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- Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
- Kategorie: Ratgeber
- Sprache: Englisch
In "Be Good To Yourself (Unabridged)," Orison Swett Marden offers a compelling examination of self-care as a cornerstone for personal development and success. Marden's prose is both accessible and inspirational, blending personal anecdotes with practical advice grounded in the principles of positive psychology and self-help literature. Emerging during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a period marked by the rise of the American self-help movement, this work reflects the zeitgeist of an era prioritizing individual agency and personal responsibility, urging readers to cultivate a healthy relationship with themselves as a precursor to achieving their aspirations. Marden, a pioneer in the self-improvement arena, drew inspiration from his own struggles over adversity after an impoverished childhood, which fueled his passion for uplifting others through motivational writing. Influenced by the Transcendentalist ideals of self-reliance and positive mental attitude, he established a legacy of empowerment that seeks to elevate the human spirit. His background in journalism and authorial pursuits allowed him to refine ideas that resonate deeply with readers seeking transformation. This book is a valuable resource for those on a journey of self-discovery and personal growth. It serves not only as an uplifting guide but also as a profound reminder of the importance of self-kindness in an often-challenging world. Readers looking to enhance their lives and harness their potential will find Marden's insights both timeless and transformative. 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: 2024
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Be Good To Yourself (Unabridged)
Table of Contents
Introduction
Be Good To Yourself centers on the idea that lasting achievement and integrity grow from the steady practice of treating oneself with disciplined kindness and respect.
This work is a classic of inspirational self-help by Orison Swett Marden, an American author active around the turn of the twentieth century. First appearing in the early decades of that century, it reflects the era’s confidence in personal improvement and moral uplift. The “Unabridged” designation indicates a complete presentation of the original text. Rather than unfolding in a fictional setting, the book addresses everyday life—work, home, and the inner world of habit and intention—guiding readers toward a humane, sustainable vision of success grounded in character.
Marden offers a concise, exhortative, and encouraging voice that blends practical counsel with a warm, reflective tone. The experience is not narrative-driven but thematic, developing a coherent argument for why self-consideration is the basis of sound judgment, productivity, and steadiness under pressure. The style is direct and accessible, favoring clear statements of principle and illustrative reasoning. Readers can expect an uplifting mood that emphasizes possibility without ignoring effort, and a rhythmic cadence that invites contemplation. The overall effect is both calming and energizing, aiming to equip readers with attitudes they can immediately test in daily routines.
At its heart, the book explores self-respect, self-mastery, and the intelligent cultivation of habits that strengthen judgment, purpose, and resilience. It makes a sustained case that caring for one’s health, time, and inner resources is not indulgence but responsibility. The emphasis on intentional living, balanced ambition, and constructive thought reflects a belief that inner discipline shapes outward outcomes. While the language is shaped by its period, the themes are enduring: know your limits, nurture your strengths, keep your standards high, and do not mistake self-neglect for virtue. The argument is ethical as much as practical, uniting aspiration with conscience.
Contemporary readers may find its relevance in an age of overcommitment and constant distraction. The call to treat oneself well anticipates current conversations about burnout, focus, and sustainable productivity. Marden’s perspective invites readers to ask foundational questions: What kind of success is worth pursuing? How do we create conditions in which steadiness and creativity can thrive? The book’s insistence on inner clarity and humane boundaries offers a counterpoint to quick fixes. Rather than emphasizing novelty, it returns to first principles, suggesting that progress is anchored in consistent, respectful stewardship of one’s energy, attention, and ideals.
Structurally, the book proceeds through focused reflections that build a layered philosophy of personal conduct. Each segment deepens a central proposition: that being good to oneself safeguards the capacity to be good for others and to one’s work. The counsel is practical but not mechanical; it encourages readers to test ideas against experience, cultivate self-knowledge, and correct course without self-reproach. The result is a framework that prizes steadiness over spectacle, urging readers to align ambition with rest, diligence with moderation, and outward achievement with inward poise.
Be Good To Yourself (Unabridged) offers a faithful encounter with Marden’s complete argument, preserving its period voice while speaking to perennial concerns. Readers interested in classic self-help, ethical reflection, or personal development grounded in character will find guidance that is firm yet humane. Without promising shortcuts, it provides a clear lens through which to assess daily choices and long-term aims. Approached with patience, it becomes a companionable manual for building durable habits of mind and heart, reminding us that self-respect is the starting point of effectiveness, generosity, and a life lived with purpose.
Synopsis
Be Good To Yourself (Unabridged) presents Orison Swett Marden's central claim that genuine success begins with considerate self-treatment. He frames self-kindness not as indulgence but as a moral duty that safeguards health, buoyancy, and efficiency. Early chapters argue that many people starve the mind of encouragement, deny themselves rightful recreation, and thus impair usefulness to others. Marden positions the book as practical counsel for restoring cheer, balance, and faith in daily living. He links personal happiness with increased productivity and service, contending that a brighter inner life radiates outward. The tone is exhortative yet pragmatic, offering examples, maxims, and brief case sketches.
