Not only is this a great bit of poetry, but Rudyard Kipling’s ‘IF’ is also sort of a recipe for success and happiness. I like it a lot and hope you do too.

“If” By Rudyard Kipling

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream–and not make dreams your master,
If you can think–and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ‘em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings–nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And – which is more – you’ll be a Man, my son!

The first idea presented in the third stanza “If you can make one heap of all your winnings and risk it all on one turn of pitch and toss” initially gave me pause because my first-blush interpretation was that Kipling was saying high risk is a good thing.

But I came to realize that everything in life is high risk, and Kipling simply used gambling as metaphor. We all experience failure in some way, sometimes daily. The point, at least to me, is that regardless of what ‘skeletons’ you have in your closet, what significant failures (or accumulation of many small ones) you have in your past, they do NOT, unless you allow them, dictate your future.

IF…this poem’s message resonates with you, please leave a comment below and share your thoughts.

Thanks,
Eric