How To Get What You Want
	How To Find Oneself <  Previous Contents Next  >

Few men find themselves before they die. -Ralph Waldo Emerson.

It’s that bigger, grander man beating beneath the dwarf of a man you feel yourself to be that is important.

There is a legend that when God was equipping man for his long life-journey of exploration, the attendant good angel was about to add the gift of contentment and complete satisfaction. The Creator stayed his hand—“No,” He said, “if you bestow that upon him you will rob him forever of all joy of self-discovery.”

The greatest moment in any life is the moment of self-discovery, the moment that gives a human being the first illuminating glimpse of his divine powers, that moment which opens the door into the great within of himself and shows him his godlike possibilities. The greatest event in any life is that which arouses the God in him.

The principal of a New York evening high school, telling an interviewer how she had discovered herself, said:

“When I felt that there was need of me in the world, I awoke to the fact that there must be a soul in me, a something bigger than I was, and therefore a something that I must give to others. I have always believed in the school as a hitherto unrecognized field, because the world is a school, and the application is therefore limitless.”

This teacher is remarkably successful because she discovered early in life that something bigger than herself which she felt she “must give to others.” Although educated as a society girl, the call from the within of herself to teach, was so loud that it could not be resisted. Through teaching she has not only found the larger woman in herself, but she is also helping thousands of other women and girls to do the same for themselves.

One of the most difficult things in the world is to get people to realize the extent of their latent powers, to believe in their own bigness, in their own possibilities. The reason is that they see only a part of themselves, because they have only partially discovered themselves.

“Each of us,” said Professor William James, “has resources of which he does not dream.” If we could only turn a spiritual X-ray on ourselves most of us would find powers and potencies in the great within of us which may not have gotten even to their germinating stage. There is probably not a living being who would not be amazed if he could see unfolded in panorama all of the potentialities within him, if he could only glimpse the man he might be. He would say, “These remarkable success qualities belong to someone who has achieved distinction, not to an unknown person like me.”

All of the potencies and possibilities of a giant oak are wrapped up in the acorn, and under the right conditions they would unfold to the full in a perfect oak. When we see a scrub oak which has come from a perfect acorn, we know that it has been dwarfed by wrong conditions, that only a very small part of the possibilities infolded in the acorn were ever unfolded. The mean little scrub oak expresses only a fraction of the immense possibilities that lay buried in the parent acorn.

The same is true of every child born into the world. All of the latent forces, the powers and possibilities locked up in the human acorn under right conditions, would develop to full and complete expression in the ideal man or woman.

And this is what Nature, in all her work, is ever after, the ideal, the perfect specimen that reaches up to the possibilities foreshadowed in the seed. She is not after the dwarf oak; nor does she want the shriveled, blighted wheat that has been starved and stunted by uncongenial soil, by droughts, or other unfavorable conditions. It is the perfect wheat that was foreshadowed in the parent kernel she wants. Above all, it is the possible man, not the scrub oak or shriveled wheat variety of man that Nature is ever after. ‘What you are is not a thousandth part as important as the ideal man, the possible man existing in the life germ within you.

It is only now and then that we see a giant human oak, where practically all of the possibilities of the acorn have been unfolded and given complete expression, as in a Socrates, a Gladstone, a Lincoln. Most of us are human dwarfs, scrub-oak men and women, in whom only a minimum of the possibilities of the human acorn have found expression. Yet I believe the time will come when the average man will be larger than the most magnificent specimens yet shown to the race.

What you are capable of being and doing is your greatest life asset. What you are actually doing may be a dwarfed thing compared with the giant achievement you are capable of. It is not what you have done, but what you long to do, what you feel capable of doing that will, if you struggle to express your ideal, count most.

Up to this time you may have been seriously hampered or dwarfed in your development. All sorts of things may have happened to the possible man, or the possible woman in you, to limit its growth, to restrict it, to impoverish it. But it is that superb thing that is possible to you, the thing which the Creator sent you here to do that you must strive to express. It is the man or the woman He wrapped up in the human acorn that you should struggle to evolve. It’s that bigger, grander man beating beneath the dwarf of a man you feel yourself to be that is important.

In the great within of yourself there may be vast powers which you have never called out. Who can tell what unwritten books that would inspire, or set the world thinking, may be in your undiscovered reserves? Undeveloped beauty which would enchant men may be locked up inside of you, waiting for expression. What possible harmonies and melodies may be stifled, still silent in the octaves of your being! What masterfulness, what vast reserves of helpfulness, inspiration, and encouragement may still lie uncovered within you!