He distinguishes self-care from selfishness, urging readers to become their own best friend by cultivating self-respect, dignified self-approval, and a kindly inner voice. The author maintains that harsh self-criticism wastes power, while fair appraisal liberates it. He advises guarding the body with sufficient rest and good habits, and feeding the mind with uplifting ideas rather than fear-laden thoughts. Marden stresses beginning each day with expectancy and confidence. Throughout, he emphasizes that permission to be happy is not a luxury but equipment for achievement. Neglecting this permission, he says, leads to chronic discouragement that undermines judgment, courage, and initiative.
Building on this premise, the book develops the power of thought and imagination. Marden contends that habitual thinking molds character and circumstance, and that cheerful mental pictures draw out latent ability. He recommends replacing worry-saturated inner talk with constructive affirmations, gratitude, and a forward look. Practical measures include choosing reading and companionships that nourish hope, practicing prompt decision, and seizing small opportunities instead of postponing living to a future milestone. Self-approval, he notes, steadies the will and gives poise in emergencies. The message is to start where you stand, work with what you have, and let confidence accumulate through action.
A major section treats worry, anxiety, and fear as the chief thieves of power. Marden describes their physical and moral toll, then proposes remedies rooted in perspective and activity. He counsels refusing to cross bridges before reaching them, meeting duties one at a time, and turning thought from morbid brooding to purposeful tasks. The narrative encourages cultivating serenity through trust, orderly plans, and healthful routines. He advises adequate sleep and periodic detachment from cares, arguing that relaxation restores judgment. By trimming trifles to size and refusing panic, the individual conserves energy for creative work and wholesome enjoyment.
The author next examines mood mastery and the art of cheerfulness. He portrays a genial manner, a smile, and considerate speech as tangible assets in business and friendship. The book urges readers to keep surroundings clean, beautiful, and harmonious, maintaining that environment reflexively tones the mind. Marden praises the fortifying influence of uplifting books, music, and nature, and he recommends choosing companions who stimulate courage instead of cynicism. He shows how courtesies, small generosities, and prompt appreciation lighten burdens at home and office. The recurring theme is that good feeling can be cultivated deliberately and spreads by contagion.
Recreation and leisure receive extended attention. Marden insists that vacations, outdoor exercise, and play are investments in efficiency rather than lapses from duty. He argues for changes of scene, fresh air, and joyous hobbies as correctives to monotony and strain. Even brief daily recesses, he notes, clear the brain and quicken imagination. The book defends setting aside money for health and rest, framing such expenditures as economy in the long run. Laughter is praised as a tonic, and the author encourages finding innocent amusements that refresh without dissipation, thereby enabling steadier effort and finer workmanship afterward.
Turning to work, the book counsels choosing tasks that engage one's aptitudes and ideals whenever possible, and putting heart into whatever lies at hand. Marden emphasizes concentration, promptness, and thoroughness, while warning against needless hurry and clock-slavery that exhausts without improving results. High aims are urged, but with stepwise execution and patient accumulation of power. The text suggests arranging the day to secure uninterrupted periods for important work, guarding against distractions, and maintaining self-control under pressure. The guiding thought is that joy in labor multiplies efficiency and that overstrain, not effort itself, is the common source of breakdown.
Marden links prosperity to character and service. He presents honesty, reliability, courtesy, and a spirit of helpfulness as the true magnets of opportunity. The book affirms that wealth is safest and sweetest when earned through usefulness and enlivened by generosity. Gratitude is described as a creative force that opens doors and keeps one's outlook buoyant. Encouraging words, fair dealing, and cheerful demeanor are shown to strengthen alliances and bring repeat chances. Rather than relying on clever shortcuts, Marden urges developing a reputation for quality and goodwill, which, he argues, draws both material reward and the deeper satisfaction of esteem.
The closing chapters gather these counsels into a simple program: befriend yourself, think and speak constructively, protect health, enjoy wholesome pleasures, and carry a bright spirit into work and relationships. Marden's overarching message is that being good to yourself equips you to be reliably good to others. By mastering thought, relaxing worry, and giving yourself permission to be happy now, you unlock poise, initiative, and endurance. The book ends with a call to begin immediately, using present resources and moments. Measured by increased usefulness, courage, and joy, self-kindness becomes not sentiment, but the practical art of living.
Historical Context
Be Good to Yourself was composed for readers living in the United States during the transition from the Gilded Age to the Progressive Era, roughly the 1890s through the first decades of the twentieth century. Orison Swett Marden, born in 1850 in rural New Hampshire, wrote from the vantage point of a rapidly urbanizing and industrializing society centered in cities such as Boston, New York, and Chicago. He founded Success Magazine in 1897, a New York–based periodical that reflected the aspirations of a national middle class. The book addresses contemporary conditions: long working hours, new corporate structures, and emerging ideas about health, leisure, and the disciplined self.
The Second Industrial Revolution (circa 1870–1914) transformed production through railways, steel, oil, and electrification. Carnegie Steel’s consolidation into U.S. Steel in 1901 and the expansion of Standard Oil (established 1870) created unprecedented corporate scale, while the telephone (patented 1876) and electric power grids reorganized work and time. Antitrust action culminated in the 1911 Supreme Court breakup of Standard Oil. Marden’s book portrays character, self-mastery, and prudent rest as tools to navigate this volatile economy. He translates industrial principles of regularity and system into personal routines, urging readers to preserve health and morale amid the speed and pressure of mechanized workplaces.
