The renowned William James was speaking of men who had never found themselves
when he declared that the average man develops only ten per cent of his latent mental
abilities. "Compared to what we ought to be," he wrote, "we are only half awake. We
are making use of only a small part of our physical and mental resources. Stating the
thing broadly, the human individual thus lives far within his limits. He possesses powers
of various sorts which he habitually fails to use."
You and I have such abilities, so let's not waste a second worrying because we are not
like other people. You are something new in this world. Never before, since the
beginning of time, has there ever been anybody exactly like you; and never again
throughout all the ages to come will there ever be anybody exactly like you again. The
new science of genetics informs us that you are what you are largely as a result of
twenty-four chromosomes contributed by your father and twenty-four chromosomes
contributed by your mother. These forty-eight chromosomes comprise everything that
determines what you inherit. In each chromosome there may be, says Amran Sheinfeld,
"anywhere from scores to hundreds of genes -with a single gene, in some cases, able to
change the whole life of an individual." Truly, we are "fearfully and wonderfully" made.
Even after your mother and father met and mated, there was only one chance in
300,000 billion that the person who is specifically you would be born! In other words, if
you had 300,000 billion brothers and sisters, they might have all been different from
you. Is all this guesswork? No. It is a scientific fact. If you would like to read more about
it, go to your public library and borrow a book entitled You and Heredity, by Amran
Scheinfeld.
I can talk with conviction about this subject of being yourself because I feel deeply
about it. I know what I am talking about. I know from bitter and costly experience. To
illustrate: when I first came to New York from the cornfields of Missouri, I enrolled in
the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. I aspired to be an actor. I had what I thought
was a brilliant idea, a short cut to success, an idea so simple, so foolproof, that I
couldn't understand why thousands of ambitious people hadn't already discovered it. It
was this: I would study how the famous actors of that day-John Drew, Walter Hampden,
and Otis Skinner-got their effects. Then I would imitate the best point of each one of
them and make myself into a shining, triumphant combination of all of them. How silly I
How absurd! I had to waste years of my life imitating other people before it penetrated
through my thick Missouri skull that I had to be myself, and that I couldn't possibly be
anyone else.
That distressing experience ought to have taught me a lasting lesson. But it didn't. Not
me. I was too dumb. I had to learn it all over again. Several years later, I set out to
write what I hoped would be the best book on public speaking for business men that had
ever been written. I had the same foolish idea about writing this book that I had
formerly had about acting: I was going to borrow the ideas of a lot of other writers and
put them all in one book-a book that would have everything. So I got scores of books on
public speaking and spent a year incorporating their ideas into my manuscript. But it
finally dawned on me once again that I was playing the fool. This hodgepodge of other
men's ideas that I had written was so synthetic, so dull, that no business man would ever
plod through it. So I tossed a year's work into the wastebasket, and started all over
again.
This time I said to myself: "You've got to be Dale Carnegie, with all his faults and
limitations. You can't possibly be anybody else." So I quit trying to be a combination of
other men, and rolled up my sleeves and did what I should have done in the first place: I
wrote a textbook on public speaking out of my own experiences, observations, and
convictions as a speaker and a teacher of speaking. I learned-for all time, I hope-the
lesson that Sir Walter Raleigh learned. (I am not talking about the Sir Walter who threw
his coat in the mud for the Queen to step on. I am talking about the Sir Walter Raleigh
who was professor of English literature at Oxford back in 1904.) "I can't write a book
commensurate with Shakespeare," he said, "but I can write a book by me."
Be yourself. Act on the sage advice that Irving Berlin gave the late George Gershwin.
When Berlin and Gershwin first met, Berlin was famous but Gershwin was a struggling
young composer working for thirty-five dollars a week in Tin Pan Alley. Berlin,
impressed by Gershwin's ability, offered Gershwin a job as his musical secretary at
almost three times the salary he was then getting. "But don't take the job," Berlin
advised. "If you do, you may develop into a second-rate Berlin. But if you insist on being
yourself, some day you'll become a first-rate Gershwin."
Gershwin heeded that warning and slowly transformed himself into one of the
significant American composer of his generation.
Charlie Chaplin, Will Rogers, Mary Margaret McBride, Gene Autry, and millions of others
had to learn the lesson I am trying to hammer home in this chapter. They had to learn
the hard way-just as I did.
When Charlie Chaplin first started making films, the director of the pictures insisted on
Chaplin's imitating a popular German comedian of that day. Charlie Chaplin got nowhere
until he acted himself. Bob Hope had a similar experience: spent years in a singing-anddancing
act-and got nowhere until he began to wisecrack and be himself. Will Rogers
twirled a rope in vaudeville for years without saying a word. He got nowhere until he
discovered his unique gift for humour and began to talk as he twirled his rope.
