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- Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
- Kategorie: Ratgeber
- Sprache: Englisch
In "Be Good to Yourself," Orison Swett Marden presents a compelling exploration of personal development through a lens of self-empowerment and positivity. Utilizing a blend of motivational prose and practical advice, Marden draws upon philosophical insights and real-life anecdotes to illustrate the importance of self-care and resilience. The literary style is both accessible and inspirational, encouraging readers to cultivate a mindset focused on personal growth and self-acceptance, countering the societal pressures that often lead to self-doubt. Published in the early 20th century, this work is situated within a broader movement of self-improvement literature that sought to uplift individuals during a time of profound social change. Marden, a prominent figure in the American self-help movement, was profoundly influenced by his own challenging experiences, including a difficult childhood and a career marked by entrepreneurial ventures and personal failures. His conviction that one's attitude and outlook can dramatically alter one's life circumstances fueled his writings, making him a pioneer of motivational literature. Marden's optimistic vision encourages readers to embrace their unique potential and take charge of their destinies. I highly recommend "Be Good to Yourself" to anyone seeking a source of inspiration to enhance their personal journey. Marden's engaging prose and wisdom serve not only as a guide but as a reminder that nurturing oneself is essential for achieving lasting happiness and success. In this enriched edition, we have carefully created added value for your reading experience: - A succinct Introduction situates the work's timeless appeal and themes. - The Synopsis outlines the central plot, highlighting key developments without spoiling critical twists. - A detailed Historical Context immerses you in the era's events and influences that shaped the writing. - A thorough Analysis dissects symbols, motifs, and character arcs to unearth underlying meanings. - Reflection questions prompt you to engage personally with the work's messages, connecting them to modern life. - Hand‐picked Memorable Quotes shine a spotlight on moments of literary brilliance. - Interactive footnotes clarify unusual references, historical allusions, and archaic phrases for an effortless, more informed read.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023
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BE GOOD TO YOURSELF
Table of Contents
Introduction
Self-respect, practiced daily, becomes the quiet engine that powers character, achievement, and lasting happiness. In Be Good to Yourself, Orison Swett Marden directs attention inward, urging readers to treat themselves with the same fairness and encouragement they would offer a valued friend. Rather than proposing shortcuts, he emphasizes inner conditions—attitude, self-trust, and disciplined kindness—that shape outward results. The book’s promise is not indulgence but sturdier foundations for effort and purpose. Its counsel is framed to be practical and uplifting, suggesting that the way we speak to ourselves and steward our energies profoundly influences the trajectory of our lives.
This is a work of self-help and personal development, written by Orison Swett Marden, an American inspirational author known for advancing the early self-improvement movement and for founding Success magazine. Be Good to Yourself belongs to the tradition of early twentieth-century success literature, a period in which writers explored character, optimism, and personal initiative as keys to progress. While not tied to a single narrative setting, it moves within the cultural optimism of its time, blending moral earnestness with pragmatic advice. Readers encounter a voice shaped by that era’s confidence in individual agency, tempered with humane attention to well-being.
The premise is straightforward: genuine progress begins with a constructive relationship to oneself. Marden frames self-kindness as a disciplined habit that strengthens resolve, clarifies purpose, and sustains effort when challenges arise. The reading experience is steady and encouraging, marked by clear statements, illustrative observations, and a tone that seeks to fortify rather than flatter. Instead of offering rigid formulas, the book stresses principles readers can interpret for their own circumstances. The mood is earnestly optimistic; the style is direct and accessible, more like a mentorship conversation than a sermon, aiming to cultivate courage, steadiness, and a practical sense of inner stewardship.
Key themes include self-respect, self-talk, and the productive use of one’s mental and emotional resources. Marden links inner attitude to outer action, arguing that encouragement, moderation, and a well-ordered life enable sustained achievement. He underscores the importance of guarding against habits of discouragement and needless self-criticism, presenting self-care as an ally of persistence rather than a retreat from effort. The book also considers how hope, purpose, and character influence one another. These themes reflect the broader current of early self-help writing while focusing on the personal, daily choices that either reinforce or undermine a person’s ability to pursue meaningful goals.