You doubt that there is anything of the kind? But you do not know. Many a man has carried locked up within himself for more than half a century the germs of a mighty genius without even guessing at it. There are multitudes of men and women all over the world who are as ignorant of their possibilities, of their hidden success assets, as the Native American Indians were of the resources of the great Western Continent when Columbus discovered it.

Emerson says, “Few men find themselves before they die.” Very few people ever make exploring voyages within themselves, and they carry with them to their graves undiscovered contines of ability. The great majority die without developing their possible efficiency of hand, or tongue, or of brain; without developing any of the special gifts locked up in the great within of themselves. Most of us die with the great secret, with the sealed message which the Creator put in our hands at birth, still unread, because we have never learned how to open or how to read it.

Young men often say in excusing their lukewarm efforts, “If I only knew that I had the ability of a Roosevelt, an Elihu Root, a Wanamaker or a Marshall Field that I could stand at the head of my profession or business, there is no amount of hard work or drudgery I would not undertake. No matter how many years it might take, if I was sure of ultimate success, I would not mind the work or the time.”

But how do you know, I ask? How can you be sure that you have not a lot of this ability you long for locked up in yourself? If you have not tried your strength, how do you know what you may be able to do? You may have more ability slumbering within you than you dream of. Why waste your precious time thinking about other people’s genius? Why not unlock your own, see what you have, bring it out into the light and develop it? You may have something of a Roosevelt, something of a Marshall Field in yourself; you may have something very much greater than either of these men manifested waiting your help to give it expression.

When we know that even the great majority of men whom we call successful use only a comparatively small part of their ability because they never find all of themselves, why should any of us put a narrow limit to our possibilities, remain paupers in achievement when we might be princes?

We set our own limitations. Emerson hammers this truth home to all of us in his “Essay on Self-Reliance.” He says: “That popular fable of the sot who was picked up dead drunk in the street, carried to the duke’s house, washed, dressed and laid in the duke’s bed, and, on his waking, treated with all obsequious ceremony like the duke, assured that he had been insane, owes its popularity to the fact that it symbolizes so well the state of man, who is in the world a sort of a sot, but now and then wakes up, exercises his reason and finds himself a true prince.”

There are enough powers, enough resources in the minds of the people in the great failure army today to revolutionize the world if their sleeping potencies could be aroused; if they could only be made to believe in themselves. If they could only learn how to enter into the secret depths of their nature, to get hold of themselves, to arouse latent qualities and powers, they could do marvelous things.

The great problem is to know how to get at the force in the great within of ourselves and to put it to work to the best advantage. For whether life shall be a success or a failure depends upon the call we make on our resources, the extent to which we develop all our possibilities.

The other day I was trying to encourage a young man, who had the opportunity, to start out for himself, instead of settling down in a narrow groove to work for somebody else all his life. “I am afraid,” he said, “I haven’t the courage to take chances. I have always worked for somebody else. I have never made a program for myself; never started anything on my own responsibility. I don’t dare to make the attempt lest I fail.”

That young man will never get hold of half of his resources, because he is afraid to trust himself, afraid to branch out, to take chances. We don’t know what we can do until we try, and unused faculties never grow or strengthen. Everywhere we see starved, stunted lives, people who have discovered but little bits of themselves, little patches cleared up here and there in the great wilderness of their possibilities. They couldn’t believe in their inherent greatness. They couldn’t realize that they were born into this world to do a certain work; and that to do that work they would need every bit of power they could develop.

The average youth starting out in life has no means of knowing what his total assets are. Our systems of education do not help him to discover his possibilities. He sees only the assets that lie on the surface, and if he is not instructed how to find those that are deep down below the surface, if he does not get into the right environment, if he does not make a call on the divinity within him, he may never develop the man it is possible for him to be.

Self-discovery is simply a question of finding God in ourselves; and this is just what the new philosophy helps us to do. This new philosophy is a trolley pole which connects us with the mighty current of infinite power, and then our life problems seem easy because we are not pushing our car ourselves. Infinite power does that.

Many people had never really met themselves until they became acquainted with this new philosophy. That is, they had never up to that time found the best part of themselves. They had previously been getting their living by their weak faculties instead of their strong ones. They had been in the position of people living in poverty on a little corner of their vast estate, ignorant that there were great deposits of undiscovered, unmined wealth.

The possibilities of mental expansion, enlargement of vision, quickening of the mental faculties, increasing the efficiency,—in other words, the possibilities of self-discovery in the new philosophy are almost unbelievable.

In the old thought one’s ability is pent-up, shut in. Self-expression is stifled; one is hemmed in by race prejudices, race beliefs, race lies, by religious convictions, whereas in the new philosophy there is a freedom, a fullness of self-expression, which gives a feeling that one’s latent powers are being unlocked and set free.

