Timid people concern themselves too much about what others will think and say. They are constantly studying the impression they are making upon people who probably are not even thinking of them. Their super sensitiveness causes them to imagine themselves being criticized, slighted, and unfairly condemned by those who all the while are absorbed in their own affairs.
A man may be on the road to success when a single act of timidity may annul all his chances. People lose confidence in him if he lacks faith in himself. Courage is admired, fear never is. Courage is dignified, fear is repulsive. The man of courage is welcomed everywhere, while fear invites itself to a seat in the rear. The following incident actually occurred in a second-hand bookshop. The salesman had been talking for some time to a customer, when another man who had selected a book for himself mustered up enough courage to say: "Don't let me interrupt you, sir, if you are busy with that gentlemanI wanted to getthis book--but I can just as well call in on my way back--I would have to trouble you anyway--to change--a five-dollar bill--and perhaps--you haven't--the change-so I'll come back--in a little while--don't trouble, sir--and then I'll have the right change with me."
This sounds exaggerated, but it can be vouched for. What chance, think you, has such a man as that for advancement or distinction in the world? He is foredoomed to failure unless he changes his entire mental attitude.
Every man should learn to stand firmly upon his own feet. As himself he may become great; as an imitator he will amount to little. "Intellectual intrepidity," says Samuel Smiles "is one of the vital conditions of independence and self-reliance in character. A man must have the courage to be himself, and not the shadow or the echo of another. He must exercise his own powers, think his own thoughts, and speak his own sentiments. He must elaborate his own opinions, and form his own convictions. It has been said that he who dare not form an opinion must be a coward; he who will not, must be an idler; he who can not, must be a fool."
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