For contemporary readers, the book’s relevance lies in its counterbalance to burnout and the relentless self-judgment common in high-pressure environments. It encourages an approach to ambition that includes boundaries, recovery, and a fair inner dialogue. Rather than prescribing a one-size-fits-all method, Marden’s guidance spotlights universal principles—consistency, patience, and respect for one’s limits—that can support varied paths and professions. The emphasis on thoughtful self-management anticipates modern conversations about mental hygiene and resilience, offering a humane reminder: sustainable progress depends not only on effort and skill, but also on how we treat ourselves while striving.
Stylistically, Marden writes with moral clarity and a calm, persuasive cadence. The counsel is practical without being technical, and idealistic without losing touch with everyday realities. Readers will notice the hallmarks of early success literature—confidence in personal agency, attention to habits, and a belief in the formative power of thought—expressed in a tone that remains warm rather than severe. The result is a guide that invites reflection and steady application. Its arguments are meant to be lived with over time, forming part of the reader’s inner conversation about work, relationships, and the kind of person one is becoming.
Be Good to Yourself may appeal to students, professionals, and lifelong learners who want ambition grounded in well-being. It offers a framework for interpreting effort through the lens of self-respect, proposing that kindness to oneself is not a reward after success but a condition that makes success possible. Readers looking for encouragement that does not excuse complacency—and discipline that does not invite self-reproach—will find a balanced approach. In connecting character to care of the self, Marden provides a timeless reminder: sustaining one’s best work begins with sustaining the person who must do it.
Synopsis
Be Good to Yourself introduces theme that being good to oneself is duty, not selfishness; the purpose is to conserve capacities and produce happiness and usefulness. Marden identifies inner attitude as decisive. He describes how many people are harsh masters to themselves, living under strain, needless self-denial, and punitive self-talk. He sets aim: to replace self-hurt with constructive regard. The opening chapters connect thought and wellbeing: one's mental climate colors health, efficiency, and relationships. The author signals a practical, prescriptive approach, offering counsel on habits, rest, work, associations, and ideals. He frames the book as a guide for rebuilding the self's conditions for growth.
Focuses on self-respect and self-approval, not vanity but recognition of worth. He argues that self-depreciation cripples initiative; constant fault-finding breeds timidity and failure. Marden recommends cultivating self-trust through honest appraisal, encouraging words, and a high yet humane standard. He proposes dismissing belittling labels and refraining from morbid introspection. The text counsels standing erect mentally, carrying a consciousness of dignity, and training the inner voice to cheer rather than accuse. Confidence is portrayed as a moral asset and a working capital. The chapter suggests practical routines—beginning the day with affirming purpose and closing it with fair judgment—to establish a steadier self-regard.
The development turns to the management of thought and mood. Marden contends that worry, fear, and discouragement waste energy and undermine sound judgment. He urges the reader to cultivate a habit of cheerfulness and a spirit of expectancy, using deliberate attention and suggestion to establish brighter mental currents. The book advises guarding the tongue and inner monologue, since words intensify states of mind, and recommends a selective "mental diet" of reading and companionship to feed hope rather than anxiety. Imagination is treated as a tool to picture wholesome outcomes rather than disasters. The emphasis is on training the thought-atmosphere in which actions inevitably take shape.
The narrative moves from mind to bodily conditions that support happiness and efficiency. Marden presents health, rest, and recreation as obligations to oneself and others. He stresses sufficient sleep, regular exercise, fresh air, and simple, moderate habits. The text warns against overstrain, incessant hurry, and stimulants used to whip flagging powers, describing such practices as costly to nerve force. Recreation is framed not as idleness but as repair. The author suggests periodic breaks, contact with nature, and balanced meals as practical safeguards. Physical care is linked to mental poise; a rested body makes self-control easier, and disciplined rest undergirds sustained productivity.
