In summary, we might say:

1. Be enough in earnest about emotional growth to make it the most important concern of your life.
2. Be willing to say. “No,” to anything which interferes with that continued growth.
3. Attempt to be objective and honest in the selection of courses which best fit your new emotional pattern.
4. If the deeper self does not wish to do a certain thing, that fact is justification enough for not doing it. Each of us is primarily responsible in accounting to himself.
5. In following such a course of action, you will be amazed to discover that decisiveness earns the admiration of acquaintances, since most of them wish that they could exercise the same kind of courage.

In the process of growing up emotionally we will often be startled to discover vistas of new satisfactions opening up before us. We will begin to realize that our childish fears have kept us from enjoying freedom, that our desire for universal approval has made it impossible for us to gain the approval which we most desire.

These new satisfactions will not come all at once. Neither should we expect to plunge immediately into large decisions that tax our emotional strength too greatly. The first tentative steps will be the most important and with exercise greater decisions can be undertaken.

The great mountaineers begin their training by climbing little hills. In growing up, we must all learn how to walk before we can run.

• Lewis F. Presnall