conclusion to prove
itself. In it one goes round and round and at the end of the argument
one knows no more than at the beginning.
Illustrations
Two men go into a bank. One steps up to the cashier’s counter
and asks if he can cash a cheque.
“Who can identify you”, asks the cashier.
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“My friend here”, says the man.
“But, I do not know your friend.”
“That’s O.K. I’ll introduce you.”
Man is made in the image of God, since it is well-known that God
is not coloured, it follows that a coloured person is not a man.
Wisemen cannot be wrong
This fallacy consists in an attempt to click an argument by an
appeal to authority. As a writer puts it, “Quoting authorities is of
course, entirely legitimate and only when pushed too for, when the
Big Name freezes mental activity, does it become a fallacy.”
Illustrations
It says so in the Bible.
My daddy said so.
My grandma used to say so.
Guilt by Association
This logically fallacy arises when unlike things are equated and
the identification is supurious.
Illustrations
Communists are opposed to segregation.
The Supreme Court is opposed to segregation.
Therefore the Supreme Court is following Communist line.
Who thrusts a knife into an other person should be punished
A surgeon in operating does so.
Hence he must be punished.
Your logic will have validity and force if you bear in mind the
logical principles mentioned in this paper and keep a good watch on
any of these fallacies creeping up in your reasoning. We may close
with wise words of Will Durant:  “....We cannot rise forth on our
quest of truth without determining in advance what we
are looking for, by what road we propose to seek it, and how we
shall know it if we come upon it. Any other order would not be log-ical.”
Personality and YOU 5
How to Overcome
Inferiority Complex
What is ‘Inferiority Complex’?
Inferiority complex means strong feelings of inadequacy and
insecurity which colour an individual’s entire adjustive efforts.
It should not be confused with inferiority feelings which arise
when the individual feels a sense of incompleteness or lack of fulfil-ment in any life area. Such inferiority feelings are normal driving
forces which push him towards improvement and superiority, a
higher level of development or a better integrated personality.
Inferiority feelings, however, may be exaggerated into an inferiority
complex which leads to unhealthy over-compensation.
Most neurotics suffer from an inferiority complex. Some admit
it, and others deny it. The others quite often claim they feel superi-or to most people. But this sense of superiority in itself is evidence
in disguise of feelings of inferiority. As Dr Alfred Adler, world-famous psychologist and founder of this theory put it, “Behind every
one who behaves as if he were superior to others we can suspect a
feeling of inferiority which calls for very special efforts of conceal-ment.” Thus the neurotic person may strive for power and self-aggrandisement in order to compensate for underlying feelings of
inadequacy and inferiority.
It needs emphasis that the feeling of inferiority in the sense of
incompleteness and unfulfilment is a normal feeling. As Adler
observes “To be a human being means to possess a feeling of infe-riority which constantly presses towards its own conquest.” He elu-cidates, “Man, seen from the standpoint of nature, is an inferior
organism. This feeling of his inferiority and insecurity is constantly
Personality and YOU 6
present in his consciousness. It acts as an everpresent stimulus to
the discovery of a better way and a finer technique in adjusting him-self to nature. This stimulus forces him to seek solutions in which
the disadvantages of the human status in the scheme of life will be
obviated and minimized.”
He thus emphasized the importance of deep-seated feelings of
inferiority in relation to the abilities and accomplishment of others.
He believed that it is only in the neurotic that such underlying feel-ings are exaggerated into an inferiority complex which leads the
individual to overcompensate for his feelings of inferiority by striv-ing to triumph over others and dominate them in order to prove his
superiority, or to avoid competition and comparisons with others by
getting “sick”.
Roots of Inferiority Complex
The roots of inferiority complex are:
A Feeling of Unreality: One of the roots of this complex is the
feeling of unreality. It is as if a kind of false self has taken control
because the real self has absconded. Hence the inferiority victim is
assailed by self-doubt and inadequacy. He cannot face people
because he is not a real person. He plans to do great things, but
when it comes to their actual implementation he has no self with
which to realize his intentions. An apparently capable person in
charge of an office said, “I hate it because I am no really there. I can
never be one and I become hopelessly weary and exhausted.”
A Sense of Inner Rottenness: The victim of inferiority complex
suffers from a sense of inner rottenness, he is constantly trying to
conceal from the world. He moans: “I am just as bad smell”, or “I feel
maggotty inside”, Or “I am just not worth caring for”. He has a des-perately poor estimate of himself. He finds that he cannot stand up
for his own rights or seek promotion or protest against an injustice,
or mix with the opposite sex because he assumes a rottenness with-in him that makes him totally unacceptable to the common run of
people.
Over-sensitivity to Physical Handicaps: Most of us over- compen-Personality and YOU 7
sate for our physical handicaps by working that much harder
towards the attainment of a worthwhile goal. There are innumerable
examples of persons whose individual handicaps or afflictions gave
them the stimulus to achieve more than average success. F.D.
Roosevelt refused to allow a physical impediment to interfere with
his political goals. Helen Keller, Beethoven, Edison and a host of oth-ers, have left us the philosophical legacy, “Be glad you feel inferi-or”—if your inferiority feelings give you a greater will to succeed.
But there are others, the over-sensitive, whose inferiorities block
their roads to success. To the physical handicap they add a self-pity
type of psychic invalidism.
The Need to be Loved: An inferiority complex may be the expla-nation for one’s failure to find love or to make marriage a success.
Unloved neurotics fail to realize that to be loved they must love and
be lovable. As a psychologist puts it, “One need not search the far
corners of the earth to find love. The capacity to love is present in
the soul of everyone. But like the absent-minded philosopher who
searches for his spectacles only to discover that he has them on, we
seek everywhere except within ourselves.” The man with an inferior-ity complex may drive himself into a frenzy in his determination to
push himself ahead in his work, to win attention. Or he may turn to
escape—through alcohol, or flirtation or in a hobby that will absorb
him so completely that he cannot think about his humiliating stand-still at work. He may take refuge from a hostile world through sick-ness and turn his grievance against the world into hypochondria.
This he will not do deliberately, of course, but he may drift gradual-ly and unconsciously into the comforting excuse.
Selfishness: The common denominator of all forms of neurotic
inferiority is selfishness. We discover, on analysis, that the sufferer
has been wasting a lot of energy fighting a misfortune of fate. No
one has ever been able to undo the work of fate (for example, giving
themselves new parents and new childhood or changing the colour
of their skins or their lines of descent); any attempt to do so is like
beating one’s head against a wailing wall. George Santayana well put
it, “There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval.”
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One must put up with misfortunes of fate philosophically.
Lack of Self-discipline: People who suffer from inferiority com-plex find it almost impossible to take disciplinary measures to
develop self-confidence. It needs sustained efforts to overcome any
kind of complex. But the self-pitier wants a simple way out. He is
reluctant to suffer physically or mental discomfort for the sake of
attaining his goal. He wishes to enter an obstacle race without hav-ing to jump the hurdles. You cannot make an omelette without
breaking eggs.
Techniques for Overcoming Inferiority Complex
(1) If you have an inferiority complex find out why. Use this a-b-c approach by asking yourself these questions.
(a) What are some of the whys and wherefores of my feelings of
neurotic inferiority? How did my inferiority complex come about?
Am I trying to attain an unattainable goal? (b) Have I been resorting
to negative forms of over-compensation? (c) What disciplinary steps
can I take to eliminate the handicap of feeling inferior?
(2) Have a conscious recognition of your major limitation or
deficiency. Do not try to dodge. Dr W.W. Dyer aptly observes, “Just
learning to appreciate life without cursing reality all the time, and so
destroying your one chance for happiness now, can be both the first
and last step in your pursuit of complete fulfilment.”
(3) Don’t worry about having to impress people. Adopt a relaxed
attitude. Be your real “you”. It is the key secret of feeling at ease
around people.
(4) Avoiding things you dislike only deepens your feelings of
inferiority. You can’t overcome social shyness or awkwardness by
being a stay-at-home. Get to meet people and try to be a good mixer.
(5) Stop walking backwards. If you do nothing else, stand still
until you are able to take a step forward. Remember that self-reliance comes with acceptance of responsibilities and discharging
them. Take the responsibility on your shoulder and it will leave no
room for chips.
(6) If you want to feel big—think big.
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(7) Convince yourself that you get what you give.
(8) Decide realistically what you want out of life. Go after it zeal-ously.
(9) Develop the will to achieve—the iron determination to live a
richer, happier life. As Robert Frost has it, “The best way out is
always through.”
(10) Heart-satisfying outlets in music, reading, art, liteature,
sports are specific remedies to overcome inferiority feelings.
(11) Avoid self-denunciation. The girl who stays away from
dances because she is self-conscious about her figure is making it
more difficult for herself to ultimately overcome her inferiority com-plex. Becoming an excellent dancer will rid her of that particular
anxiety.
(12) Don’t build a wall around yourself.
(13) Remember that every one has feelings of inferiority.
People—big or small—are so nearly alike that no one needs to feel
inferior in the presence of another. We are all exposed to the same
disappointments, frustrations, threats, illness, storms, accidents
and wars. Our best defence is to build up an inner immunity against
their impact on our morale. To accomplish this you start with the
confidence that you can survive physically and emotionally the
painful realities of life. If others can do you can too.
Doing Rings the Bell
In every situation try to be constructive and creatively alive. As
Dr Dyer points out action is the single, most effective antidote to
depression, anxiety, stress, fear, worry, guilt self-pity and immobili-ty: “Just doing is such an important part of being a fully functioning
person.”  He adds, “If you decide to do something about your prob-lem, rather than grumble about it, you’ll be on the road to changing
things around for yourself. If you find yourself asking ‘yes, but can
I do?’ the answer is really very simple. Anything is a lot more effec-tive than nothing.” With determination and perseverance all things
are attainable.
Personality and YOU 10
How to Turn Failure into
Success
Nothing is difficult to a man who has persistence.
—(Chinese Proverb)
It is easy as A.B.C. to envy highly successful people who have
reaped laurels in their fields. What is not often realised is that the
secret of their success stories lies in their indomitable courage,
working hard like blazes, and persistence in the face of overwhelm-ing odds. For years on end hey have been enduring failure and frus-tration. The common denominator of their dazzling success stories
is their poin-blank refusal to give up and this quality enabled them
in the end to turn failure to success. Their motto was: “Stick to it and
you will achieve your aim.” The secret of their success can be put in
six little words: Never let down! Never let up.
What is Failure?
According to Henry Ford “the habit of failure is purely mental
and is the mother of fear.” In other words it is a state or land-scape
of the mind. “You will be surprised to hear this”, says Dr W.W. Dyer,
“but failure does not exist. Failure is simply an opinion of how a cer-tain act should have been completed. Like success, failure in any
endeavour is more often caused by mental attitudes than by mental
capacities. It is in short a reaction. No condition or set of circum-stances is in itself a calamity to be feared. It is your reaction to it
that makes it a “Waterloo” or a field of triumph.
In his psychological makeup man is made for success NOT fail-ure. It is normal to be successful. Alfred Adler, father of individual
psychology observes: “Life (and all psychological expressions as part
Personality and YOU 11
of life) moves ever toward overcoming, toward perfection, toward
superiority, toward success. You cannot train or condition a living
being for defeat.” Success is the law of life: “man is not man as yet”.
Why People Fail?
More people are beaten than fail. It is not ‘wisdom’ or ‘money’ or
‘brilliance’ or ‘push’ or ‘pull’ which they lack but just plain ‘gristle
and bone’. This rude, simple primitive power which we call “stick-to-it-iveness”, Ford calls “the uncrowned king of the world of endeav-our”. People who fail throw their aims overboard and give up at the
first sign of opposition or misfortune. Lack of persistence is the
major cause of failure. Fear of failure also immobilizes some people.
They doubt their capacity to succeed in achieving their object and
don’t make the effort. Shakespeare wrote:
Our doubts are traitors,
And make us lose the good we oft might win,
By fearing to attempt.
(Measure for Measure)
You can never get far in any activity if you mind falling down. In the
park a little girl was learning to skate by a sort of trial-and-error
method, and experiencing falls in the process. She was resting from
her labours when a boastful boy rolled up to her side and taunted,
“I can skate better than you can”. “Yes I suppose you can”, the little
girl agreed. But, she added proudly, “I’ll bet you mind falling down
more than I do”.
Failures shirk hard work, an indispensable factor of success. To
quote Ford, “It is failure that is easy; success is always hard. A man
can fail in ease; he can succeed only by paying out all he has”.
Other causes of failure are: procrastination, usually with a host
of alibis; indecision, the habit of passing the buck on all occasions
instead of facing problems squarely; lack of clear-cut plans; wishing
rather than willing; fear of criticism; failure to map out plans and to
execute them because of what other folk will think, do or say.
Technique for Turning Failure into Success
Persistence:  Give up your giving up and replace it with dogged
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perseverance. As T.F. Buxlon has it “With ordinary talent and
extraordinary perseverance, all things are attainable”. It is dogged as
does it, is an old well-tried recipe. It means stick to it and you will
attain your goal. Every failure you take in your stride takes you near-er your goal. Never give up too soon for success may be just around
the corner.
Ralph Charell in his book ‘How I Turn Ordinary Complaints into
Thousands of Dollars: The Diary of a Tough Customer depicts an
inspiring chronicle of how his determination and iron-will to fight
all the way paid off for him against would-be consumer exploiters.
Genius itself is indefatigable persistence. Edison’s definition of it is
well-known: Genius is one per cent inspiration and ninety-nine per
cent perspiration”. Inspiration is useless without perspiration.
A stout-hearted man, Major General Goethals dug the Panama
canal. One day, when the job was half done, a big land-slide wrecked
the canal. It ruined the work of many months. His principal assistant
asked him in a voice of dark despair, “What will we do now?”
Goethals lit a cigarette, tossed the match away and replied, “Well;
dig it out again”.
Have the courage to “start over again” and yet again—if need be.
Then like Edison, you may go on to triumph. An assistant found him
one morning at two O’clock, wreathed in smiles. Expecting that
Edison had solved the problem in research he had been carrying on
for years, the assistant said: “You’ve solved it; you’ve found the
answer?” And Edison said: “not a blamed thing works: now I can
start over again”. An old boatman was asked: “If a man fell off this
pier would he be drowned?” “No”, he replied, “It is not falling into
the water that drowns a man; it’s staying there”.
Persistence being a state of mind can be cultivated. Napoleon
Hill has listed four steps which can lead to the habit of persistence:
(1) A definite purpose backed by burning desire of its fulfilment.
(2) A definite plan expressed in continuous action.
(3) A mind closed tightly against all negative and discouraging
influences, including negative suggestions of relatives, friends and
acquaintances.
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(4) A friendly alliance with one or more persons who will encour-age one to follow through with both plan and purpose.
Analysis
Analyse carefully and objectively your failure to
determine where you made your mistakes. Whatever the causes of
your setback, you are taking a definite step forward when you lay
bare what they were. You are already on the road towards turning
your failure into successes. Never make the same mistakes
again. Return to the fight more determined than ever to take the
sting out of failure, to wrest victory from defeat, to turn failure into
success.
Don’t be discouraged by your initial set-back. You are on the
road to success when you realize that failure is merely a detour,
when you think of yesterday without a regret and of tomorrow, with-out a fear.
Don’t trot out  alibis and don’t blame others. “A man may fall
many times”, says Elmer G. Letterman, “but he won’t be failure until
he says that some one pushed him”.
Challenge
Take your set-backs as a challenge. Look upon a defeat as a sin-gle round in the contest. Yes you have been knocked down, but you
are not yet beaten. Seize that brief time of apparent defeat to regain
your breath and to re-plan your strategy, then spring back on your
feet and into the fight once again. “Let your fighting instincts be
aroused, and take up arms again, knowing that you will turn defeat
into victory”, advises a psychologist. Ford writes, “Failure is only the
opportunity to begin again, more intelligently”, and we will add with
greater enthusiasm than ever before.
Never equate your failures with your own self-worth. If you do
so you will be doomed to feelings of worthlessness. Not to succeed
in a particular enterprise is not to fail as a person. It is just not being
successful with that particular trial at that particular moment. Of
course the setbacks or mistakes were your but never forget they
were not YOU. So beware of thinking that you are failure simply
Personality and YOU 14
because you made a few mistakes.