Another set of chapters examines surroundings and associations. The book claims that environment exerts a steady formative pressure, urging readers to make homes, workplaces, and daily routes as orderly, clean, and cheerful as circumstances allow. Beauty, music, and flowers are recommended where possible as quiet tonics. Companions are treated as influence multipliers: cheerful, upright friends stimulate energy, while cynicism and gossip depress it. Marden encourages tactful avoidance of demoralizing talk and proposes using conversation for encouragement. He also advises simplifying possessions and tasks to reduce friction. By curating places and people, one can create a background that supports courage and consistent effort.
The argument then addresses work, ambition, and the pursuit of success. Marden recommends choosing, so far as possible, congenial employment and bringing enthusiasm to duties at hand. He discourages grinding methods that sacrifice health and joy to speed or gain, asserting that serenity increases efficiency. The book outlines basic time habits—regular hours, periodic pauses, orderly planning—and urges attention to quality over frantic quantity. In setbacks, it counsels prompt rallying, fair self-criticism without abuse, and steady persistence. Failure is described as information to be used, not a verdict against character. The theme is productive ambition governed by self-kindness and clear, practicable aims.
Extending the theme, Marden links being good to oneself with the way one treats others. He holds that ill-will, envy, and resentment waste vitality, while kindness and service reinforce self-respect and happiness. The text promotes courtesy, generosity, and a habitual smile as forms of social sunshine that ease one's own burdens as well as others'. It discourages harsh judgments and dwelling on grievances, recommending forgiveness as a hygienic practice. The author also notes the practical returns of goodwill in trust, cooperation, and opportunity. Personal welfare and public spirit are presented as mutually sustaining, not competing motives, within the economy of daily life.
The later chapters consider ideals and the inward sources of resilience. Marden proposes that faith in a benevolent order, however defined by the reader, steadies the mind and keeps motives clean. He encourages prayer or reflective silence, gratitude for ordinary blessings, and a clear personal ideal as a compass through change. The book argues that holding to noble images of character helps preserve youthfulness of spirit, even under pressure. It suggests aligning routine acts with larger purposes to prevent drift and cynicism. Hope, he concludes, is not passive; it is an energizing outlook that shapes conduct and sustains endurance.
In conclusion, Be Good to Yourself gathers its counsel into a practical program of small, repeatable acts. It recommends starting where one is—beginning the day with a constructive intention, keeping appointments with rest and exercise, speaking well to oneself, choosing uplifting contacts, taking fresh air, and doing some daily kindness. The closing emphasis is on steadiness rather than spurts, on simplification, and on refusing self-hurt in thought or habit. Marden's central message is that considerate treatment of one's own powers is not indulgence but the groundwork of happiness, usefulness, and achievement, and that anyone can begin the reform by conscious, humane self-management.
Historical Context
Be Good to Yourself is anchored in the social realities of the United States from the late Gilded Age through the Progressive Era and into the early 1920s, when urban, industrial life refashioned daily routines. Its implied setting is not a fictional locale but the modern city: offices in New York and Boston, factory districts in Chicago and Pittsburgh, and streetcar suburbs linked by electrified transit. By 1904 New York had a subway; by the 1910s telephones, typewriters, and time clocks synchronized labor. Orison Swett Marden writes to readers facing white-collar deadlines and shop-floor regimentation, mapping a program of personal stewardship to meet the psychological strains of modern productivity.
The industrial revolution in the United States accelerated between 1870 and 1913, when the country emerged as the world’s leading manufacturer. Corporate titans such as Andrew Carnegie (steel) in Pittsburgh and John D. Rockefeller (Standard Oil, organized in 1870; dissolved by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1911) symbolized an era of consolidation and scale. The 1920 census marked a turning point: more Americans lived in urban areas than rural ones. The accompanying pressures—long hours, pace-setting machinery, and status competition—frame Marden’s insistence that character, health, and deliberate self-care are prerequisites to sustainable achievement, not luxuries to be deferred until after success arrives.
