A Favorite Fallacy

A Favorite Fallacy

¶ For fame is not due, as we have been led to believe, solely to years
of plodding toil. A thousand years of labor could never have produced
an Edison, a Marconi, a Curie, a Rockefeller, a Roosevelt, a Wilson, a
Bryan, a Ford, a Babe Ruth, a Carpentier, a Mary Pickford, a Caruso, a
Spencer or an Emerson.


Fame's Foundation

¶ The reserved seat in the tip-top peak of the pyramid is procured only
by him who has _found his real vocation_.

To such a one _his_ work is not hard. No hours are long enough to tire
his body; no thought is difficult enough to weary his mind; to him there
is no day and no night, no quitting time, no Saturday afternoons and no
Sundays. He is at the business for which he was created--and all is
play.


Edison Sleeps Four Hours

¶ Thomas A. Edison so loves his work that he sleeps an average of less
than four hours of each twenty-four. When working out one of his
experiments he forgets to eat, cares not whether it is day or night and
keeps his mind on his invention until it is finished.

Yet he has reached the age of seventy-four with every mental and
physical faculty doing one hundred per cent service--and the prize
place in the tip-top peak of the Wizards of the World is his! He started
at the very bottom layer, an orphan newsboy. He made the journey to the
pinnacle because early in life he found his vocation.


Failures Who Became Famous

¶ Each one of the world's great successes was a failure first.

It is interesting to note the things at which some of them failed.
Darwin was a failure at the ministry, for which he was educated. Herbert
Spencer was a failure as an engineer, though he struggled years in that
profession. Abraham Lincoln was such a failure at thirty-three as a
lawyer that he refused an invitation to visit an old friend "because,"
he wrote, "I am such a failure I do not dare to take the time."

Babe Ruth was a failure as a tailor. Hawthorne was a failure as a Custom
House clerk when he wrote the "Scarlet Letter." Theodore Roosevelt was a
failure as a cowboy in North Dakota and gave up his frontiering because
of it.

These men were failures because they tried to do things for which they
were not intended. But each at last found his work, and when he did, it
was so easy for him it made him famous.


Play, Not Work, Brings Fame

¶ Fame comes only to the man, or woman, who loves his work so well that
it is not work but play. It comes only to him who does something with
marvellous efficiency. Work alone can not produce that kind of
efficiency.


Outdistancing Competition

¶ 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.


Efficiency Comes from Enjoyment

¶ 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."


Knowing What are _Not_ Your Vocations

¶ 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.


How to Test Yourself

¶ 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.