When Mary Margaret McBride first went on the air, she tried to be an Irish comedian and
failed. When she tried to be just what she was-a plain country girl from Missouri-she
became one of the most popular radio stars in New York.
When Gene Autry tried to get rid of his Texas accent and dressed like city boys and
claimed he was from New York, people merely laughed behind his back. But when he
started twanging his banjo and singing cowboy ballads, Gene Autry started out on a
career that made him the world's most popular cowboy both in pictures and on the
radio.
You are something new in this world. Be glad of it. Make the most of what nature gave
you. In the last analysis, all art is autobiographical. You can sing only what you are. You
can paint only what you are. You must be what your experiences, your environment,
and your heredity have made you.
For better or for worse, you must cultivate your own little garden. For better or for
worse, you must play your own little instrument in the orchestra of life.
As Emerson said in his essay on "Self-Reliance" : "There is a time in every man's
education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is
suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the
wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through
his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given him to till. The power which
resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do,
nor does he know until he has tried."
That is the way Emerson said it. But here is the way a poet -the late Douglas Mallochsaid
it:
If you can't be a pine on the top of the hill.
Be a scrub in the valley-but be
The best little scrub by the side of the rill;
Be a bush, if you can't be a tree.
If you can't be a bush, be a bit of the grass.
If you can't be a muskie, then just be a bass-
But the liveliest bass in the lake!
We can't all be captains, we've got to be crew.
There's something for all of us here.
There's big work to do and there's lesser to do
And the task we must do is the near.
If you can't be a highway, then just be a trail,
If you can't be the sun, be a star;
It isn't by the size that you win or you fail-
Be the best of whatever you are!
To cultivate a mental attitude that will bring us peace and freedom from worry, here is
Rule 5:
Let's not imitate others. Let's find ourselves and be ourselves.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Chapter 17: If You Have A Lemon, Make A Lemonade
While writing this book, I dropped in one day at the University of Chicago and asked the
Chancellor, Robert Maynard Hutchins, how he kept from worrying. He replied: "I have
always tried to follow a bit of advice given me by the late Julius Rosenwald, President
of Sears, Roebuck and Company: 'When you have a lemon, make lemonade.' "
That is what a great educator does. But the fool does the exact opposite. If he finds
that life has handed him a lemon, he gives up and says: "I'm beaten. It is fate. I haven't
got a chance." Then he proceeds to rail against the world and indulge in an orgy of selfpity.
But when the wise man is handed a lemon, he says: "What lesson can I learn from
this misfortune? How can I improve my situation? How can I turn this lemon into a
lemonade?"
After spending a lifetime studying people and their hidden reserves of power, the great
psychologist, Alfred Adler, declared that one of the wonder-filled characteristics of
human beings is "their power to turn a minus into a plus."
Here is an interesting and stimulating story of a woman I know who did just that. Her
name is Thelma Thompson, and she lives at 100 Morningside Drive, New York City.
"During the war," she said, as she told me of her experience, "during the war, my
husband was stationed at an Army training camp near the Mojave Desert, in New
Mexico. I went to live there in order to be near him. I hated the place. I loathed it. I
had never before been so miserable. My husband was ordered out on maneuvers in the
Mojave Desert, and I was left in a tiny shack alone. The heat was unbearable-125
degrees in the shade of a cactus. Not a soul to talk to but Mexicans and Indians, and
they couldn't speak English. The wind blew incessantly, and all the food I ate, and the
very air I breathed, were filled with sand, sand, sand!
"I was so utterly wretched, so sorry for myself, that I wrote to my parents. I told them I
was giving up and coming back home. I said I couldn't stand it one minute longer. I
would rather be in jail! My father answered my letter with just two lines-two lines that
will always sing in my memory-two lines that completely altered my life:
Two men looked out from prison bars,
One saw the mud, the other saw stars.
"I read those two lines over and over. I was ashamed of myself. I made up my mind I
would find out what was good in my present situation. I would look for the stars.
"I made friends with the natives, and their reaction amazed me. When I showed interest
in their weaving and pottery, they gave me presents of their favourite pieces which they
had refused to sell to tourists. I studied the fascinating forms of the cactus and the
yuccas and the Joshua trees. I learned about prairie dogs, watched for the desert
sunsets, and hunted for seashells that had been left there millions of years ago when
"What brought about this astonishing change in me? The Mojave Desert hadn't changed.
The Indians hadn't changed. But I had. I had changed my attitude of mind. And by doing
so, I transformed a wretched experience into the most exciting adventure of my life. I
was stimulated and excited by this new world that I had discovered. I was so excited I
wrote a book about it-a novel that was published under the title Bright Ramparts. ... I
had looked out of my self-created prison and found the stars."
