Quoting Mr. Waldo P. Warren:  “Much of the strength within men is hidden, awaiting an occasion to reveal it.  The head of a department in a great manufacturing concern severed his connection with the firm, his work falling upon a young man of twenty-five years.  The young man rose to the occasion, and in a very short time was conceded to be the stronger executive of the two.  He had been with the concern for several years, and was regarded as a bright fellow, but his marked success was a surprise to all who knew him—­even to himself.

“The fact is, the young man had that ability all the time and didn’t know it; and his employers didn’t know it.  He might have been doing greater things all along if there had been the occasion to reveal his strength.

“Do you employers and superior officers in business realize how much of this hidden strength there is in your men?  Perhaps a word from you, giving certain men more scope, would liberate that ability for the development of both your business and your men.

“Do you workers know your own strength?  Are you working up to your capacity?  Or are you accepting the limits which the circumstances place about you?”

CHAPTER III

THE INITIATIVE ENERGY OF SUCCESS

[Sidenote:  Sources of Persistence]

In such instances as we have recounted, men have found that persistent effort along certain lines has had the effect of making presently available what would otherwise be simply unused storage batteries of reserve power.  What was the source and inspiration for this persistent effort?

You will say that it was ambition or patriotism or some similar semi-emotional influence.  And so it was.  But what is ambition, what is patriotism, what is any desire but a picturing to the mind’s eye of the things desired, an awakening of a mental image of the result to be attained, the reward that is to follow certain efforts?  And these mental pictures coming into consciousness have brought with them their associated emotions and their associated impulses to muscular action, impulses appropriate to the picture and automatically tending to work its realization.

These impulses constitute the whole of man’s achieving power.  They are the Initiative Energy of all Success.

[Sidenote:  Importance of the Mental Setting]

When you are afflicted with doubt and fear, timidity and lack of confidence, this means that your mental inhibitions are too numerous, too high or too strong.  Remove them and access is had to the latent energy of accumulated and creative thought complexes.  You will then become buoyant, cheerful, overflowing with enthusiasm, and ready for a fresh, definite, active part in life.

Ideas, then, when latent, may be considered as possessing an energizing influence.

The same idea does not necessarily have the same effect upon the same persons at different times.  What its effect may be at any time or with any individual depends upon the make-up of the consciousness in which it finds itself.