What do you think of yourself?

Can you see yourself in this picture?  YOU ARE atttractive, able, intelligent.You have a body that functions marvellously. (Talk about automation! Your human automation would put every machine in the world to shame.)

The most elaborate machine, functioning perfectly most of the time, is at your command.

“What a piece of work is a man!  how noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god!” So wrote Shakespeare of the human body and soul—and he could have been writing about you.
You have over 12 billion brain cells; they would look like stars under the microscope. Your brain, the product of at least a billion years of evolution, is the finest precision machine in existence.  It is capable of several trillion associations of thought. Yet even the ablest scientists cannot analyze adequately the amazing way in which a thought springs into the human mind, or the power by which thoughts travel to and from your brain cells.
Normally, you use about one-tenth of your brain power.

If you used it all, what you would accomplish would stagger your friends and associates.
Spiritually, you’re so great that if you sank into the worst kind of moral slime, by the power of thought you could lift your eyes and your heart to the hills from which your help would truly come. The Bible promises you this in Psalm 121: “My help cometh from the Lord, which made heaven and earth.”

Still, you have feelings of inferiority

You have enough atomic energy in your body to destroy the entire city of New York, as Dr. Norman Vincent Peale points out in A Guide to Confident Living.*
Still, you suffer from feelings of inferiority.
You’re the top, but a good deal of the time you feel low, unhappy, inadequate.
You are unique in almost every other way, but not in this respect. You share these feelings of inferiority with almost every intelligent human being.
The fact that you sometimes feel so inadequate and in¬ferior is proof that you are a superior human being, for fools and imbeciles cannot feel the way you do.

Feeling inferior doesn’t prove you are inferior
As a rule, the brighter you are, the less conceited you are about your brilliance. The most brilliant men nearly always underestimate themselves.
When Gordon W. Allport, Associate Professor of Psychology at Harvard, tested a group of college students, he discovered that more than half of them had, at one time or another, suffered from an overwhelming sense of intellectual inferiority.†
Professor Allport was astonished. After all, he points out, half of a group can’t be below average. Furthermore, college students, when tested, prove to be superior in intelligence to the average.

Many of the college students also had a terrific sense of physical and social inferiority.
Professor Allport thought their feelings about this absurd, too. College students, he points out, are by and large, superior in physique and health, and come from superior social backgrounds.
His conclusion: Feelings of inferiority cannot be taken as an index of actual inferiority.

Don’t Worry, be happy !

Worry is a habit

Did you know that psychologists say that worry is a habit? If you are a frequent worrier, you have allowed yourself to fall into the habit of worrying.
If you played the piano as frequently as you worry, you would probably be a first class pianist.
Since you practise worrying instead of practising some desirable skill, you may easily be a first grade, professional, top-notch worrier. I know, for I used to be one.
Substitute a new habit for it. Obviously, you will not cease worrying by saying to yourself, “I’m going to stop worrying about that old goat, my boss.” The words will simply flash a picture into your mind of your boss looking like an old goat, and you’ll worry about him harder than ever.
No, you must utilize Golden Key Three, Action, and it must be the right action.

One o£ the best methods for getting rid of worries is described by the great physical training instructor and authority on relaxation, Joseph A. Kennedy, in Relax and Live.*
As he explains, mental imagery is wiped out of the mind when we visualize, imagine, or remember black perfectly.
“Just remember having seen some black object in the past,” he says. “You may remember whatever black object is easiest for you—a black telephone, a black pair of shoes, a black letter seen in a book, black coal, black velvet drapes . . . Remembering a small black period on a page is best of all, but remember whatever black object it is easiest for you to remember, and you can even shift from one black object to another, if you wish.”

You’re a very poor judge of yourself!

All your life you have probably been rating yourself incorrectly. Only one person in five can judge himself correctly. Four chances out of five, you are a wretched judge of yourself.
You may rate yourself too highly out of self-defense, or too low out of lack of self-confidence.
Because Americans value self-confidence, we have a tendency to pretend we have it even when we haven’t. This explains why most of us, in spite of our inferiority feelings, rate ourselves suspiciously high on the qualities we would like to have. We often rate ourselves, not as we really think we are, but as we wish we were.
If we overrate ourselves, those who meet us will sense it and show resentment. Few and far between are those discerning enough to realize that our pitiful attempts at pretending to be better than we are merely serve to cover up our terrifying feelings of inferiority.
Incidentally, the two traits on which we are most apt to overrate ourselves are our sense of humor and our refinement. On these two points, our best friends can tell us a great deal more about our personalities than we ourselves know.

If you feel like blowing…

Besides the habit of worrying, another great threat to serenity is anger.
My most successful business friends do not agree with those psychologists who say that if you feel like blowing, blow!
They point out that business employees in minor positions may lose their jobs if they do, and top executives may lose the respect of their employees.
As one business friend of mine says, “If you cannot discipline yourself, how can you expect to lead others? Self-discipline must come first.”
At times when you are tempted to blow your top, try instead to see the other fellow’s point of view. If you’re still angry, go for a walk as soon as possible. By going in for physical exertion you’ll get rid of some of the adrenalin that accumulates when your rage is roused.
Later, you will learn two ways to build up self-confidence by using Key One, the Thought key; two ways to build it up by using Key Two, Writing Things Down; and six ways to build up your self-esteem through the use of Key Three, Action.

The salt of the earth

Those who rate themselves too high in desirable qualities are likely to be less brilliant or more frightened than average; but those who rate themselves too low are the salt of the earth. Frequently they possess almost every great quality you can think of except self-confidence.
It takes real intelligence to think you are not so smart as you should be.
When Socrates was asked why he was considered the wisest man in Greece, he replied, “It is because I know that I know nothing.”

In the seventeenth century, Isaac Newton, who dis¬covered the Law of Gravitation and was one of the greatest scientific thinkers, made a very humble statement about his discoveries. He said he felt like a child playing with pretty shells of knowledge by the seashore, while the great undiscovered sea o£ knowledge stretched alluringly beyond him.
This kind of intellectual humility, however, is different from the kind of inferiority feeling that makes you feel stupid in comparison with your next door neighbor or your immediate superior at the office. Most likely, he is superior merely in position, and possibly in acquired knowledge. What he has done, you can do. Often it is mostly a matter of having faith in yourself, and letting that faith help you with anything you attempt.
In the long run, you will be happier and get further if you have real faith in yourself, and are neither too humble nor too proud.
An inferiority complex is like a fungus that absorbs healthy living matter. Don’t let it sponge away your great, dynamic personality! It takes a lot of courage to build up the self-confidence that the years have corroded. You have that courage!