Self Depreciation
Don’t wallow in self-depreciation and self-pity. He who depreci-ates himself becomes worthy of his contempt and is justly depreci-ated by others. Don’t let perfectionism immobilize you. As Dr
Maxwell Maltz has it, “Differentiate between your self and your
behaviour. You are not ruined, nor worthless because you made mis-take or got off course any more than a typewriter is worthless which
makes an error; or a violin which sounds a sour note. Don’t hate
yourself because you are not perfect”.
Value of Failure
A set-back cannot hurt you if you learn from it and try again. It
does not hurt you unless it stops you. It does not hurt you if after it
you look up with bright eyes and say. “Now, let us see why
I failed and have an other go”. “Failure”, says Dr Dyer, “can be
instructive, it can be an incentive to work and explose. It can be
thought of as success if it points the way to new discoveries”.
The proverb “nothing succeeds like success”, is well-known. But
Kenneth Boulding thinks otherwise. Say he, “I have revised some
folk wisdom lately. One of my edited proverb is  Nothing fails like
success because you do not learn anything from it. The only thing
we ever learn from it is failure. Success only confirms our
superstitions.”
Get rid of the Fear of Failure
Fear of failure is simply a bogey. Fear—any sort of fear—does
not exist out there in the world. “It is something that you do to your-self by thinking fearful thoughts and having fearful expectations”,
says a psychiatrist. All disasters you visualize will rarely surface. In
getting rid of the fear of failure take a tip from animal behaviour.
Cats hunt mice; if they are not successful in one attempt, they just
make another—and yet an other. They don’t lie down and whine
grumbling about the one that escaped or have a nervous breakdown
because they failed. Apply the same logic to your behaviour to elim-Personality and YOU 15
inate the fear of failure.
Healthy, self-actualized or self-fulfilled people are not afraid to
fail. In fact they often welcome it. They don’t equate their worth with
their failures and successes. They realize that failure is simply
someone else’s opinion and not to be feared since it cannot affect
self-esteem.
Personality and YOU 16
How to Cultivate a
Balanced Personality
His life was gentle, and the elements
So mixed in him that Nature might stand up,
And say to all the world, ‘This was a man’!
Shakespeare—Julius Caesar
A fully developed and mature personality is an infinitely com-plex structure of many traits, elements and influences. Perhaps the
words “variety” and “balance” give us the key to it. What
Shakespeare made Antony say of Brutus in  Julius Caesar assumes
great significance in the context of variety and balance to personal-ity. Mature and well-rounded personality demands a balanced mix-ture of elements. To be one-sided or lop-sided is necessarily a flaw
in personality. An angular personality lacking poise is a poor per-sonality for it will be off the hinges.
Both our physical activity and our mental processes involve cer-tain contrasts. We are pulled in different directions by various ele-ments in our make-up. When we allow ourselves to be pulled too far
in one direction or the other then personality becomes warped and
lopsided or unevenly balanced. For the development of personality,
balance in various spheres of life is essential.
Work and Play
Almost every one would accept it as self-evident that we must
work in order to live, not everybody believes that we must play in
order to live, not everybody believes that we must play in order to
live. Play has been defined as a “pleasure activity in which the means
is more important than the ostensible end”. The most refined styl-ized forms of play are dancing, art and music. One can enjoy them
Personality and YOU 17
by participation or by seeing or hearing them. They enable people to
live out unsatisfied instinctive urges in a way not hampered or
restricted by reality considerations.
Dr Karl Menningers, M.D., urges that we should work as hard as
we can but hold on to our hobbies: “If the proper direction and
encouragement of play can be therapeutically useful, it can also be
prophylactically useful. If it is good for sick people it is even better
for healthy people. We are all subject and liable to the disease of dis-turbed morale (demoralization) and one of the best antidotes
against this is to be found in recreation.” Another psychologist
underscores the need for striking a balance between work and relax-ation. “We can work better if we are relaxed; and enjoy our leisure
more when we go to it with the satisfaction of work well done.
Hence, the balance and relationship between the two is vital for day-to-day living with full satisfaction.”
The art of relaxing indeed is part of the art of working. The
human organism cannot live without alternating periods of work
and relaxation.
Psychosomatic Well-being
Doctors and psychologists tell us that mental and physical well-being are intimately connected. While recognising the interaction of
body and mind we must pay adequate attention to each. To develop
one at the expense of the other is to produce a life that is lacking
balance. Proper concerns about each help the other.
Regular exercise, adequate sleep and sensible diet are factors
which count for a balanced personality on the physical side. Dr W.W.
Dyer warns us against misbehaving towards our body. “By letting
yourself get fat through improper diet or lack of exercise, you vic-timise yourself. By allowing your body to become addicted to pills
such as tranquillisers, or alcohol, or tobacco, you are a very effective
self-exploiting victim. By not giving your body adequate rest periods
or by fouling it up with stress and tension, you are allowing yourself
to be victimised. Your body is a powerful, well-tuned, highly effi-cient instrument, but you can abuse it in so many ways by simply
Personality and YOU 18
rejecting it, or fueling it with low-calibre fuels and addictive sub-stances that will only demolish it in the end.”
The spirit of open-mindedness, freedom from prejudice, devel-opment of a variety of interests, the habit of asking intelligent ques-tions, reading worthwhile books and straight thinking provide stim-uli that keeps the mind sound and alert. Remember what Leonardo
da Vinci said about disease of the mind: “Iron rusts from disuse,
stagnant water loses its purity, even so does inaction sap the vigours
of the mind.”
A famous Roman poet said, “Your prayer must be that you have
a sound mind in a sound body.” With a sound mind in a sound body
you can take on the characteristics of a fully-functioning personali-ty.
Give and Take
“If you want friends, be a friend.” Our ability to attract towards
us material things, friends, cultural enrichment, is in direct propor-tion to our readiness to imbibe the attitude of ‘give and take’. “The
constant receiver”, says Dr J.A. Schindler, M.D., “never learns what
great enjoyment ‘giving’ can bring; he does learn how his cramped,
grasping, tight emotions produce almost constant illness.”
Erich Fromm says “Giving is more joyous than receiving not
because it is a deprivation, but because in the act of giving lies the
expression of my aliveness.” The teacher is taught by the students,
the actor stimulated by his audience, the psychoanalyst is cured by
his patient—provided they do not treat each other as objects, but
feel related to each other genuinely and productively.
The ability to give is the hall-mark of a well-rounded mature per-sonality. It presupposes the attainment of a predominantly produc-tive orientation. In such an orientation the person overcomes
dependency and acquires faith and courage to rely on his own pow-ers in the attainment of his goal.
In the sphere of material things, giving means being rich. Not he
who has much is rich, but he who gives much. The hoarder who is
anxiously worried about losing something is, psychologically speak-Personality and YOU 19
ing, the poor impoverished man regardless of how much he has.
Whoever is capable of giving is to be considered as rich. This atti-tude is a plus point of one’s personality.
Society and Solitude
Man’s constant striving to realise his full inherent potential is
regarded by psychologists as the most fundamental goal of human
personality. Maslow formulated a list of fifteen characteristics of
self-actualised persons. Two of these characteristics are:
(1) “They are capable of very deep satisfying inter-personal rela-tions”;
(2) “They have a need for privacy and solitude at times and are
capable of looking at life from a detached objective point of view”.
If we are to actualise our full inherent potential we have to
understand the contrasting needs of our personalities at times when
we can mix freely with other people, and at times when we can be
alone.
Human beings are gregarious creatures, made for fellowship. No
man is an island: “We are bound together in the bundle of life.”
But solitude is equally essential to man. Constant gregarious-ness militates against balance in personality development. It is the
refuge of mediocrity. If we fail to strike a balance between fellow-ship and solitude the odds are that we shall become either ‘lone
wolves’ or ‘social butterflies’—neither of which form of life is
human. Solitude is essential for creative work and for meditation
upon ourselves. It is in solitude that we can transcend the barriers
of time and space. It is not a narrowing experience; it is just the
opposite in fact.
Our privacy is a very important part in our lives. It is necessary
to our own sense of well-being. Thoreau, who lived alone for almost
two years at Walden Pond, wrote about his feelings of privacy in
Walden: “To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome
and dissipating. I love to be alone.”
While we are not all Thoreaus, and this is the twentieth century,
his observations are still more appropriate today. We do not have to
Personality and YOU 20
be always around others, or to always have others around us. How
true is Wordsworth.
When from our better selves we have too long,
Been parted by the hurrying world, and droop,
Sick of its business, of its pleasures tired,
How gracious benign is solitude!
At times solitude is best company for a respite from the stress
and strain, noise, hectic fever, of modern life “far from the madding
crowds ignoble strife.” It is not escapism but reality. The fusion of
fellowship and solitude is a hall-mark of a balanced personality.
Conformity and Independence
The present age is called the Age of Conformity (to say nothing
of the Age of Anxiety, the Age of Togetherness—all of which desig-nations are, in fact, psychologically related). The term conformity
means the yielding of the individual’s judgement or action to group
pressure arising from a conflict between his own opinion and that
maintained by the group.
Independence of judgement is a form of behaviour in the group
pressure situation in which the individual judges and acts mainly on
the basis of his own position and is neither unduly susceptible to
the group norms nor unduly driven to deviate from them.
Independence of judgement is to be distinguished from count-er-conformity. The latter is the case in which the person is actually
opposing the group, hostile and compulsively dissenting from it.
Conformity, independence, and counter-conformity are not three
points along a single continum. Rather they represent three vertices
of a triangle.
Conformity or independence of the individual under group pres-sure depends on the nature of the situation and the characteristics
of the individual. For balance in personality structure, use your own
inner commonsense in each situation. Perceive, think and feel and
act in your own way. As prof P.C. Sexton puts it, “Conformity is like
a sleeping pill—a small dose is all right in order to give rest to the
organism, but too much is lethal.”
Personality and YOU 21
How to Acquire a
Charming Pesonality
The dialogue of man with others is life.
—Martin Gray
Personality, literally means the mask worn on stage by actors in
ancient dramas. It is used synonymously with character. It is limit-ed to denote interpersonal role, both explicit and implicit. Role
means the form and style of interpersonal relationship. The explicit
role is verbal; the implicit role is non-verbal, Charm is a sort of
bloom on a personality. It strikes the sight, it magnetizes. This
invaluable asset of personality is not inborn. It can be developed by
any one by following certain techniques. Here are the main tech-niques:
Be Nice to People
Be nice to people. This is the essence of charm. Real charm does
not seek to please so much as demonstrate concern. When you meet
somebody, say with genuine warmth: “Well! Hello! How pleasant to
see you!” “How are you?” This greeting not only gives pleasure, it
also gives an extra little psychological lift. Believe that given
patience on your side it is possible to tolerate awkwardness and
unkindness and manage to agree to differ. Don’t ride rough shod on
others’ feelings by asking tactless questions and making thought-less remarks. According to Cardinal Newman a gentleman is one
who never inflicts pain. Be a gentleman, and scrupulously avoid
hurting people.
Look pleased to see people
Don’t keep your face impassive when you meet or begin dealing
Personality and YOU 22
with another human beings. Demonstrate some sort of positive
response—pleasure, interest, enquiry, curiosity, friendliness, will-ingness to help. Look every inch alive, alert, and vibrant. Speak with
animation, warmth, enthusiasm and humour. Aim at looking
pleased when you meet people at all costs. Reinforce your greeting
with warmth, and friendliness in your voice.
Show interest
We all yearn for others to be interested in us. Showing interest
in others is a must if you want others to like you and feel that you
are a charming and pleasing personality. “If you want to make peo-ple like you”, says Dale Carnegie, “talk in terms of the other man’s
interests”.
Avoid fault-finding
This bad habit is basically rooted in envy and jealousy of others.
As J.K. Lavater has it, “If you are pleased at finding faults, you are
displeased at finding perfections.” A fault finder is a non-doer. The
real doer has no time for criticising others. He is too busy doing his
own work.
Look Cheerful
No one is attracted to the pessimist, the moaner, the grouch, the
sourpuss. The cheerful person is one who smiles readily; he is much
more charming. He looks younger, more attractive, more confident.
A cheerful person is welcome everywhere. An old Irish proverb has
it, “continual cheerfulness is a sign of wisdom”. An unknown poet
has written:
‘Tis well to walk with a cheerful heart
Wherever our fortunes call,
With a friendly glance and an open hand,
And a gentle word for all,
Since life is a thorny and difficult path,
Where toil is the portion of man,
We should all endeavour, while passing along,
To make it as smooth as we can.
Personality and YOU 23
Don’t desire to be the centre of attraction
According to a psychologist, the desire to attract and hog atten-tion can make us so insensitive to other people’s feelings and wish-es that we are domineering, selfish, rude and cruel. You can be so
eager to talk that you continually interrupt other people. You may
go on talking when people want you to be quiet, or prefer to let a
subjet drop, or want to switch on to something else. You can play
the buffoon or hurt people with your wit. You can spoil somebody’s
attempt to do something. Don’t be like the Aesop’s fly that sat upon
the axle-tree of the chariot wheel and said, “What a dust do I raise”.
Avoid desiring to be considered superior
If you are all wrapped up in yourself, you are overdressed. It is
well to remember that the whole sense of one’s importance is mere-ly an evaluation of self by self. People who give themselves airs are
shunned. Their whole life and outlook are geared to keeping their
own end up and this gives them no time to like people and be con-cerned about them. Do play the game of one-up-manship.
Control Your Moods
Socially speaking it means trying to be always nice to people, not
nice to them only when you feel like it. Recognize a mood before it
takes firm hold of you. Make a habit of breaking any bad mood. It is
unreasonable and stupid to antagonize people simply because you
happen to feel a bit off-colour.
Co-operate and be Helpful
If you like people, you will no doubt want to help them. It is nat-ural to offer to do things for people, not because you feel you
should, but because that is the way you are. People who are genuine-ly charming are willing to co-operate and remain open-hearted with
their time and money. They do not hold back, waiting to be asked or
wondering whether they will look silly. Instead, they say, “I’ll do it!”,
“I’ll try!”, “I’ll go!”, “I’ll help you!”. Remember it is natural to co-oper-ate. Marcus Aurelius well said. “We are made for co-operation, like
feet, like hands, like eyelids, like the rows of the upper and lower
Personality and YOU 24
teeth. To act against one another then is contrary to Nature, and it
is acting against one another to be waxed and turn away.”
Give Encouragement and Appreciation
People also yearn for encouragement and appreciation. Mark
Twain said: “I can live for two months on a good compliment.” It
doesn’t cost us much to encourage others in their activities or in
coping with their problems. A few words, a question or two, a scrib-bled note are all that is required. Resolve to go through life giving
new zest and joy to people by dispensing encouragement and appre-ciation at every opportunity. As a psychologist puts it, “Old and
young, skilled and unskilled, expert or novice, the intelligent and the
not-so-bright, all thrive on a few well chosen words.” Les Giblin in
his: “How you can have Confidence and Power in dealing with
People”, says, “People everywhere ... are hungry for praise and
appreciation. When we give them what they are hungry for, they are
much more likely to be generous in giving us, what we want from
them, whether it is their skill, manual work, ideas, co-operation, or
what not.”
Offer Understanding and Sympathy
To be understanding and sympathetic is another way of helping
our fellow-beings. As Harry and Bonaro Overstreet put it: “The
drama of understanding is the drama of going forth to meet life
more than half way. It is the drama of trying to see the other peson’s
point of view; of trying to look at foibles through other people’s con-cerns and life conditions.”
Nothing in a fellow human being can be alien to us. As Rabbi Leo
Baeck puts it. “To be a man means to be a fellow man. I am to make
the man beside me my fellow man by my will and my deed.”
Be Enthusiastic
Apathy never attracted anyone or anything. Whoever minted the
phrase: “I couldn’t care less” has done considerable harm. In all your
transactions with others try to show enthusiasm, zest, keenness,
liveliness, aliveness. These qualities should be evident on your face
Personality and YOU 25
and in your voice. There is nothing smart, nothing clever, nothing
attractive in your looking surly, bored, casual, apathetic.
Healthy, fulfilled people are enthusiastic about life. They like
life. Others like to have such people around because enthusiasm is
contagious.
Show Genuine Love
Lastly to be a charming personality, cultivate the habit of show-ing genuine love to other people. Says H.N. Casson, “The supreme
h.p. is not horse power. It is the heart power. It is the greatest of all
prime movers....”
