© 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
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• There is always something to upset the most careful of human calculations. Ihara Saikaku (1642–1693)

As a perfect example, let's take the sorry state of our drinking water. I grew up and used to live in New York City. The city might have been noisy and dirty during my youth, but the drinking water, which came from deep in the Catskill Mountains, had a reputation for good taste and high quality. For many reasons, this is no longer true. So, facing reality, I bought a water filter for my tap. The device is easy enough to use and keep clean. But there are still people who think filtering water is too “strange.” That's fine; let them drink lead, plutonium and chlorine. They still live in a world of unreasonable expectations. They're unable to shift gears to pass the slow traffic of life—minor problems requiring small adjustments. That leaves them in the slow lane, of course.

Micro computers moved from being oddities for electronics buffs to helpful tools in offices to outright necessities in the span of about ten years. And aren't they fabulous? They save tremendous drudgery. But there are still inflexible people who consider computers one of the “strange” things in the modern world. It’s even worse to use the word “Internet” with this sort. These people freeze up needlessly when faced with a computer. It's a psychological block. They forget that the automobile and the telephone (which they don't think twice about using) were perceived as “strange” by previous generations. People used to feel odd hearing that tinny voice over the receiver or whizzing down the road at fifteen miles per hour. Back then, it was the forward thinking people who weren't afraid of the new technologies who got the most out of them the soonest.

Not every new development or cultural trend is desirable. You can't always follow the crowd. But the examples I have just given are mainstream instances where the successful person needs to be able to change gears, to think in different ways, to use different tools, to protect against new dangers, and to reach out for new opportunities. If you have an attitude that's open to accepting the new, you'll be able to sort out the gimmicks from the valuable new ways of doing things. You have to reflect and carefully analyze how change affects the way you live. Are your attitudes healthy? Do you respond in positive ways that keep you going in the right direction? You cannot think about these questions too much. They stand at the crossroads of human achievement.