I have known of a case of this sort where a young man’s ability seemed to be doubled and quadrupled in a very short time after he got into the practice of this new philosophy. Before that this young man said he was so hedged in by the old church traditions and prejudices, and by his great faith in drugs and patent medicines, to which he had been a slave,—his whole mentality was so blocked in and circumscribed, so narrowed, pinched, stifled by his old thought, that he could not seem to get any freedom of thought or expression.

This was due largely to the fact that he had been reared in a small town in the South where religious prejudice is very strong. In this town people brought up in one denomination believe that those in all the other denominations are doomed. This young fellow used to pity everybody who was not a Baptist because he felt sure that they were going to be damned forever. He had himself a perfect horror of committing the unpardonable sin, and he was filled with a slavish terror of death.

The new philosophy made him a different being, turned him around and opened up a new world to him. The things which had seemed so real and so tremendously important in the past have gradually faded into nothing, and he sees now that only the good is real. He realizes that if God is all, if there is no other power, if He made all that there is, everything must be good and only the good can be real.

This one principle together with the realization of the oneness of all life, the unity of all the things in the universe, has changed his outlook upon life, has unlocked his fettered faculties and given him a freedom of expression which he had never before dreamed possible.

We find ourselves in very different ways. Struggling with difficulties, disappointments, failures, great responsibilities, has been the means of recalling many human beings to themselves. “Returned with thanks,” abusive criticisms have opened the door to fame to many an author, when if his first manuscripts had been accepted, his first book praised, he might have made a very indifferent author.

Ella Wheeler Wilcox at the beginning of her career sent out an article to nineteen different publishers before it was accepted. This has been the experience of many a great writer who, in his effort to overcome obstacles has found his larger self.

The greatest of their latent possibilities lies so deep in some natures that it takes the impact of a tremendous emergency, a great life, or national crisis to call it out. Any ordinary event, the easy way of prosperity, will not do it; it must be something which shakes them to the very center of their being and knocks out from under them every support. They must feel that they have nothing to lean upon but the creative power within—even the God who made them. So long as there is no supreme call made on the great within of them they never know their own resources. On the other hand the structure of many a divine success has risen out of the ashes of a burned fortune or apparently ruined hopes.

The San Francisco earthquake and fire was really the making of many lives. Thousands of men and women who had not amounted to anything before were suddenly brought to their senses, and to the discovery of their real selves. The crash which made such a terrifying rift in the earth for many miles, made a rift in their lives, uncovering vast assets which otherwise never would have been brought to light.

Like those plants which must be crushed before they will reveal their sweetest fragrance, or their beneficent properties, many people never reveal the sweetest thing in them until they are crushed by some great sorrow. They go through half a life or more unconscious of the richness which lies buried within them, when suddenly some great grief, some overwhelming misfortune reveals a wealth of personality, and of power which not even those who knew them best dreamed they possessed.

Job really never discovered his full power, his superb manhood, until he had lost all his material possessions; until the Bedouins had stolen his herds and burned his home, and he himself had been attacked with boils and all sorts of physical afflictions. But out of these terrible afflictions which tested his character came the light and strength which guided him to the haven of peace, a greater material prosperity and a higher manhood than before. It was only when overwhelming sorrows and losses had stripped him of his supposed friends, his family, and everything which he had thought worthwhile, and he was forced to depend upon God alone, that he really found himself.

The shock of the Civil War which uncovered the greater Abraham Lincoln also uncovered the greater Ulysses S. Grant. When forty years old nobody outside of his own little community knew Grant. Up to that time he had not shown the slightest sign of what was locked up in him. No one ever dreamed there was anything remarkable in the man, and yet all of these years walking around unheeded among his fellows was one of the world’s greatest warriors.

There was disguised in that apparently mediocre individual the man who next to Lincoln was to play the chief part in the saving of his country. There was locked up in that ordinary man one of the greatest military geniuses that ever lived. A quarter of a century of ordinary events and life routine did not even give a glimpse of the giant sleeping within him. He never dreamed what was inside of himself. Up to his thirty-ninth year or later everybody who knew Grant would have laughed at the idea (as he would have done himself) that he had ability to take any prominent part in the subduing of the great rebellion.

He was graduated twenty-first in a class of thirty-nine at West Point. At thirty-two he was a nobody, forced to resign from the army because of his great weakness. He went into the custom house, the real estate business, worked in a store, in a tannery, and was a comparative failure in them all. It was the supreme emergency of a war which threatened to disrupt the nation that revealed the real man to himself and to the world.

