Abraham Lincoln's Letter To Headmaster

A letter written by Abraham Lincoln to the Headmaster of a school in which his son was studying. It contains an advice, which is still relevant today for executives, workers, teachers, parents and students.

A WORD TO TEACHERS

  

"He will have to learn, I know, that all men are not just and are not true. But teach him if you can the wonder of books... but also give him quiet time to ponder the eternal mystery of birds in the sky, bees in the sun and flowers on a green hillside.

In school, teach him it is far more honourable to fall than to cheat...

Teach to have faith in his own ideas, even if everyone tells him he is wrong.

Teach him to be gentle with gentlepeople and tough with the tough.

Try to give my son the strength not to follow the crowd when everyone getting on the bandwagon...

Teach him to listen to all men; but teach him also to filter all he hears on a screen of truth, and take only the good that comes through.

Teach him, if you can how to laugh when he is sad... Teach him there is no shame in tears.

Teach him to scoff at cynics and to be aware of too much sweetness.

Teach him to sell his brawn and brain to highest bidders, but never to put a price on his heart and soul. Teach him to close his ears to a howling mob... and stand and fight if thinks he is right.

Treat him gently, but do not cuddle him, because only the test of fire makes fine steel. Let him have the courage to be impatient. Let him have the patience to be brave. Teach him always to have sublime faith in himself, because then he will have faith in humankind.

This is a big order, but see what you can do. He is such a fine little fellow my son!

- Abraham Lincoln"

WINNING STARTS WHEN YOU START

• To solve a problem or to reach your goal, you don't need to know all the answers in advance.
• But you must have a clear idea of the problem or the goal you want to reach.
• All you have to do is know where you're going.
• The answers will come to you of their own accord.
• Don't procrastinate when faced with a big difficult problem, break the problem into parts, and handle one part at a time.
• If you can get up the courage to begin, you have the courage to succeed.
• It's the job you never start that takes the longest to finish.
• Don't worry about what lies dimly at a distance, but do what lies clearly ahead.
• Your biggest opportunity is where you are right now.
• When you begin you are half done.

LIFE IS WHAT YOU MAKE OF IT

• The power to succeed or fail is yours alone.
• You alone have the responsibility to shape your life.
• Nothing and no one can deny you greatness once you understand this.
• There's no one on earth to stop you but yourself.
• No one on earth can cheat you out of ultimate success but you.
• More powerful than all the success slogans ever written is the realization that everyone has but one boss on earth.
• That boss is you.
• Picture yourself vividly as winning, and that alone will contribute immeasurably to success.

USE YOUR IMAGINATION TO FIND SUCCESS

• Visualize what you want.
• See it, feel it, believe in it.
• Your mind is a mental workshop.
• You can build anything in it.
• Make your mental blue print, and begin to build.
• The beginning is in your imagination.
• First think; then organize your thoughts into plans; then transform your thoughts into reality by taking some positive action.
• Use your imagination to perceive your reality even when it is not fully materialized.
• You must first see it clearly in your mind before you can do it.
• First visualize and then actualise your way to success.
• You really can live your dreams.
• All you have to do is try.

YOU HAVE THE POWER TO CHOOSE

• While your character is formed by your circumstances, your own desires can do much to shape those circumstances.
• The one thing over which you have absolute control is your own thoughts.
• It is this that puts you in a position to control your own destiny.
• Nature is at work around you.
• Character and destiny are her handiwork.
• She gives you love and hate, jealousy and reverence.
• All that is yours is the power to choose which impulse you follow.
• You can at any time decide to alter the course of your life.
• No one can take that away from you.
• You can do what you want to do.
• You can be who you want to be.
• All you have to do is decide on what you want.

SUCCESSFUL PEOPLE KNOW WHAT THEY WANT

• In whatever position you find yourself determine your objective first.
• Until your thoughts are linked to a purpose there can be no accomplishment.
• There is no achievement without goals.
• If you don't know where you are going, how can you expect to get there?
• The world has the habit of making room for the person whose words and actions show that they know where they are going.
• Goals give you a starting place and a destination.
• With them, you will be able to determine what it will cost you to get there.
• In your pursuit of them, you will be going someplace.
• Only you can determine what you want.
• You can decide on your major objectives, targets, and aims.
• Knowing where you are going is all you need to get there.

