H. V. Kaltenborn—the famous radio news analyst—once toldme how he made a dull job interesting. When he was twentytwoyears old， he worked his way across the Atlantic on a cattleboat， feeding and watering the steers. After making a bicycle tourof England， he arrived in Paris， hungry and broke. Pawning hiscamera for five dollars， he put an ad. in the Paris edition of TheNew York Herald and got a job selling steropticon machines. Ifyou are forty years old， you may remember those old-fashionedstereoscopes that we used to hold up before our eyes to look attwo pictures exactly alike. As we looked， a miracle happened.
The two lenses in the stereoscope transformed the two picturesinto a single scene with the effect of a third dimension. We sawdistance. We got an astounding sense of perspective.
Well， as I was saying， Kaltenborn started out selling thesemachines from door to door in Paris—and he couldn’t speakFrench. But he earned five thousand dollars in commissions thefirst year， and made himself one of the highest-paid salesmen inFrance that year. H.V. Kaltenborn told me that this experience did as much to develop within him the qualities that make forsuccess as did any single year of study at Harvard. Confidence？
He told me himself that after that experience， he felt he couldhave sold The Congressional Record to French housewives.
That experience gave him an intimate understanding ofFrench life that later proved invaluable in interpreting， on theradio， European events.
How did he manage to become an expert salesman when hecouldn’t speak French？ Well， he had his employer write out hissales talk in perfect French， and he memorised it. He would ringa door-bell， a housewife would answer， and Kaltenborn wouldbegin repeating his memorised sales talk with an accent soterrible it was funny. He would show the housewife his pictures，and when she asked a question， he would shrug his shoulders andsay： “An American... an American.” He would then take off his hatand point to a copy of the sales talk in perfect French that he hadpasted in the top of his hat. The housewife would laugh， he wouldlaugh—and show her more pictures. When H. V. Kaltenborn toldme about this， he confessed that the job had been far from easy. Hetold me that there was only one quality that pulled him through：
his determination to make the job interesting. Every morningbefore he started out， he looked into the mirror and gave himselfa 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？ Whynot imagine every time you ring a door-bell that you are an actorbefore the footlights and that there’s an audience out there lookingat you. After all， what you are doing is just as funny as somethingon the stage. So why not put a lot of zest and enthusiasm into it？”
Mr. Kaltenborn told me that these daily pep talks helped himtransform a task that he had once hated and dreaded into anadventure that he liked and made highly profitable.
When I asked Mr. Kaltenborn if he had any advice to give tothe young men of America who are eager to succeed， he said：
“Yes， go to bat with yourself every morning. We talk a lot aboutthe importance of physical exercise to wake us up out of the halfsleepin which so many of us walk around. But we need， evenmore， some spiritual and mental exercises every morning to stirus 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. “Ourlife is what our thoughts make it.” Those words are just as truetoday as they were eighteen centuries ago when Marcus Aureliusfirst wrote them in his book of Meditations： “Our life is what ourthoughts make it.”
By talking to yourself every hour of the day， you can directyourself to think thoughts of courage and happiness， thoughts ofpower and peace. By talking to yourself about the things you haveto be grateful for， you can fill your mind with thoughts that soarand sing.
By thinking the right thoughts， you can make any job lessdistasteful. Your boss wants you to be interested in your job sothat he will make more money. But let’s forget about what the bosswants. Think only of what getting interested in your job will do foryou. Remind yourself that it may double the amount of happinessyou get out of life， for you spend about one half of your wakinghours at your work， and if you don’t find happiness in your work，you may never find it anywhere. Keep reminding yourself thatgetting interested in your job will take your mind off your worries，and， in the long run， will probably bring promotion and increasedpay. Even if it doesn’t do that， it will reduce fatigue to a minimumand help you enjoy your hours of leisure.