“It is love that makes the world go round”, says an old song. “It
is not money. It is not rank, it is not power. It is love.” Love is the
ultimate human answer to the ultimate human question.
Personality and YOU 26
How to Stand on Your
Feet
It is an absolute perfection, and it were divine to get the very
most out of one’s own individuality.
—Montaigne
The importance of standing on your own feet can hardly be over-stressed. This is what makes for full flowering of personality, self-fulfilment and high achievement. Refusing to follow the crowd, to
follow your own bent of mind, to be nobody-but-yourself, is what
pays the ultimate dividends.
Some people just drift. They go with the tide, follow the line of
least resistance, just think and do as others think and do and thus
deny their individuality and personality. Self-denial amounts to self-betrayal.
To be self-reliant, self-fulfilling and achieving personality you
must master the techniques of standing on your feet.
Art of standing on your feet
The techniques of the art of standing on your own feet are as
follows:
Think for yourself: “Thinking”, says Henry Ford, “is the hardest
task any one can do, which is probably the reason why we have so
few thinkers.” How many of us think for ourselves? Says, Gordon
Byron, “a lot of people think they think but they don’t. Often they
jump from an observation to a conclusion without any reasoning
whatsoever. It is merely a mental impulse. Orderly thinking is com-paratively rare.” “There is no expedient”, said Edison, “to which a
man will not go to avoid the real labour of thinking.”
Some people are so “well-adjusted” to society that in Rome they
Personality and YOU 27
would not only do as the Romans do, but think and feel as the
Romans. As they do not do their own thinking they are mental
slaves.
It takes courage to be a non-conformist and think differently
from your group, and the crowd you are with. And yet that is what
you owe to yourself—your self-esteem, your uniqueness in the
world, the fact that there  is only one you. “No one”, says Dr W.W.
Dyer, “is even remotely like you in terms of your innermost feelings,
thoughts and desires.”
You must remember famous rules of Descart’s art of thinking:
(1) accept a thing as true only when you clearly recognize it as
such; and
(2) be careful to avoid haste and prejudice.
Test your ideas with facts. Give up every preconceived notion
and follow your intellect to whatever conclusions it may lead. Avoid
sweeping statements like “Everybody says”. “How can you  possibly
know?” It will be fair to say ‘many’ but not everybody. In any case
truth is not always what the majority think. Often the exact opposite
of what is generally believed is the truth. Thinking for yourself can
be only purposeful if it is given scientific orientation. Science is
rigidly accurate in observation and ruthless to fallacy in logic.
Scientific orientation is contrasted with anti-scientific orienta-tions which are the nemesis of correct and logical thinking. These
are:
(i) The orientation of dependency, in which statements are
accepted not because they are verifiable or logically consistent, but
because they originate from a parent or parent-surrogate which may
take the form of a person, a professor, a philosophical system or a
sacred book. The general motto of this orientation may be: ”Daddy
says so”, or “the Bible says so”.
(ii) Word-mindedness: This orientation involves the tendency to
word-mindedness as distinguished from fact mindedness. Examples
are: “If a statement sounds true, it must be true”; “If it is eloquently
stated, it must be true”; “If the speaker has a beautiful voice, it must
be true”; and “If a statement logically follows from self-evident
Personality and YOU 28
truths, it must be true”.
(iii) According to this orientation whatever we want passionately
enough to be so is so. We believe what we want to believe—however
absurd and improbable. This kind of orientation is encouraged by
mass media especially “the dream factories” of advertising and
movies.
There is Aesop’s story of an amateur singer who hadn’t a voice
but used to sing all day accompanying himself on a lyre in a house
with plastered walls, which amplified the sound so much that he
thought himself to have a first rate voice. His conceit made him
think that he was cut out for the stage. But when he appeared in
public he sang so atrociously that he was chased off with a volley of
stones.
(iv)‘Yes-but orientation: This is the orientation of people who are
willing to make verifiable statement, except when they arrive at sub-jects involving their special moral, cultural, or class prejudice at
which point they dig their heels into the ground and cry, “Yes, but
...”. The ‘yes-butter’ is not willing to apply the scientific orientation
to some area in his thinking. He makes the motto of Emerson’s state-ment: “There are two laws discrete ... Law for man, and Law for
thing”, and justifies throwing out the scientific orientation in the
discussions of human problems.
Be Autonomous
Give full expression and scope to your personality. Do things
your own way. Act on your own initiative. Initiative has been defined
as “a special kind of action. It is doing something worthwhile with-out being told to do so”. It has been said that the supreme success
quality of a man is initiative. Perhaps it is. At any rate no man ever
yet made a big success unless he had it. Many people have far more
knowledge and ability than they use. Their brains appear to  have no
self-starter. And there are no handles on them whereby they can be
moved to action. The mass of the people do only what they are told
to do. Without instructions they stand idle. They seldom start any-thing. They shrink from doing anything on their own. They play safe
Personality and YOU 29
preferring to accept orders in a subordinate position to responsibil-ity as executives. We see them everywhere—people of outstanding
ability who have no push and never succeed in life. Every person
who ever started anything had to face difficulties and doubts. Very
often we have to start something which we don’t know how to fin-ish, but we learn as we go along. To start anything new always
requires some courage and to persevere requires a bit of stamina. As
a Chinese proverb has it, “Nothing is difficult to a man who has per-sistence”.
The people who have initiative are the people who count. It is
they who take the cake.
Don’t listen to people who say, ‘This is how things are, and you
can’t change them. It has always been that way.’ Don’t be afraid of
striking out on the new and untried road—your way. Be your ‘own
man’. Get rid of your idols. Be your own hero.
Have courage of your convictions
Courage is not absence of despair; it is rather the capacity to
move ahead in spite of despair. It means willingness to confront
fear, flying in the face of criticism, relying on yourself; believing
enough in yourself and in living your own life as you choose.
William Manchester in his recent biography of Douglas
MacArthur, “American Caesar”, (1979) pinpoints one outstanding
trait of MacArthur, who has been compared to Alexander the Great.
“What Douglas MacArthur believed in most was Douglas
MacArthur”. The most shining example of the courage of one’s con-victions was Martin Luther who said in his famous speech at the Diet
of Worms (1521), “Here I stand, I cannot do otherwise”.
It was Magellan who said, “the Church says the earth is flat; but
I have seen its shadow on the moon, and I have more confidence
even in a shadow than in the Church.” You may remember Galileo’s
reply to the Inquisition, “Nevertheless it (earth) does move”.
It is a blessed thing indeed if you have individuality enough and
courage to stand by your own convictions, and have the grandeur to
say your say. But you must make sure that your convictions are in
Personality and YOU 30
fact true and not false. According to Dr Theodor Rick, Freud told his
circle of students in Vienna that “only those convictions are lasting
and valuable which one acquires after overcoming objections” and
added. “Convictions and women one can get easily are not highly
appreciated.”
The English physicist, John Tyndall in his “Fragments of Science
for Unscientific people”, wrote, “The brightest flashes in the world
of thought are incomplete until they have been proved to have their
counterparts in the world of facts.” Your convictions, in short, must
be dynamic, founded on reason and fact.
Self-belief
Believe in yourself. Have a passionate faith and enthusiasm in
what you are doing. As the leading Polish spiritual writer M. Malinski
puts it, “You have enough strength to do what you have to do. Don’t
be afraid of the people who are in your way or maliciously put obsta-cles in front of you. Don’t be afraid if the world is difficult.”
Everything depends upon you, on your trust in yourself.
At the same time don’t worry overly about the result of your
endeavour to reach your goals. We tend to be so obsessed about the
result of our effort that we fail to enjoy the effort itself. We become
so concerned that our effort should result in future success that we
often fail to watch, regulate and take pleasure in the present
moment. Aldous Huxley warns us against the exclusive worship of
success. “The bitch-goddess success—in William James’s phrase—
demands strange sacrifices from those who worship it.” Don’t
undervalue the importance of the effort itself. “I have”, says B.T.
Washington, “learned that success is to be measured not so much by
the position one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has
overcome while trying to succeed.”
This is not to suggest that there should be no persistent effort
to ‘succeed’ in our endeavour. It is not to be taken as an invitation
to apathy or idleness—far from it. The suggestion is to do whatever
task presents itself to the best of our capabilities with all possible
care and concentration and with all possible enjoyment. How well a
Personality and YOU 31
task is done can be so hampered by worrying about the result and
being prejudiced as to what the result would be. Let the result take
care of itself, because we can never guarantee it; we do not have the
power to manipulate all the factors which account the result
successful.
Man is a deciding animal. He can decide to eliminate worry if he
learns to take life as an adventure, as a game, as a risky but
enjoyable sport. “Life”, says Hebbel, “is not anything; it is only the
opportunity for doing something.”
Conclusion
The man who stands on his feet is not only qualified for
self-fulfilment and high achievement he has also the character of a
happy life.
How happy is he born and taught
that serveth not another’s will;
Whose armour is his honest thought,
And simple truth is his utmost skill.
(Henry Wotton)
Personality and YOU 32
How to Develop Tenacity
of Purpose
A man can still go a long way when he is tired. Don’t give up.
—Herbert Casson
Importance of Tenacity of Purpose
Success in life depends on tenacity of purpose more
than on any other single factor. A moderate ambition
seen through to a successful conclusion is far more
worthwhile than a grandiose scheme abandoned when difficulties
crop up.
A Rolling Stone .....
Many people appear to fritter away their abilities and talents on
incompleted tasks. They launch many ventures but finish few. When
they meet setbacks—they set off for some new objectives—they are
ready to throw their goals and purposes overboard, and give up at
the first sign of opposition or misfortune. A few carry on despite all
obstacles and opposition, until they attain their goal.
Yet any long term goal in life can be attained only by mastering
the obstacles encountered on the way. True success can be achieved
by facing problems and snags but not in abandoning the task and
running away. You know the famous proverb: ‘A rolling stone gath-ers no moss’. The wanderer with no specific destination gets lost on
the side roads. He never “arrives”.
Choice of Single Objective
For successful achievement and fulfilment, a single objective
must be chosen and attained over a period of time. It must not be
given up the moment a snag arises, or the moment you learn of
Personality and YOU 33
other possible and attractive goals or objectives. Keep your atten-tion focused on the bull’s eye till you attain your target.
Andre Maurois admires Americans with single-track minds,
“their tenacity and their obsession are sometimes boring, but they
succeed, by repeated attacks in demolishing the obstacles that hin-der their progress.” He further advises: age quod agis (do what you
are doing  i.e., with all your powers). Put your whole heart into it.
Strive with both your body and your mind towards the goal. When it
has been reached, you may retrace your steps, explore the path that
cuts across your own, and feast your eyes upon the view. But until
the task is done, no exploring or loitering.
Life is not All Beer and Skittles
To develop tenacity of purpose you must comprehend clearly
one fundamental principle of life. Life is not all smooth-sailing, it
proceeds by fits and starts. Periods when things go well alternate
with slow periods when progress appears almost at a standstill. You
can observe the operation of this great rule in your own life. Some
weeks all goes well, things work out as you planned, progess is
rapid, your morale is high and enthusiasm aglow. Then you run into
a sluggish phase. Obstacles crop up; delays occur; progress comes
to a halt. Your enthusiasm wanes. Your morale sags. You say, “I
thought it was too good to last” or “This is not, after-all, my cup of
tea.”
To achieve tenacity of purpose, you must recognise that these
bad patches are part of the natural order. They occur to every one
and in all endeavours. Eventually success comes to the person who
keeps on regardless of setbacks, working like blazes and striving
whole-heartedly just the same during the time when things look dim
and he can see little result for his efforts. Out of sight events are
slowly shaping themselves in these bad times. Suddenly the work
done without result leads to a breakthrough and another fine peri-od of progress and manifest achievement ensues. Never forget that
life is not all beer and skittles (fun and games).
The following technique will help develop tenacity of purpose.
Personality and YOU 34
Definite Goals: Set for yourself realistic and exact goals.
Vagueness about one’s purpose leads inevitably to lack of tenacity.
Decide on your aims and purposes. Know clearly what you want
from life.
Stick-to-it-iveness: Once you have chosen your goals stick to
them just as limpet sticks to rocks. Changing your ideas about your
goal in life produces only confusion and elaborate effort with no
result.
Take a firm decision even it it is an unpleasant one, and then
stick to it. Hasty action is to be avoided, but once a decision is taken,
it has to be carried through. Put in full effort for achieving your
newly acquired goal. Make no compromises. Adopt no half meas-ures. Waste no time in regrets.
Winning Attitude: Cultivate a winning attitude. Expect to be suc-cessful. Concentrate your thoughts on the reasons why you will suc-ceed, not on possible failure. Queen Victoria said to her Prime
Minister A.J. Balfour, “We are not interested in the possibilities of
defeat.” Remember that everyone of you is made for success, not
failure. To quote Alfred Adler, “Life moves ever toward overcoming,
toward perfection, toward superiority, toward success. You cannot
train or condition a living being for defeat.”
George Bernard Shaw has said: “He who flees from the battle,
lives to fight another day.” So it is with problems of life. It is better
to ‘flee’ from the battlefield of problems, only to re-assemble our
resources of thought and energy; to fight again. Life is more impor-tant than certain concepts we cherish. Despite setbacks and disap-pointment, there is always a chance. But if we stubbornly exhaust
our energy in wild goose chases and hug illusions, we spoil our
chances of staging a come-back.
Where do you begin your battle? You have to learn to declare
war on your tendency to hug illusions. The battle has to be won in
the battlefield of your mind. Your mind is a battlefield. And if you
win, you will experience a new one emerging from the debris of the
dead thoughts. You are the cluster of your attitudes. The winning
attitude leads you to talk, think, and act for success. You can soon
Personality and YOU 35
come to take it for granted that what you start you will finish.
Tenacity can easily be made a habit. Every successful action you per-form leaves a trace on your mind that makes it easier to be more
successful next. “Nothing succeeds like success”, is a true proverb.
It means that it is not easy to achieve success, but once you have
achieved it, the way is open to even greater success. For example, a
novelist may write nine books and yet remain comparatively
unknown. Then the tenth book becomes a best-seller, which not only
ensures success for any further books that he may write but also
creates a demand for the first nine.
Will Power: Marshal Foch said, “Victory is a thing of the will.”
Tenacity is helped by will-power. Particularly at the outset of any
venture, will-power is needed to help you keep at it until the habit
of persistence is formed. According to Gordon Byron, will-power
depends on the following five factors:
1. Keep your health in good shape by living sensibly.
2. Use auto-suggestion to train your mind and will as you want
them to be.
3. Develop the habit of will-power by accomplishing small things
successfully.
4. Do something everyday for no other reason than that it is dif-ficult, such as counting and re-counting a collection of small objects
aloud for five minutes.
5. Carry out instantly and without second thoughts the little
chores of the day. The most useful and universal of these is getting
up in the morning the moment you should. The habit of concentrat-ing one’s thoughts on the building of plans for the attainment of a
definite purpose leads to tenacity.
Intense Desire: Build up an intense desire to attain your goal. It
is comparatively easy to acquire and to maintain tenacity in pursu-ing the object with a burning desire.
Self-reliance: Believe in your ability to carry through your plans.
Make your plans definite, organising them properly into a time-table
or action programme. A definite plan, expressed in terms of contin-uous action will ring the bell.
Personality and YOU 36
When you face uncertain situations and suffer from indecision,
you must ponder and analyse the situation. Think it over. Do not live
under illusions.
Knowledge: Acquire knowledge of the matters that will help you
in the attainment of your goal. Base your plans on knowledge, not
guess-work. Put your experience and observation to good use.
Cooperation: Tenacity is also helped by harmonious cooperation
with others. Napoleon Hills recommends a friendly alliance with one
or more persons who will encourage you to follow through with
both plan and purpose.
Negativism: Negativism is lethal to success in any enterprise.
Keep your mind tightly closed against all negative and discouraging
influences, including negative suggestions of relatives, friends and
acquaintances. Declare war on your negative feelings, your failure
mechanism. Resolve that the basic aim of the re-orientation of your
life is the destruction of poisonous, destructive thinking. You will
then find peace, happiness and success.
Doing to a finish: A man must have some self-control. He must
have a bit of self-mastery. When he starts a thing, he must hold him-self at it until it is done. The quitters are never heard of. They never
attain success. To go through life leaving a trail of unfinished tasks
can lead to failure.
