“It matters not what may be the cause of the trouble in the anxious mind,” says Dr. A. J. Sanderson, “the results upon the body are the same. Every function is weakened, and under the continual influence of a depressed state of mind, they degenerate. Especially is this true if any organ of the body is handicapped by weakness from any other cause. The combination of the two influences will soon lead to actual disease.
“The greatest barrier in the way of the healing process, especially if the malady be one that is accompanied by severe pain, is the mental depression that is associated with it and often becomes a factor of the disease. It stands in the way of recovery sometimes more than do the physical causes, and obliterates from the consciousness of the individual the wonderful healing power of nature, so essential to recovery.”
A most injurious and unpleasant way of looking for trouble is fault-finding, continual criticism of other persons. Some people are never generous, never magnanimous toward others. They are stingy of their praise, showing always an unhealthy parsimony in their recognition of merit in others, and critical of their every act
Don’t go through life looking for trouble, for faults, for failures, for the crooked, the ugly, and the deformed; don't see the distorted man—see the man that God made. Just make up your mind firmly at the very outset in life that you will not criticise or condemn others, or find fault with their mistakes and shortcomings. Fault-finding, indulging in sarcasm and irony, picking flaws in everything and everybody, looking for things to condemn instead of to praise, is a very dangerous habit to oneself. It is like a deadly worm which gnaws at the heart of the rosebud or fruit, and will make your own life gnarled, distorted, and bitter.
No life can be harmonious and happy after this blighting habit is once formed. Those who always look for something to condemn ruin their own characters and destroy their normal integrity.
We all like sunshiny, bright, cheerful, hopeful people; nobody likes the grumbler, the fault-finder, the backbiter, the slanderer. The world likes Emerson, not Nordau; likes the man who sees longevity in his cause and good in the future, who believes the best and not the worst of people. Idle gossipers, serpent tongues, people who give vent to their tempers, get only momentary satisfaction, and ever afterward they are tormented by their own ugly natures and then wonder why another person enjoys his life and they do not enjoy theirs.
It is just as easy to go through life looking for the good and the beautiful, instead of the ugly; for the noble instead of the ignoble; for the bright and cheerful instead of the dark and gloomy; the hopeful instead of the despairing; to see the bright side instead of the dark side. To set your face always toward the sunlight is just as easy as to see always the shadows, and it makes all the difference in your character between content and discontent, between happiness and misery, and in your life, between prosperity and adversity, between success and failure.
Learn to look for the light, then. Positively refuse to harbor shadows and blots, and the deformed, the disfigured, the discordant. Hold to those things that give pleasure, that are helpful and inspiring, and you will change your whole way of looking at things, will transform your character in a very short time.
A great many people think they would be happy if they were only in different circumstances, when the fact is that circumstances have little, if anything, to do with one’s temperament or disposition to enjoy the world.
I know people who have lost their best friends, who have all their lives been apparently unfortunate, have struggled against odds and have themselves been invalids, and yet they have borne up bravely through it all, and have been cheerful, hopeful, inspiring to all who knew them.
You who are always unhappy, who are always grumbling about your circumstances, hard luck, and poverty, must remember that thousands of people would be happy in precisely your condition.
If you have been in the habit of talking down your business, the times, your friends, and everything, just reverse the process, talk everything up, and see how soon your changed thought will change the atmosphere about you and improve your conditions.
A strong, positive man does not allow himself to talk and think negatives. He does not say “I can’t”; it is always “I can”; he does not say “I will try the thing,” but “I will do it.” “Cant’s” have ruined more boys and young men and young women than almost anything else, for to get into the negative habit, the doubting habit, tends to keep them down. They are fastening bonds of servitude around themselves, and will not be able to counteract their influence unless they reverse their thinking, talking, and acting.
Perfect faith is the child of optimism and harmony. The pessimist atmosphere is always deadly to health and fatal to business as well as morals. The balanced soul is never suspicious, does not expect trouble, but quite the reverse. He knows that health and harmony are the everlasting facts, that disease and discord are but the absence of the opposites, as darkness is not an entity in itself, only the absence of light. Get yourself in balance, and life will look and be different to yea.
"Brooding o'er ills, the irritable soul
Creates the evils feared, and hugs its pain.
See thou some good in every sombre whole,
And, viewing excellence, forget life's dole,
In will the last sweet drop of joy to drain”
Chapter IX.
The Power Of Cheerful Thinking
Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement; nothing can be done without hope.—Helen Keller.
The men whom I have seen succeed best in life have always been cheerful and hopeful men, who went about their business with a smile on their faces, and took the changes and chances of this mortal life like men, facing rough and smooth alike as it came.—Charles Kingsley.
THE cheerful man has a creative power which the pessimist never possesses. There is nothing which will so completely sweeten life and take out its drudgery, nothing that will so effectively ease the jolts on the road, as a sunny, hopeful, optimistic disposition. With the same mental ability, the cheerful thinker has infinitely more power than the despondent, gloomy thinker. Cheerfulness is a perpetual lubricator of the mind; it is the oil of gladness which dispels friction, worries, anxieties, and disagreeable experiences. The life machinery of a cheerful man does not wear out or grind away as rapidly as that of one whose moods and temper scour and wear the delicate bearings and throw the entire machinery out of harmony.
“In the maintenance of health and the cure of disease cheerfulness is a most important factor,” says Dr. A. J. Sanderson. “Its power to do good like a medicine is not an artificial stimulation of the tissues, to be followed by reaction and greater waste, as is the case with many drugs; but the effect of cheerfulness is an actual life-giving influence through a normal channel, the results of which reach every part of the system. It brightens the eye, makes ruddy the countenance, brings elasticity to the step, and promotes all the inner forces by which life is sustained. The blood circulates more freely, the oxygen comes to its home in the tissues, health is promoted, and disease is banished.”
A farmer in Alabama eight or ten years ago, subject to lung trouble, had a hemorrhage while ploughing one day, and lost so much blood that he was told by his physician that he would die. He merely said that he was not ready to die yet, and lingered for a long time, unable to get up. He gained strength, and finally could sit up, and then he began to laugh at anything and everything. He persisted in his hilarity, even when well people could see nothing to laugh at, and gained constantly. He became robust and strong. He says he is sure that if he had not laughed continually he would have died.
A great many people have brought sick, discordant bodies back into harmony