The efficiency movement reshaped work culture in the 1900s–1910s. Frederick Winslow Taylor’s The Principles of Scientific Management (1911) proposed time-and-motion analysis to raise output; Frank and Lillian Gilbreth refined motion studies on shop floors and in offices. Assembly-line methods reached a landmark at Ford’s Highland Park plant in 1913; the time clock (commercialized by Willard Bundy in 1888) and adding machines synchronized white-collar output. Reformers tied efficiency to public interest: in the 1910 Eastern Rate Case, attorney Louis D. Brandeis argued railroads could meet demand by adopting scientific management rather than raising rates. Yet the costs of speed-ups—fatigue, stress, accidents—drew counterpressures. Wisconsin enacted a pioneering workmen’s compensation law in 1911; a broader public health infrastructure coalesced as the U.S. Public Health Service took its modern name in 1912. Parallel to industrial efficiency, the mental hygiene movement emerged. Clifford W. Beers’s A Mind That Found Itself (1908) catalyzed the National Committee for Mental Hygiene (1909), promoted by physicians such as Adolf Meyer and supported by psychologists like William James. Employers experimented with welfare departments and rest periods; YMCA programs and the playground movement framed recreation as preventive health. This matrix of efficiency and mental hygiene is the clearest historical backdrop to Be Good to Yourself. Marden reframes productivity as the fruit of sleep, cheerfulness, purpose, and restraint, warning that nervous exhaustion and worry are not badges of ambition but sources of waste. His counsel aligns with Progressive managerial ideals—discipline, order, measurable improvement—yet resists their dehumanizing extremes by insisting that self-protection, not relentless acceleration, is the surest route to durable excellence.
Repeated financial crises shaped the book’s ethic of resilience. The Panic of 1893, sparked by railroad failures and a stock collapse, produced nationwide unemployment estimated above 15 percent by 1894 and prompted Coxey’s Army to march on Washington. The Panic of 1907, triggered by speculation in United Copper and a run on New York’s Knickerbocker Trust (October 1907), was stabilized only after J. P. Morgan organized private rescues—an episode that helped spur the Federal Reserve Act of 1913. Marden’s practical optimism—cultivating inner reserves, thrift, and initiative—mirrors a society learning to withstand market volatility with both institutional reforms and personal steadiness.
Labor conflict and the struggle over the workday formed another decisive context. The Haymarket affair in Chicago (1886) and the Pullman Strike (1894) signaled the high stakes of industrial relations. Theodore Roosevelt’s intervention in the 1902 anthracite coal strike legitimized federal mediation. The Adamson Act (1916) established the eight-hour day for interstate railroad workers, and Ford’s 1914 announcement of a five-dollar daily wage with an eight-hour shift in Michigan became emblematic of a new bargain. Be Good to Yourself echoes these shifts by arguing that overwork diminishes judgment and creativity; its call for rest, recreation, and moderation harmonizes with the emerging legal and managerial recognition of humane hours.
World War I (1914–1918) and the 1918–1919 influenza pandemic intensified concerns about stamina, morale, and loss. The United States entered the war in April 1917; 116,000 Americans died, and demobilization brought adjustment challenges, including what contemporaries called “shell shock.” The influenza pandemic killed an estimated 50 million globally and about 675,000 in the United States, prompting closures of schools and workplaces. In this climate, Marden’s emphasis on protecting vitality, cultivating hope, and rebuilding habits of normalcy reads as a postwar tonic. His guidance on emotional composure and physical care translates public traumas into individual practices for recovery and continuity.
Immigration and mass education expanded the audience for self-improvement. Ellis Island processed millions between 1892 and 1924, with a peak year in 1907 exceeding one million admissions. Settlement houses, notably Hull House in Chicago (founded 1889 by Jane Addams), offered classes and social services; the Chautauqua movement popularized adult education on traveling circuits. Andrew Carnegie funded 1,689 public libraries in the United States (part of more than 2,500 worldwide, 1883–1929), creating reading rooms where Marden’s volumes found new readers. Be Good to Yourself channels an Americanization ethos centered on discipline and aspiration, yet it softens nativist edges by affirming universal dignity and the attainable habits of health and self-respect.