Summing Up
To develop tenacity of purpose—
1. Get a clear vision or picture of exactly what you want to do or
to accomplish in life.
2. Believe that you can and will succeed in doing it.
3. Start doing it and keep at it.
4. Do not go about chanting tales of your failures and what you
might have been. It is a pernicious habit of getting sympathy from
others and using it as an emotional crutch. It weakens your moral
fibre. Throw away this crutch.
Have a clearly defined objective—a specific goal to work towards
a bull’s-eye to shoot at. Know what you want and make a bee-line for
Personality and YOU 37
it. Having set a goal, believe firmly, deeply, unflinchingly that you
will attain it. You have your objective; you have built your dream
castle in the clouds. You firmly believe that you will realise it. Start
right now! Keep on working at it and you will work a miracle as sure-ly as day follows night.
Tale-Piece
One cold windy day in the late spring, a snail started to climb a
cherry tree. Some sparrows in a neighbouring oak enjoyed a good
laugh at his expense. Finally, one flew over and addressed the snail,
“Aay, you sap, don’t you know that thee are no cherries on this
tree?” The little fellow didn’t pause as he replied out of the corner
of his mouth, “But there will be when I get there.”
Moral
If you expect to reach a desirable destination make a start—right
here and now, and do not be deterred by discouraging comments
from those who lack enterprise and vision.
Personality and YOU 38
The Success Factors
Life is not anything; it is only the opportunity to do something.
—Hebbel
What is Success?
Success consists in doing and accomplishing things. It is the
accomplishment of an end aimed at. It is doing one’s best to make
the most of oneself. It is not something that can be measured in rela-tion to the accomplishments of others. It is an individual matter and
must always be determined by the degree in which a specific person
has attained his own highest potentialities.
A Goal
The first success factor is the formulation of a goal. The gener-al causes of our mediocrity in performance or our failure in accom-plishment are not lack of ability, unwillingness to work, or indiffer-ence or lack of earnestness. The real cause is that we do not formu-late specific, concrete goals towards which to direct our efforts. We
aim our efforts at vague generalizations, and not at bull’s-eye.
Always specify your goals in such a way that it has four characteris-tics: (1) It is specific; (2) It is positive; (3) It is realistic; and (4) It
locates the goal within some environment or situation. Occasionally
it is necessary to break the end goal into sub-goals and set periodic
goals to achieve the targeted end-goal gradually.
Passion
To attain your goal pursue it single-mindedly and with passion
and strong enthusiasm, which moves heaven and earth. As Emerson
has put it, “nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.”
The father of modern psychology, William James, expressed this
point beautifully: “In almost any subject your passion for the sub-Personality and YOU 39
ject will save you. If you only care enough for a result, you will most
certainly attain it. If you wish to be rich, you will be rich; if you wish
to be learned, you will be learned; if you wish to be good, you will be
good. Only you must then really wish these things and wish them
with exclusiveness, and not wish at the same time a hundred other
incompatible things just as strongly.”
To pursue a goal passionately is the best possible assurance of
success in it. If there is a way to success, passion finds it and is
cowed by few difficulties or obstacles. It enlists the whole body and
soul of man to achieve its coveted objectives.
The American motion picture pioneer, Samuel Goldwyn, used to
say: “No person who is enthusiastic about his work has anything to
fear from life.” Passion is the indispensable condition or qualifica-tion for a great achievement. “We may affirm”, says Hegel, “absolute-ly that  nothing great in the world has been accomplished without
passion.” Passion is the prime success factor. All other needed fac-tors follow as a matter of course in its wake.
Driving force
Closely related to passion is driving force that there is no gain
without work.
The old saying has it, “Through hardship to the stars.” Anyone
can be successful if he is prepared to pay the price for it. But the
price you have to pay is a continual once. If you stop paying the
price when you have achieved some success, then you will slip back.
It means that the driving force has gone and the price is no longer
being paid. The trouble with some people is that they want to get to
the promised land without going through the wilderness.
“Pay for it and take it”, said Emerson. Everything worthwhile has
a price and to make it meaningful we must pay that price. Beware of
the philosophy of “Something for nothing”. Two young men of equal
abilities start in the business world at the same time. One remains
stuck in a small job all his life, while the other climbs to the top in
his trade. What is the difference? Just this, the one who was stuck
refused to pay the price of success.
Personality and YOU 40
Courage
Another essential success factor is courage. Kierkegaard,
Nietzsche, Camus and Sartre have proclaimed that courage is not
the absence of despair; it is rather the capacity to move ahead  in
spite of despair. It is the willingness to confront fear. It means flying
in the face of criticism, relying on yourself, being willing to accept
and learn from the consequences of your choices. Courage is the
recognition that failure is a genuine possibility and that absolute
certainty is an illusion. This is what Sydney Smith said about
courage: “A great deal of talent is lost in the world for want of a lit-tle courage. Everyday sends to their groves obscure men whom
timidity prevented from making a great effort, who, if they could
have been induced to begin, would in all probability have gone great
lengths in the career of fame. The fact is that to do anything in the
world worth doing, we must not stand back shivering and thinking
of the cold and danger, but jump in and scramble through as well as
we can. It will not do to be perpetually calculating risks and adjust-ing nice changes, but at present a man waits, and doubts and con-sults his brother, and his particular friends, till one day he finds he
is 60 years old and that he has lost so much time in consulting
cousins and friends that he has no more time to follow their advice.”
As Core Harris advises, “The bravest thing you can do when you
are not brave is to profess courage and act accordingly.” The idea of
professing courage is sound because the important thing to do is to
act, rather than to try to convince yourself of how brave you are or
aren’t at any given moment. Self pity does no one any good.
Success visualization
The effectiveness of the foregoing success factors will be great-ly enhanced if you visualize yourself as a success and act according-ly several times a day. Success or failure in any enterprise is caused
more by mental attitude than by mental capacities. The success atti-tude magnetizes success, the failure attitude, failure. Conduct your-self as if you were what you want to be. As Shakespeare wrote in
“Hamlet”, “Assume a virtue if you have it not.” Build up a very vivid
Personality and YOU 41
picture of yourself behaving in the way you want to behave, being
the sort of person you want to be and let this image drift into your
mind. On this plus success factor Dr H.E. Stanton observes, “Perhaps
the greatest power we have as human beings is to use our imagina-tion to help us change in the ways we want to change ..... The way to
do this would appear to be to create in one’s mind an image of the
person one wants to be. The value of this approach ..... has been
repeatedly affirmed in my own therapy.”
Firmly fix in your mind what you would like to do, and then,
without veering off course, you will move straight to your goal.
Preserve the success attitude. All things come through desire. We
become like that on which our hearts are fixed. Set your heart on a
goal, visualize its attainment, work for it like blazes, give it that lit-tle extra, and with God’s help you will achieve it.
Persistence
The spirit behind the above success factors is the unbending
spirit called persistence. It enables you to hold on when there is
nothing in you except the will which says to you, “Hold On”. The
magic formula of success is: Never let down! Never let up! Give up
your giving up and replace it with dogged persistence. If you persist
and follow up tirelessly, never even entertaining the idea of
being put off, then you will almost always emerge not only having
reached your goal, but often having far exceeded your initial
expectations.
Checking up Cy Young’s pitching record, Henry Himmill noted
that the great baseball star won 511 out of 906 games, a record that
has never been equalled. Young won a few more than half his games.
To be an outstanding success in any endeavour, it is not necessary
to be right all the time. If you are right more than half the time, you
may win a medal or make a million dollars. The idea is to keep pitch-ing.
In the art of success there is no substitute for persistence. The
slogan ‘Press On’ has solved and always will solve the problems of
the human race.
Personality and YOU 42
Open-mindedness
Yet another vital success factor is open-mindedness. The ability
and willingness to learn from our errors, no matter how painful they
may be. The only complete mistake is the mistake from which we
learn nothing. Samuel Smiles remarks, “We often discover what will
do, by finding out what will not do; and probably he who never made
a mistake never made a discovery.”
As the Overstreets have it: “Man is a mistake-maker. This fact
points out our obligation to let one another make a normal quota of
mistakes, acknowledge them, learn from them and move beyond
them, keeping intact, all the while, a reasonable self-respect and
self-confidence.”
As C.G. Jung points out in his autobiography, when one lives
one’s own life one must take mistakes into the bargain. “Life would
not be complete without them. There is no guarantee—not for a sin-gle moment that we will not fall into error or stumble into deadly
peril. We may think there is a sure road. But that would be the road
of death ... Any one who takes the rule road is as good as dead.”
So take mistakes for granted like measles and bad weather.
Don’t make the same mistake twice. It is better to look forward and
to make new mistakes than to look back and do nothing The worst
mistake you can make is to lose your initiative. It is the man who
keeps on who climbs to the top rung of the ladder.
The will to succeed
Succees comes to the person who has the will to succeed. It is no
bonanza, it does not come as a gift of heaven. It is the end product
of our own efforts. It is the result of our will to succeed. The indi-vidual who has the will to succeed takes charge of his success. He
knows what he wants and he plans the steps by which to achieve it.
He directs and bends the force of his life to the attainments of his
goals. He does not expect fate to throw success in his lap, nor does
he rely on other people to give it to him. He knows what he wants,
and he regulates his daily actions to attain it. He succeeds because
he has the will to succeed. At the back of 99 out of 100 assertions
Personality and YOU 43
that a thing cannot be done is nothing but unwillingness to do it.
When you attempt to do a thing you should do it with a will and
be confident that you will succeed. You should act as if it were
impossible to fail. It is will-power that makes the dreams come true.
Don’t pray for lighter burdens but for stronger backs.
Do your best
The last success factor is “Do your best, and leave the rest.”
“Success for any sane adult”, says Dorathsa Brand, “is exactly equiv-alent to doing his best. What best may be, what its farthest reaches
may include, we can discover only by freeing ourselves from the will
to fail.”
In his recent autobiography “Unfinished journey” the great vio-linist, Yehudi Menuhin, says: “Striving to do my best, I have found
fulfilment.” “Perfection”, he adds, “cannot be achieved unless its
pursuit becomes a way of life.”
At no given point can a sincere and developing person feel that
he has ‘arrived’. For, success is a journey, not a location.
Winning attitude
To approach setbacks properly and effectively you need a
winning attitude, a positive mind. The famous psychologist Adler,
founder of the school of Individual Psychology, was a delicate
rickety child and a mediocre student. His teacher advised his father
to take him out of school and apprentice him to a shoe-maker
because he was not fit enough to do anything else. But, says
his biographer, N. Orgler, winning attitude was his watchword and
difficulties were to be faced as spurs to increased efforts to reach
the goal. “Failure is only the opportunity to begin again—more
intelligently.”
Looking ahead
Hope is the first and the most basic of vital virtues, that animate
men. Don’t dwell or brood on the past. Give the best you have got
today. That is a recipe for a better tomorrow. The past is just a buck-et of ashes. Never regret it. It is just as futile as trying to cry over
Personality and YOU 44
spilt milk. In a letter to George Brandes the great Norwegian
dramatist, Isben, wrote, “I hold that man to be right who is most
closely in league with the future.”
The above plus success factors will work if you work them hon-estly and determinedly. Good luck!
Personality and YOU 45
Have Faith in Yourself
What a man thinks of himself, that is which determines, or
rather indicates, his fate.
—H.D. Thoreau
A man’s success in any enterprise is not the end-result of magic,
miracle, or fluke. It is, by and large the fruit of his iron faith in him-self translated into action. People fail to make it because they lack
dynamic faith in themselves.
Admiral Dupont was explaining to Admiral Forragut the reasons
why he failed to enter Charleston harbour with his feet of iron-clads.
Forragut listened until he was through and then said, “Dupont, there
is one reason more.” “What is that?” questioned Dupont. “You did
not believe you could”.
Strong feelings of inferiority and lack of faith in themselves hin-der them so that the fine qualities they do possess cannot be real-ized.
The Importance of Self-Faith
Faith is the starting point of all achievements. It is the only anti-dote for failure. It is the magic formula, the open sesame to success.
It does move mountains. “There is no fate that cannot be surmount-ed by scorn”, says Albert Camus. This surmounting of fate is a pos-itive triumph of faith in yourself. A man of unconquerable self-faith
says, “To hell with fate”. Says Dr W.W. Dyer, “You are worthy not
because others say so, or because of what you accomplish or
because of your achievements. Rather, you are worthy because you
say so, because you believe it, and most importantly, because you
ACT as if you are worthy”. Faith is an indispensable condition of
human life. Says the well-known psycho-analyst, Erich Fromm,
“Faith in oneself is a condition of our ability to promise something
Personality and YOU 46
and as Nietzsche pointed out, man can be defined by his capacity to
promise, that is one of the conditions of human existence.” No man
comes to the end of his rope until he loses faith in himself. Then,
indeed his life “is bound in shallows and in miseries”. With faith and
fire in us, nothing is impossible : with them we build our destiny
with our own hands.
What is Self-Faith?
Faith means trust and reliance or belief in ourselves. It cannot be
adequately defined verbally. It can only be experienced. According
to Vernon Howard, “Faith is what you are, faith is how you talk, faith
is how you live, faith is action, not merely an isolated principle.” It
is one of the major positive emotions. It has also been defined as “a
state of mind which may be induced or created by affirmation or
repeated instructions to the subconscious mind, through the princi-ple of auto-suggestion.”
How to develop faith in yourself?
Self-faith being the magnet of success, it is worth your while to
learn how to develop it and harness its tremendous power. This is
especially important if, for any reason, you feel that you have lost
your self-confidence or stopped to believe in yourself.
Self-Analysis: How to go about it?
First of all know yourself as you really are. Ask yourself why you
have lost faith in yourself or feel inferior or inadequate. If you can
find the cause, look at it objectively and recognise it for what it is.
If you cannot find the cause, just accept that there is some reason
deep down in the unconscious and leave it at that. Realize what you
can do and what gifts and abilities you have. Admit them gratefully.
Ask yourself about your goal in life. Have you a definite and realis-tic goal? Or are you just drifting through life without any aim? If you
haven’t got a goal, select one and focus your mind on it.
Belief in Success
Believe in the possibility of success in the attainment of your
Personality and YOU 47
goal. If the goal has been well chosen, your powers will enable you,
barring accidents, to achieve it. It is futile and dangerous to under-take unattainable objectives. Failure in their attainment can destroy
self-confidence and energy.
Combine Faith with Action
Wed faith to action. Action produces faith and faith induces
action. A young squirrel who eagerly wanted to climb to the top of
his first tree in order to enjoy the wide wonderful world, asked his
mother, “How do I get faith enough to climb this tree?” “Do it”, she
said. “But if I slip?” “Do it”. “But if I slip?” “Do it”. But if I slip?” “Do
it”. So he did and did it. From that day onwards he had an eager
mind that could climb any tree. And he did. On the necessity of com-bining faith with action, Kenneth Hildebrand remarks, “But faith
cannot become ‘tested power’ for us until we venture on it in the
practical affairs of life. Psychologists point out that both belief and
doubt are living attitudes, and involve conduct. We express belief or
doubt by living.” Doing is having. You may put it thus : Faith is per-formance towards the thing in which you have faith. The perform-ance of your faith even though at first performed in doubt and
weakness ultimately produces the object of your faith. It is action-oriented faith that moves mountains.
Combine Faith with Commonsense
Combine faith with commonsense. Neither faith alone nor com-monsense alone will produce results. You need both. If you have
faith only you may be led to believe in some wild scheme for  abol-ishing poverty by an Act of Parliament; and if you have only common-sense, you may be wholly satisfied with things as they are. When you
have both, then you will have your head up and your feet on the
ground, and you will move forward steadily and surely.
Auto-suggestion
As “faith is a state of mind that may be induced by self-sugges-tion”, start each day by a positive thought and affirmation. This is
psychologically sound. As a psychologist has it, “Our lives are gov-Personality and YOU 48
erned mainly by our unconscious minds and the most important
thing is to get positive thoughts into them.” You do this by repeti-tion of positive affirmations. It is an established psychological truth
that thoughts sent into the unconscious mind tend to actualize
themselves. So begin with an affirmation. Say to yourself: “I believe
in myself and the work I am doing. I am doing my best and, there-fore, I will succeed. I am one with the Infinite power of the Universe
and, therefore, have no need to fear anything. “Take one of these
sentences or one like them, and repeat it several times when you
wake up. Repeat it at times during the day—even if you are not
thinking what you are saying.” According to Napoleon Hill
“Repetition of affirmation of orders to your subconscious mind is
the only known method of voluntary development of the emotion of
faith.” Any impulse of thought which is repeatedly passed on
to the subconscious mind, which proceeds to translate that impulse
into its physical equivalent, by the most practical procedure
available.
