How this 1917 composition will inspire you to be better

B. C. Forbes - founder of Forbes magazine - was dropping words of wisdom in his book "Key of Success" more than a century ago.

Last summer I found these words of wisdom by Bertie Charles Forbes, the founder of Forbes magazine.

B. C. Forbes, 1917 circa

These words come from a book Forbes wrote in 1917, called "Keys to Success".
I believe they are a great reminder of what business and life are about.

Hope you will enjoy it as much as I did when I first read it.

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Keys to Success

Your success depends upon you.

Your happiness depends upon you.

You have to steer your own course.

You have to shape your own fortune.

You have to educate yourself.

You have to do your own thinking.

You have to live with your own conscience.

Your mind is yours and can be used only by you.

You come into the world alone.

You go to the grave alone.

You are alone with your inner thoughts during the journey between.

You must make your own decisions.

You must abide by the consequences of your acts.

You alone can regulate your habits and make or unmake your health.

You alone can assimilate things mental and things material.

You have to do your own assimilation all through life.

You may be taught by a teacher, but you have to imbibe the knowledge. He cannot transfuse it into your brain.

You alone can control your mind cells and your brain cells.

You may have spread before you the wisdom of the ages, but unless you assimilate it you derive no benefit from it; no one can force it into your cranium.

You alone can move your own legs.

You alone can use your own arms.

You alone can utilize your own hands.

You alone can control you own muscles.

You must stand on your feet, physically and metaphorically.

You must take your own steps.

Your parents cannot enter into your skin, take control of your

mental and physical machinery, and make something of you.

You cannot fight your son’s battles; that he must do for himself.

You have to be captain of your own destiny.

You have to see through your own eyes.

You have to use your own ears.

You have to master your own faculties.

You have to solve your own problems.

You have to form your own ideals.

You have to create your own ideas.

You must choose your own speech.

You must govern your own tongue.

Your real life is your thoughts.

Your thoughts are of your own thinking.

Your character is your own handiwork.

You alone can select the materials that go into it.

You alone can reject what is not fit to go into it.

You are the creator of your own personality.

You can be disgraced by no man’s hand but your own.

You can be elevated and sustained by no man but yourself.

You have to write your own record.

You have to build your own monument – or dig your own pit.

Which are you doing?

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See you next Sunday 🗓️
Thanks,
Giacomo