From “The Human Condition: A User’s Manual,” by Arnold Kunst
13 July
Don’t play old tapes. Ok, so you wet your pants on your
first day in kindergarten, and you were really embarrassed. And for years after
that, whenever you were embarrassed, that first day in school is what comes
back to you. Bear in mind, unless you cope effectively with that mindset you
won’t succeed at anything. Life just doesn’t work like that. You must take
reasonable precautions about that playing-old-tapes thing.
Here’s a suggestion: consider starting up a Warm-And-Fuzzies
file. Buy yourself a really nice, expensive three-ring binder, and a packet of
those clear plastic sheets designed to hold 8 1/2X11’s and fit into a
three-ring binder. Then slip evidence of accomplishments into those plastic
sheets to preserve them as if they were important - glowing letters of
recommendation, certificates of completion, your kids’ drawings and hand-drawn birthday
cards, heart-felt thank-you notes, e-mails from friends, or even strangers, you
want never to forget. Throwing them out with yesterday’s daily newspaper is the
very same thing as abdicating a kind of royal prerogative. For whether you
realize it or not, you were built for greatness. You can neither accurately
measure its impact nor alter that destiny - but you can intentionally walk away
from it.
And if you do abdicate, you’ll end up like the legions of
historical might-have-beens; you’ll be just like a car driving along railroad
tracks – with the right vehicle on the wrong surface it’s no wonder you’ll lose
your transmission inside a mile!
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