Psychodrama
Another method for developing faith in yourself is the technique
of psychodrama designed by Dr J.L. Moreno. For instance, a shy per-son is assigned the drama role of a bold hero such as Richard the
Lion-hearted. The shyness soon disappears as the assumed role is
absorbed into the very character of the actor. By speaking and act-ing the bold role he actually takes on the bold traits of the person
he represents. After a while it is no longer an assumed role, it is a
permanent trait of the person’s personality. It has proved to be a
surprisingly helpful method for building faith in one’s self. You can
use it for generating practical faith which will turn hoped-for
traits into present powers. Choose your desired role—one that
depicts confidence, or trust. Forget who you are. Concentrate only
on the triumphant person you are becoming. Act out your role by
every means possible; in speech, thoughts, attitudes, physical move-ments. After a while the role will become you. The ideal will become
the real.
Personality and YOU 49
Bright Vision
Keep a bright vision in the front of your mind of yourself suc-ceeding. With each job tackled, imagine a successful result. Think
always in terms of possibilities and never of failures. Compare your-self with the topmost standards. Don’t compare yourself with oth-ers. Remember you are inferior to no one. You are only different.
Whenever you accomplish a task, however small, congratulate your-self. Chalk it up as a success. It is by building on success in little
things that you will become confident to tackle really big things.
Faith building needs patience and perseverance : Rome was not built
in a day.
Sensible Approach to Problems
Face your problems sensibly—confident of success. Accept the
viewpoint that every problem has a solution and approach your
problems in this spirit. When you come to face a problem, relax and
don’t panic. Try to face it objectively. Write down the facts. What
possible solutions are there to that problem? Is there anything you
yourself could do at this moment to solve it? If so, resolve to do it
as soon as possible and act on your resolve. If there is nothing you
can do about it presently, accept that fact. With the passing of time
a solution may be found. At present it is impossible. Turn away from
your problem knowing that you have done all you could do
at this stage. If necessary, make a date in the future when
you will consider it again. But don’t carry it about you
all the time. It is much more likely that your unconscious
mind will work out a solution if you consciously turn
away from it. How often we find that a problem with which we have
wrestled at night is impossible. Yet in the morning we see a solution
clearly. This is because our unconscious mind has been working
while we have been asleep.
Personality and YOU 50
Personality and Tension
Personality is infinitely more than your books and your popular-ity; it is you—body and mind and emotions—living at your peak.
—Karin Roon
How tension affects personality?
Tension affects personality in the following ways:
(1) It fosters a sense of inferiority.
(2) It develops a negative mental attitude.
(3) It leads to the danger of becoming Napoleon-type which
attempts to compensate for small size by too much drive and too
great an expenditure of energy.
(4) It inhibits concentration and through the confusion of nerve
impulses makes a person ‘all mixed up’ mentally so that he finds it
difficult to make decisions.
(5) Tension encourages the chronic worrier because
worry grows out of unfinished problems and the inability to make
decisions.
(6) Tension leads to delinquency and to crime.
(7) Tension creates frustration.
(8) Tension can frequently cause personality distortions.
Habits of a tense person
A tense peson has the following cluster of habits:
(1) He wets his lips with the tip of his tongue.
(2) He clamps his teeth hard together while working or reading.
(3) He bites his nails.
(4) He is a pencil tapper.
(5) He performs a drum beat with his fingers on the arm of
his chair.
Personality and YOU 51
(6) He frowns most of the time.
(7) He constantly glances at his wrist-watch.
(8) He has acquired a tic around his mouth.
(9) He cracks his knuckles.
(10) He is a chain-smoker.
Havoc of tension
Tension plays havoc with our physical, mental and emotional
health. It immobilises us and keeps us from living. It can bring
ulcers, hypertension, cramps, tension headaches, backaches and the
like. It makes us jittery.
Tension as a whole-time state is a killer. Says a doctor, “If you go
through life under tension you are like an automobile racing its
motor at full throttle, in high gear, with the clutch out and the brake
on. Sooner or later something lets go and there are damned few
spare parts to repair in a human body.”
When tension becomes dangerous
Tension is a part of normal living and so long as it can be
released, can often be an agreeable sensation. Itself not an evil, it
can help to contribute to our great moments of happiness, buoyan-cy and achievement. A psychiatrist observes, “Tension is not a bad
thing in itself, but for a balanced life we require the alteration of ten-sion and release, with intervening rest and relaxation. It is the con-tinual stimulation of tension without release that is one of the
biggest dangers of our over-active civilization.”
What is tension?
Tension is defined as a condition arising out of the mobilisation
of psycho-biological resources to meet a threat; physically
it involves an increase in muscle tonus and other emergency
changes, psychologically it is characterised by feelings of strain,
uneasiness and anxiety. In simple terms tension is unreleased
energy.
Personality and YOU 52
Causes of tension
Tension can be physical, mental and emotional. It is caused by
faulty physical habits or emotional maladjustment. According to an
eminent psychologist, there are two basic reasons why tension
builds up:
In the first place, there is an influx of excitement that tends to
go beyond tolerance. And in the second place, the opportunities for
discharge of excitement are blocked. The excitement is locked up
uneasily in the personality and breeds tension. If the incessant
influx of excitement produces tension, equally it is true that the
blocking of discharge of excitement (efflux) tends to maintain
tension, and shows itself in neurosis.
It is not the amount of work you are doing but the way you are
doing that generates tension.
A competent business executive, who had been working for 12
hours a day, was warned by a friend that his overwork would cause
a breakdown. He replied, “When you push your business, there is
nothing to fear, as far as overwork is concerned. It’s when the busi-ness pushes you that trouble starts.”
How to manage tension?
Broadly speaking the management of overtension is simple. If
the influx of your excitement is too great, and the efflux of your
stimuli is limited or blocked, the solution is to limit and control the
influx and to widen and facilitate the efflux.
For instance if you are in a state of tension because shocks,
alarms and crises constantly get at you, the only sensible course is
to reduce the number of aisles that make your tension intolerable.
At the same time you need to facilitate the efflux. In other
words you need to unlock your personality and to express your
emotions.
For example, if you are tension-ridden as your boss has been
irritating for months, it is about time you spoke to him in reality
rather than waste sleepless hours at night ticking him off only in
Personality and YOU 53
imagination.
Action
In any tension charged situation action is a sure-fire remedy.
Tension is a stimulus that calls for action because it can be dis-charged and its accompanying unpleasantness relieved by some
kind of acivity. In this sense, tension functions as a powerful drive
in its own right. Doing rings the bell. By overcoming your inertia and
acting you can release tension. As Dr Dyer observes “Action is the
single most effective antidote to depression, anxiety, stress, fear,
worry, guilt, and immobility.” If you find yourself asking, “Yes, but
what can I do?” The answer is really very simple. Anything is a lot
more effective than nothing. The action-oriented person seldom suf-fers from over-tension. This old saying has a lot of truth in it: ‘Even
when you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit
there.” Tennyson wrote: “I myself must mix with action lest I wither
by despair.”
Walk it Out
Walking is an excellent way to relieve tension. It tones up circu-lation and makes the body feel better. A psychologist advises, “So,
in this hectic fast-moving world, with its tensions and pressures, let
us seize as often as we can the opportunities which walking affords
for health and quietness of mind, and human fellowship.”
Talk it Out
Talking out is a sound method of releasing fear and bottled up
tension. The old saying “getting it off your chest” has a literal mean-ing. Talk to a person who will listen to you with sympathy and
understanding.
Don’t Give Way to Despair
In a situation of crisis, be calm, and strong, and patient. Meet
frustration and failure with courage. Rise superior to the trials and
turbulations of life, and never give in to hopelessness or despair. It
Personality and YOU 54
is time to keep on bravely. “To the brave and resolute, to those with
faith to believe and God-given strength to endure, there is one thing
only to do ... plod on and on and on”, advises Francis Gay. With a
positive outlook on life, say to yourself, “Certainly it can be done—
and I can do it.” We were born to succeed not to fail.
Overcoming Sense of Inferiority
Study the situation, estimate why you feel inferior and then try
to rectify the situation. Realised that there is no such thing as an
inferior person. If you find a difficulty in facing, some situation, you
can always take Dr Weeke’s advice and “float” into it. Let life carry
you instead of struggling to force yourself. Here are five tips for
overcoming the sense of inferiority:
(1) Get to know yourself—your weaknesses and your
strength.
(2) Build up the image of yourself succeeding.
(3) Minimize the difficulties.
(4) Don’t be afraid of other people but learn to appreciate
them.
(5) Do your best and leave the rest.
Relaxation
Apart from the above strategies there is another way of releas-ing your tension. It is that of cultivating the habit of relaxation.
Indeed as Dr D.H. Fink has it: “Learning how to relax is an important
step towards better living.” Relaxation not only prevents disease and
increases your energy but it also enables you to think clearly and it
frees the personality. It gives you a sense of aliveness. Relaxation
means more than supple muscles and freedom from fatigue. It
means the ability to bend with the storm, to adjust yourself to
unforeseen difficulties. For with this flexibility comes self-reliance,
a freedom from the fear of the future which spoils today for many
people. Only a person relaxed physically, mentally and emotionally
is the fulfilled happy person. Observes Dr Rogers Vittoz, “When the
Personality and YOU 55
human personality is completely freed—that is when the mind, emo-tions and body are working in harmony—the person is not only
without fear but is also able to make decisions easily and frequent-ly taps a source of creative ability of which he was completely
unaware. He is then happy.”
Three Ways to Relax
There are three kinds of relaxation:
(1) physical, (2) emotional and (3) philosophical. If you practise
them they are yours for they will reduce unwanted tension to the
minimum.
(1) Physical Relaxation: Throw yourself on a bed two or three
times a day and let yourself go limp like an old sock. Really limp I
mean. The catnappers probably have the most valuable approach to
physical relaxation. Edison, Roosevelt and Churchill were masters of
the art of cat-napping.
As Dr C.W. Dail has pointed out diversion—attending cricket
games, reading exciting books, going on long trips in the automobile
and the like—is not true relaxation. Most of these activities tend to
excite and produce muscular tension and loss of sleep. “It is diffi-cult to imagine a person relaxed while attending an exciting sports
event or while enthusiastic about some hobby.” True relaxation con-sists of perfect muscular rest. In it there is not even a muscular flick-er. There is complete muscular rest with tendency to sleep. The best
example of muscular relaxation is seen in a baby soon after he falls
asleep in your arms. His arms, legs and neck are limp and he feels
heavy and difficult to handle. Your aim should be to relax your
whole body perfectly during sleep and rest.
(2) Emotional Relaxation:  Don’t take your worries to bed. Pour
down the drain all your irksome injustices, your resentments, jeal-ousies and possessiveness, and cultivate a positive attitude. Says a
psychologist, “We hug our negative feelings to ourselves because we
are afraid that without them we shall be nothing. We shall not exist.
But it we put positive-mindedness in place of our poisonous resent-Personality and YOU 56
ments, we not only lose our tensions but we discover a new world of
serenity and enjoyment.” Dr John A. Schindler advises: “When you
catch yourself starting a thought that will produce a stressing emo-tion like worry, anxiety, fear, apprehension, discouragement or the
like, STOP IT, and substitute thinking that brings a healthy emotion
like equanimity, resignation, courage, determination and cheerful-ness.” Negative thinking weakens and poisons the psyche; positive
thinking heals, strengthens, relaxes and enlivens the psyche.
(3) Philosophical Relaxation: Don’t be the prisoner of
despair, fear and pessimism. Things need never remain the same.
Relax into the philosophical awareness that attitudes, not circum-stances, create events. If at the same time you can let go of self pity,
bitterness and possessiveness, you will find yourself in a world that
has no use for tension. The importance of personal hope and trust
cannot be over-emphasized. Regardless of your circumstances
you can still decide to think hopefully. Prisoners who have survived
affirm the importance of a willingness to always think hopefully.
William Nichous who rescued from more than three years imprison-ment in a Venezuelan jungle where he was held by rebels in the
most primitive conditions attributed his survival to never abandon-ing hope and living one day at a time. Hope is upto you and it comes
from deciding to trust yourself. Always look ahead with hopeful-ness. That is the point. And as Casson puts it, “You can’t be beaten
unless you surrender.”
Personality and YOU 57
Get Out of the
Comparison Trap
Endemic Disease
Comparing yourself with others to determine how you should
conduct your own life is an endemic disease in the world. It takes a
lot of self-confidence for people to consult their internal resources
to determine what they want to do, and when people don’t have that
self-esteem, they use the only other standards available—compar-isons with others.
Following one’s own bent is a tough job. “To be nobody but
myself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you
everybody else”, means to fight the hardest battle which any human
being can fight, and never stop fighting. How easy it is to follow the
crowd and take refuge in gregariousness.
Two Games
There are two games in the comparison trap : the game of self-comparison and the game of allowing yourself to be compared. The
first is a destructive art; the second, still more destructive.
Self-comparison is virtually a universal malady, afflicting all but
the toughest of resisters. You look outward for your behavioural
cues and consequently comparison-vision dictates most of your
judgements. How do you know that you are intelligent?—you com-pare yourself to others. How do you know if you are stable?
Charming? Poised? Successful? Actualized?—by checking out how
others around you are doing and then deciding where you fit in the
comparison scale. Cooley calls a social self of this sort the reflected
or looking-glass self:
Each to each a looking-glass
Reflects the other that doth pass
Personality and YOU 58
The looking-glass self, in other words, is the person’s self-image
which is formed on the basis of perceiving how others react towards
him. A recent research study indicates that high-status persons tend
to get cues from others that further enhance their high status; low
status persons tend to get cues from others that further depress
their low status. The self of a high-status person is reflected from a
magnifying glass, that of a low status person from a reducing look-ing-glass.
The self-comparison game is deadly because in it your assess-ments of yourself are always controlled by something outside you
which you cannot regulate. It deprives you of internal security as
you cannot be certain how others assess you. You are robbed of your
individuality and by playing the sedulous ape to others you become
a lost and hopeless victim of the pernicious game—a sort of copy cat
or a discreet sheep.
You don’t have to be a compulsive non-conformist who looks at
the way people conform and sets out to be exactly the opposite. You
have to use your inner commonsense, when it comes to deciding
what you want, without needing to be like everybody else if only
because you are a unique personality and couldn’t be just like all the
others even if you really wanted to be. You must outgrow your per-nicious self-comparison habits and develop internal standards to
evaluate your life and its style.
Even deadlier is the game of allowing yourself to be compared
by others. They play a variety of comparison games to keep you
from realizing your objectives or to manipulate you into doing what
they want you to do. They use such sentences to keep you from
reaching your own goals:
“Why aren’t you more like...?”
“Why can’t you be like your father?”
“This is what God wants you to do.”
“They want it this way. They don’t allow that. That’s the way
they do things.”
Be on the alert: don’t  walk into these traps.
Einstein once said, “Great spirits have always encountered vio-Personality and YOU 59
lent opposition from mediocre minds.” As a psychologist has it, “If
you want to achieve your own greatness, you’ll have to use your self
as your first and last consultant.”
Avoid Hero Worship
Be your own hero. Don’t expect to be like any one else. A French
proverb has it, “To compare is not to prove.” As George Santayana
puts it, “Comparison is the expedient of those who cannot reach the
heart of things compared.”
Preserve your identity. That way lies fulfilment. “Man is always
an individual, but he is not always himself”, says Jung. Be yourself.
Shakespeare has the last word on the need to avoid the comparison
trap:
To thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
Avoiding the comparison trap is essential to the development of
personality which means “fidelity to the laws of one’s being”. As
Jung observes perceptively: “Personality can never develop unless
the individual chooses his own way, consciously and with moral
deliberation.”
While the conformists follow, they never create. The non-conform-ist alone is a creative person. He is an inner-directed person, rather
than an other-directed or tradition-directed person. He does not walk
on the well-trodden path; he blazes a new trail.
Have a good look at yourself and your very personal aspirations,
and appreciate the absurdity of running your life on the basis of
comparisons with others. People who are interested in having you to
be as they are, or as they want you to be, will repeatedly remind you
of how others are doing things to give you solid examples to follow.
