How to be happy though human / by W. Béran Wolfe.

successfully asked his employer for a substantial rise in salary. The employer’s reply was significant: “ We would have given you an increase long ago if you had acted as though you were worth it ! ” Another patient, an architect, who felt he was a complete failure, was ordered to buy a car he had admired at a distance, as a prop to his self-esteem. He drove his new car to a Country Club which was planning a new addition, showed his plans to the committee in charge of construction, and drove away with an order for the new building. He was an excellent architect, needing solely an external stimulus to his self-esteem, to enable him to realize his own value. A young lawyer who used to sit and worry about his diminishing assets was urged to invest almost his entire fortune in a new wardrobe and a two weeks’ holiday in a fashionable seaside hotel. He inspired confidence in an unhappy wife, a guest at the same hotel, took charge of her divorce proceedings, and collected the largest fee he had ever made, and at the same time renewed his zest for the practice of law, and his belief in his own ability. Silk hats do not make heroes, nor clothes a queen-— but they help if you have an inferiority complex. In all the cases we have described, the “ plus gestures ” were only accessories—the real compensations were always in terms of social usefulness. The most imposing array of “ plus gestures ” is of no value if there is no underlying willingness to be socially useful. If you have been unduly sensitive to other people’s opinions, plan a campaign of convincing yourself, with “ plus gestures ” if necessary, of your own validity, remembering always that “ plus gestures ” are but temporary devices. If you use “ plus gestures ” to help yourself, they are good. If you use them to convince others, they are simply an expression of bad manners. Fundamental "Techniques of Compensation The art of compensating for the inferiority feeling which every human being inherits as part of the raw