The late Justice Miller, who was for years regarded as the ablest man in the United States Supreme Court, told me that he did not even begin to study law until he was thirty-seven years old. He had not found himself until then. But in a little more than ten years from that time he was on the Supreme Court Bench.

Many people pass their fiftieth, even their sixtieth milestone, before they find themselves, before something happens which unlocks a new door in the great within of themselves and reveals new powers, new resources, of which they had never before been conscious. Then in a few years after their discovery they have redeemed half a lifetime of ineffectiveness.

We often hear men and women who have found themselves tell of the particular things which awakened their ambition; the accident, the sorrow, the emergency, the book, the suggestion, the encouraging friend, which first gave them a glimpse of their own possibilities, uncovered powers which they never before dreamed they possessed. If all of the people who have done things worthwhile in the world would only give an account of how they were awakened, tell of the things that had aroused their ambition,—the incident, the circumstance, the book, the lecture, the sermon, the advice, or the catastrophe, the failures, the crisis, the emergency, the afflictions, the losses in their lives, what a wonderful help it would be to the strugglers who are conscious that they have locked up within them forces which have not been aroused and which they cannot seem to get hold of.

The man who can write a book that will enable people to discover their unused assets will do an incalculable service to humanity.

Boosting from the outside will never help us to discover ourselves. We do our greatest work, uncover most of our latent power, when struggling to make good, when striving to make a place for ourselves in the world. Yet it is a strange fact that most people look not only for their pleasures but for all their personal resources outside of themselves. They go through life complaining that they have nobody to help them, that they have no chance such as many others have, excusing themselves for their failure or mediocre success on the plea that they lack capital, or “pull,” or opportunity, when they have locked up right within themselves vast assets of untold value which they have never developed and which they never can use until they have found and made them available.

This is one reason why so many of the sons and daughters of inherited wealth discover so little of themselves. They go through life indifferently, carrying their great possibilities undeveloped to their graves, because there was no special motive for effort, apparently no necessity to exert even the surface power.

No son ever inherited wealth enough to uncover his greater possibilities. No father can do this for his son; it can be done only by self-effort. Everyone who has ever made his mark on the world, who has done things worthwhile, has found his resources in himself.

The necessity for personal effort has made many a man famous, has compelled him to contribute to the uplift of humanity, to the progress of the world, who but for this priceless spur would have remained a practically useless member of society.

It is a most unfortunate thing for any boy to be coddled and waited upon until he has formed habits which make it very unlikely that he will ever exert himself sufficiently to arrive at the point of self-discovery.

A housewife explaining to her husband why the bread was not good said, “There is as good stuff in this loaf of bread as in any loaf I ever made, but nobody can eat it because there is not enough yeast in it. It did not rise.”

This is just what is the matter with a lot of young people with good material in them, good man timber, good woman timber. They lack yeast. There is not enough of the rising quality, not enough of the yeast of a divine ambition in them to make them struggle to find and develop their highest power.

“Great masters are they who help you to find yourself,” said Dr. Frank Crane. “The others simply find you.”

There are a multitude of things which assist our self-discovery. Keeping our minds in a positive, creative condition; keeping ourselves physically at the top of our condition, in perfect health; maintaining mental poise, a cheerful, happy mental attitude, by keeping our minds free from fear and worry and anxiety,—all of these things are great aids to self-discovery. And there is no secret about any of these things.

Self-confidence is a potent self-discoverer. Distrust, self-depreciation closes the doors to the locked-up potencies and powers within. Faith opens the door and releases them.

Seek every possible experience which seems to open up your nature and release new force. For instance, great lovers of music after listening to a wonderful voice, or going to an opera, feel something inside of them released, something which had been locked up before, something which they never really knew they possessed until then. Sometimes a great play will produce a similar effect upon people. They leave the theater feeling conscious of decided enlargement by the unlocking of latent forces within them. Our ideals are constantly being broadened and elevated by similar experiences.

A youth perhaps has slumbering in his nature great pent-up artistic or musical powers, but he has always lived back in the country, on a farm, where he never has come in contact with musical or artistic people, never has been thrown in a musical atmosphere. He never has heard music of any account outside of his little church choir, and remains quite ignorant of his latent possibilities until he goes to the city. There he hears famous musicians, great singers in concerts, in opera, and a new avenue is opened up in his nature, a new passion is aroused which sweeps away his farm ideals, and his plans for his career are instantly changed. He has discovered a new force in himself, which henceforth is to govern his life.