YOU CAN START BEING SUCCESSFUL ANYTIME

• Starting is the key to all success.
• Beginning something new is what people fear most.
• Nothing will ever be attempted if you wait to overcome all the possible objections.
• The great thing is the start, to see an opportunity for service and to start doing it.
• The reason why so little is done, is generally because so little is attempted.
• You will succeed if you can get up the courage to begin.
• The only true failure lies in the failure to start.
• The courage to begin separates dreamers from achievers.

YOU MUST MAKE YOUR OWN DECISIONS

• If you don't run your own life, someone else will.
• You are in control of your life to the degree that you make the decisions.
• To control the outcome of anything, you must control the action at the point of decision-making.
• If you let others make the decisions for you, you have no control.
• When you control the decisions, you control the actions.
• When you take charge of your life, there is no longer a need to ask permission of others.
• When you ask permission, you give someone veto power over your life.
• Only you are responsible for your life.
• Take control and start making those decisions.
• Successful people know how to make decisions.

TO WIN, YOU MUST EXPECT TO WIN

• Believe in your innermost being that you will achieve what you set out to do, and it will open the way for miracles to happen.
• You'll find that life responds to your outlook.
• What you expect to happen happens.
• Expecting something to happen energizes your goal and gives it momentum.
• Your expectation will open or close the doors to your supply.
• Expect great things, work with honour for them, and they will surely come to you.
• Your supply will always correspond with your expectations.
• There is no medicine like hope, no incentive so great, and no tonic so powerful as the expectation of something tomorrow.
• You can't succeed beyond your wildest expectations unless you begin with some wild expectations.
• The dreams you believe in come to be.

YOU HAVE TO THINK BIG TO BE BIG

• Your aspirations are your possibilities.
• You will become as small as your controlling desire, or as great as your dominant aspiration.
• High achievement always takes place in the framework of high expectation.
• Your mind stretched to a new idea will never go back to its original dimensions.
• Think little goals and expect little achievements.
• Think big goals and win big success.
• The first ingredient of success is to dream a great dream.

EXPECT CHANGE ON YOUR WAY TO SUCCESS

• You must avoid breaking when things don't go your way.
• You are secure to the degree that you can accept change.
• Security comes from being able to bend your insecurities.
• Recognize that change will take place.
• You'll become secure, not by standing still, but by growing, moving, and staying energized.
• Be secure in the knowledge that you can deal with what happens to you.
• Have the courage to bet on your ideas.
• Take some calculated risks, and act on your dreams.
• There is no permanent security on this earth: there is only opportunity.

YOUR SUCCESS DEPENDS ON YOUR ENJOYMENT

• You'll never achieve real success unless you like what you are doing.
• What you do is more important than how much money you make.
• How you feel about it is more important then what you do.
• The more you love what you are doing, the more successful it will be for you.
• Don't set compensation as your goal.
• Find the work you like, and the compensation will follow.
• You don't pay the price of success.
• You enjoy the price for success.

DON'T BELIEVE IN MIRACLES, DEPEND ON THEM

• You don't need an explanation for everything.
• There are such things as miracles, events for which there are no ready explanations.
• In the future, knowledge may explain these events quite easily.
• Any sufficiently advanced technology is quite indistinguishable from magic.
• Seeing, hearing, feeling are all miracles as well as each part of you.
• Seeing is not always believing.
• You know much more than you understand.
• Have the vision to see invisible things.

THERE IS ALWAYS A GOOD SIDE

• Be an optimist and try to see the opportunity in every misfortune, not a pessimist that sees misfortune in every opportunity.
• The optimist sees the doughnut, the pessimist sees the hole.
• You can develop success from every failure.
• Discouragement and failure are two stepping-stones to success.
• No other elements can do so much for you if you are willing to study them and make them work for you.
• View every problem as an opportunity.
• When it is dark enough you can see the stars.

YOUR LIFE IS A SERIES OF EXPERIENCE, SOME GOOD, AND SOME BAD

• Each experience makes you bigger and stronger, even though it is often hard for you to realize it.
• Learn quickly that the setbacks and grief, which you endure, actually help you in your march forward.
• This world was built to develop your character.
• Stay in the midst of activity and life.
• Don't isolate yourself.
• Be among people and things, among troubles, difficulties and obstacles.
• Your character develops itself in the stream of life.
• Life is a classroom in which you are being tested, tried, and passed.
• You're expected to make measurable progress in reasonable amounts of time.
• That's why those third grade chairs are so small.

