Analyzing Character, page 329 by Katherine M.H. Blackford
<< Return to Title Details & Download330
;p>" id="CHAPTER IV<p>">
CHAPTER IV
INDUCING DECISION AND ACTION
"I want it," said a gentleman to us, speaking of a piece of property in which he was contemplating investment. "I want it so bad that I can't think of much else. I lie awake nights dreaming of myself in possession of it, and yet, somehow or other, I can't make up my mind to buy it. I have the money and have had the money in the bank for weeks. There is nothing else I want to do with that money half as much as I want to buy that property, but it is an important move and, somehow or other, I just can't make the plunge."
This gentleman's experience illustrates a psychological condition well known to many of our readers, because they have been in substantially the same situation--and well known to every salesman, because he has had to meet and combat just such a situation many a time.
Desire having been created, our law of sale states that desire, properly augmented, ripens into decision and action. This is true. And yet the ripening process is sometimes so slow that the frost of fear or the rot of regret spoils the fruit. It is popularly supposed to be true that if a person really desires to do a thing strongly enough, and it is within the bounds of possibility, he will do it. Nine times out of ten, or perhaps ninety-nine times out of a hundred, this is the case; but there are times when the will simply refuses to respond to desire.
A BALKY WILL
A lady who was of an exceedingly stubborn nature once said to us: "Ordinarily, I consider myself to be quite amenable to persuasion and suggestion. I like to live peaceably with others. Occasionally, however, someone, and perhaps someone whom I love very dearly, says something or does something that makes me stubborn. Then I absolutely balk. Commands, demands,