Wisdom & Empowerment: The Orison Swett Marden Edition (18 Books in One Volume). Orison Swett Marden

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      Chapter IX.

       The Power Of Cheerful Thinking

       Table of Contents

      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 by “the laugh cure,” by substituting cheerfulness for fretting, worrying, and complaining. Every time one complains or finds fault, he is only acknowledging the power of his enemies to hold him down, to make his life uncomfortable and disagreeable. The way to get rid of these enemies of happiness, is to deny their existence, to drive them out of the mind, for they are only delusions. Harmony, health, beauty, success—these are the realities; their opposites are only the absence of the real.

      “I try as much as I can,” said a great philosopher, “to let nothing distress me, and to take everything that happens as for the best. I believe that this is a duty and that we sin in not so doing.”

      Similarly Sir John Lubbock has said:

      “I cannot, however, but think that the world would be better and brighter if our teachers would dwell on the Duty and Happiness, as well as on the Happiness and Duty; for we ought to be as cheerful as we can, if only because to be happy ourselves is the most effectual contribution to the happiness of others.”

      Nothing makes for one’s own health and happiness so much as a serene mind. When the mind is self-poised and serene, every faculty and function falls into line and works normally. There is equilibrium and health everywhere in the body. The serene mind can accomplish infinitely more than the disturbed and discordant.

      “A serene intentness will always prevail,

      Though bluster and bustle will often fail”

      The work turned out by a calm, balanced mind is healthy and strong. There is a vigor and naturalness about it which is not found in that done by a one-sided man, a mind out of balance. Serenity never dwells with discontent, with anxiety, with over-ambition. It never lives with the guilty, but dwells only with a clear conscience; it is never found apart from honesty and square dealing, or with the idle or the vicious.

      The sunny man attracts business success; everybody likes to deal with agreeable, cheerful people. We instinctively shrink from a crabbed, cross, contemptible character, no matter how able he may be. We would rather do a little less business or pay a little more for our goods and deal with an optimist.

      The great business world of to-day is too serious, too dead in earnest. Life in America is the most strenuous ever experienced in the history of the world. There is a perpetual need of relief from this great tension, and a sunny, cheerful, gracious soul is like an ocean breeze in sultry August, like the coming of a vacation. We welcome it because it gives us at least temporary relief from the strenuous strain. Country store-keepers look forward for months to the visits of jolly, breezy travelling men, and their wholesale houses profit by their good nature. Cheerful-faced and pleasant-voiced clerks can sell more goods and attract more customers than saucy, snappy, disagreeable ones. Promoters, organizers of great enterprises, must make a business of being agreeable, of harmonizing hostile interests, of winning men's good opinion. Newspaper men, likewise, depend on making friends to gain entrée, to get interviews, to discover facts, and to find news. All doors fly open to the sunny man, and he is invited to enter when the disagreeable, sarcastic, gloomy man has to break open the door to force his way in. Many another business is founded on courtesy, cheerfulness, and good humor.

      Employees can often make their situations easier, get more salary, and win promotion by always being cheerful and bright, besides having a pleasant, happy time themselves. Emory Belle tells how this worked in her own case:

      “I started out to my work one morning, determined to try the power of cheerful thinking СКАЧАТЬ