MAKE YOUR OWN OPPORTUNITIES

• Your destiny is not a matter of chance; it's a matter of choice.
• Success is not something you wait for, but rather something you should pursue.
• Don't wait for extraordinary opportunities to find you.
• Seize common everyday occasions and make them great.
• Opportunities will often come disguised in the form of misfortune, or temporary failure.
• You can start right where you are.
• Distant pastures always look greener.
• At this very moment, you are standing right in the middle of golden opportunity.
• Act on your dreams and they are yours.

YOUR MIND IS YOUR LIMIT

• The only thing that stands between you and what you want from life is simply your will to try it and the faith to believe that it is possible.
• Your mind will amaze your body.
• You must find the energy and determination to keep going.
• Keep telling yourself, you can do it, you can do it.
• When you believe you can, you can.
• In belief there is power.
• It opens your eyes, your opportunities become plain, and your vision becomes reality.
• You will succeed when you believe you can succeed.
• The only limit to your realization of tomorrow will be your doubts of today.
• Everything is possible if you believe it is.

OPEN YOUR OWN DOORS TO OPPORTUNITY

• Every situation, properly perceived, becomes an opportunity.
• Distant fields always look greener, but opportunity lies right in front of you.
• Take advantage of them when they appear.
• Start where you are at this moment.
• Success is all around you.
• It is not in your environment, it is not in luck or chance, or the help of others.
• Success is in you alone.
• You don't need more strength or more ability or greater opportunity.
• What you need is to use what you have.
• Learn to seize good fortune, for it is always around you.
• Success doesn't come to you, you go to it.

GOALS WILL HELP YOU REACH SUCCESS

• Your present circumstances don't determine where you can go; they merely determine your starting place.
• The purpose of goals is to focus your attention on your future.
  Magical things will begin when you set them.
• Your power to accomplish becomes a reality when you have a goal.
• Your mind reaches toward achievement when it has clear objectives.
• Goals give you a starting place and a destination.
• Just focus the full power of all you are on what you have a burning desire to attain, and you will achieve success.
• Act on your dreams and they are yours.

MAKE YOUR DREAMS A REALITY

• You have the power and the opportunity to change your life. You can make anything you want of it.
• It's not difficult, it just takes some effort.
• See things, as you would have them be instead of as they are.
• Your personal plan must focus on what you want, not on what you have.
• Your imagination will show you how to turn possibility into reality.
• Visualize your goals and your subconscious will work toward making those mental pictures come true.
• When you picture yourself vividly as winning that alone will contribute immeasurably to your success.
• Knowing your destination is all you need to get there.

IT IS YOUR FRIENDS THAT MAKE YOUR WORLD

• Your environment is the mental feeding ground from which the food that goes into your mind is extracted.
• Choose your environment with care...one that is positive, one that lifts you up and gives you wings to soar.
• Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambition.
• Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.
• Don't become a victim of your environment.
• Create favourable conditions through your associations.
• Your own inherent force and energy will compel things to turn out the way you desire when you're surrounded by positive people.
• We shape our buildings, thereafter they shape us.

ACCEPT CHANGE WITH A SMILE

• Sooner or later you'll encounter an event in your life, and how you meet it determines your future happiness and success.
• Since the beginning of time, everyone has been called upon to meet such a crisis.
• A closer look will show you that most "crisis situations" are opportunities to either advance or stay where you are.
• Indeed most changes in your life will take place out of either "inspiration" or "desperation".
• Whatever comes your way, give it meaning and transform it into something of value.
• Your personal growth is the process of responding positively to change.
• A precious stone cannot be polished without friction, nor humanity perfected without trials.

COURAGE IS THE CAPACITY TO CONFRONT WHAT CAN BE IMAGINED

• You are bigger than anything that can happen to you.
• The obstacles you face are only mental barriers, which can be broken by adopting a more positive approach.
• Reality is something you rise can above.
• You don't have to be a puppet manipulated by outside powerful forces; you can become the powerful force yourself.
• Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear -- not absence of fear.
• This is where you will win the battle -- in the playhouse of your mind.
• Visualize what you want.
• See it, feel it, believe in it.
• Make it your mental blue print, and begin to build.
• See things, as you would have them be instead of as they are.

