Dollars and Sense Part 16

Prosperity makes most of us careless. We don't give our business the careful consideration we should. We run to extremes during prosperous times.

We should make the most of prosperity while it is here. We should enjoy it to the fullest, but we should remember that for every high tide there is a low ebb.

Prosperity should enable us to put away a reserve for the hard times.

We should be careful that prosperity does not turn our heads or cause us to lose our vigilance.

Home Life

After all we say and do, the real pleasure of this world comes from the home. The gilded palaces we see in our travels abroad are beautiful to look upon presently, but later on they serve their purpose to make a contrast with the sweet simplicity of home.

When you go home, cut business out, and let play and sociability and love occupy your time.

A married man should be in partners.h.i.+p with his wife. The man being fitted with st.u.r.dier physique, with strong ability to combat, should take up the heavy burden of business, for those are the things he can do the best. The wife should take up the home part of the duties of the firm, and when evening falls each member of the firm should try to lessen or take away the cares to which the other has been subject during the day.

The best place in the world is the home, and in proportion as home life is unsatisfactory or uncongenial, so in proportion are the Clubs filled with dissatisfied and unhappy men. If you want to hear pessimistic talks on home life, talk with those derelicts who spend most of their time at the Clubs.

Learn to make much of little things. Learn that smiles and good humor in the home bring happiness, and iron out the frowns and check the mean impulses arising within us. Be pleasant every morning until ten o'clock, and the rest of the day will take care of itself. Start out in the morning right and happiness will be home at night.

There is nothing in your old age that will be such a comfort to you as retrospection, or looking back over a long life of happiness in the home. The happy little incidents which today seem trivial will be remembered in the future, and a thousand and one occurrences which are happening in the home are being put away in the store-house of memory, later to be called upon and enjoyed again.

In the evening of life when you and your silver-haired partner sit before the fire place, when you have retired from active partic.i.p.ation in your respective branches of the business, which is bread winning on the part of the man and bread making on the part of the woman, then you will have a happiness and satisfaction which all the gold in the world could not buy. The pleasures of the old who have had happy homes during their lives are the greatest pleasures in the world.

The sunset of your life will not be beautiful unless your home life was pleasant during your day of work.

Optimism

The man who is an optimist may be laboring under a delusion, but certain it is that he is happy while under the delusion.

Every man should have ideals. He should see the beauty and good in things. He may not accomplish his ideals, but the antic.i.p.ation and working out of them is a mighty pleasant vocation.

The pessimist is always unhappy, and when no definite thing is before him to worry about, the very fact that there is nothing to worry about makes him unhappy.

The pessimist says "Business is not half as good as it would be if it was twice as good as it is." The optimist says "Business is twice as good as it would be if it was only half as good as it is."

Grizzly Pete, of Frozen Dog, Idaho, is an optimist, and Webb Grubb, of the same town, is a pessimist. A short time ago they had a big rain storm in Frozen Dog. Webb Grubb kicked about the rain. Grizzly Pete, all wreathed in smiles, said "Rain is a mighty good thing to lay the dust." A few days later the sun came out oppressively warm. Webb Grubb kicked about the warm weather. Grizzly Pete, again all smiles, said "Hot weather and suns.h.i.+ne are mighty good things to dry the mud."

The pessimist goes about with a dark lantern peering into out-of-the-way places, ever looking for meanness and things to find fault about.

The optimist goes about in the bright sunlight looking for the beautiful things, and sees more things by the aid of the great suns.h.i.+ne than the pessimist can find with his little dark lantern.

The optimist rises in the morning with gladness in his heart, suns.h.i.+ne in his face and smiles upon his lips. The mere privilege of living and enjoying nature is a priceless satisfaction to him. He gets good out of life every moment he lives. He is a man to be envied, if envy is ever allowable.

The pessimist warps his mind and his physique, and his influence on others is decidedly bad.

The optimist raises the average of the world by his presence, the pessimist lowers the average.

The optimist is in the majority, however, and the world is growing better.

Learn to see beauty in the small things. Study nature. Watch the processes of plant life and animal life. Surround yourself with helpful influences; books, music, friends.

There is no investment a man can make that yields such unbounded returns as optimism.

Optimism cannot be bought with money. It is as free as the air we breathe. That is why poor people generally are optimists.

Memory

The man whose memory allows him to play four games of chess blindfolded is good for nothing else.

Book-keepers who can name every folio page and every customer's balance are good for little else.

There is nothing in mental gymnastics from the dollar standpoint.

The good lawyer or the good business man does not rely on his memory, but rather his ability to find out things and get at results.

If you remember only the customers who are slow pay or shaky, it will be a lot easier than to remember the names of all the customers who pay promptly.

If your wife wants you to get something down town tomorrow, write her request on a little piece of paper, roll it up in a ball, put it in your pocket with your loose change. Forget the incident, let the paper do the memory act.

Next day when you reach in your pocket for change you will find the little ball with the reminder on it.

If there is something you want to attend to at home, drop yourself a postal card.

Carry a little pad of paper in your pocket. Write down the little things you are to do. Don't store your mind with these temporary matters. Let the tab remember for you.

Let your mind be like a sieve, and have the meshes coa.r.s.e enough to keep in the big things and let the little things go through.

Have your business figures written down, your comparative sales, increases or losses. Study the written figures. Have system. Do things methodically. Don't trust to your memory. If the thing you see or hear is worth keeping, write it down on the little tab.

The orator who commits his speech to memory is in a sorry plight if he forgets a sentence.

If you are to speak at a dinner, lay out your plan, divide your topic into several parts. Jot down the catch lines, and just before you speak look over the ticket. Charge your brain with the points or ideas and build the words around them.

Don't remember things with verbatim correctness. Remember the skeleton thought, the idea.

When you quote a price or figure, jot it down. Confirm the verbal statement by a written memorandum.