commissions the first year, and made himself one of the highest-paid salesmen in
France that year. H.V. Kaltenborn told me that this experience did as much to develop
within him the qualities that make for success as did any single year of study at Harvard.
Confidence? He told me himself that after that experience, he felt he could have sold
The Congressional Record to French housewives.
That experience gave him an intimate understanding of French life that later proved
invaluable in interpreting, on the radio, European events.
How did he manage to become an expert salesman when he couldn't speak French?
Well, he had his employer write out his sales talk in perfect French, and he memorised
it. He would ring a door-bell, a housewife would answer, and Kaltenborn would begin
repeating his memorised sales talk with an accent so terrible it was funny. He would
show the housewife his pictures, and when she asked a question, he would shrug his
shoulders and say: "An American ... an American." He would then take off his hat and
point to a copy of the sales talk in perfect French that he had pasted in the top of his hat.
The housewife would laugh, he would laugh-and show her more pictures. When H. V.
Kaltenborn told me about this, he confessed that the job had been far from easy. He told
me that there was only one quality that pulled him through: his determination to make
the job interesting. Every morning before he started out, he looked into the mirror and
gave himself a pep talk: "Kaltenborn, you have to do this if you want to eat. Since you
have to do it-why not have a good time doing it? Why not imagine every time you ring a
door-bell that you are an actor before the footlights and that there's an audience out
there looking at you. After all, what you are doing is just as funny as something on the
stage. So why not put a lot of zest and enthusiasm into it?"
Mr. Kaltenborn told me that these daily pep talks helped him transform a task that he
had once hated and dreaded into an adventure that he liked and made highly profitable.
When I asked Mr. Kaltenborn if he had any advice to give to the young men of America
who are eager to succeed, he said: "Yes, go to bat with yourself every morning. We talk
a lot about the importance of physical exercise to wake us up out of the half-sleep in
which so many of us walk around. But we need, even more, some spiritual and mental
exercises every morning to stir us into action. Give yourself a pep talk every day."
Is giving yourself a pep talk every day silly, superficial, childish? No, on the contrary, it is
the very essence of sound psychology. "Our life is what our thoughts make it." Those
words are just as true today as they were eighteen centuries ago when Marcus Aurelius
first wrote them in his book of Meditations: "Our life is what our thoughts make it."
By talking to yourself every hour of the day, you can direct yourself to think thoughts of
courage and happiness, thoughts of power and peace. By talking to yourself about the
things you have to be grateful for, you can fill your mind with thoughts that soar and
sing.
By thinking the right thoughts, you can make any job less distasteful. Your boss wants
you to be interested in your job so that he will make more money. But let's forget about
what the boss wants. Think only of what getting interested in your job will do for you.
Remind yourself that it may double the amount of happiness you get out of life, for you
spend about one half of your waking hours at your work, and if you don't find happiness
in your work, you may never find it anywhere. Keep reminding yourself that getting
interested in your job will take your mind off your worries, and, in the long run, will
probably bring promotion and increased pay. Even if it doesn't do that, it will reduce
fatigue to a minimum and help you enjoy your hours of leisure.