IF AT FIRST YOU DON'T SUCCEED, TRY, TRY, AGAIN

• The most important quality essential to your success is perseverance.
• It overcomes almost everything, even nature.
• Effort only fully releases its reward after you refuse to quit.
• Austere perseverance, harsh and continuous rarely fails of its purpose, for its silent power grows irresistibly with time.
• It's your constant and determined effort that breaks down all resistance, and sweeps away all obstacles.
• Success is connected with action.
• It is largely a matter of hanging on after others have let go.
• You can have the success you seek if you never give up trying.
• In the end, the only people who fail are those that do not try.
  Never, never, never give up.

YOU ALWAYS HAVE A CHANCE

• You know what you are today, but not what you may be tomorrow.
• Use your imagination.
• Look at things, as you want them to be.
• You can do what you believe you can do.
• There are powers within you to do things you never dreamed possible.
• You would amaze yourself if you did all the things you are capable of doing.
• You can do anything you wish to do, have anything you wish to have, and be anything you wish to be.
• All you have to do is act on your dreams.

YOU CAN LIVE YOUR DREAMS

• It is because you are different from anyone else that you are special.
• Only you know what is best for you.
• It is by taking chances that you learn how to be brave.
• Don't be afraid to encounter risks.
• Don't let your life slip through your fingers by living in the past or the future.
• By living your life with passion each day you live all the days of your life.
• Remember where you have been and know where you are going.
• Life is not a race but a journey to be savoured each step of the way.
• You can have anything you want from life if you try.
• You owe it to yourself to try.

QUALITY OF LIFE STARTS IN YOUR MIND

• Your real riches are riches in your head and heart.
• Real satisfaction comes from appreciating what you have.
• Wealth without enjoyment is little consolation.
• There are two ways of being happy: you must either diminish your wants or augment your means.
• It is always better to appreciate things you cannot have than to have the things you cannot appreciate.
• It is not what you have, but what you enjoy that constitutes your abundance.
• Your riches will always lie within you, not in your material possessions.

SUCCESSFUL PEOPLE HAVE GOALS

• Your present circumstances don't determine where you can go; they merely determine where you start.
• The purpose of goals is to focus your attention on your future.
  Magic begins when you set them.
• Your power to accomplish becomes a reality when you have them.
• Your mind reaches toward achievement when it has clear objectives.
• Goals give you a starting place and a destination.
• If you focus the full power of all you are on what you have, a burning desire to achieve... you will attain success.
• Act on your dreams and they are yours.

ACTION AND EFFORT MAKE DREAMS A REALITY

• You have the power and the opportunity to change your life, to make of it anything you want.
• It's not difficult...it just takes effort.
• See things, as you would have them be instead of as they are.
• Your personal plan must focus on what you want, not what you have.
• Your imagination will show you how to turn possibility into reality.
• Visualize your goals and your subconscious will work toward making those mental pictures come true.
• Picture yourself vividly as winning, and that alone will contribute immeasurably to your success.
• Knowing where you're going is all you need to get there.

YOU ARE MORE IMPORTANT THAN ANY OF YOUR PROBLEMS

• The process of growing and learning always involves risks.
• Courage comes from the reserves of your mind that are much more powerful than your outside circumstances.
• When you are bigger than your problems, you gain the courage necessary to win.
• Courage is the power to face difficulties.
• Obstacles will always look large or small to you according to whether you are large or small.
• Courage is the capacity to confront what can be imagined. It gives you the ability to rise above reality.
• See things, as you would have them be instead of as they are.
• Overcoming obstacles is the price of achievement...the price of greatness.

YOUR FRIENDS MAKE YOUR WORLD

• Your environment is the mental feeding ground from which the food that goes into your mind is extracted.
• Choose your environment with care, one that is positive, one that lifts you up and gives you wings to soar.
• Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambition.
• Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.
• Don't become a victim of your environment.
• Create favourable conditions through your associations.
• Your own inherent force and energy will compel things to turn out the way you desire when you're surrounded by positive people.
• We shape our buildings, thereafter they shape us.