Here you will learn Lesson Plan On Perseverance, What Is Success
Page 24 of
50.
The man who
has not acquired the art of reflection is like a traveler who finds himself
obliged to choose a path in the darkness of night.
Is it not a pardonable thing if he feels a little hesitation before definitely
committing himself to a path, of whose direction he knows nothing and whose
possible pitfalls he can not see?
This predicament never occurs to those who practice the art of reflection.
The habit they have acquired of weighing carefully the pros and cons of every
question, coupled with the facility of concentration they have taught
themselves, enables them to rapidly envisage the drawbacks as well as the
advantages of the actions that they have determined to carry out.
A few moments of thought suffice them in which to group together the reasons
which may lead them to carry out a matter, as well as to review mentally those
which may tend to deter them from undertaking it.
Their decision, of whatever nature it may be, will never be a source of regret
to them, because it will be founded upon definite deductions, after a careful
canvass of all the favorable or unfavorable elements that may affect the success
of the enterprise.
This constant practice of reflection will have the further advantage of
developing in the man who employs it the spirit of impartiality so necessary to
him who wishes, while making reasoned resolutions, to keep them entirely free
from even involuntary falsehood.
The people who love to conceal the truth from themselves in order to follow
their proclivities, while retaining some semblance of excuse that they can make
to their consciences, are by no means so uncommon as one might suppose.
For this reason one can never be sufficiently insistent upon the necessity of
exercising absolute sincerity in all our estimates, whether this sincerity
wounds our self-love or not, and particularly when it inhibits us from doing
something that we should very much like to do.
But decision, in order to become a guiding virtue in our lives, must not only be
prompt and based upon firm foundations, it must also be enduring.
Nothing can be more fatal to activity and nothing more of an obstacle to the
acquisition of perseverance than the endlessly changing pursuit of new
ambitions.
The feeling of inward satisfaction which follows realization will never be known
by the man of indecision.
He will never experience the gratification of seeing his work completed, for,
long before he has approached half-way toward its completion he will have
abandoned it to begin work on something else.
Indecision is often due to an annoying versatility of character which causes one
to reject suddenly what one has previously judged to be of value.
This is a tendency toward quick satiety complicated by an unsatisfied yearning
for something better.
It is a common but regrettable propensity to be able to see the bad aspects of a
thing after it is done and to exaggerate them out of all proportion.
Perfection, alas, is not of this world, and those who seek it run a very big
risk of never even catching a glimpse of it.
But people with versatile minds are much less likely to penetrate to the heart
of this truth because the hunt for absolute perfection serves them as an excuse
for the constant change in their aims.
It is much less humiliating to say, "I have never yet met perfection," than to
admit that one has been incapable of discovering it.
This perpetual flux of change enables people of indecision to obtain only an
imperfect knowledge of any matter, for the reason that they never take the time
to go deeply into anything.
But they never will admit their lack of depth and, since they have scratched the
surface of a great many questions, they love to pose before the world as people
who are quite disillusioned.
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