Resist their suggestions and your own temptation to look outside
yourself for model.
Comparisons make no Sense
Comparisons in fact make no sense, for two reasons: you are
unique in the world and you are always alone.
Personality and YOU 60
There is only one YOU and you take that YOU wherever you go.
No one is even remotely like you in terms of your innermost feel-ings, thoughts and desires. “Life”, says Jung, “is always an exception,
a statistical random sample. It is so because it is always the life of
an individual who is a distinct, unique and inimitable being and not
‘life in general’ since there is no such thing.” In the light of this
notion it hardly makes sense that you should use anyone’s example
as a reason for your doing or not doing anything. In spite of all pres-sure on you and the constant reminders that you must be like other
folk, you can never do it. You will still perceive, think and feel in
your own unique way.
As a grown up, ultimately each one of you is alone. No one can
do for you what you must do for yourself:
You got to walk that lonesome valley,
You got to walk it by yourself;
No body else can walk it for you,
You got to walk it by yourself.
No other solution will do.
Your inevitable existential aloneness means that your human
existence is inescapably predicated on your being along with your
unique feelings and thoughts. Existential aloneness can be a source
of great strength as well as a source of big trouble. Whenever you
are tempted to use other peoples’ lives as models of how you should
run your own, think of this line by Ibsen: “The strongest man in the
world is he who stands most alone.”
Must you conform? The answer is a resounding No! As Robert M.
Linder puts it, “Man is a rebel. He is committed by his biology not to
conform.” Give free play to your individuality. Follow your own bent
of mind no matter what other people say. Never follow the crowd.
Design your own life style and follow it with calm self-confidence,
and creative courage.
Personality and YOU 61
Step Out from
Your Erroneous Zone
There could be more than one erroneous zones for an individ-ual. He may be aware of some, unaware of others. One person may
be handicapped because of his unhappy past, regrets gnawing at his
heart. Another may feel hurt because he has not achieved what he
wanted because of his laziness or insufficient zeal and effort.
Others have identified their erroneous zones as inability to iden-tify their goals properly. Yet others may have wasted precious time
and energy seeking others’ approval which was not needed. Some
could not break away from the past or free themselves from wast-ing emotions like worry and guilt. There could be some who procras-tinated beyond what was necessary. Some suffered from security
complex and remained tied to the present stagnation. While most
remain undeveloped because they do not have the enough courage
to break loose from convention. The erroneous zones could be mul-tiplied. These could form separate themes for further issues.
The most significant, however elementary it might seem or
sound, is one’s failure to take charge of one’s self. The drifter, like
the waif on the turbulent waters of the sea, does not reach any-where. You have to take charge of yourself. Stop being a drifter, a
waif. There are powerful reasons for it.
Dr W.W. Dyer gives an excellent reason which cannot be
improved upon. “Look over your shoulder. You will notice a con-stant companion. For want of a better name, call him your-own-death. You can fear this visitor or use him for personal gain. The
choice is up to you. ......”
Death is inevitable, certain as well as it keeps no time-table. Even
if it does, we mortals know nothing about it. Now, life being uncer-tain and short, should you remain at the mercy of circumstances.
Personality and YOU 62
Others? Not do things which you want to do? The point is: you can
let death make you ineffectual or use it to help you learn effective-ly.
The next time you think about yourself and your priorities, you
will think of taking charge of yourself. Make your own choices. Here
is a useful tip: Ask yourself: “How long am I going to be dead?” Most
people ask themselves: How long they are going to live? See the
point? The first question will awaken you from your mental stupor,
put you on trail of success and achievement. You will shed crippling
doubts and fears. If you do not, the alternative is obvious. You will
live all your life the way others say you must. If your stay on this
earth is so brief, it should be yours and you should be able to put it
to the best use.
When you prepare yourself to take charge of yourself, you will
be confronted with several mental ghosts which will begin to haunt
you. You have to look them straight in the face and bury them. The
most haunting will be the notion that intelligence is measured by
one’s ability to solve complicated problems. To read, write and com-pute at fast speed which will astonish others and flatter you. You
may also think that solution of abstract equations is yet another. In
other words, you have been nursed on the notion that intelligence
involves formal education, bookish excellence and a measure of
achievement. It encourages a kind of intellectual snobbery. It is
bound to rub you the wrong way. Let the opportunity arise. You will
be deflated.
Let’s have a look around. It is commonly believed that a person
who has a staggering memory, has mastered one subject or has a
sponge like mind remembering dates, time etc. of superfluous
events is very intelligent. Shed this notion. It is not accumulation of
such information that counts. It is its right application. A true index
of intelligence is an effective, useful life lived from moment to
moment.
You must have come across scores of people who are unable to
overcome some personality minus points all their life. For example,
a neurotic remains a neurotic. He continues to spread unhappiness,
Personality and YOU 63
is suspicious, thinks that the whole world is hostile to him. What
happens to him ultimately? He suffers from a nervous breakdown.
The reason? He has not taken charge of himself. He lives on others’
thinking. He has not emerged from his particular erroneous zone.
The astonishing truth is there is no breakdown because the
nerves do not break. People who have stepped out from their erro-neous zones, do not suffer from nervous breakdowns because they
have taken charge of themselves. Their nerves are under their con-trol, not  vice versa. They remain in control of themselves because
they are in full awareness of their potential. They know how to ward
of depression.
It might surprise you to learn that this does not necessarily
mean solving their problems in a jiffy or with a magic wand. Not the
least. Rather than measuring their intelligence on the basis of
whether they can solve a problem or not, they do it on the basis of
whether they can keep their balance in the face of it or not. Do they
succeed? Watch people carefully. Successful people do keep this bal-ance. Dr Dyer says, “You can begin to think of yourself as truly intel-ligent on the basis of how you choose to feel in the face of trying cir-cumstances.”
With some variations here and there each one of us has to face
problems whose nature is not very different. Conflicts, sorrows,
deaths, disease, injury, disagreements, frustration and failure are
common to us all. How is that despite this some people are able to
steer clear of unhappiness and dejection that stem from these cir-cumstances while others buckle down and sink in blues?
Those people who have conditioned their thinking in such a way
that look upon problems as human condition and do not measure
happiness by an absence of problems are the most intelligent.
When you decide to take charge of yourself, you will have to
recast your thinking. Additionally, there are always forces working
against the individual in society. Hence the task is not easy but it is
not impossible. The only sure way is to put faith in your own abili-ty to feel emotionally whatever you choose to feel at any time in
your life. This may read sensational. Because you must have been
Personality and YOU 64
nursed on thinking that you cannot control emotions because they
are natural. They just happen as day and night and nobody can do
a thing about them. It is not necessary to control them. It is absolute-ly necessary to  accept them. Suppose death may occur. What hap-pens. What are your options? Feeling sorrow is natural. Emotion is
justified. But if you refuse to accept the unhappy event you will find
yourself wasting away without knowing what is happening to you.
You have not controlled death You have not controlled sorrow. Yet
you have come out of it unscathed.
What is the logical consequence of this reasoning? It is simple:
feelings are not just emotions which occur to us. These are reactions
we have conditioned ourselves to produce for given situations. It is
up to us. We can choose destructive, negative reactions. We can
choose positive encouraging reactions. Two youngmen sit in a pres-tigious examination. Both fail. One commits suicide, the other tries
again and succeeds. See the difference! It is absolutely important for
you to know that you can choose your reactions. That is taking
charge of yourself. That is emerging from your erroneous zone.
Direct advantages flow from your realisation that you can
choose your reactions. The most important is that even without
bookish excellence you would be called and known as intelligent.
There is a compelling need to control your thinking apparatus.
You alone control the entry of thoughts into your mind. You are the
sentinel guarding your mental gates. If you think, it is untrue, ask
yourself who is then? Is it your shadow? Your father, mother,
friends or what? If any of these are guarding your mental gates, you
are unguarded. You have not taken charge of yourself.
One can draw only one sure and irrefutable conclusion from the
foregoing: if you control your thoughts (your feelings stem from
them) then you are capable of controlling your feelings too. The con-trol over feelings does not begin directly. It begins from working on
your thoughts. Thoughts come first.
Many a time you must have thought that certain situations,
things or individuals hurt or make you unhappy. Nothing could be
more misleading. Your hurt, your unhappiness stems not from them
Personality and YOU 65
but from  your thoughts about them. That is why betrayal from a
stranger does not hurt you but betrayal from a friend does. Simply,
it is because you have thoughts about the friend that he would be
faithful. Had you nursed yourself on the thought that he could let
you down any time, there would be no hurt.
Shedding your complexes, stepping out from your erroneous
zone means becoming a free and mentally, emotionally healthy per-son. It involves adopting a different thinking approach. Once you
embark upon the interesting journey of changing your thoughts,
your new feelings will begin to emerge and you will have taken the
most vital and significant step towards emerging from your erro-neous zone.
Personality and YOU 66
Discover Your Creative
Channels
One great secret of success and achievement, often overlooked,
is creative visualization. This is a broad term. It is a process by
which you can consciously create your own reality and can create it
the way you want. In fact, creative visualization is something which
most of us do in our daily life almost each minute. Think for your-self. Is it not a fact that your mind is filled with an endless succes-sion of images and thoughts? You are constantly projecting these
images onto the world, creating your experiences. It is a serious fal-lacy to think that this creative visualization is rather hard to acquire.
On the contrary, it is quite easy.
The first requisite is an open, receptive mind. You must clear the
decks of your mind for further action. The simple technique
employed here is to consciously choose mentally acceptable images.
If necessary, these have to be created. But you must choose or cre-ate those images which you want to manifest clearly in your life. The
next step is to project them with confidence and self-assurance. The
entire exercise besides being profitable is highly pleasurable. It is
almost like creating a golden dream and then putting it into prac-tice.
It is not important how clearly you see the mental image because
you may also hear, sense or just feel what you are creating. By pic-turing or sensing what you want to manifest in life, you are, during
the course of your thinking and living, attracting those very forms
to yourself. These images can be called the blue-prints of your cre-ative thinking. S. Gawain, an eminent authority on the subject says:
“This image magnetizes and guides the energy of the universe to
flow into the form you are creating, and eventually it manifests on
the physical plane.”
Personality and YOU 67
In simple terms, you attract into your lives whatever you think
about the most. What you believe in. The world is here to give you
what you want provided you make the right amount of effort in the
right direction. You can, in your own limited way, have a sense of
perfection. This is possible only when you change your beliefs and
thought-patterns. You have to work on dissolving your self-made
limitations.
It is pertinent to ask: why do many people fail to create positive
visualization? Why do they impose on themselves miserable,
shrunken and negative lives? The answer is plain and simple: you
get into your life whatever dominates your thinking. Call it visuali-zation. To go a step further ahead, it may be said that this visuali-zation means whatever you think of yourself at the deepest level.
It is an amazing phenomenon of nature and human psychology
that the positive manifests in your life straight but the negative does
it indirectly. If you are negative and afraid, lack self-assurance and
are ridden with anxiety, you will attract the very situations you are
seeking to prevent. It may be equally or more surprising to know
that many of us have a difficult time accepting what we want
because we adopt limiting beliefs about ourselves right from the
early stages of our life. If you want creative visualization to be an
operative factor in your life, you should be willing to accept the best.
Nothing short of it.
Another pertinent question is: what can one do when the phe-nomenon refuses to work? Let’s prevent the negative. This should be
viewed as an opportunity for development, for getting closer to
those forces which transform human life. It is these forces which
have lifted millions of so-called ordinary mortals and converted
them into immortals. One need not give examples.
There is another dimension to it. Think cool. Review
your visualization. You may be pursuing goals which are opposed to
your creative visualization. You may be striving foolishly hard to
create something not in harmony with your real essence.
Even if your objectives are in harmony with your real essence,
there could be other limitations. For example, you may be nursing
Personality and YOU 68
feelings of unworthiness about your own self. It is quite possible
that you have accumulated negative attitudes on life itself. Your
ideas about people might be equally discouraging. All these factors
taken together prevent the desired visualization. Nonetheless, it is
possible to get beyond their crippling effects. You must be willing
first and then make the necessary effort to go past such barriers.
You can certainly become bigger than your difficulties.
Another serious setback or danger you are likely to face involves
defaulting on your responsibility system. Without your knowing you
could be acting is irresponsible manner. Or you could be avoiding
things which need immediate attention. Unconscious procrastina-tion in a serious problem. It may read far fetched but it is a telling
psychological reality that you could be mistreating yourself. Your
visualization could be correct and high but if you are not treating
yourself well, your creativity is bound to suffer.
You have to be equally considerate to your intuitive self. For,
this is the part of your being which feels and is really receptive. If
the intuition tells you to go ahead with something and you go on
ignoring its dictate, you reduce your creative potential. This is a
potentially vast area where lots of people trip. They have lofty ideals
and aspirations but in actual conduct of themselves they do not
treat themselves as well as they should. In other words, even if you
visualize the best but treat yourself in an unworthy fashion, you are
setting counter-currents to your own creative ability. Unless you
honour your whole self, the manifestation of creativity will not be
whole.
Modern scientific research has discovered that the two hemi-spheres of the human brain perform two separate functions. The
left one is for thought which is concerned with rationality, activity,
masculinity and is out-going. The right one, on the other hand, is
involved with what may be called ferminine. It deals with intuition
and feeling. If you want to cash on the creativity to the optimum,
you have to use both hemispheres equally well. If you do not listen
to your intuition, you run the risk of clogging your creative chan-nels.
Personality and YOU 69
You are aided by an infinite intelligence which is ever at your
beck and call. But sometimes you must be willing to let go of your
own ego-plans to let the powerful force shape itself. Since the mind
has two sides—masculine and feminine—both should be allowed to
play their respective parts. The rational or the masculine part sel-dom inspires. It acts as a kind of censor board over the feminine or
the intuitive part. It is the latter which originates ideas. Lest these
impulses should play havoc, the censor board begins to operate by
checking, correcting, analysing and applying brakes. Thus it is
essential for you to have a trusting relationship with your intuitive
self so that you are not misled by wayward impulses. Let the impuls-es be originated, then rationally processed by the masculine part.
This effective balance will result in maximum utilization of your cra-tivity. This will be your creative channel.
You must be on guard against two conflicts. The first is that sup-porting the intuitive channel in the physical world means asserting
yourself. Often people who develop the channel tend to withdraw
from life failing to assert themselves. Withdrawal from the physical,
wrapping yourself in a cocoon in order to safeguard this energy will
result in stoppage of the source itself. The well-springs of creative
channels once found should not be permitted to rest. Or they will
begin to rust. Once they close off, it will be difficult to recharge
them.
Last, do not confuse creative channels and their use with hack-neyed phrase “positive thinking”. The two are vastly different in
concept and application. In positive thinking, there is an attempt to
eliminate negative thinking, and replacing it with brighter thoughts.
In creative-channel process, you need not struggle against negative
thoughts. Experience them, instead. The main stress is on discover-ing the hidden creativity and putting it to the maximum use. This is
the know-how of latest in creativity which can be termed as the tech-nology of the soul.
Personality and YOU 70
It’s Human to have
Troubles
You cannot stop the birds of trouble from flying over your head,
but you can prevent them from making nests in your hair.
—Chinese Proverb
We All have Our Troubles
All of us have troubles—some problems—emotional ups and
downs—caused by life’s frustrations, money problems, job worries
and a host of other kinds of frustrations. Rich or poor, troubles,
come to all of us. No one knows with certainty from one day to the
next just what the next day will bring. Life is very unpredictable. The
fact that none can feel totally secure in anything subjects us to a
common frustration. We are all in the same boat trying to make the
most of life, adopting ourselves to each changing situation.
Duty to Survive Life’s Troubles
True, many of us bring on our own misfortune. But it is also true
that many of us often become the innocent victims of “the slings
and arrows of outrageous fortune”. Assuming the philosophical atti-tude that any one at any time can suddenly be confronted with a
serious problem because of unforeseen circumstances makes us
realize that no one is exempt from life’s frustrations: “Man is born
unto trouble, as the sparks fly upwards.” We can only be held
responsible for those troubles which we have deliberately brought
on ourselves, due to faulty judgement or some other reason.
