The world has little use for the weak-kneed, the fainthearted, but the conqueror who carries victory in his very presence, who overcomes opposition which appalls weak minds, who does not skip his difficult problems, who conquers everything which gets in his way, is always in demand. People who accomplish but little usually have a genius for seeing difficulties in the way of everything they undertake. Their imaginations conjure up obstacles which rise in their pathway, like giants or great mountain peaks, and paralyze their courage. They can see them a long way off. They begin to look for them as soon as they plan any course of action; they wait for them, and, of course, they find them.
These people seem to wear obstacle glasses and they see nothing but difficulties. There is always an “if” or a “but” or a “can't” in the way, — just enough to keep them from taking the necessary step or making energetic effort to get what they want.
They do not think there is any use trying to get a situation which they see advertised because there will probably be a hundred other applicants ahead of them when they get there. They see so many people out of employment that they have no hope of getting a position for themselves; or, if they have one, they see so many obstacles to their advancement, so many ahead of them, so many favored by their employer, that when there is a vacancy, they stand no show for promotion.
No man can rise to anything very great who allows himself to be tripped or thwarted by impediments. His achievement will be in proportion to his ability to rise triumphantly over the stumbling-blocks which trip others.
When I hear a young man whining that he has no chance, complaining that fate has doomed him to mediocrity, that he can never get a start for himself, but must always work for somebody else; when I see him finding unconquerable obstacles everywhere, when he tells me that he could do this or that if he could only get a start, if somebody would help him, I know there is very poor success material in him, — that he is not made of the stuff that rises. He acknowledges that he is not equal to the emergencies which confront him. He confesses his weakness, his inability to cope with obstacles which others surmount. When a man tells us that luck is against him, that he cannot see any way of doing what he would like to do, he admits that he is not master of the situation, that he must give way to opposition because he is not big enough or strong enough to surmount it. He probably hasn't lime enough in his backbone to hold a straw erect.
There is a weakness in the man who always sees a lion in the way of what he wants to do, whose determination is not strong enough to overcome the obstacle. He has not the inclination to buckle down to solid, hard work. He wants success, but he does not want it badly enough to pay the price. The desire to drift along, to take things easy, to have a good time, overbalances ambition.
Obstacles will look large or small to you according to whether you are large or small.
People who have a tendency to magnify difficulties lack the stamina and grit necessary to win. They are not willing to sacrifice a little comfort and pleasure. They see so much hardship in working their own way through college or starting in business without capital that they do neither. These people always look for somebody to help them, to give them a boost.
When a boy tells me that he just yearns for an education, that he longs to go to college, but that he has no one to help him as other boys have, that, if he had a rich father to send him to college, he could make something of himself, I know perfectly well that that boy does not yearn for an education, but that he would simply like to have it if it could be gotten without much effort. He does not long for it as Lincoln did. When a boy today says that he cannot go to college, — although deaf, dumb, and blind girls manage to do it, — I know that he has such a knack of seeing difficulties that he will not only miss college, but will probably also miss most of what is worthwhile in life.
The young man who, after making up his mind what he wants to do in the world, begins to hunt up obstacles in his path, to magnify them, to brood over them until they become mountains, and then to wait for new ones to develop, is not a man to take hold of great enterprises. The man who stops to weigh and consider every possible danger or objection never amounts to anything. He is a small man, made for little things. He walks around an obstacle, and goes as far as he can easily, but when the going gets hard he stops.
The strong man, the positive, decisive soul who has a programme, and who is determined to carry it out, cuts his way to his goal regardless of difficulties. It is the weak-kneed man, the discouraged man, who turns aside, who takes a crooked path to his goal. Men who achieve things, who get things done, do not spend time haggling over perplexities, or wondering whether they can overcome them. A penny held close to the eye will shut out the sun. When a man lies down on the ground to see what is ahead of him, a rock may hide a mountain. A small man holds petty difficulties so closely in view that great objects beyond are entirely shut out of sight. Great minds keep their eyes on the goal. They hold the end so persistently in view, and it looks so grand and desirable, that the intermediate steps, no matter how perplexing, are of comparatively little importance. The great man asks but one question, "Can the thing be done?" not "How many difficulties will I run across?" If it is within the reach of possibility, all hindrances must be pushed aside.
We meet these trouble-borrowing, difficulty-seeing people everywhere. There is usually one or more on every school board and church board, every board of directors or trustees, who always sees difficulties which do not appear to the others, and if everything depended upon these people nothing would ever be accomplished. Nearly every invention, discovery, or achievement which has blest the world would have failed had the calamity-howlers, the objection-seers been listened to.
The youth who is bound to win may see difficulties. but he is not afraid of them because he feels that they are no match for his grit. He feels within himself a power infinitely superior. He knows perfectly well that undaunted pluck can annihilate them. To his determination they do not exist. The Alps did not exist to Napoleon, not because they were not formidable mountains, almost impassable in midwinter, but because he felt that he was greater than they. His generals could see the Alps, with all their terrors, and thought they were impassable; but the mighty general saw only victory on the green plains beyond the eternal snow.
You will find that the habit of minimizing annoyances or difficulties, of making the best of everything that comes to you, of magnifying the pleasant and the agreeable and reducing to the least possible importance everything that is disagreeable or unpleasant, will help you wonderfully not only in your work but also in your attainment of happiness. It transforms the disagreeable into the agreeable, takes the drudgery out of distasteful tasks, eases the jolts of life wonderfully, and it is worth infinitely more than money. You will find yourself growing to be a larger, completer man. The sunny, buoyant, cheerful soul manages, without losing his equilibrium, to glide over difficulties and annoyances which throw others off their balance and make them miserable and disagreeable.
The Creator never put the grandest of his creations — man — at the mercy of petty trifles, or intended him to be crushed by obstacles. Character was never intended to be ruined by irritation. But even the Creator cannot make a man who is determined to use blue glasses see things in a white light. It all depends upon the color of the glasses you adopt, — your own mental attitude. Every man has within him the power of changing the blue into white, the disagreeable into the agreeable; everyone has the crystal lens which may resolve even murky light into rainbow hues.
No man ever amounted to much in the world until he learned to put out of the way things which would trip him, or to get rid, at any cost, of the things which block his passage. Self is the greatest stumbling-block. Our own selfishness, our desire for comfort, for pleasure, is the greatest obstacle in the path of all progress. Timidity, doubt, and fear are great enemies. Guard your weak point, conquer yourself, and you can conquer everything else.
It makes great difference how you approach a difficulty. Obstacles are like wild animals. They are cowards but they will bluff you if they can. If they see you are afraid of them, if you stand and hesitate, if you take your eyes from theirs, they are liable to spring upon you; but if you do not flinch, if you look them squarely in the eye, they will slink out of sight. So difficulties flee before absolute fearlessness, though they are very real and formidable to the timid and hesitating, and grow larger and larger and more formidable with vacillating contemplation.
Charlotte Perkins Oilman, in her little poem, "An Obstacle," describes a traveler struggling up a mountain side, bent on important business, and bearing a heavy load, when suddenly a huge obstacle spread itself across his path. He was dismayed. He politely begged the obstacle to get out of his path. It did not move. He became angry and abused it. He knelt down and prayed it to let him pass. It remained immovable. Then the traveler sat down helpless before it, when a sudden inspiration seized him. Let him tell in his own words how he settled the matter:
“I took my hat, I took my stick.
My load I settled fair,
I approached that awful incubas
With an absent-minded air —
And I walked directly through him
As if he wasn’t there!”
Most of our obstacles would melt away if, instead of cowering before them, we should make up our minds to walk boldly through them.