Here is another youth whose whole idea before he started for college was to go into the store, or some other business, with his father, but as he advanced in his studies, and the inspiration of the college professors pushed his horizon of ignorance a little farther and farther away, new forces were opened up and he made discoveries in his nature which completely changed his life aim.

Parents are often puzzled and troubled at what they think is the fickleness of their sons when they frequently change their ideas about their future careers. This is often because education unlocks new powers, opens up new possibilities to them, and changes their ideals and ambitions.

One of the great advantages of education and wide experience is that these help us to uncover more and more of our hidden powers. And these seem inexhaustible, for, no matter how many successive discoveries we make in ourselves, there apparently is no diminution of the remainder. In fact, human life seems to be a sort of a funnel. We pass into the small end at birth, and the farther we go the larger and larger grows the funnel. Our horizon keeps ever pushing out towards the Infinite, and there seems no limit to our possible growth.

Many people go through life without having their nature opened up to any great extent because they do not seek the occasions for growth. They do not take sufficient pains to get in an ambition-arousing, an ideal-awakening environment.

Not long ago I wound my watch at night and in the morning I found that it had stopped. The hands were just where they had been when I wound it. I took it up; but the hands did not move. Then I gave it a violent shaking and it started at once and ran until the mainspring was exhausted the following night.

The power which enabled the watch to do what it was made to do was there all the time. All it needed was a little shaking up to start it going.

I have met many a youth who seemed to be standing still; there seemed to be no power engine inside of him to run his mental machinery effectively and while I was wondering when he would start up, his father, upon whom he was dependent, suddenly died or some other misfortune befell him. The jolt started his mental engine, and all at once he developed an amazing amount of energy and executive ability, which no one ever before dreamed he possessed. I have seen others whose road was made so smooth and easy for them that they never received sufficient jolting to set their mental engines working, and they have gone through life with the power still unlocked inside of them. On every hand we see even young men and young women standing still mentally and spiritually, making no progress toward further self-discovery.

They have ceased to grow.

Men and women who are trying to make the most of their lives, never stop growing. They are always on the road, because their goal is always receding as they grow larger, broader and more efficient. They only stop off at way stations to unpack a few things which they no longer need, impedimenta which hamper them, and then they resume their journey. This is the way all along the life path.

If you would get at your hidden resources, stimulate your growth and your power, you must be continually improving yourself somewhere; increasing your intelligence by closer and keener observation, by the constant study of men and things, the broadening of your mental and spiritual outlook, the getting away from self and the enlarging of your sphere of service and helpfulness.

Reading the world’s great books—the Bible, Shakespeare, the life stories of great men and women, and association with noble souls are great helps to young people on their voyage of self-discovery.

Think of the secret chambers of possibilities which were unlocked in multitudes of people by men like Lincoln. There are thousands of people living today who are grander men and women, better husbands and wives, better lawyers, better physicians, better statesmen because of the example of Abraham Lincoln. The story of his life, of what he accomplished, opened up new avenues in their nature, our institutions are better, our civilization is higher because this grand man lived.

I know of no other means of self-discovery so potent as an inspiring book, and it is a great thing to keep such books near you, because ideals become dim if we do not constantly stimulate them by the right mental food. Listening to a great orator often stirs us to the very centers of our being, and awakens new impulses, new powers and determination in many a soul who up to that time had been asleep so far as knowing and utilizing his inner powers were concerned. Perhaps you have had this experience in listening to some great preacher or lecturer who seemed to open up a new world to you and give you a glimpse of realms in your nature which otherwise might have remained forever hidden.

“Man becomes greater in proportion as he learns to know himself and his faculty.” The more highly we cultivate all our faculties, the more deeply we draw upon our resources, the more of our hidden selves we discover, the wider grows our vision. Life becomes a perpetual progress.

It has been a long journey up through the ages from the brute to the man, and on the way up we have developed such marvelous powers and resources as our primitive ancestors never dreamed of. Yet civilized man is still farther away from his ultimate destination, the end of the path of ascent, than he now is from the crude savage of his earlier stages.

Garrett P. Serviss says, “The human brain is only in its infancy, and since we are aware of that, we have good reason to hope that in the future web shall not merely know that the earth is full of power, but shall make that power, in some way, serve our uses.”

We are all in a continuous process of development, and, as yet, strangers to the immense possibilities that sleep in the great within of ourselves. Uncovering these possibilities, finding our resources, should be the great object of every human being.

The wisest thought of the seven wise men of Greece was expressed in the two words carved over the entrance of the great Delphic Temple:—“Know Thyself!”

“Know thyself!” This is really the chief business of man—to learn to know himself, to realize the power that is his through his inseparable union with his Creator.