by Elsie Lincoln Benedict
Available in 98 free installments
Owner:
¶ Fame comes from doing one thing so much better than your competitors that your results stand out above and beyond the results of all others. Any man who will do efficiently any one of the many things the world is crying for can place his own price upon his work and get it. He can get it because the world gladly pays for what it really wants, and because the efficient man has almost no competition.
¶ But here's the rub. You will never do anything with that brilliant efficiency save what you LIKE TO DO. Efficiency does not come from duty, or necessity, or goading, or lashing, or anything under heaven save ENJOYMENT OF THE THING ITSELF.
Nothing less will ever release those hidden powers, those miraculous forces which, for the lack of a better name, we call "genius."
¶ Elimination of what are distinctly NOT your vocations will help you toward finding those that ARE. To that end here are some tests which will clear up many things for you. They will help you to know especially whether or not the vocations you have been contemplating are fitted to you.
¶ Whenever you are considering your fitness for any vocation, ask yourself these questions:
Self-Question 1?Am I considering this vocation chiefly because I would enjoy the things it would bring?such as salary, fame, social position or change of scene?
If, in your heart, your answer is "Yes," this is not a vocation for you.
¶ The above test can best be illustrated by the story of a young woman who wanted to be told that she had ability to act. "I am determined to go into the movies," she told us. "Do you think I would be a success?"
"When you picture yourself in this profession what do you see yourself doing?" we asked.
"Oh, everything wonderful," she replied. "I see myself driving my own car?one of those cute little custom-made ones, you know?and wearing the most stunning clothes and meeting all those big movie stars?and living all the year round in California!"
"Is that all you ever see yourself doing?" we inquired.
"Yes?but isn't that enough?"
"All but one?the acting."
She then admitted that in the eight years she had been planning to enter the movies she had never once really visualized herself acting, or studying any part, or doing any work?nothing but rewards and emoluments.
Self-Question 2?Knowing the requirements of this vocation?its tasks, drudgeries, hours of work, concentration and kind of activity?would I choose to follow them in preference to any other kind of activity even if the income were the same?
Would I do these things for the pleasure of doing them and not for the pay?
If, in your heart, you can answer "Yes" to these questions, your problem is settled; you will succeed in that vocation. For you will so enjoy your work that it will be play. Being play, you will do it so happily that you will get from it new strength each day.
Because you are doing what you were built to do, you will think of countless improvements, inventions, ways of marketing them. This will promote you over the others who are there only for the pay envelope; it will raise your salary; it will eventually and inevitably take you to the top.
A man we know aptly illustrates this point. He was a bookkeeper. He had held the same position for twenty-three years and was getting $125 a month. He had little leisure but used all he did have?evenings, Saturday afternoons, Sundays and his ten-day vacations?making things.
In that time he had built furniture for his six-room house?every kind of article for the kitchen, bathroom and porch. And into everything he had put little improving touches such as are not manufactured in such things.
We convinced him that his wife was not the only woman who would appreciate these step-saving, work-reducing, leisure-giving conveniences. He finally believed it enough to patent some of his inventions, and today he is a rich man.
¶ One more question will shed much light on the matter of your talents. Here it is:
