Part 27

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 sunshine than the pessimist can find with his little dark lantern.

The optimist rises in the morning with gladness in his heart, sunshine 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 coarse 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.

Memory is a bad servant sometimes. You remember a thing one way and the other fellow remembers it another way. You are both honest, but one of you is wrong. If you had made a memorandum in duplicate or jotted down the figures, what trouble it would have saved you.

Where dollars are concerned it is good sense to trust to a written memo., and not to any mental memo.

No use to cram your brain with transient things, when lead pencils and paper are so cheap and so easily obtainable.