© 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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• Everyone believes in his youth that the world really began with him, and that all merely exists for his sake. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832)

But it takes little or no effort to be accepting of others. You must remember those people along the way who helped ease your way when you were the outsider. Try to follow their lead when you're the insider, too. Hold your hand out to the outsider. Be the one who welcomes rather than shuns. Be the one who is stimulated by the other person's differences, not the one who makes fun of them.

Starting a new job or coming into a new family are hard enough, but how about a new country? The immigrant is often starting an entire life from scratch and doesn't even speak the language. We tend to romanticize immigration, but it must be one of the hardest life adjustments a person can make. The fear, the stress, the uncertainty, the pressure, even the ridicule. Be the person who helps soothe all that, not the one who makes it worse. To me, intolerance toward immigrants is just amazing. I can't even grasp it, knowing what dreams many of them have, and how hard they work to make those dreams come true. Instead of seeing immigrants as strange people who dart around speaking gibberish and stumbling all over English, see them as human beings on the same level you are.

When I lived in New York City, I often had my dinner sent up. The delivery people almost never spoke English. They had the lowest job on the totem pole. All they could really do was smile and hope I smiled back. I did smile back, but I also tipped them well. I've lived in a foreign country where everything anybody said sounded like gibberish to me and where people couldn't understand a word I said. When people were kind to me then, I remembered. A little extra welcome to an outsider in any context can't fail to spread good will. And we live with precious little good will.