Progressive Era reforms sought to correct the excesses of industrial capitalism between approximately 1901 and 1917. Under Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft, federal action addressed regulation (Hepburn Act, 1906), consumer safety (Pure Food and Drug Act and Meat Inspection Act, 1906), and conservation. The Efficiency Movement, crystallized by Frederick Winslow Taylor’s Principles of Scientific Management (1911), promoted measurement and output. Marden’s counsel echoes this reform spirit yet cautions that human beings are not machines. Be Good to Yourself translates the period’s language of efficiency into a doctrine of conserving nervous energy, sleep, and recreation, advocating humane productivity aligned with Progressive social objectives.
Mass immigration and labor conflict reshaped American cities and factories from the 1880s to the 1910s. Ellis Island opened in 1892; by 1920, more than 23 million immigrants had entered the United States since 1880. Labor flashpoints included the Haymarket affair (Chicago, 1886), Pullman Strike (1894), and the founding of the IWW (1905). Tragedies like the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire (New York, 1911), which killed 146 workers, spurred safety laws and, in Wisconsin, the first statewide workers compensation law (1911). Marden’s book addresses these tensions indirectly by urging employers and employees alike to value rest, sobriety, and self-education as elements of safety, dignity, and advancement.
The early twentieth century witnessed a vast apparatus of moral uplift, education, and public health that shaped Marden’s program. Andrew Carnegie’s 1889 essay Gospel of Wealth justified philanthropy that built capabilities; between 1883 and 1929 he funded 2,509 libraries worldwide, approximately 1,679 of them in the United States, anchoring self-improvement in towns and cities. The Chautauqua movement, begun at Lake Chautauqua, New York, in 1874, brought summer lectures, music, and adult education across the nation, while the YMCA spread gymnasiums and classes after its American founding in Boston in 1851. Settlement houses, notably Jane Addams’s Hull House in Chicago (founded 1889), connected education and social services to immigrant neighborhoods. Public high school enrollment surged in the so-called high school movement between the 1890s and 1920, and land-grant colleges established by the Morrill Acts of 1862 and 1890 expanded technical training. Simultaneously, physicians and reformers confronted neurasthenia (a term popularized by George M. Beard in 1869), overwork, and urban nervousness; S. Weir Mitchell’s rest cure underscored the perceived need for recuperation. Federal capacity grew with the 1912 renaming of the U.S. Public Health and Marine-Hospital Service as the U.S. Public Health Service. Economic shocks, including the Panic of 1893 and the Panic of 1907 (triggered by the collapse of Knickerbocker Trust in New York), exposed the fragility of fortunes and led toward the Federal Reserve Act of 1913. Be Good to Yourself synthesizes these currents: it treats libraries and lectures as ladders, embraces exercise and fresh air as antidotes to nervous depletion, and frames morale as capital to be conserved during downturns. In profiles he offered elsewhere of contemporaries such as Thomas Edison and Andrew Carnegie, Marden modeled a disciplined, optimistic ethos that this book turns inward toward health, habit, and self-respect.
A distinct recreation and conservation movement reinforced the book’s call for rest and nature. Yellowstone became the first national park in 1872; the Sierra Club was founded by John Muir in 1892; and the National Park Service was established in 1916 to administer protected lands. Urban reformers created parks, playgrounds, and boulevards; the Playground Association of America formed in 1906 to institutionalize supervised play. These developments normalized vacations and outdoor exercise for the middle class. Marden leverages this culture, urging readers to seek fresh air, daylight, and regular leisure as public goods and personal disciplines that restore efficiency and guard against nervous prostration.
Mind-cure and allied currents in psychology and religion provided a vocabulary for healthful thought. The New Thought movement, with roots in Phineas Quimby’s ideas, spread through organizations such as the Unity School of Christianity (founded in Kansas City in 1889) and Divine Science (1888), while Mary Baker Eddy founded the Church of Christ, Scientist in 1879 and published Science and Health in 1875. William James’s lectures on habit and The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902) legitimated attention to belief and will. The Emmanuel Movement in Boston (1906) linked pastoral care and psychotherapy. Marden’s book adopts this mental hygiene ethos, teaching that disciplined, optimistic thinking improves health and conduct.
As social and political critique, the book indicts the age’s worship of speed, the neglect of rest in factories and offices, and the moral hazards of intoxicants and urban vice. It aligns with Progressive calls to conserve human life, implicitly challenging employers who extract labor without regard to fatigue, safety, or family time, and urging voluntary corporate paternalism alongside policy reform. By universalizing access to self-care practices and education, it pushes against rigid class fatalism while acknowledging structural dangers revealed by strikes, fires, and panics. Its ethic of humane productivity and civic-minded self-discipline offers a counterweight to exploitative industrial norms of the period.
Be Good To Yourself (Unabridged)
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]” 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,[1q] 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.
