Self Help

Furthermore, we are up in arms against those who dare to uncover the truth for our benefit. One of the most severe shocks I received in the early part of my public career was the knowledge that men are still being crucified for the high crime of telling the truth. I recall an experience I had some ten years ago, with a man who had written a book advertising his business school.

He submitted this book to me and paid me to review it and give him my candid opinion of it. I reviewed the book with painstaking care, then did my duty by showing him wherein I believed the book was weak. Here I learned a great lesson, for that man became so angry that he has never forgiven me for allowing him to look at his book through my eyes.

When he asked me to tell him frankly what "criticism" I had to offer of the book, what he really meant was that I should tell him what I saw in the book that I could "compliment."

That's human nature for you!

We court flattery more than we do the truth. I know, because I am human. All of which is in preparation for the "unkindest cut of all" that I am duty-bound to inflict upon you; namely, to suggest that you have not done as well as you might have done for the reason that you have not applied a sufficient amount of truth set out in Lesson Eight, on Self-control, to charge yourself with your own mistakes and shortcomings.

To do this takes self-control and plenty of it. If you paid some person who had the ability and the courage to do it, a hundred dollars to strip you of your vanity and conceit and love for flattery, so that you might see the weakest part of your make-up, the price would be reasonable enough.

We go through life stumbling and falling and struggling to our knees, and struggling and falling some more, making asses of ourselves, and going down, finally, in defeat, largely because we either neglect or flatly refuse to learn the truth about ourselves.

Since I have come to discover some of my own weaknesses through my work of helping others discover theirs, I blush with shame when I take a retrospective view of life and think how ridiculous I must have seemed in the eyes of those who could see me as I wouldn't see myself. We parade before the enlarged shadows of our own vanity and imagine that those shadows are our real selves, while the few knowing souls with whom we meet stand in the background and look at us with pity or with scorn. Hold on a minute 1 I am not through with you yet.

You have paid me to delve into the depths of your real self and give you an introspective inventory of what is there, and I am going to do the job right, as nearly as I can.