Do You Posses These Success Robbing Traits?

Timid, shy people are detrimentally self-conscious; they think too much about themselves. Their thoughts are always turned inward; they are always analyzing, dissecting themselves, wondering how they appear and what people think of them. If these people could only forget themselves and think of others, they would be surprised to see what freedom, ease, and grace they would gain; what success in life they would achieve.

Timidity, shyness, and self-consciousness belong to the same family. We usually find all where we find any one of these qualities, and they are all enemies of peace of mind, happiness, and achievement. No one has ever done a great thing while his mind was centered upon himself. We must lose ourselves before we can find ourselves. Self analysis is valuable only to learn our strength; fatal, if we dwell upon our weaknesses.

Over-sensitiveness, whether in a man or a woman, is really an exaggerated form of self-consciousness. It is far removed from conceit or self-esteem, yet it causes one's personality to overshadow everything else. A sensitive person feels that, whatever he does, wherever he goes, or whatever he says, he is the center of observation. He imagines that people are criticizing his movements, making fun at his expense, or analyzing his character, when they are probably not thinking of him at all. He does not realize that other people are too busy and too much interested in themselves and other things to devote to him any of their time beyond what is absolutely necessary. When he thinks they are aiming remarks at him, putting slights upon him, or trying to hold him up to the ridicule of others, they may not be even conscious of his presence.

You may ask how shall I get rid of these traits? Think less of yourself and more of others. Mingle freely with people. Become interested in things outside of yourself. Do not brood over what is said to you, or look for reasons to be offended. Do not have such a low and unjust estimate of people as to think they are bent on nothing but hurting the feelings of others, and depreciating and making light of them on every possible occasion. A man who appreciates himself at his true value, and who gives his neighbors credit for being at least as good as he is, cannot be a victim of over-sensitiveness.

The great majority of people, no matter how rough in manner or bearing, are kind-hearted, and would much rather help than hinder a fellow human being, but they have all they can do to attend to their own affairs, and have no time to spend in minutely analyzing the nature and feeling of those whom they meet in the course of their daily concerns. In the busy world, it is give and take, touch and go, and those who expect to get on must rid themselves of all sensitiveness. If they do not, they doom themselves to unhappiness and failure.

Some of our best writers never found themselves, never touched their power, until they forgot their rules for construction, their grammar, their rhetorical arrangement, by losing themselves in their subject. Then they found their style.

It is when a writer is so completely carried away with his subject that he cannot help writing that he writes naturally. He shows what his real style is.

No speaker has ever electrified an audience while he was thinking of his style or was conscious of his rhetoric, or trying to apply the conventional rules of oratory. It is when the orator's soul is on fire with his theme, and he forgets his audience, forgets everything but his subject, that he really does a great thing.

Could anything be more foolish and shortsighted than to allow a morbid sensitiveness to interfere with one's success in life?

Self-consciousness is a foe to greatness in every line of endeavor. No one ever does a really great thing until he feels that he is a part of something greater than himself, until he surrenders to his or her greater purpose.

Submitted by Audie Perove

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