A Few Thoughts on
Self-Discipline and Efficiency
O. S. Marden
1. The
Needle and the Polar Star
Pure
grit is that element of character which enables a man to clutch his aim with an
iron grip, and keep the needle of his purpose pointing to the polar star of his
hope.
Through sunshine and storm, through
hurricane and tempest, through sleet and rain, with a leaky ship, with a
mutinous crew, it persists; in fact, nothing but death can stop it or subdue
it, and it dies still struggling.
How long and how hard can you stick to one
thing? Your success in life will depend largely on this. (85)
2.
Doing the Hardest Thing First
“Do the hardest thing first” is the motto
hanging above the desk of a very successful business man. This man has told me
that that single short sentence has wrought a revolution in his life.
“One day I suddenly realized”, he said,
“that I had fallen into the habit of putting off unpleasant duties and evading
disagreeable or difficult tasks, until the ghosts of them blocked my path at
every turn. I put up that motto where I could not help seeing it, and set
myself to bring each day’s work in line with it. The first day I began on the
duties I had kept pushing aside, the long-deferred, long-overdue tasks that had
been put out of sight in favour of the easy, pleasant things. When at length I
had cleared my path, I made it a rule to begin each morning at the biggest,
toughest job in the whole day’s work before me. I gave my freshest efforts to
the kind of work I had previously put off the longest, and before a great while
I found that what used to loom up before me like a mountain of difficulty, when
handled with energy and determination, was really very simple and comparatively
easy. It is to the forming of this habit to do the hardest thing first, more
than to anything else, that I owe what is called my success.”
A great many people fail in life for no
other reason than that they shrink from doing the hard, disagreeable things.
They pick out the things they like, the easy things first, and leave the
disagreeable, difficult tasks until the last. In the meantime they are tortured
with anticipation of the drudgery to come later. (202-203)
3.
Giving Up Postponement
[The
principle of] doing the hardest thing first does not mean that it is always
possible or advisable to pick out the difficult things in our work and do them
out of their order. It simply means that one should not skip the hard things -
put them off - when it is time to do them. Every hour we postpone only makes it
more difficult to get up courage to tackle them.
The man who goes through life picking the
flowers and avoiding the thorns in his occupation, always doing the easy thing
first and delaying or putting off altogether, if possible, the hard things,
weakens his character so that he does not develop the strength that will enable
him to do the hard things when they are actually forced upon him.
Only recently a prominent public man was
criticized throughout the newspaper world as one not having enough character to
keep his promises. He had not the stamina to make good when to do so proved
difficult. He hadn’t the timber, the character fiber to stand up and do the
thing he knew to be right, and that he had promised to do. The world is full of
these jelly-fish people who have not lime enough in their backbone to stand
erect, to do the right thing. They are always stepping into the spotlight in
the good-intention stage, and then, when the reckoning time comes, taking the
line of least resistance, doing the thing which will cost the least effort or
money, regardless of later consequences. They think they can be as unscrupulous
about breaking promises as they were about making them. But sooner or later
fate makes us play fair or get out of the game. (204-205)
4. On
Having Character
I know a man who has formed the
unfortunate habit of picturing to himself the agreeable and the disagreeable
side of things, and of following whenever it is possible the agreeable side,
regardless of whether it is the right or the wrong course to pursue. The result
is the man has no character or stamina.
He is pleasant and agreeable, but lacks
vigour, and has never accomplished anything worthwhile. His life has been a
busy but an unprofitable one. Everything he has done has been characterless. I
knew him as a boy at school, and what he was then he is now. He always skipped
the hard problems at school, and he has been skipping them ever since. As a
consequence, he has practically no standing in his community. No one would think
of looking to him for aid in an emergency.
Why is it that so many people who are
ambitious to get on in the world and to make the most possible of themselves
should shrink from the discipline, the training which is absolutely necessary
to enable them to get the most out of their lives? Just because things are
distasteful to them, or require much effort or constant application, they
shrink from them.
One would think that a youth who starts
out with a vigorous resolution to make the most out of the material given him
and to reach the highest possible round in life’s ladder, would firmly resolve
never to forego any experience, to omit any discipline or training or
opportunity which could help him along or advance his interests. Instead,
however, on every hand we see young men playing with the spoon, pitting off
taking their medicine, because it is disagreeable. They know it will help them,
but they dread taking it.
Now, the only way to grow, to become
strong and vigorous, the only way to get that training and discipline which
will give character, firm fiber and stalwart resisting timber, is to take your
medicine without hesitation. A disagreeable draught will not be nearly so
nauseous if taken quickly. (205-207)
000
“Eternal Wisdom in Daily Life” was published as an independent item in
the associated websites on 13 February 2022.
The
excerpts that make the article are reproduced from the book “Making Life a Masterpiece”, by Orison
Swett Marden, Elibron Classics, 2005, Thomas Y. Crowell Co. Publishers, New
York, 1916, 329 pages. The numbers of pages are indicated between parentheses
at the end of each fragment. “Eternal
Wisdom in Daily Life” is also part of the August 2020 edition of “The Aquarian Theosophist”.
000
000
Helena Blavatsky
(photo) wrote these revealing words: “Deserve,
then desire”.
000