Thelma Thompson, you discovered an old truth that the Greeks taught five hundred
years before Christ was born: "The best things are the most difficult."
Harry Emerson Fosdick repeated it again in the twentieth century: "Happiness is not
mostly pleasure; it is mostly victory." Yes, the victory that comes from a sense of
achievement, of triumph, of turning our lemons into lemonades.
I once visited a happy farmer down in Florida who turned even a poison lemon into
lemonade. When he first got this farm, he was discouraged. The land was so wretched
he could neither grow fruit nor raise pigs. Nothing thrived there but scrub oaks and
rattlesnakes. Then he got his idea. He would turn his liability into an asset: he would
make the most of these rattlesnakes. To everyone's amazement, he started canning
rattlesnake meat. When I stopped to visit him a few years ago, I found that tourists
were pouring in to see his rattlesnake farm at the rate of twenty thousand a year. His
business was thriving. I saw poison from the fangs of his rattlers being shipped to
laboratories to make anti-venom toxin; I saw rattlesnake skins being sold at fancy prices
to make women's shoes and handbags. I saw canned rattlesnake meat being shipped to
customers all over the world. I bought a picture postcard of the place and mailed it at
the local post office of the village, which had been re-christened "Rattlesnake, Florida",
in honour of a man who had turned a poison lemon into a sweet lemonade.
As I have travelled up and down and back and forth across America time after time, it
has been my privilege to meet dozens of men and women who have demonstrated "their
power to turn a minus into a plus".
The late William Bolitho, author of Twelve Against the Gods, put it like this: "The most
important thing in life is not to capitalise on your gains. Any fool can do that. The really
important thing is to profit from your losses. That requires intelligence; and it makes
the difference between a man of sense and a fool."
Bolitho uttered those words after he had lost a leg in a railway accident. But I know a
man who lost both legs and turned his minus into a plus. His name is Ben Fortson. I met
him in a hotel elevator in Atlanta, Georgia. As I stepped into the elevator, I noticed this
cheerful-looking man, who had both legs missing, sitting in a wheel-chair in a corner of
the elevator. When the elevator stopped at his floor, he asked me pleasantly if I would
step to one corner, so he could manage his chair better. "So sorry," he said, "to
inconvenience you"-and a deep, heart-warming smile lighted his face as he said it.
When I left the elevator and went to my room, I could think of nothing but this cheerful
cripple. So I hunted him up and asked him to tell me his story.
"It happened in 1929," he told me with a smile. "I had gone out to cut a load of hickory
poles to stake the beans in my garden. I had loaded the poles on my Ford and started
back home. Suddenly one pole slipped under the car and jammed the steering apparatus
at the very moment I was making a sharp turn. The car shot over an embankment and
hurled me against a tree. My spine was hurt. My legs were paralysed.
"I was twenty-four when that happened, and I have never taken a step since."
Twenty-four years old, and sentenced to a wheel-chair for the rest of his life! I asked
him how he managed to take it so courageously, and he said: "I didn't." He said he raged
and rebelled. He fumed about his fate. But as the years dragged on, he found that his
rebellion wasn't getting him anything except bitterness. "I finally realised," he said,
"that other people were kind and courteous to me. So the least I could do was to be kind
and courteous to them."
I asked if he still felt, after all these years, that his accident had been a terrible
misfortune, and he promptly said: "No." He said: "I'm almost glad now that it happened."
He told me that after he got over the shock and resentment, he began to live in a
different world. He began to read and developed a love for good literature. In fourteen
years, he said, he had read at least fourteen hundred books; and those books had
opened up new horizons for him and made his life richer than he ever thought possible.
He began to listen to good music; and he is now thrilled by great symphonies that would
have bored him before. But the biggest change was that he had time to think. "For the
first time in my life," he said, "I was able to look at the world and get a real sense of
values. I began to realise that most of the things I had been striving for before weren't
worth-while at all."
As a result of his reading, he became interested in politics, studied public questions,
made speeches from his wheel-chair! He got to know people and people got to know
him. Today Ben Fortson-still in his wheel-chair-is Secretary of State for the State of
Georgia!
During the last thirty-five years, I have been conducting adult-education classes in New
York City, and I have discovered that one of the major regrets of many adults is that
they never went to college. They seem to think that not having a college education is a
great handicap. I know that this isn't necessarily true because I have known thousands of
successful men who never went beyond high school. So I often tell these students the
story of a man I knew who had never finished even grade school. He was brought up in
blighting poverty. When his father died, his father's friends had to chip in to pay for the
coffin in which he was buried. After his father's death, his mother worked in an
umbrella factory ten hours a day and then brought piecework home and worked until
eleven o'clock at night.
