Check up each week on the progress you are making. Ask yourself what mistakes you have made, what improvement, what lessons you have learned for the future.

Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage.

Tell a child, a husband or an employee that he is stupid or dumb at a certain thing, that he has no gift for it, and that he is doing it all wrong and you have destroyed almost every incentive to try to improve. But use the opposite technique, be liberal with encouragement; make the thing seem easy to do, let the other person know that you have faith in his ability to do it, that he has an undeveloped flair for it - and he will practice until the dawn comes in at the window in order to excel.

In short, we lose the freshness and spontaneity of true conversation. These are areas in which everyone interested in self-improvement will seek to improve.

In order to make friends you must first be friendly

If you disagree with them you may be tempted to interrupt. But don't. It is dangerous. They won't pay attention to you while they still have a lot of ideas of their own crying for expression. So listen patiently and with an open mind.

One of the most appalling comments on our present way of life is that at one time half of all the beds in our hospitals were reserved for patients with nervous and mental troubles, patients who had collapsed under the crushing burden of accumulated yesterdays and fearful tomorrows. Yet a vast majority of those people would be walking the streets today, leading happy, useful lives — if they had only heeded the words of Jesus: “Have no anxiety about the morrow”; or the words of Sir William Osler: "Live in day-tight compartments."