East Oregonian : E.O

of Those Who Fail

If he can find nobody or nothing else to blame he will complacently attribute his failures to 'bad luck.'

Search diligently enough and you can usually find a reason for 'bad luck.'

'Bad luck,' most times, is nothing but a convenient excuse for lack of energy, lack of persistence, lack of diligent thinking and planning and striving and stick-to-it-iveness.

'Bad luck' and laziness, indifference, shiftlessness and shallowness are near relatives, if not always brothers.

The expert spinner of excuses is fond of explaining another's success as 'good luck.'

'Good luck' you must have noticed however, commonly goes hand in hand with hard work, with indefatigable plodding, with unremitting application, with clear-headed thinking—with, in short, deservedness.

If those who use their brains in coining glib excuses would use them in overcoming the need for excuses, they would fare better in the end.

Abject failure and an ideal excuse are less desirable than partial success and the poorest excuses.

Bad workmen quarrel with their tools,' our copybooks early in life told us.

Have you not found it so?

If time spent in complaining about tools were applied to learning how to use the tools more would be accomplished.

If you are a ready weaver of excuses which implicate others stop right now and do a little self-analysis.

Turn your searchlight inward.

Do some keen, unsparing introspection.

Apply an X-ray to yourself.

Try to find weak spots in your own make-up instead of having eyes to see them only in others.

Don't fill yourself with delusions that you are really a much smarter fellow than the world imagines.

Don't drug yourself with self-pity and self laudation.

Next time you find yourself ready to blame another for your failure to achieve something just bite your tongue and keep your mouth shut.

Stop whining.

Be determined to overcome at least some of your obstacles.

Make certain that you will at least deserve to succeed.

And in time you stand a good chance of getting there.

And remember that satisfaction comes more from the twenty-four carat, hundred per cent effort to succeed than from success itself.