The boy brought up in these circumstances went in for amateur dramatics put on by a
club in his church. He got such a thrill out of acting that he decided to take up public
speaking. This led him into politics. By the time he reached thirty, he was elected to
the New York State legislature. But he was woefully unprepared for such a
responsibility. In fact, he told me that frankly he didn't know what it was all about. He
studied the long, complicated bills that he was supposed to vote on-but, as far as he
was concerned, those bills might as well have been written in the language of the
Choctaw Indians. He was worried and bewildered when he was made a member of the
committee on forests before he had ever set foot in a forest. He was worried and
bewildered when he was made a member of the State Banking Commission before he
had ever had a bank account. He himself told me that he was so discouraged that he
would have resigned from the legislature if he hadn't been ashamed to admit defeat to
his mother. In despair, he decided to study sixteen hours a day and turn his lemon of
ignorance into a lemonade of knowledge. By doing that, he transformed himself from a
local politician into a national figure and made himself so outstanding that The New
York Times called him "the best-loved citizen of New York".
I am talking about Al Smith.
Ten years after Al Smith set out on his programme of political self-education, he was
the greatest living authority on the government of New York State. He was elected
Governor of New York for four terms-a record never attained by any other man. In 1928,
he was the Democratic candidate for President. Six great universities-including
Columbia and Harvard-conferred honorary degrees upon this man who had never gone
beyond grade school.
Al Smith himself told me that none of these things would ever have come to pass if he
hadn't worked hard sixteen hours a day to turn his minus into a plus.
Nietzsche's formula for the superior man was "not only to bear up under necessity but to
love it".
The more I have studied the careers of men of achievement the more deeply I have
been convinced that a surprisingly large number of them succeeded because they
started out with handicaps that spurred them on to great endeavour and great rewards.
As William James said: "Our infirmities help us unexpectedly."
Yes, it is highly probable that Milton wrote better poetry because he was blind and that
Beethoven composed better music because he was deaf.
Helen Keller's brilliant career was inspired and made possible because of her blindness
and deafness.
If Tchaikovsky had not been frustrated-and driven almost to suicide by his tragic
marriage-if his own life had not been pathetic, he probably would never have been able
to compose his immortal "Symphonic Pathetique".
If Dostoevsky and Tolstoy had not led tortured lives, they would probably never have
been able to write their immortal novels.
"If I had not been so great an invalid," wrote the man who changed the scientific
concept of life on earth-"if I had not been so great an invalid, I should not have done so
much work as I have accomplished." That was Charles Darwin's confession that his
infirmities had helped him unexpectedly.
The same day that Darwin was born in England another baby was born in a log cabin in
the forests of Kentucky. He, too, was helped by his infirmities. His name was Lincoln-
Abraham Lincoln. If he had been reared in an aristocratic family and had had a law
degree from Harvard and a happy married life, he would probably never have found in
the depths of his heart the haunting words that he immortalised at Gettysburg, nor the
sacred poem that he spoke at his second inauguration-the most beautiful and noble
phrases ever uttered by a ruler of men: "With malice toward none; with charity for all
..."
Harry Emerson Fosdick says in his book, The Power to See it Through; "There is a
Scandinavian saying which some of us might well take as a rallying cry for our lives: 'The
north wind made the Vikings.' Wherever did we get the idea that secure and pleasant
living, the absence of difficulty, and the comfort of ease, ever of themselves made
people either good or happy? Upon the contrary, people who pity themselves go on
pitying themselves even when they are laid softly on a cushion, but always in history
character and happiness have come to people in all sorts of circumstances, good, bad,
and indifferent, when they shouldered their personal responsibility. So, repeatedly the
north wind has made the Vikings."
Suppose we are so discouraged that we feel there is no hope of our ever being able to
turn our lemons into lemonade-then here are two reasons why we ought to try, anywaytwo
reasons why we have everything to gain and nothing to lose.
Reason one: We may succeed.
Reason two: Even if we don't succeed, the mere attempt to turn our minus into a plus
will cause us to look forward instead of backward; it will replace negative thoughts with
positive thoughts; it will release creative energy and spur us to get so busy that we
won't have either the time or the inclination to mourn over what is past and for ever
gone.
Once when Ole Bull, the world-famous violinist, was giving a concert in Paris, the A
string on his violin suddenly snapped. But Ole Bull simply finished the melody on three
strings. "That is life," says Harry Emerson Fosdick, "to have your A string snap and finish
on three strings."
That is not only life. It is more than life. It is life triumphant!
If I had the power to do so, I would have these words of William Bolitho carved in
eternal bronze and hung in every schoolhouse in the land:
The most important thing in life is not to capitalize on your gains. Any fool can do that.
The really important thing is to profit from your losses. That requires intelligence; and
it makes the difference between a man of sense and a fool.
So, to cultivate a mental attitude that will bring us peace and happiness, let's do
