Courage mon brave!

My favourite quote of all time is: “Nobody can make you feel inferior without your consent.” It’s from the fabulous Eleanor Roosevelt who, when people ask me who in history I'd like to go back to meet, I’d choose. This quotation from her is so simple and yet just so true too. I used to be unbelievably shy as a child and anyone could make me feel inferior in those days. A good example of this would be my earlier experiences of getting my hair cut. In the late 1960s there was this very trendy new salon in Nottingham where everyone at school would go for a trim. For some reason I was convinced that if I entered that place I would be immediately laughed out of the door and told that I just wasn’t trendy enough to have their exalted scissors touch my inferior locks. How ridiculous was that? Once, I tried to pluck up the courage to go in – I must have been around fifteen at the time – and if I walked past the salon once, I must have walked past it a dozen times. Each time I had the temerity to look through the window, trying to convince myself that all I had to do was open the door and walk in, the fear would grab me and drag me further along the street. I hated myself for being so weak.

Anyone who knows me now would be surprised at this revelation. I don’t know when it was that I read the wise words of Lady Eleanor, but I can remember devising from it a new life motto for myself. “You can walk into that hairdresser’s of life.” This became something of a mantra for me and slowly it helped me to overcome my innate shyness and develop a trust in myself that has seen me through life ever since. I never flinch these days from entering a room full of strangers; I’ll talk to anyone; I’ll go anywhere. If I don’t know something, I’ll ask the question (there’s another proverb from somewhere that goes: “He who asks something that he doesn’t know is a fool for a moment; he who doesn’t ask remains a fool forever”).

If you think about what Eleanor Roosevelt was saying, it’s obvious. Bullies and snobs rely on their victims’ own weaknesses to succeed; they need permission from their victims before they can feel superior. So always, always, always deny them that permission, and you’ll be just fine. Give them your consent, and you’ve only yourself to blame.

This is all good advice. But just so that you don’t go from here feeling too serious, I’ll leave you with another of my favourite quotes, this time from W C Fields: “Always carry a small flagon of whisky in case of snakebite. Furthermore, always carry a small snake”. Wise words indeed.