Victor Herbert
The Power Of Positive Thinking
Ask For It
Many of the richest rewards of life, material as well as spiritual, are never acquired simply because they aren’t asked for. It is because this principle is so simple that it is so frequently not even recognized, not put into daily practice. Yet it is a fundamental principle of life.Is it good? Is it just? Are you prepared for it? Then— ask for it!
Adopt the positive attitude, and ask for what you want from life.There is a positive quality of magic in this proposal. But be very careful what you ask for, since in all probability you will get it. Midas asked for the golden touch and turned his beloved daughter into a golden image. On reflection, you will realize that you have asked for most of your triumphs and, through the very request, motivated their achievement.
Ask for it. But test it first. Is it good? Is it just? Are you equipped to have and hold and develop what you desire for good purposes? Jane Froman, the singing star, never lost the positive approach of her childhood. She recalls an incident of student days at the University of Missouri. Regulations prohibited her from going to St. Louis to hear the opera. She couldn’t leave the campus except to visit parents or friends who were approved by the school authorities. She had no friends in St. Louis. So Jane Froman went straight to her dean and asked for what she wanted. The dean firmly informed her that he wouldn’t change the university regulations to suit her convenience. Then, warmed by the intensity of her request, the dean smiled and invited her to be the guest of himself and his wife at the opera. She had asked for it.
The Secret Of The Positive Way Of Life
Perhaps that was just a lucky exception that could have happened to anyone? Perhaps, but Jane Froman doesn’t rest content with exceptions. She has learned the secret of the positive way of life. She asks for what she wants. Jane was badly broken in body and spirit in a plane crash near Lisbon, Portugal, during the war. She yearned to return home, but transportation wasn’t available. All doors seemed closed to her.
Then she wrote a simple letter to President Roosevelt, explained her predicament, and asked for transportation home. She barely had time to pack to take advantage of the reservation the President made available to her. Oh, well, that was just a lucky exception! Perhaps, but how do you account for this? After returning home and undergoing a series of operations that patched her together, she asked for an automobile. She was told she was zany, that thousands had been waiting for cars and were paying many hundreds of dollars over list prices. Jane simply looked up the name of the president of the automobile company that made the kind of car she wanted. She wrote to him, a stranger, and asked for a car.
What answer did she get? Just a question. What color did she prefer? Jane Froman knows that you get many good things by asking for them. More consistently than many she has the positive attitude that wins. If she had a negative or passive attitude, she wouldn’t have gone to the opera, come home quickly for the hospitalization she needed, got the car she wanted. She didn’t moan, “I can’t,” which as often as not means “I’m so negative in outlook I won’t even bother to try.”All of us occasionally have got what we simply asked for. Sometimes we ask for too much, ask for things that do not meet the test, and refusal makes us skeptical. Obviously we can’t have everything we ask for. We can have our fair share of the good things of life, however, if we apply the suggested test and adopt the positive attitude as Jane Froman and most effectual people have always done.
Do you ask for too little?
Sometimes we defeat ourselves by asking for too little. When Andrew Carnegie sold his steel mills to the J. P. Morgan interests, he asked for $400,000,000. He got his figure, which was higher than Morgan representatives had offered in this deal that resulted in the formation of the great United States Steel Corporation. Later the little old Scotsman was visiting with Morgan on a transatlantic voyage and said, “I’ve often regretted that I didn’t ask you for a hundred million more.” Morgan nodded and said, “If you had asked for it, you would have got it.”
There is a charming, white-thatched Manhattan editor named Perry Williams who didn’t ask for quite enough and, because of that, very probably sidestepped fame. When he was in his early twenties, Perry wrote a libretto. It was good and many years later was produced in Minneapolis. But long before that Perry took the positive step of sending the libretto to the world-famous Victor Herbert. If Herbert were interested, that might mean fame and fortune. Word came back that the noted composer was very much impressed and would be more than glad to write the music. He would stop in Minneapolis on tour and they would complete arrangements.Perry Williams began living in the clouds. He counted the days until the great Herbert would be in Minneapolis.
Then the composer’s plans were suddenly changed. His tour was stopped. “Well, what did you do then?” I asked the man who had opened the door to fame by simply asking for it. “Nothing,” said Perry Williams. “I was disappointed. But I didn’t want to press Victor Herbert.” “Couldn’t you have hopped to New York to talk it over?” I asked. “After all, he said he was impressed and would be glad to write the music.” Perry smiled ruefully, “I could have done just that. But I didn’t. I’ve often wondered. . . .”
His positive attitude had opened the door to fame and left it ajar waiting for him. His negative attitude involving a youthful shyness had slammed shut the door. Perry Williams has had a fine career as a chamber-of-commerce director, writer, and editor, but at twenty-three he hadn’t learned the value of a consistently positive attitude in the attainment of desires and he wasn’t fully aware of the super four-wheel braking power of the negative attitude.
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