As social critique, the book challenges a culture that prized output over wellbeing and confused exhaustion with virtue. It rebukes the era’s casual Social Darwinism—apparent in boardrooms and shop floors alike—by asserting that humane limits, not cutthroat competition, produce the most reliable success. Its stress on rest, sobriety, and cheerfulness implicitly condemns exploitative schedules, status anxiety, and conspicuous consumption that widened class divides. Addressing clerks, managers, and strivers across the urban spectrum, Marden translates Progressive concerns about public health and fair work into an ethics of personal governance, suggesting that caring for the self is a civic act that counters the harshest inequities of industrial modernity.
BE GOOD TO YOURSELF
Chapter I. Be Good To Yourself
It is a rare thing to find a person who is really masterful in his personality, masterful in what he undertakes; who approaches his task with the assurance of a conqueror; who is able to grapple vigorously with his life problems; who always keeps himself in condition to do his best, biggest thing easily, without strain; who seizes with the grip of a master the precious opportunities which come to him.
In order to keep himself at the top of his condition, to obtain complete mastery of all his powers and possibilities, a man must be good to himself mentally, he must think well of himself.
Some one has said that the man who depreciates himself blasphemes God, who created him in His own image and pronounced him perfect. Very few people think well enough of themselves, have half enough esteem for their divine origin or respect for their ability, their character, or the sublimity of their possibilities; hence the weakness and ineffectiveness of their careers.
People who persist in seeing the weak, the diseased, the erring side of themselves; who believe they have inherited a taint from their ancestors; who think they do not amount to much and never will; who are always exaggerating their defects; who see only the small side of themselves, never grow into that bigness of manhood and grandeur of womanhood which God intended for them. They, hold in their minds this little, mean, contemptible, dried-up image of themselves until the dwarfed picture becomes a reality. Their appearance, their lives, outpicture their poor opinion of themselves, express their denial of the grandeur and sublimity of their possibilities. They actually think themselves into littleness, meanness, weakness.
“As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.[1][1q]” His opinion of himself will be reproduced by the life processes within him and outpictured in his body. If you would make the most of yourself, never picture yourself as anything different from what yon would actually be, the man or woman you long to become. Whenever you think of yourself, form a mental image of a perfect, healthy, beautiful, noble being, not lacking in anything, but possessing every desirable quality. Positively refuse to see anything about yourself which would detract from your personality. Insist upon seeing only the truth of your being, the man or woman God had in mind when he made you, not the distorted thing, the burlesque man or woman, which your ignorance and unfortunate environment, wrong thinking and vicious living have produced. The estimate you have of yourself, the image of yourself which you carry in your mind, will mean infinitely more to you than other people may think of you.
If we would make the most of our lives, if we would be and do all that it is possible for us to be and to do, we must not only think well of ourselves, but we must also be just to ourselves physically, be good to our bodies. In order to be the highest, the most efficient type of man or woman, it is just as necessary to cultivate the body, to develop its greatest possible strength and beauty, as it is to cultivate the mind, to raise it to its highest power.
There are plenty of people who are good to others, but are not good to themselves. They do not take care of their own health, their own bodies, do not conserve their own energies, husband their own resources. They are slaves to others, tyrants to themselves.
Faithfulness to others is a most desirable trait, yet faithfulness to yourself is just as much of a requisite. It is as great a sin not to be good to yourself as not to be good to others. It is every one’s sacred duty to keep himself up to the. highest possible standard, physically and mentally, otherwise he can not deliver his divine message, in its entirety, to the world. It is every one's sacred duty to keep himself in a condition to do the biggest thing possible to him. It is a positive sin to keep oneself in a depleted, rundown, exhausted state, so that he can not answer his life call or any big demand that an emergency may make upon him.
There are many people of a high order of ability who do very ordinary work in life, whose careers are most disappointing, simply because they do not keep themselves in a physical and mental condition to do their best.
