© Elliot Essman 2005. All rights reserved.

These pages contain the complete 2005 revised text of Building Yourself, public speaking trainer Elliot Essman's guide to living the successful life.

Elliot Essman Public Speaking Training
Building Yourself Table of Contents
Previous Section - Next Section

• Thinking is like loving and dying. Each of us must do it for himself. Josiah Royce (1855–1916)

1. Programming. Television, advertising and popular films. They fill your head with the values and notions of a small group of people who decide what you will think, what you will feel. For example, one of their favorite villains is the evil businessman. Motivated by greed, the businessman stops at nothing to get what he wants. More than half of all television murders are committed by evil businessmen. In real life, the number of murders committed by businessmen is not statisti­cally significant. In real life, without businesspeople you'd be naked, living in a hut. Evil real estate developers make great movie villains. I have the think that the class of such villains does not include those few enlightened developers who sold the real estate on which the producers of the films actually live. There are hundreds of other examples of such uncalled for and unfair TV stereo­typing, from the docile housewife to the beer‑swilling “red­neck.” Reality doesn't work that way—people are first and foremost individuals.

2. P.C. As you probably already know, P.C. stands for “politically correct.” Again, a small group of people with a little bit of power have decided that they must reform the English language, to remove every vestige of sexism, racism, ageism and what have you, even if our sacred English lan­guage screams and kicks in protest. Pets are now “animal companions,” Orientals are now “Asians,” and Indians are now “Native Americans.” The last one particularly gets my goat. I was born in the United States. No one has the right to question my legitimacy as a Native American. P.C. is an insult to your intelligence. Reject this nonsense.

3. Pundits. In its original Hindi, a pundit was a man who was learned in Sanskrit, Hindu philosophy, law and religion. What we mean here is a self‑professed authority, someone who claims great knowledge or insight, and who usually has a considerable following. These people have an answer for every question, a cure for every ill. They're out there in droves, telling us we're “dysfunctional,” or that we're looking for love in the wrong place, that we're too sensitive, or too insensitive. Pundits have come and gone since history began, but now they're out in greater force than ever—on the talk shows, at slick seminars, at book signings. Small minds feed on their magnetic personalities. Small minds make them very rich. Your mind is not small. Life may not be easy, but no one knows your life better than you do. Pundits are seductive, but the short cut to happiness they offer is for people who can never measure up to your potential. If you put your mind and heart into the hands of a pundit, you scatter and waste your precious freedom to think for yourself. Think twice before admiring another human being too much.

4. Pills. The magic pill that cures all ills, the panacea. Societies latch onto one panacea after another. At any given time you can always find people obsessed with some great cause. You hear them anguish over one great problem that, if solved, will most assuredly be the last we'll ever have to deal with before we reach the promised land of perfected living. In my own lifetime, the defeat of communism was the great cause; later there was the war against drugs. Human existence can be frustrating, and it's natural for many of us to fantasize about a cure‑all, or to attribute all of society's ills to one source. If only we could decrease drug use, increase employment, get rid of our current bad politicians and put in nicer ones! As individuals, too, it's possible to fall prey to the thinking that if only I could do this, get this degree, travel to this country, destroy all those evil businessmen, my life will be unmitigated bliss. In either case, magic pills, cure‑alls, get‑rich‑quick schemes, and simplistic solutions to life's problems are the food of the small mind. Magic pill thinking is tempting and seductive, but like anything seductive, it can hold you in a state of inaction, of vain expectation, of unrealistic fantasy, as the clock ticks steadily on.