On the first day of the new year, I felt inspired to reread one of my favorite success gurus - Orison Swett Marden. He was a poor orphan who took control of his life, earned an education, and forged a successful career in the hotel/resort business. Later, he became very interested in the principles of self-improvement, interviewing famous people and writing motivational books. In 1897 Marden founded the hugely popular Success Magazine. His work launched the self-improvement movement of the 20th Century - featuring authors such as Napoleon Hill, Dale Carnegie, Norman Vincent Peale, Zig Ziglar, Stephen Covey and many others.
I was reading Marden's book, Making Life a Masterpiece, originally published in 1916, and the following excerpt caught my eye:
"The real problem of education is how best to show youth its possibilities, how to arouse its latent energies, how to give the boy and girl a picture of the highest possible self, how to stimulate its growth and development. The pumping of facts into a pupil's brain, the teaching him by reiteration and imitation, filling his mind with facts and theories and rules, is not education. It is merely mental stuffing. The real education is evolution, calling out what is in the mind, developing it, exercising the mental faculties until they become vigorous and strong enough to seize, to grip and to hold.
The teacher who by encouragement and inspiration leads youth to self-discovery is the greatest of all educators."
Marden goes on to give examples of mentors and powerful personalities who inspire others to discover their own latent abilities and interests. Young lawyer Wendell Phillips was inspired to fight for civil rights after hearing William Lloyd Garrison depict the horrors of slavery. Emerson inspired a generation of idealists. Daniel Webster inspired future orators. Theodore Roosevelt captured the imagination of young Americans who dreamed of bold action.
Marden recommends:
"The degree of our achievement depends, to a certain extent, upon the accident of coming across the right stimulus, which arouses our ambition or awakens dormant faculties. I have ofen heard successful men say that if it had not been for a certain thing which happened in their career they would probably never have been anything like as successful as they were.
If possible, get into an ambition arousing, stimulating environment. You will be surprised to find how such an environment will stir you to redouble your efforts, will awaken your slumbering powers and spur you on to renewed endeavor.
People who seclude themselves from their kind, who do not care to meet others, who do not wish to move out of the familiar routine, people who get in a rut, make a great mistake."
He advocates travel, meeting new people, conversation, reading good books. I love this! Sounds like a New Year's plan to me.
Friday, February 26, 2010 at 7:09AM 
