Dollars and Sense Part 17

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.

The employe who trusts to his memory hurts the business, and after he quits a lot of misunderstandings will come up.

Insist on your employes making memorandums of things and prices, for when the employe goes he takes his memory with him. If he has a memorandum you know the facts.

Worry

Nothing will prevent effective work like worry. If you are given to introspection and worry, and allow these things to go unchecked, they become habits with you, and while your sleep, in a measure, is an antidote for worry, yet the more worry you have the less soundly you will sleep, and consequently the less effective sleep will be in correcting the injury caused by worry.

Suns.h.i.+ne and darkness cannot be present at the same time, for in nature one of the first rules we find is that no two objects can occupy the same place at the same time. No matter how much one is given to the worry habit, he experiences reflex moments when he does not worry. Some of our pessimistic friends who are given to the worry habit say it is impossible for them not to worry. You are thinking of what you are reading, and if your mind is interested in it you are not worrying while you are reading these articles, and this shows that if you are interested in reading there is little chance for worry to get in; for your mind is occupied.

Men have tried all sorts of things to escape worry. Some of them frequent places where gaiety and mirth abound, so that they are for the time being banis.h.i.+ng worry, but in proportion as these things keep one from worrying, the reaction is stronger when it does come, and the individual who tries to escape worry by going the pace and occupying his time with light things, suffers more keenly from worry when it does come. Some men turn to drink to kill worry. Many a man imagines while he is drunk and his brain is clogged with alcohol that he is the happiest man in the world, and some of them go to the extent of imagining their finances are in a flouris.h.i.+ng condition. The alcohol fills the brain with fancy pictures, and for the time being the mind forgets to worry. When the alcohol wears away the brain takes up the worry again in an increased degree.

To kill worry by the active process is like trying to cure rheumatism by external application. The only thing you do is to stop the pain temporarily. The best way to cure rheumatism is to go at it through the blood. Eradicate the uric acid from the system, and then the rheumatism will disappear. The best way to cure worry is not by local applications, but by getting at the root of things. Eliminate as far as possible the things which cause worry. Remember that as long as you live there will come things across your path that are not to your liking. You should be philosophical, and make the best of things that are about you. Look at the bright side rather than the dark.

There are only two things in the world to worry about. First--the things we can control or change; second, the things over which we have no control. Now, it is manifestly useless to worry over the first kind; for we can correct the thing and there will be nothing to worry about.

It is manifestly useless to worry over the things we cannot control, for, as set down in the second proposition, we cannot change the things. It therefore behooves us to eliminate from our calculations the second kind of worry, for no amount of worry can possibly change that kind. We must therefore confine our attention to the first kind, the kind we can change, and when we have changed the thing there is no cause to worry.

Nothing helps a man's health so much as contrasts in climate or habits.

When the doctor tells you it is necessary to go to California or Arizona, or some other distant point, he knows that fifty per cent. of the good you will get by the change is from the water, air, suns.h.i.+ne and surroundings, and the other fifty per cent. of the good you will get is because you have been taken away from the very things that have been causing you worry. If you can't get contrasts by trips to other distant points, you can get the contrasts right where you live. If your mind is occupied in the day with deep thinking and hard business problems, you should occupy your evening with something that will contrast with it. Take up some light literature, play with your children, or work at some hobby in which you are interested.

The trouble with those who worry most is that they have worked themselves up to such a frenzied state they can't read anything excepting startling newspaper articles and freakish, frothy books.

The man with rheumatism cannot cure himself in a day, neither can the man with the worry habit eradicate worry from his make-up in a day or so.

The man who worries should make up his mind he is going to read and get interested in the reading. Let him set apart ten minutes the first day, and agree that he will devote those ten minutes honestly, intently to the subject before him. The next day he can add a minute or two, and so on until he can read one or two hours at a time. Finally, the wrinkles will be ironed out and the horizon will be brightened.

As we are, so is the world to us. The most familiar objects change their aspect with every change of the soul. When you worry, everything is distorted, everything appears unnatural, the world looks dark, our friends seem far off. The jokes we hear fall flat. We indulge ourselves in pessimism.

