Welcome to the Inspirational Living podcast. Today's reading has been edited and adapted from the book Getting On by Orison Sweat Martin.

The leaders of the world, be it in business, science, or the arts, have ever been precedent breakers.

Timid people, no matter how able, never make leaders. Fearlessness and originality are characteristic of all leaders of progress.

They have no reverence for the old simply because it is old.

With them it is always a question of pushing forward, of improving on the past, instead of

slavishly copying it.

Men and women who have blazed new paths for civilization have always been precedent breakers.

It is ever the individual who believes in their own idea, who can

think and act without a crowd to back them, who is not afraid to stand alone, who is bold,

original, resourceful, who has the courage to go where others have never been, to do what others have never done,

that accomplishes things, that leaves their mark on their times.

Do not be afraid of being original. Do not be a copy of your father, your mother, your grandparents, which would be

as foolish as it would be for the violet to try to be a rose. Every person is born to do a certain

work. If you try to do some other person's work, you will be a failure. Great men and women never copy one another.

A master mind cannot be made to fit a pattern or conform to a set routine. Every strong person's

achievement is an outgrowth of their individual ideas. What you manufacture or a cell, the conduct of your business, the book you write, the picture

you paint, the sermon you preach.

This is the expression of the world of what was wrapped up inside you, not in someone else.

The imitator ruins their capacity for initiative.

They lose their creative power.

Their inventiveness and resourcefulness are never developed.

Their executive ability, the ability to originate, to do things, is seriously crippled, if

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