While we are all capable of making serious mistakes the impor-tant thing is profit from our said experiences. We cannot always zig-zag from life’s difficulties. When troubles come to us, and often
Personality and YOU 71
“they come not single spies but in battalions” it is only natural that
we should have our moods of depression and discouragement. It is
only human to find ourselves in trouble and reacting to it with tem-porary despondency. Nevertheless to remain continually in the dol-drums because of some major frustration is an emotional
reaction that is morbid and capable of making you sicker than you
would ever want to be. As Martin Gray says in his “A Book of Life”
(1975) “Life’s pendulum swings between darkness and light, despair
and hope, torment and peace. Life has always to be reconquered.”
All existence is a struggle; life is simply winning through.
Are You a Chronic Worrier?
By ‘worry’ we mean an abnormal concern over something exist-ing or something unpleasant you fear may happen to you. It is
defined as “being immobilized in the present as a result of things
going or not going to happen in the future”. It is a contrivance that
keeps you immobilized in the now about something in the future—
frequently something over which you have no control.
Abnormal worry is frequently the root of unrelieved depression
and unhappiness. A chronic worrier dissipates his energy because
the things he worries about seldom happen. As Dr Lloyd Foster aptly
puts it, “To worry is as foolish and wasteful as driving one’s car into
the garage and leaving the motor running all night. A tremendous
amount of energy would be consumed, but the car would not be
going anywhere.” Excessive worry can bring ulcers, hypertension,
cramps, headaches, and the like. It destroys health : it can cause pre-mature ageing. It is a form of self-torment. The famous Dejerine of
Paris said, “In our lives there are mountains and molehills, but in the
lives of neurasthenics there are ony mountains.”
Worry Test
Dr Caprio has formulated the following worry test. It will enable
you to gain some inkling as to whether you are a chronic worrier.
Ask yourself the following questions. Check the ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ col-umn. If the majority of your checks are ‘Yes’ answers, you no doubt
have the personality of neurotic worrier:
Personality and YOU 72
Questions
(1) Do you bring your work troubles home? Yes/No
(2) Are you constantly pre-occupied with Health
problems? Yes/No
(3) Does the least emotional stress give you a
feeling of butterflies in your stomach? Yes/No
(4) Do you go from doctor to doctor trying to
find out what’s wrong with you? Yes/No
(5) Are you overly cautious about everything? Yes/No
(6) Do you take a pessimistic view about most
things? Yes/No
(7) Are you inclined to make mountains of
mole-hills? Yes/No
(8) Are you over-concerned about what other
people think? Yes/No
(9) Are you continually worried about the welfare
of members of your family? Yes/No
(10) Do you dwell on past mistakes? Yes/No
(11) Do you worry about going insane, dying or
developing cancer? Yes/No
(12) Do you lack confidence in the future? Yes/No
(13) Are you superstitious? Yes/No
(14) Do you worry about God punishing you? Yes/No
(15) Are you a perfectionist? Yes/No
(16) Were you brought up by parents who
worried to excess? Yes/No
(17) Have you always been serious-minded? Yes/No
(18) Are you over-sensitive to criticism, easily
offended, and addicted to brooding over
slights? Yes/No
(19) Can you trace your worry habit to some
painful frustration in the past? Yes/No
(20) Do you worry about everyday
responsibilities? Yes/No
(21) Do you worry about the kind of impression
Personality and YOU 73
you make on other people? Yes/No
(22) Do you constantly talk about the things that
worry you to those around you? Yes/No
(23) Must you be constantly reassured that
nothing will happen to you? Yes/No
(24) Are you dependent on others to solve your
troubles? Yes/No
(25) Do you worry excessively about other
people’s troubles and misfortunes? Yes/No
(26) Are your imagined fear associated with
something you have read or heard? Yes/No
(27) Are you over-suspicious and doubt the
integrity of your friends? Yes/No
(28) Are your money troubles a constant source
of worry? Yes/No
(29) Do you have a compulsive need to worry? Yes/No
(30) Are you the type to bite off more than you
can chew and then worry about it? Yes/No
(31) Do you lack a sense of humour? Yes/No
(32) Are you afraid to enjoy life? Yes/No
How to Manage Your Troubles?
Here are some psychologically sound techniques for the man-agement of your day-to-day troubles and frustrations:
Don’t Cross a Bridge till You come to it
That is to say, don’t worry about something before it has hap-pened. Your fears may be groundless, for it may never happen.
Remember: “Never trouble trouble till trouble troubles you.”
Don’t think about you all the time
If you do so your troubles are likely to get out of hand. Molehills
will grow into mountains, and any setback will be seen as more of
an obstacle than it actually is. It is necessary to look beyond your-self. Then you recognize for instance that you are not the only per-son experiencing the loneliness of the hospital bed, or the aching
Personality and YOU 74
emptiness of bereavement, or the cruel frustration of another fail-ure, or the nagging pain of unavoidable frustration. Don’t ever be
too sorry for yourself. Every minute of every day, somewhere, some
one lands in trouble similar to yours. You are not the only target of
trouble.
Convince yourself that every problem has a solution
Every situational problem has a proper solution. It is just a mat-ter of being patient and finding the right answer to your situation-al-problem, by study and planning.
Don’t leap in the dark
Think carefully before you act. People are easily frustrated when
they allow themselves to act on an impulse. Act with clear under-standing to avoid disappointment. “Haste makes waste” runs the old
saying, “and waste makes want, and want makes strife between the
good man and his wife”. If you must hasten, hasten slowly.
Don’t be a Perfectionist
Perfectionists are disposed to be easily frustrated because they
expect too much of themselves and others. They are too idealistic
and less realistic. Says Bertrand Russell, “Real life is, to most men, a
long second-best—a perpetual compromise between the ideal and
the possible.” Perfection spells immobility or paralysis.
Don’t Look for Trouble
An optimist and pessimist went into business together. Trade
flourished. “Well”, said the optimist, “We’ve had a wonderful month.
It has been one constant run of customers”. “Yeah”, agreed the pes-simist dourly, “We have had some good business. But look at those
front doors! If people keep shoving through them, the hinges will be
out in another week”. Don’t meet trouble half-way.
Talk Out Your Problems
Talk out your problems with someone you think can help you.
Merely talking things over with someone provides an outlet for fear
and tension. Never be too proud or shy to seek outside help.
Personality and YOU 75
Simplify Your Life
Don’t deliberately invite complications that will cause worry and
anxiety.
Learn to Live Now
Learn to live in the present and not waste your current moments
in immobilizing thoughts about the past or future. “There is no
other moment to live but now”, says Dr Dyer. Lewis Carroll in his
‘Alice Through the Looking-Glass’ speaks about living in the present:
‘The rule is jam less tomorrow and jam yesterday ... but never
jam today.’
‘It must come sometimes to jam today’ Alice objected.
How about you? Any jam today? Since it must come sometimes, how
about now? At the same time don’t look too far ahead. Live one day
at a time. Make the best and most of here and now.
Worry-killer Question
Ask yourself this worry eradicating question, “What’s the worst
thing that could happen to me (or them) and what is the likelihood
of it occurring?” You will discover the absurdity of worry in this way.
You cannot please Everybody
You cannot always please everyone. To run into people who dis-like you, is to be expected. Accept rejection stoically.
Be Practical
Be strictly practical and down-to-earth about your troubles.
Accept them as a challenge to your courage, guts and ingenuity.
Lift of Laughter
When things go wrong try the lift of laughter. Think of some-thing to smile or laugh about. Use your sense of humour when you
need it most. Don’t take yourself and your problems
so seriously that you cannot stand back and view the absurdity of
taking anything so solemnly. “Appreciate the immense value of
humour”, says H.N. Casson, “No man ever laughed himself mad; but
millions have laughed themselves into sense and sanity.”
Personality and YOU 76
Power Within
Sell yourself the idea that you have a power within you that will
help you to meet your adversities courageously—that will enable
you to surmount any obstacle. “There are still potentialities in you
that you cannot even feel”, says M. Malinski in his ‘One Daily Bread’
(1979). “You are capable of deeds you never thought of in your
wildest dreams. Greatness slumbers within you. Have confidence in
yourself.”
Control Your Emotions
Learn to control your emotions. Coping with your day-to-day
frustrations successfully depends on how well you can control your
emotions.
Act
Action is the single most effective antidote for depression,
worry and tension. It is virtually impossible to be depressed and
active at the same time. If you decide to do something about your
problem rather than grumbling about it, you will be on the road to
changing things around yourself. If about your situational-problem
you find asking yourself, “Yes, but what can I do?” the answer is
really very simple. Anything is lots better than nothing. Be an action-oriented person. Your troubles will pass away if you overcome your
inertia and act in the spirit of old song.
Here We are! Here We Are Again
Here we are! here we are!! here we are again!!!
There’s Pat and Mac and Tommy and Jack and Joe
When there’s trouble brewing,
When there’s something doing,
Are we down-hearted
No! Let’em all come!
(Charles Knight)
Trying is all. Never stop trying. “It is not given to man to know
the worth of his efforts. His business as a man is to try” (W.J.
Gardner). Say yes to trying, yes to striving, yes to attempting.
Personality and YOU 77
He Who Will
not Reason .......
Homo sapiens, the only creature endowed with reason is also
the only creature to pin its existence on things unreasonable.
—Henry Bergon
The Queen of All Things
Reason is supposed to be queen and mistress of all things, yet
most of us don’t listen to it. We are guided by emotions and not by
reason. Instead of making a wise use of it we flee in panic from it,
as from a dragon.
Reasoning is our best guide in charting our course of life.
Without this guiding lamp we fall into many errors. As Will Durant
has it, “A life without reasoning is unworthy of man; it is better to
be Socrates in prison than Caliban on the throne.” Reasoning saves
us from bigotry, folly and intellectual slavery. As William
Drummond puts it, “He who will not reason, is a bigot; he who can-not, is a fool; and he who dares not, is a slave.”
But What is Reasoning?
Reasoning is realistic thinking which helps us to adjust to the
real world. It is contrasted with autistic thinking which is as an end
in itself and not as a means to an end. Fantasy, dreams, and wishful
thinking, are all examples of autistic thinking. Fantasies and dreams
do not stand up very well in the light of everyday reality. Often an
individual who is dissatisfied with his everyday life has day-dreams
of success and gratification. Positive harm is done when these day-dreams become so satisfying that the individual no longer seeks real
achievement.
Personality and YOU 78
There are three kinds of reasoning:
Deductive Reasoning: Deductive reasoning is the kind of reason-ing exemplified by the syllogism: “If A is true and B is true, then C
follows necessarily.” It is inferring from premises or propositions
representing already known facts.
Inductive Reasoing: In inductive reasoning the thinker builds
from the known to the unknown; it is inference from the particular
to the general.
Evaluative Reasoning: A third kind of reasoning is evaluating—
judging the soundness or appropriateness of an idea or product.
Critical thinking is evaluative reasoning.
Basic Mistakes
In every kind of reasoning some basic mistakes arise inevitably.
They are a natural part of the process of thinking. For sound and
valid reasoning it is necessary to identify these mistakes and to cor-rect them. Edward De Bono has listed five such fundamental mis-takes. These are:
The Monorail Mistake: The monorail mistake involves going
directly from one idea to an other in an inevitable manner, and
ignoring all qualifying factors.
Examples are:
“The cat has been out in the rain and is soaking wet. I’ll pop her
in the spin-dryer for a few minutes because that is how Mummy
dries wet things.”
“These pills are red and must be sweets”, says a child helping
himself to a handful of iron tablets from the cabinet.
The monorail mistake thus occurs when you follow a single
track from one idea to another:
Wet—spin-dryer.
Red—sweets.
Such mistakes are simple minded mistakes:
“Taxes are unfair—let’s abolish them.”
“We want more money—let’s strike for more money.”
“Teachers are there to teach—so teachers know more about
Personality and YOU 79
teaching than any one else.”
“Professors are clever—so what he says must be right.”
The best way to correct this type of mistake is to accept the idea
but follow it further. Instead of saying, “You cannot put the wet cat
in the spin-dryer because that is for clothes”, you say, “If you put the
cat in the spin-dryer, the cat will die.”
The Magnitude Mistake: Here the idea is right but the magnitude
is wrong. For example: “Mummy, you need not buying anything for
dinner because Daddy has just caught a fish.” “We’ll clear up crime
in the streets by putting more policemen on the beat.” The move-ment from the idea of the fish to the idea of eating it for dinner is
perfectly valid but the magnitude may be all wrong if the fish caught
by Daddy happens to be a two inch tiddler. Similarly it is obvious
that more policemen will stop crime but three extra policemen
would not make enough difference and it might be necessary to
more than double the police force.
Measurement is the tool to cope with the magnitude mistake.
“Put a teaspoonful of shampoo into a cupful of water” is quite differ-ent from “Put the shampoo in water”. “Daddy has faught a fish—we
can all eat it for dinner”, may be right if Daddy has indeed caught a
big enough fish or it could be horribly wrong if Daddy is not so skil-ful.
The Misfit Mistake: In a misfit mistake, the idea does not actual-ly fit with the situation.  For example, you are walking down the
street and you recognize the back-view of some one you know very
well. The back of his head is unmistakeable and the suit is one he
often wears. You quicken your pace and draw level only to find it is
a total stranger. In this instance something is recognized as being
familiar but actually turns out to be something quite different. It is
a misfit mistake because the idea of what something is does not fit
with reality. You do not wait until you have listed every possible fea-ture before you jump to a conclusion.
The way to correct this type of mistake is to notice all possible
features of a situation before coming to a conclusion. For Example,
if you had noticed that the man in the street ahead of you had rings
Personality and YOU 80
on his fingers than at once you would have known it could not have
been your friend. If you base a conclusion on all the available infor-mation then that conclusion is as valid as it can be in the circum-stances.
The Must-be Mistake: This is the arrogance mistake—the fixation
of an idea by arrogant certainty. The fault is not in the idea itself but
in the way it is held or imposed on other people. It is a mistake in
the future rather than in the past. It stops the evolution of an idea;
shuts out the possibility of other ideas. It is also related to person-ality and training.
Examples:  “As civilization advances, poetry almost necessarily
declines.”                                                                     (Macaulay)
“There is no genius without a mixture of madness.”
(Seneca)
“The minority is always in the right.”                             (Ibsen)
(Why, there may be a minority of stagnationists, as Ibsen himself
confessed later.)
The way to overcome this mistake is to eliminate or minimize
arrogance. As Voltaire warned, “Doubt is not a pleasant condition
but certainty is an absurd one.” Nietzsche once wrote:
“This is my way ...
What is your way?
The way does not exist”.
It is a fitting motto for those who want to eliminate some of the
arrogance which leads to paralysing rigidity in thinking.
The Miss-out Mistake: This mistake arises when one considers
only part of a situation and applies the conclusion drawn from it to
the whole situation.
Examples: Friends might sympathize with a wife whose husband
has run away and roundly condemn the irresponsibility of the man.
They would over-look the fact that she had driven him away by her
nagging.
A photograph of a policeman hitting a man with a lathi may be
used as an evidence of police brutality which is what it looks like.
What may be missed out is the fact that the man has knife with
Personality and YOU 81
which he has just attacked the policeman. It is impossible to tell this
from the photograph.
The mistake can be overcome when you look at only a part of
the situation and do not assume that you are looking at the whole.
If you look at a part of situation and accept that it is only part, then
there is no mistake. To come to a valid conclusion about a situation
look at it steadily and see it whole.
Rationalizing Desire
An other basic mistake in the process of reasoning consists in
putting the premium not on evidence but on subtlety. Then it
becomes like written history, a mere advocate of any poweful desire.
Reason may be only the technique of rationalizing desire; for the
most part we do not do things because we have reasons for them,
but because we find reasons for them; because we want to do them.
We must be on our guard against being communists because we are
poor, or conservatives because our ship is in. As Bertrand Russell
has it so well, “What we need is not the will to believe, but the wish
to find out, which is the exact opposite”.
Typically rationalizing involves thinking up logical and socially
approved reasons for our past, present or proposed behaviour. With
a little effort we can soon justify to ourselves the absolute necessi-ty of buying a new car, of watching T.V. instead of studying or even
of marrying some one with whom we are not in love.
Often we manage not only to justify our behaviour, but actually
to feel righteous about it. Thus Hitler saw the liquidation of Jews not
as reprehensible but a noble crusade.
