Here you will learn Strategies For Success, Path To Success
Page 14 of
50.
A very frequent form of obstinacy is to exaggerate
the importance of trifling circumstances and to use them as a pretext for
continuing in one's errors.
Sincerity toward oneself can never exist along with obstinacy. Obstinacy
delights in clothing things with the shapes that please it and no longer sees
them in their true light, but rather in those colors that it wishes them to
wear.
This method of conducting oneself can not fail ultimately to lead to the
shipwreck of judgment and the complete loss of the power to estimate things at
their real value.
It very often happens, moreover, that this wrong-headedness is by no means
unconscious. In such cases the lack of consistency in one's reasoning becomes
still more apparent and the folly of one's attempts is accentuated.
But one hates to admit that one has made a mistake, and one hardens oneself in
one's wrong doing, so that one can escape confessing that one has recognized its
wrongness.
Thus one hopes to be able to deceive others by the act of deceiving oneself.
One argues the case, advancing reasons of which one sees the fatuity. One offers
all sorts of obviously insincere arguments and thus deprives oneself of all
hope of a return to the path of honesty.
No one is ever the dupe of these wretched expedients, unless it be the person
who employs them. Generally in proportion to the unsuccess of his efforts, such
a man increases the insincerity of his arguments, until the time arrives when he
is quite unable to conceal from anybody the fallacy of his whole point of view.
Another characteristic of obstinacy is the incredulous spirit with which one
hears of the success of other people.
The depress state of mind which is always the result of a failure of any sort
causes the growth, in the minds of obstinate people, of a jealousy which always
betrays itself by ill- natured remarks regarding those who have achieved the
realization of their hopes.
Such people can not, without bitterness, admit the success of others, and they
seek by every means in their power to minimize its importance.
Their wounded vanity, coupled with their dread of having to recommence the
struggle, deprives them of all kindness of heart or consideration, either for
those who have succeeded or for those who have from the start pointed out the
obvious illogicality of their own attempts.
Here is another argument that obstinate people fall into quite naturally, and
that they consider quite conclusive:
'' Oh, yes!'' they exclaim. It is easy enough to characterize as obstinacy an
attempt which has resulted in nothing in the end; but if it had been successful
you would at once have decorated it with the name of foresight!''
The answer to this is a very simple one:
If this particular attempt had turned out successfully, it would have done so
because it was based upon a well-thought-out plan, because it was the outcome of
a concentration of thought preceding and making fruitful the resolution that
was carried into effect.
All enterprises that are conscientiously undertaken do not, alas, succeed. But
those which originate in feverish and ill-considered impulses invariably end
disastrously.
"But," the obstinate man will say, "there are people who have made no efforts in
that direction and yet for whom everything turns out a success!''
We would not wish to deny that casual good luck does occasionally fall to the
lot of people who have made no sort of move toward working for it.
But if one is not satisfied to draw one's deductions merely from a single
example, one will see that sooner or later such people will ruin by their
headstrong folly, all the good that has come to them by such a happy accident.
Our
featured links related to Strategies For Success, Path To Success
