The First Key to Success in the 21st Century Is "You!"
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Date Published: April 27, 2025
Date Modified: May 7, 2025 |
- "You" by B. C. Forbes from "Keys to Success in the 21st Century"
- The First Key to Success in the 21st Century Is "You."
Your success depends upon you.
Your happiness depends upon you.
You have to steer your own course.
You have to educate yourself.
You have to do your own thinking.
You must make your own decisions.
You have to shape your own fortune.
You have to live with your own conscience.
You must abide by the consequences of your actions.
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 innermost thoughts during the journey between.
“I cannot make you well unless you make yourself well,” an eminent doctor often tells his patients. You alone can regulate your habits and make or unmake your health. Said a Brooklyn preacher, offering his parishioners communion one Sunday: “You may be invited to a feast where the table is laden with the choicest foods, but unless you partake of the foods, unless you appropriate and assimilate them, they can do you no good. You must appropriate its blessings. I cannot infuse them into you.”
You may be taught by a teacher, but you have to imbibe the knowledge. They 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 assimilate things mental and things material. You have to do your own assimilation all through life. 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 alone can use your own arms.
You alone can move your own legs.
You alone can utilize your own hands.
You alone can control your own muscles.
You must take your own steps.
You must stand on your own feet, physically and metaphorically. You have to be captain of your own destiny.
Your parents cannot enter into your skin, take control of your mental and physical machinery, and make something of you; and parents, you cannot fight your child’s battles; they must do that for themselves.
You have to use your own ears.
You have to see through your own eyes.
You have to master your own faculties.
You have to solve your own problems.
You have to create your own ideas.
You have to form your own ideals.
You must choose your own speech.
You must govern your own tongue.
Your real life is your thoughts.
Your thoughts are of your own making.
You are the creator of your own personality.
You can be elevated and sustained by no one save yourself. You can be disgraced by no one’s hand but your own. You have to write your own record. You build your own monument—or you dig your own pit.
Which are you doing?
Your happiness depends upon you.
You have to steer your own course.
You have to educate yourself.
You have to do your own thinking.
You must make your own decisions.
You have to shape your own fortune.
You have to live with your own conscience.
You must abide by the consequences of your actions.
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 innermost thoughts during the journey between.
“I cannot make you well unless you make yourself well,” an eminent doctor often tells his patients. You alone can regulate your habits and make or unmake your health. Said a Brooklyn preacher, offering his parishioners communion one Sunday: “You may be invited to a feast where the table is laden with the choicest foods, but unless you partake of the foods, unless you appropriate and assimilate them, they can do you no good. You must appropriate its blessings. I cannot infuse them into you.”
You may be taught by a teacher, but you have to imbibe the knowledge. They 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 assimilate things mental and things material. You have to do your own assimilation all through life. 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 alone can use your own arms.
You alone can move your own legs.
You alone can utilize your own hands.
You alone can control your own muscles.
You must take your own steps.
You must stand on your own feet, physically and metaphorically. You have to be captain of your own destiny.
Your parents cannot enter into your skin, take control of your mental and physical machinery, and make something of you; and parents, you cannot fight your child’s battles; they must do that for themselves.
You have to use your own ears.
You have to see through your own eyes.
You have to master your own faculties.
You have to solve your own problems.
You have to create your own ideas.
You have to form your own ideals.
You must choose your own speech.
You must govern your own tongue.
Your real life is your thoughts.
Your thoughts are of your own making.
You are the creator of your own personality.
You can be elevated and sustained by no one save yourself. You can be disgraced by no one’s hand but your own. You have to write your own record. You build your own monument—or you dig your own pit.
Which are you doing?
"You," B. C. Forbes, "Keys to Success in the 21st Century"
