ARE YOU BEING YOURSELF?

Nobody is so miserable as he who longs to be somebody and something other than the person he is in body and mind.

“The only reason you try to be someone you are not when you are around certain people is, because you think they are better than you. Stop that comparison. Be yourself.”

A certain daughter of a streetcar conductor had to learn that lesson the hard way. She longed to be a singer. But her face was her misfortune. She had a large mouth and protruding buck teeth. When she first sang in public, she tried to pull down her upper lip to cover her teeth. She tried to act “glamorous.” The result? She made herself ridiculous. She was headed for failure.

However, there was a man in this night club who heard the girl sing and thought she had talent. “See here,” he said bluntly, “I’ve been watching your performance and I know what it is you’re trying to hide. You’re ashamed of your teeth!” the girl was embarrassed, but the man continued, “what of it? Is there any particular crime in having buck teeth? Don’t try to hide them! Open your mouth, and the audience will love you when they see you’re not ashamed. Besides,” he said shrewdly, “those teeth you’re trying to hide may make your fortune!”


Cass Daley took his advice and forgot about her teeth. From that time on, she thought only about her audience. She opened her mouth wide and sang with such gusto and enjoyment that she became a top star in movies and radio. Other comedians tried to copy her!

Dale Carnegie said, “I can talk with conviction about this subject of being yourself because I feel deeply about it. I know what I am talking about. I know from bitter and costly experience. To illustrate: when I first came to New York from the cornfields of Missouri, I enrolled in the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. I aspired to be an actor, I had what I thought was a brilliant idea, a shortcut to success, an idea so simple, so foolproof, that I couldn’t understand why thousands of ambitious people hadn’t already discovered it. It was this: I would study how the famous actors of that day- John Drew, Walter Hampden, and Otis Skinner- got their effects. Then I would imitate the best points of each one of them and make myself into a shining, triumphant combination of all of them. How silly! How absurd! I had to waste years of my life imitating other people before it penetrated through my thick Missouri skull that I had to be myself, and that I couldn’t possibly be anyone else.”

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