When the whole matter is summed up philosophically, there is no bad luck in the world except sickness. All other so-called hard luck is simply temporary. If you lose your money, don't worry about it, make some more. If you lose a friend, don't worry; show him his mistake. If you lose an opportunity, do not worry; be ready for the next one.

Life is short. The end of life is death. What's the use of worrying.

Worry is like drink. The more you give it the more it fastens on you.

Cultivate a cheerful disposition. Mix with people who are cheerful. Do not allow the garden of your mind to grow up with worry weeds.

Occupation kills worry. If your mind is filled with uplifting work or brain training it will have little time to worry.

Promises

A business man may be rated as worth a million, but if he breaks his promises regarding payments or fulfillments of contracts, he will find later on those who deal with him will insist upon cash transactions.

Keeping promises is the basis of credit. Let it be said of you that you always keep your promise; that you have never been known to break your word, and you will need little persuasion to get the credit man's O.K.

If you purchase for cash right along, some day you can ask for and will receive a small credit, if you promise to make your payments on a certain date. If you keep your promise you can repeat the operation.

Later on you will be given larger credit, because you have been keeping your promises. You can increase your credit step by step to amazing proportions if your promises are always kept.

The business world places much confidence in promises. The note in the bank is a written evidence of the promise. The note says on the face of it "I promise to pay." The Government of the United States issues bank notes on the face of which is a promise.

When you make promises as regards dates, jot down the promise in your memorandum book. Whatever you do, keep that promise. The man who breaks his promise in little things will break them in greater ones.

When you make a promise to meet a man it is just the same as promising to pay a man money. In either instance you are in the man's debt, and the obligation is not cancelled until the debt is paid. In other words, until the promise is fulfilled.

Just so sure as the sun sets, the man who habitually breaks his promises will surely break his business.

Independence

It seems to be the rule rather than the exception that the moment a business man attains success he grows independent.

There is no such thing as independence within the full meaning of the word. Every creature in the world is dependent more or less.

The man who takes delight in his so-called independence and forces it to the front, soon receives knocks.

The constant tapping and knocking hurts anyone. Boosts beat knocks. The man who has a reputation for being independent never gets boosts.

Some business men forget the obligations they are under. They forget the help that was extended to them in time gone by. They furnish up a fine mahogany office, with an outer room, and outside of this another room with an information desk. They cultivate coldness and independence. They make it difficult for their friends to see them.

They put a lot of red tape around their business, and by these acts they get out of touch with the pulse of the business. They look at things through colored gla.s.ses. Their judgment gets warped.

In proportion as a man cultivates independence and autocratic ideas, just so in proportion is he nearing the brink over which many have fallen to destruction. When an independent man has a fall, his enemies glory and loud are the shouts that arise from them, and if we listen closely we will hear the mult.i.tude say: "Serves him right."

There is nothing like democracy in business. By this it must not be understood that the head of the concern is to see every pedler, or every life insurance agent. But if the business man is accessible, and greets you with a glad hand, and in the pleasant manner turns you over to the proper department head, you go away from the office satisfied, and you give this man a boost instead of a knock.

The late P. D. Armour was a good example of the point we are making, he did not waste time in social visits during business hours, but anyone who had business with the Armour Inst.i.tution could get an interview with Mr. Armour. It has often been remarked by business men that they would rather have a turn-down from Mr. Armour than an order from some of the other houses, for Mr. Armour always made one feel good.

No one can be independent. The larger one's business is the more the proprietor is dependent on those around him.

It takes many months to build a sky sc.r.a.per, yet a wrecking company can tear a sky sc.r.a.per to the ground in a few days, and so it is with a man's reputation. It takes years to get good credit in the commercial world, but if success spoils a man and makes him independent, he has created enemies, and there is no telling where these enemies will get in their work. It is like the worms eating through the bottom of a s.h.i.+p. Some day the craft goes down because of the silent attacks made in it, which were not visible from the surface.

Some day the independent man is surprised to have the bank call him in and insist that he take up his loans. He is astonished; he does not know why this sudden change has happened, but like as not some secret enemy in the bank, or some secret compet.i.tor who has a friend in the bank, has gotten in his work, and then this independent man finds out how really dependent he is.

The safer a man is from attacks, the safer his business is from the financial standpoint, and the more generous this man should be in his consideration for others.