Dr. Norman Vincent Peale likes to tell the story of the old gentleman whose greatest claim to fame was the arrival of his hundredth birthday. At the party celebrating his accomplishment, a reporter lured the centenarian into conversation with, "You must have seen a great many changes in your lifetime?"
"I sure have," replied the spry old gent, "and I've been against every one of them." ,
In his resistance to change, the old man differed from many of us only in that he had worked at it longer. All progress is based on change; all change is by tradition painful to some degree, and hence to be avoided. Change is described in such terms as "breaking" with the past, "tearing up old roots," and "losing old friends." Painful descriptions, most of them, leading many to yearn wistfully for the good old days, which were not necessarily so good at all.
One real estate developer building houses in the $65,-000 bracket found his success-conditioned clients wanted all the latest improvements, which he had, but his houses didn't really start to sell until he ornamented them with old brass coach lamps, wagon wheels, and similar symbols of the past. Later he discovered a fad among his buyers of hanging old oil portraits of alleged ancestors in the split-level living rooms. In their new and rootless community, the newcomers were trying to find what comfort they could by creating an artificial past of their own. They wanted change, but they also wanted a past to cling to, even if they had to make it themselves.
I can approve of their actions, wistful though they might seem. The instinct to cling to the past, to what is known, to habits that are as "comfortable as an old shoe," is a powerful one, not too far removed from the infant's desire to cling to mother. To tear one's self away, to go out into the "cold, cold world," requires a determination that not everyone has.
There is, however, another instinct as powerful as the desire to cling to the past, and that is man's instinct to better himself through his achievements. Achievements stimulate progress, progress accompanies change, and change involves risks which might be painful. Sooner or later, in every man's career, the two instincts clash. To strive for greater achievements, or to change to what one has, that is the question. And instincts can't answer questions. Only intelligence can do that.
Grandpa could say of his ancestry, "What was good enough for grandpa is good enough for me." He would suffer no loss of status in making that statement, because his achievements would be pretty much what his grandfather's had been, and maybe a little bit better.
Today such a statement is no longer acceptable. Progress is no longer a slow matter of evolution, but a manufactured product on a high-speed assembly line that produces by the hour what our ancestors did by the century. Change comes in such an uninterrupted flow that painful or not-a score of jobs held for 20 years become obsolete in the face of an automated machine worked with one finger by one man in a white smock-it has become a way of life. A more complex way, I'll admit, but it is here.
The net result of high-speed progress is that the instinct to cling to the past offers few rewards except to dealers in antiques, while the instinct to better one's self through achievements has at last been freed of the shackles of tradition. And never in history has the world been more eager to reward achievements. It has to have them. And so do you.
The first steps, until success becomes a habit, are the hardest. By now, through analysis of your achievements, and through Functional Self-Analysis, you know what you will be able to do best, and what will be best for you. The first step up may mean a promotion in your present department, a transfer to another department where you can exercise your talents with greater freedom, a move to another company in an entirely new field of endeavor, or possibly the establishment of your own business. Or it may involve getting your first job, and you want to be sure it is one that will provide valuable experience you can use later.
