INITIATIVE AND SELF-RELIANCE

The late Elbert Hubbard defined the man with initiative as the one who did the right thing at the right time without being told.  At this point it may be definitely stated that such a man would naturally be self-reliant. Such a man would not lean on his friends.  He would stand up with them....  He would be found fighting his own battles without crying for help.

Once a cub reporter was ordered by his city editor to go and interview a certain man.  After an awkward pause the youngster inquired:  “Where can I find him?” Smiling scornfully into his eyes the city editor replied:  “Wherever he is.”

This would seem to have been the start and finish of this youngster’s newspaper career, but quite the reverse was true.  He took the lesson well to heart, thus starting himself on the road to self-reliance.  If he had repeated the offense it is likely he would have lost his job and also his nerve—­thereby spoiling his chances for a successful career.  The fact that he did not, but went on and made of himself a famous newspaper man, proves that he lost no time in developing initiative and self-reliance.

There is no questioning the vast importance these two words mean to all of us.  Many a man who did not grasp the significance of initiative became a “leaner” for the rest of his life.  Many a man also missed his chances by doing just as he was told and nothing more.  His work ended there.  In due course it is inevitable that such a man should become part of the great army of discontented ne’er-do-wells who help to block the pavements in front of the loafing places.

Hesitation, vacillation and growing diffidence take the place of self-reliance.  He falls to the bottom like a stone.  And there he rests—­a drag anchor in the mire.  His job gets the best of him because he lacks initiative.  Once stranded he becomes an arrant coward—­afraid of his own shadow.

[Illustration:  A Scene from “In Again—­Out Again"]

We must make our own opportunities otherwise we are children of circumstance.  What becomes of us is a matter of guesswork.  We have no hand in compelling our own future. Diffidence is a species of cowardice. It causes a man’s courage to ooze out at his toes faster than it comes into his heart. Such men often have big ideas, but having no confidence in themselves they lack the power to compel confidence in others. When they go into the presence of a man of personality they lose their self-confidence and all of the pent-up courage which drove them forward flies out at the window.  Their weakness multiplies with each failure until finally “the jig is up”—­their impotency is complete.

Very largely those who have big ideas to present expect to be taken in on them and to be given an opportunity to succeed along with their scheme.  When a man becomes so unfortunate as to be unable through diffidence to explain himself, his big idea goes into the waste basket and with it all of the hopes he has built upon it. Another nail has been driven into his casket of failures.