Part 5 (2/2)

Think of the value of each day of life, how much it means and what possibilities of happiness and usefulness it contains if well spent.

But if you stuff yourself like an anaconda, dwell on the small worries and grow angry at the least trifle, you are committing as great and inexcusable a folly as if you flung your furniture and garments and food and fuel into the sea in a spirit of wanton cruelty. You are wasting life for nothing. Every sick, gloomy day you pa.s.s is a sin against life. Get health, be cheerful, keep calm.

Clear your mind of every gloomy, selfish angry or revengeful thought.

Allow no resentment or grudge toward man or fate to stay in your heart over night.

Wake in the morning with a blessing for every living thing on your lips and in your soul. Say to yourself: ”Health, luck, usefulness, success, are mine. I claim them.” Keep thinking that thought, no matter what happens, just as you would put one foot before another if you had a mountain to climb. Keep on, keep on, and suddenly you will find you are on the heights, luck beside you.

Whoever follows this recipe _cannot fail_ of happiness, good fortune and a useful life. But saying the words over _once_ and then drifting back to anger, selfishness, revenge and gloom will do no good.

The words must be said over and over, and _thought_ and _lived_ when not said.

Literature

The world is full of ”New Thought” Literature. It is helpful and inspiring to read.

It is worth many dollars to any one who will _live_ its philosophy.

I talked to a man who has been studying along these lines for some years.

”Oh, I know all that philosophy,” he said; ”it is nothing new. I am perfectly familiar with it.”

Yet this man was continually allowing himself to grow angry over the least trifle; he was quick to see and speak of the faults in others; he was demanding more of those he a.s.sociated with in the way of consideration and justice than he was willing to give, and he was untidy in his person and improvident in his use of money.

Now it is the merest waste of time for this man to read ”New Thought”

literature or practice ”deep breathing”, since he will not put into daily and hourly practice what is taught by the New Religion.

He is like the orthodox Christian who mumbles through the Lord's Prayer and then goes forth to do exactly as he would not be done by in business, social and domestic life.

_Man is what he thinks_. Not what he says, reads or hears. By persistent thinking you can undo any condition which exists. You can free yourself from any chains, whether of poverty, sin, ill health or unhappiness. If you have been thinking these thoughts half a lifetime you must not expect to batter down the walls you have built, in a week, or a month, or a year. You must work and wait, and grow discouraged and stumble and pick yourself up and go on again.

You cannot in an hour gain control over a temper which you have let fly loose for twenty years. But you can control it eventually, and learn to think of a burst of anger as a vulgarity like drunkenness or profanity, something you could not descend to.

If you have allowed yourself to think despondent thoughts and believe that poverty and sickness were your portion for years, it will take time to train your mind to more cheerful and hopeful ideas; but you can do it by repeated a.s.sertions and by reading and thinking and living the beautiful New Thought Philosophy.

Optimism

Not long ago I read the following gloomy bit of pessimism from the pen of a man bright enough to know better than to add to the mental malaria of the world. He said:

Life is a hopeless battle in which we are foredoomed to defeat. And the prize for which we strive ”to have and to hold”--what is it? A thing that is neither enjoyed while had, nor missed when lost. So worthless it is, so unsatisfying, so inadequate to purpose, so false to hope and at its best so brief, that for consolation and compensation we set up fantastic faiths of an aftertime in a better world from which no confirming whisper has ever reached us out of the void. Heaven is a prophecy uttered by the lips of despair, but h.e.l.l is an inference from history.

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