There are two additional types of rationalization—the sour
grapes and sweet lemon mechanisms. The sour-grapes mechanism
is based on the fable of the fox who, unable to reach clusters of lus-cious grapes, decided that they were sour and not worth having any-way. Similarly we may point out that the girl we couldn’t get talks
too much and will probably lose her figure at an early age. As
Aronson and Carlsmith point out, one way of reducing the discrep-ancy between our assumptions of what is desirable and our failure
Personality and YOU 82
to take action is to convince ourselves that the particular goal object
is really desirable at all.
The sweet lemon mechanism is an extension of the sour grape
mechanism. Not only is the unattainable not worthwhile, but what
we have is remarkably satisfactory. Thus we find comfort in pover-ty, for ‘money is the root of all evil’. More generalized attitudes are:
“Every cloud has a silver lining” and ”Everything happens for the
best”. There is also the sweet lemon philosophy of J.M. Barrie: “Not
in doing what you like, but in liking what you do is the secret of hap-piness”.
Although rationalizations are “logical” they are generally based
on false premises. If an individual relies too much on them, he may
develop unrealistic ways of dealing with life.
Personality and YOU 83
He Who makes no
Mistakes makes
Nothing
Probably he who never made a mistake never made a discovery.
—Samuel Smiles.
Fear of Making Mistakes
Do not be afraid of making mistakes. The person who is so care-ful that he never makes a mistake is unlikely to achieve anything of
real value. The man who never makes mistakes loses a great many
chances to learn something. You can’t get through this world with-out making mistakes. The fellow who makes no mistakes does noth-ing and that is an egregious mistake or folly.
No Man is Infallible
It is only human to make mistakes. All of us are liable to make
mistakes now and then. Even Homer sometimes nods. Homer was
the greatest of Greek poets. Horace, the Roman Poet, wrote of him,
“I, too, am indignant when the worthy Homer nods, but in a long
work it is allowable to snatch a little sleep.”
Take Mistakes for Granted
No creative purposeful man can avoid mistakes. No man always
does the right thing at once. Take mistakes for granted, like measles
and bad weather. It is better to look forward and to make new mis-takes than to look back and do nothing. You must keep on. When
Edison, the great inventor failed in an experiment, he would say
cheerfully, “Well, now we know another thing that can’t be done.”
One of the worst mistake that a man can make is to lose his initia-Personality and YOU 84
tive. An all-alive man, making mistakes will achieve more than a
robot. It is the unbeatable man who climbs to the topmost rung of
fortune’s ladder in every profession and calling.
Don’t Repeat Your Mistakes
Certainly no one should make the same mistake twice. Lord
Northcliffe, the great British journalist, said: “Any man may make a
mistake once; to make it a second time proves him a fool.” Mistakes
are caused by a lack of knowledge or lack of skill or because of some
temperamental defect. Knowledge can be acquired. So can skill. And
most temperamental defects can be overcome. According to Honery
H. Buckley, “The causes of mistakes are: first ‘I didn’t know’; second,
‘I didn’t think’; third, ‘I did not care’.” By removing these causes, the
repetition of a mistake can be prevented.
Admit Your Mistakes
Don’t be ashamed of admitting your mistakes. Every one, no
matter how brilliant, intelligent or gifted, makes mistakes either of
fact or of judgement. What matters is that these should be admitted
or rectified before much harm is done. There are lots of pigheaded
people who will never admit to being fallible even after their mis-takes have been clearly pointed out to them. In this way they cause
themselves and others much suffering.
History is replete with mistakes because statesmen and kings
are not infallible, and much of the world misery is caused because
they will do anything but lose face by admitting they are wrong.
Actually as Claude G. Bowers observes, “History is the torch that is
meant to illuminate the past to guard us against the repetition of
our mistakes of other days.”
In fact, a frank admission of mistake is a sign of moral courage
and enhances one in the estimation of one’s fellow beings. To a
speaker who compared him to Robespierre, Charles de Gaulle
replied, “I always thought I was Jeanne d’Arc and Bonaparte. How lit-tle one knows about oneself.” President Theodore Roosevelt once
said that one out of every four decisions he made was probably
wrong. Einstein even went further: ‘I am wrong’, he said, “about 99%
Personality and YOU 85
of the time.”
During the American Civil War, Lincoln, to please a politician,
signed an order transferring certain regiments, but Stanton,
Secretary of State, refused to implement it saying, “Lincoln is a
damn fool for ever signing it.” The remark was leaked to Lincoln,
who agreed. “If Stanton said I am a damn fool then I must be for he
is nearly always right. I’ll step over and see him.”
Forget Your Mistakes
Many people play safe. They avoid the risks that lead to success
because they cannot forget their mistakes. As Dr W.W. Dyer has it,
“the most obvious thing about which you can do nothing is your
past behaviour. Everything that you ever did is simply over, and
while you can always learn from it, and some times change the
effects that are continuing into the present, you cannot undo what
you have done. Therefore, any time you find yourself quarrelling
about how you should or should not have done something, instead
of discussing how can you grow from your past errors or what can
be done now you are a victim in a no-escape pitfall.” He adds, “To
chew the old cud endlessly, to be reminded of how you did this or
that, and how you should have done it, or to agonize over how you
might have it done, are all victim responses you can challenge.” As
you can only live in the present it is absurd and self-negating to let
yourself be hurt about your past mistakes. Your past mistakes are a
handful of dust. For, even God cannot change the past.
Learning from Mistakes
The admission of mistakes as well as forgetting about past mis-takes is salutary, provided we learn from them, and they are not
repeated again and again, for one of the surest ways to learn is by
trial and error. “Experience is the mother of wisdom”, is a true say-ing, meaning we learn by our mistakes.
The only complete mistake is the mistake from which we learn
nothing. Such people were the Bourbons of whom Talleyrand said,
“They have learned nothing and forgotten nothing.”
Don’t let mistakes put you off trying the same thing again. Do it
Personality and YOU 86
better the next time and avoid the mistakes you made before. Don’t
be like the cat that sat on a hot stove. She will never sit on a hot
stove again or for that matter on a cold stove.
One of the lessons that mistakes teach us is humility. The cock-sure who know it all are brought down to earth. The wise old Ben
said, “After crosses and losses, men grow humbler and wiser.”
Viscount Melbourne said of Macaulay, “I wish I was as cocksure of
anything as Tom Macaulay is of everything.”
Every mistake teaches us to learn as much as possible before we
take action. It exhibits the value of preparation.
Stressing the educative value of mistakes a psychologist
observes, “Mistakes should be regarded not as failures but as steps
in our education through life. Regard them as such and then each
will be a step behind you as you ascend the ladder of wisdom.” He
relates a homely experience from which he learned a lesson:
“When I was a small boy in India, I climbed a mango tree and as
I reached for a succulent ripe mango my triumph evaporated—a
thousand needles seemed to pierce every inch of my body, and I
came flying down with a thump, tearing off my clothes as I reached
the ground for I was covered with tiny red ants that nipped vicious-ly. I learnt then that mango trees harbour these insects and ever
after used a ladder or forked stick to get the fruit.”
We can also learn by other men’s mistakes. Surely it is better to
keep out of trouble by not repeating the foolish behaviour of others
than it is to do as they did and suffer in the same way. How men can
learn wisdom by seeing the misfortunes of others is illustrated by
Aesop’s fable, “Taught by Experience” : A lion, a donkey, and a fox
formed a partnership and went out hunting. When they had taken a
quantity of game, the lion told the donkey to share it out. The don-key divided it into three equal parts and bade the lion choose one
on which the lion leapt at him in a fury and devoured him. Then he
told the fox to divide it. The fox collected nearly all of it into one
pile, leaving only a few trifles for himself and told the lion to make
the choice. The lion asked who taught him to share things in that
way. “What happened to the donkey”, he replied.
Personality and YOU 87
“Wise men”, says, Herbert Casson, “use the experience that oth-ers have paid for.”
Sum-total of Wisdom
The lessons we learn from our mistakes and other’s mistakes, is
the sum-total of wisdom we acquire in our journey through life. If
we learn the lesson we ripen. If we do not learn we rot.
Last Word
It is not always easy to profit by mistakes. But it always pays.
Don’t be afraid of making mistakes and don’t be ashamed of admit-ting them but make sure to profit by them. This is the substance of
the art of success.
Personality and YOU 88
How to Cultivate Tact
Tact consists in knowing how far we may go too far.
—Jean Cocteau
Tact is a very important trait of plus personality. It is, therefore,
a worthwhile effort to cultivate it.
What is tact?
Tact may be defined as intuitive perception of what is fitting
especially of the right thing to do or say, adroitness in dealing with
persons or circumstances. As a psychologist puts it, “It is a subtle
perception of the suitable things to do or say. It is also a sensitive
perception of the thing not to do or say.”
Tact is more than etiquette, although it includes good manners
and courtesy. It is a sort of extra—a touch. It derives from the Latin
‘tactus’, meaning (sense of) touch.
Tact is a sort of sixth sense. It knows and feels instinctively in
any given situation what would be unwise and improper. Just as will
it knows, the thing to do and say what is right and good and wise.
Being tactful involves not making it easy for other people to hurt
themselves and consideration for their feelings point of view and
responsibilities, to rub them the right way and not to create antago-nism.
Stories about tact
The following stories illustrate the practice of tact:
Two men were meeting in a bar when the subject of Green Bay,
Wisconsin came up. The first man said, “It’s a real nice place.” The
second responded, “What’s nice about it? Only things ever came out
of Green Bay are the Packers and ugly whores.” “Now wait just one
minute, you son of a bitch”, said the first man, “My wife is from
Green Bay.” “Oh”, the other replied. “She is? What position does she
Personality and YOU 89
play?”
A glamorous Hollywood star had her picture taken and fumed at
the result. “I can’t understand it”, she said. “The last time I posed for
you, the photographs were heavenly.” “Ah, yes”, the cameraman
sighed “but you must remember that I was eight years younger
then.”
A foolish man tells a woman to stop talking, but a wise man tells
her that her mouth is extremely beautiful when her lips are closed.
Never help an old lady across the street, escort her.
Value of tact
Tact is of vital importance in human relations. It lubricates the
entire machinery of living and prevents friction. It is gift to the
prized and coveted in every walk of life. No one can afford to be
without it.
It carries one through a difficulty better than either talent or
knowledge. Says Wilson Mizner, “In the battle of existence, Talent is
the punch and Tact is the clever foot-work.” As an anonymous writer
has it:
Talent is power, tact is skill.
Talent is weight, tact is momentum.
Talent knows what to do, tact knows how to do it.
Talent makes a man respectable, tact will make him
respected.
Talent is pleased that it ought to have succeeded, tact is
delighted that it has succeeded.
Talent is wealth, tact is ready money.
Such is the magic of tact that Wilkes, one of the ugliest of men,
used to say, that in winning the graces of a lady, there was not more
than three days’ difference between him and the handsomest man
in England.
Cost of tactlessness
Tactlessness means disregard for the feelings, point of view and
prestige of other people. It is a want of consideration.
Personality and YOU 90
Tactlessness may cost a man his job. It may cost him money.
Worse still it may cost him friends. It involves rubbing the other the
wrong way and creating hostility.
The difference between a man of tact and of no tact whatever is
exemplified in an interview which once took place between Lord
Palmerston and Behnes, sculptor. At the last meeting which Lord
Palmerston gave him. Behnes opened the conversation with—“Any
news, my Lord, from France? How do we stand with Louis
Napoleon?” The British Foreign Secretary raised his eyebrows for an
instant, and quietly replied, “Really, Mr Behnes, I don’t know: I have
not seen the newspapers!” Poor Behnes, with many excellent quali-ties and lots of real talent, was one of the many men who entirely
missed their way in life through want of tact.
A tactless act or word may sometime prove disastrous. A
Chinese proverb has it, “Disaster comes out of the mouth, not into
it.” Words can heel a wound; they can also cut like a knife. No one
can afford to be tactless.
How to cultivate tact
Though tact is partly the gift of nature, it is yet capable of being
cultivated and developed by observation and experience.
Here are some techniques for doing so:
Little things
Sherlock in “A case of identity” says, “It has long been an axiom
of mine that the little things are definitely the most important.” Do
not underestimate the importance of little things. In human rela-tions little things matter much. In your approach to other people
what appears a trifle to you may be anything but a trifle to them. So
realize the importance of little things.
Human understanding
Cultivate also the human understanding. In the course of a sin-gle day you meet men and women who are made of the same human
stuff as you are. What you feel, they feel and what hurts you hurts
them. Human nature is the same all over the world.
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Reckon also with the differences in people, and try to under-stand them—the hearty and the reserved, the quiet and the impul-sive, A jocular or factious remark to one person, which would raise
a smile or provoke a haw-haw, may be resented by a very different
type of person. You must study your man.
Be a gentleman
A true gentleman scrupulously abstains from inflicting pain on
an other person, either by word or by deed. As a gentleman respects
himself, so does he respect others. His altruism enables him to put
himself in the other person’s place. He has the gift of tolerance.
Imagination
In cultivating the art of tact imagination too plays a part. Stretch
your mind about other people. Ask yourself: “If I were this man with
his feelings, his attitudes, his experiences, his difficulties, how
would I think about things? How would I feel?” Often a little imagi-nation of this sort would save you from asking tactless questions
and gauche remarks. “It is not enough to say, ‘If I were in his shoes’.
We must be that person as he is”, say Robert A. Jackson. “Only by
doing this (self-identification) can we know him, get a right view of
him, treat him right.” By exercising self-identification you will avoid
many egregious blunders in dealing with people and learn what it
means to be tactful.
Timing
Timing is of the essence of tact. A remark made by you may be
ill-timed and so provoke hostility. Choose your moment. It should
be the psychological moment—the psychologically appropriate
moment. A word spoken in due season, rings the bell. One spoken
out of season may be a thumping blunder. Saying or doing the right
thing at the right moment is the core of tact.
How you say it?
Not only what you say, and when you say it, are important, but
also how you say it. Not only what you do, but how you set about
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doing it. To say, “Do this” as a peremptory order may antagonize or
create resentment. Say, “Will you be so good as to do it.” “As regards
people in general”, says Goethe, “Show them every politeness with-out looking for thanks. That causes one many vexations in individ-ual cases, but on the whole it makes for pleasant relations.”
An older person told, “You look well”, would feel flattered, but
to tell him “You look well for your age”, would raise his hackles, for
the implication is after all that he does look old. The comment, “How
you have aged” can be made only behind his back; if said directly to
him, it would be an unforgivable affront.
Be careful of your approach. Think it out, and know not only
what you want to say but how best to broach the matter that is tact.
A time to every thing
There is a time to every thing under the heaven—a time which is
appropriate, and a time which is inappropriate. The right thing at
the wrong time can be disastrous. If an individual is not in the mood,
or is too busy with other things or is obviously upset about some-thing or other, you are not likely to get the best response, however
right you are.
In his “memories”, Sir Julian Huxley, relates the following story
which illustrates the point: “We were away in London, when his (H.G.
Wells’) illness entered its terminal stage in 1946. One of his last vis-itors, a serious young man seeking guidance from the old prophet
received this snub, ‘Oh, be quite. Can’t you see I’m busy dying’.”
A thing of the heart
“True tact”, says a psychologist “is a thing of the heart.” It is not
something that can be manufactured. It is born of courtesy, consid-eration, sympathy, empathy, care, graciousness and goodwill. To be
tactful is to be truly human. To be human means to be kind and
sympathetic to our fellow beings. “I am a man”, said Terence, “and
nothing pertaining to man is alien to me.”
Why is it that people are so guilty of treading on other’s corns
rubbing them the wrong way? Often we find that they are uncon-scious of the hurt they inflict. Afterwards they may apologize by
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saying, “I didn’t intend anything of the sort. They never gave a
thought to how other people might feel. If they had given a
moment’s thought, they could never have said or done what they
did. No personal interest, not caring—that is the root of the trouble.
The opposite is equally true. When we love people and genuine-ly care about them we become acutely sensitive to anything which
might hurt or deflate them.
To handle yourself, use your head; to handle others, use your
heart. Heart power is the greatest of all prime movers. As the old
song has it, “It is love that makes the world go round.” Make no mis-take. It is not power. It is not rank. It is not money. It is love. It is the
foundation of human relations, “the ultimate human answer to the
ultimate human question”.
As a guide for action, Dr Eric Beines’ advice makes excellent
sense:
“When in doubt, for the sake of one’s own happiness, it is wiser
to act, feel and think from love than from hate.”
Personality and YOU