“Compared to what we ought to be，” he wrote， “we are only halfawake. We are making use of only a small part of our physicaland mental resources. Stating the thing broadly， the humanindividual thus lives far within his limits. He possesses powers ofvarious sorts which he habitually fails to use.”
You and I have such abilities， so let’s not waste a secondworrying because we are not like other people. You are somethingnew in this world. Never before， since the beginning of time，has there ever been anybody exactly like you； and never againthroughout all the ages to come will there ever be anybody exactlylike you again. The new science of genetics informs us that youare what you are largely as a result of twenty-four chromosomescontributed by your father and twenty-four chromosomescontributed by your mother. These forty-eight chromosomescomprise everything that determines what you inherit. In eachchromosome there may be， says Amran Sheinfeld， “anywherefrom scores to hundreds of genes—with a single gene， in some cases， able to change the whole life of an individual.” Truly， weare “fearfully and wonderfully” made.
Even after your mother and father met and mated， therewas only one chance in 300，000 billion that the person who isspecifically you would be born！ In other words， if you had 300，000billion brothers and sisters， they might have all been different fromyou. Is all this guesswork？ No. It is a scientific fact. If you wouldlike to read more about it， go to your public library and borrow abook entitled You and Heredity， by Amran Scheinfeld.
I can talk with conviction about this subject of being yourselfbecause I feel deeply about it. I know what I am talking about. Iknow from bitter and costly experience. When I first came to NewYork from the cornfields of Missouri， I enrolled in the AmericanAcademy of Dramatic Arts. I aspired to be an actor. I had whatI thought was a brilliant idea， a short cut to success， an idea sosimple， so foolproof， that I couldn’t understand why thousands ofambitious people hadn’t already discovered it. It was this： I wouldstudy how the famous actors of that day—John Drew， WalterHampden， and Otis Skinner—got their effects. Then I wouldimitate the best point of each one of them and make myself into ashining， triumphant combination of all of them. How silly I Howabsurd！ I had to waste years of my life imitating other peoplebefore it penetrated through my thick Missouri skull that I had tobe myself， and that I couldn’t possibly be anyone else.
That distressing experience ought to have taught me a lastinglesson. But it didn’t. Not me. I was too dumb. I had to learn itall over again. Several years later， I set out to write what I hopedwould be the best book on public speaking for business men thathad ever been written. I had the same foolish idea about writingthis book that I had formerly had about acting： I was going toborrow the ideas of a lot of other writers and put them all in one book—a book that would have everything. So I got scores of bookson public speaking and spent a year incorporating their ideas intomy manu. But it finally dawned on me once again that I wasplaying the fool. This hodgepodge of other men’s ideas that I hadwritten was so synthetic， so dull， that no business man would everplod through it. So I tossed a year’s work into the waste basket，and started all over again.
This time I said to myself： “You’ve got to be Dale Carnegie， withall his faults and limitations. You can’t possibly be anybody else.”