Honest

From the Book:

“Lincoln’s rise to the Presidency—an absolute nobody coming out of absolutely nowhere—came about because Old Abe willed it to.

Lincoln didn’t have the luxury of being embarrassed about his lack of education. The guy didn’t graduate high school, middle school, or elementary school—let alone a college with a name you wouldn’t be caught dead wearing around on a sweatshirt.

Lincoln knew what he was capable of before anyone else did. But it’s a great thing he spent his whole life overlooked, undervalued, misunderstood, pitied & poor-shamed, and ultimately taken for granted.

By the time he finally started talking about the things that truly mattered, both to him and to his neighbors, Lincoln dazzled.

On the frontier, and all the way back in “hey, get a load of this guy!” New York City—and in all those small cities and railroad towns in between—whoever heard him speak, wanted to know more about who he was.

But to get to that point, Lincoln had to struggle through self-doubt, lack of purpose, depression—all that modern stuff. He was afraid of the same things we all are: that he was ugly, unlovable, unworthy. That people assumed he was faking it, and that deep down he actually was.

They would never let someone like that make it anywhere close to the White House today.

Too strange, too unserious, and have you met his wife?

The only thing Lincoln was untouchable at, was chopping wood. Everyone agreed that guy could make an axe sing. In everything else there was a long learning curve. But Lincoln worked at it—whatever it was—and in most things he improved just by sheer will.

Somehow, eventually, they ended up electing him.”