The Positive Versus The Negative Man

The Positive Versus The Negative Man

Orison Swett Marden 

Never fear failure; don't visualize it; don't picture poverty or have a horror of it, for this tends to make it a reality and keeps away from you the very things you desire.

These negative thoughts and assertions permeate the atmosphere of most homes and chill the youthful ardor of the children with the result that their ambition sags, their ideals shrivel, and, having no great life incentive, they drop into a humdrum routine and fall far below the level they might have attained.

It is criminal not to correct the tendency to negatives in a child's mind. It is not very difficult to cultivate a positive habit of thinking and acting if undertaken when a child is young.

With the adult it is not so easy, but it is possible.

Whatever you do, don't set up in your mind and in that of others, a picture of yourself as a weak, ineffective, negative personality.

If you are constantly depreciating yourself, other people will think there is a reason for it, that you are not worthy, that there is something about you that they do not know about as a basis of your own judgment. Why should not others think meanly of you if you do yourself?

If you carry about with you a negative mental attitude yours will be a negative life. You cannot act negatively without getting negative results.

Negative people do not start vigorous, positive vibrations; they are so passive and so susceptible to the influences about them that their negative minds take off all of the negative vibrations from all the cross currents from other negative minds.

It is perfectly possible to make our mentality so vigorously positive that, no matter what conflicting currents or vibrations from other negative, discordant minds strike us, they find no response.

Living in the stronger thought makes us stronger. People with a vigorous, positive mental attitude, people with a strong, firm decision, people with great faith, have a much stronger mentality than do negative minds, because they habitually live in a more vigorous mental attitude, and a positive mental attitude makes for growth, for mental enlargement.

We all know the negative man, the man who never has any opinion of his own, who is always asking other people's advice and depending upon others.

The negative character is always a weakling. The negative man in any community is the nobody. It is the positive, vigorous mentality that does things, that makes things move, which puts things through.

It is the positive man who does his own thinking; who dares to step out of the beaten path and blaze his own way; who dares to have opinions of his own and dares to express them. This is the sort of man who gains the respect and confidence of mankind.

A lot of people go through life doing little things, because their negative thought paralyzes their initiative; they do not dare undertake anything important. The negative mind, the man who is afraid to act, who is always deliberating or hesitating, never accomplishes much.

One of the most pathetic sights in the world is the man who never has any opinion of his own,—the backboneless, shiftless, slovenly, negative man, who never differs from you, whose only opinion is assent to the one you express.

We want leaders and originators more than we want followers or imitators. We have enough, and to spare, of those who are willing to lean on others. We want our young people to depend on themselves.

We want them to be so educated and trained that their qualities of leadership, their originality and their individuality, will be emphasized and strengthened instead of obliterated.

Do not forget that the force that is going to project you to the success and prosperity goal is actually inside of you. Do not look to others to push you, to give you a pull or to use their influence. Your resources, your assets, are right inside of you; they are nowhere else.

If you feel paralyzed by the very responsibility of deciding things, beginning things of your own accord, make up your mind that if you ever are to amount to anything in the world you must strangle this habit.

The only way to do this is to form the counter-habit of starting out every morning with the grim resolution not to allow yourself, during the day, to waver, to wait for somebody to show you the way.

One of the first signs of deterioration in many minds is a tendency to be negative; to hold the discordant, belligerent, envious, jealous mental attitude. This is just as abnormal as is chronic melancholy, gloom, and despondency.

These indicate an abnormal or diseased condition of the mind. Try to see things from a large, generous standpoint; hold a large consciousness.

Show everybody that you have a great faith in humanity, in your calling, and in yourself. Resolve to keep the negatives out of your life. You are too large for jealousy or envy, too big for worry, or to be anxious about your career, or about your future.

Making yourself positive to everybody and everything you contact with in life is what counts. This is the key to mastership, to success and prosperity.