In every place of business we find employees who are only about half awake, half alive; their bodies are full of dead cells, poisoned cells, because of vicious living, vicious thinking, vicious habits. Is it any wonder that they get so little out of life when they; put so little into it?
I know men in middle life who are just where they were when they left school or college. They have not advanced a particle; some have even retrograded, and they can not understand why they do not get on, why they are not more successful. But every one who knows them sees the great handicaps of indifference to their health, neglect of their physical needs, dissipation, irregular living, slipshod, slovenly habits, all sorts of things which are keeping them down, handicaps which even intellectual giants could not drag along with them and make any kind of progress.
Everywhere we see young men and women crippled in their careers, plodding along in mediocrity, capable of great things, but doing little things, because they have not vitality enough to push their way and overcome the obstacles in their path. They have not been good to their physical selves.
An author’s book is wishy-washy, does not get hold of the reader because he had no vigor, no surplus vitality, to put into it. The book does not arouse because the author was not aroused when he wrote it. It is lifeless because of the writer’s low state of vitality.
The clergyman does not get hold of his people because he lacks stamina, force and physical vitality. He is a weakling mentally because he is a weakling physically. The teacher does not arouse or inspire his pupil because he lacks life and enthusiasm himself. His brain and nerves are fagged, his energy exhausted, burned out, his strength depleted, because he has not been good to himself.
Everywhere we see these devitalized people, without spontaneity, buoyancy, or enthusiasm in their endeavor. They have no joy in their work. It is merely enforced drudgery, a dreary, monotonous routine.
The great problem in manufacturing is to get the largest possible results with the least possible expenditure, the least wear and tear of machinery. Men study the economy in their business of getting the maximum return with the minimum expenditure, and yet many of these men who are so shrewd and level-headed in their business pay very little attention to the economy of their personal power expenditure.
Most of us are at war with ourselves, are our own worst enemies. We expect a great deal of ourselves, yet we do not put ourselves in a condition to achieve great things. We are either too indulgent to our bodies, or we are not indulgent enough. We pamper them, or we neglect them, and it would be hard to tell which mode of treatment produces the worst results. Few people treat their bodies with the same wise care and consideration that they bestow upon a valuable piece of machinery or property of any kind from which they expect large returns.
Take the treatment of the digestive apparatus, for instance, which really supplies the motor power for the whole body, and we will find that most of us do not give it half a .chance to do its work properly. The energy of the digestive organs of many people is exhausted in trying to take care of superfluous food for which there is absolutely no demand in the system. So much energy is used up trying to assimilate surplus, unnecessary food, improper food, that there is none left to assimilate and digest that which is actually needed.
Men are constantly violating the laws of health, eating all sorts of incompatible, indigestible foods, often when the stomach is exhausted and unable to take care of simple food. They fill it with a great variety of rich, indigestible stuffs, retard the digestive processes with harmful drinks, then wonder why they are unfit for work, and resort to all sorts of stimulants and drugs to overcome the bad effects of their greediness and foolishness.
Many go to the other extreme and do not take enough food or get enough variety in what they do eat, so that some of their tissues are in a chronic condition of semi-starvation.
The result is that while there is a great overplus of certain elements in some parts of the system, there is a famine of different kinds of elements in other parts of the system. This inequality, disproportion, tends to unbalance and produce a lack of symmetry in the body, and induces abnormal appetites that often lead to drinking or other dissipation. Many people resort to dangerous drugs in their effort to satisfy the craving of the starved cells in the various tissues when what they really need is nourishing food.
There are only twelve different kinds of tissues in the body and their needs are very simple. For instance, almost every demand in the entire system can be satisfied by milk and eggs, though, of course, a more varied diet is desirable, and should always be adjusted to suit one’s vocation and activities. Yet, notwithstanding the simple demands of nature, how complicated our living has become!
If we would only study the needs of our bodies as we study the needs of the plants in our gardens, and give them the proper amount and variety of food, with plenty of water, fresh air, and sunshine, we would not be troubled with disordered stomachs, indigestion, biliousness, headache, or any other kind of pain or ache.
